her vagaries by the lack of something which she did not know existed,
and which she sought blindly in metaphysics. Harriet Martineau writes of
her: "It is the most grievous loss I have almost ever known in private
history, the deferring of Margaret Fuller's married life so long. That
noble last period of her life is happily on record as well as the
earlier." The hardy Englishwoman has here laid a kind human hand on the
weakness of New England, and seems to be unconscious that she is making
a revelation as to the whole Transcendental movement. But the point is
this: there was no one within reach of Margaret Fuller, in her early
days, who knew what was her need. One offered her Kant, one Comte, one
Fourier, one Swedenborg, one the Moral Law. You cannot feed the heart on
these things.

Yet there is a bright side to this New England spirit, which seems, if
we look only to the graver emotions, so dry, dismal, and deficient. A
bright and cheery courage appears in certain natures of which the sun
has made conquest, that almost reconciles us to all loss, so splendid is
the outcome. The practical, dominant, insuppressible active temperaments
who have a word for every emergency, and who carry the controlled force
of ten men at their disposal, are the fruits of this same spirit.
Emerson knew not tears, but he and the hundred other beaming and
competent characters which New England has produced make us almost envy
their state. They give us again the old Stoics at their best.

Very closely connected with this subject--the crisp and cheery New
England temperament--lies another which any discussion of Emerson must
bring up,--namely, Asceticism. It is probable that in dealing with
Emerson's feelings about the plastic arts we have to do with what is
really the inside, or metaphysical side, of the same phenomena which
present themselves on the outside, or physical side, in the shape of