Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/91

76 the Italy of the Renaissance writers and artists, combined to make the continent in which their thoughts were at home. The England of the commonalty, the Germany and Italy of the peasant and artisan, were little known to them, and as little the characteristic qualities and defects of their own country-people.

Hence their comparison of the old society with the dew was in great part founded upon what we may call literary illusions." Moreover, the German and English methods of thought were only partially applicable to a mode of life whose conditions far transcended those of European life in their freedom and in the objects recognised as common to all.

Those of us who have numbered threescore years can remember the perpetual lamentation of the cultivated American of forty years ago. His whole talk was a cataloguing of negatives: “We have not this, we have not that." To all of which the true answer would have been: “ You have a wonderful country, an exceptional race, an unparalleled opportunity. You have not yet made your five talents ten. That is what you should set about immediately."

The Brook Farm experiment probably appeared to Margaret in the light of an Utopia. Her regard for the founders of the enterprise induced her, nevertheless, to visit the place frequently. Of the first of these visits her journal has preserved a full account.

The aspect of the new settlement at first appeared to her somewhat desolate : «You seem to belong to nobody, to have a right to speak to nobody; but very soon you learn to take care of yourself, and then the freedom of the place is delightful."

The society of Mr. and Mrs. Ripley was most congenial to her, and the nearness of the woods afforded