Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/303

 testifies of its Poet and its Creator; but the highest evidence of Him she derives, not from the natural life, but from a still, lofty figure, which once advanced from the shadows of life before her glance, and made life for her light and great, connecting time and eternity. Mrs. H. is a platonic thinker, who can see (which is rare in this world) system in all things, and dissimilar radii having all relationship to one common centre. I spoke freely to her of what I considered the great want in the female education of this country,—and of all countries. Women acquire many kinds of knowledge, but there is no systematising of it. A deal of latin, a deal of mathematics, much knowledge of the physical sciences, &c., but there is no philosophical centralisation of this, no application of the life in this to life itself, and no opportunity afforded after leaving school of applying all this scientific knowledge to a living purpose. Hence it falls away out of the soul, like flowers that have no root, or as leaves plucked from the branches of the tree of knowledge when the young disciple goes from school into life. Or if they do remember what they have learned, it is but merely remembered work, and does not enter as sap and vegetative power into the life itself. That which is wanting in school-learning, in the great as in the small, is a little Platonic philosophy.

On other subjects we did not fully agree; my imagination could not always accompany the flights of my friend. But the charm in Mrs. H. is that she has genius, and she says new and startling things, in particular as regard the life and correspondence of nature and of the spirit.

When the sun sank in the waters of the river this beautiful day came to an end, and we returned to the city. But I must go again to Belmont, and spend a few days there with its good genius; so it is said—but I know not whether I shall have the time.

Mrs. H. belongs to the aristocratic world of Charleston,