Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/73

58 sylvan strength and earnestness, while many of the most intellectual and cultivated persons attended its councils. Mrs. Little and Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a pleasing and memorable part in the debate, and that flea of Conventions, Mrs. Abigail Folsom, was but too ready with her interminable scroll." In the July number of the year 1842 many pages are devoted to a rehearsal of "the entertainments of the past winter," which treats of Fanny Elssler's dancing, Braham's singing, oratorios, symphony concerts, and various lectures. Among these last, those of Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Lyell are curtly dismissed as a neat article," while those of Henry Giles are recognised as showing popular talent.

Among Margaret's own contributions to the Dial, the article on Goethe and that entitled “The Great Lawsuit" are perhaps the most noteworthy. We shall find the second of these expanded into the well-known Woman in the Nineteenth century, of which mention will be made hereafter. The one first named seems to demand some notice here, the fine discrimination of its criticism showing how well qualified the writer was to teach the women of her day the true appreciation of genius, and to warn them from the idolatry which worships the faults as well as the merits of great minds.

From a lover of Goethe, such sentences as the following were scarcely to have been expected:—

"Pardon him, World, that he was too worldly. Do not wonder, Heart, that he was so heartless. Believer Soul, that one so true, as far as he want, must yet be ad into the deeper mysteries of soul.

"Naturally of a deep mind and shallow heart, he felt the way of the affections enough to appreciate