carefully, he would have waited till the time was ripe, and
the minds of men prepared for what he had to say. He would
thus have escaped the ignominious death, which so prematurely
cut short his "usefulness." Jewry would thus, gently, soberly,
and without disturbance, have been led to a better course.

'"Children of this generation!"--ye Festuses and Agrippas!--ye
are wiser, we grant, than "the children of light;" yet we
advise you to commend to a higher tribunal those whom much
learning, or much love, has made "mad." For if they stay here,
almost will they persuade even you!'

Amidst these meetings of the Transcendentalists it was, that, after
years of separation, I again found Margaret. Of this body she was
member by grace of nature. Her romantic freshness of heart, her
craving for the truth, her self-trust, had prepared her from childhood
to be a pioneer in prairie-land; and her discipline in German schools
had given definite form and tendency to her idealism. Her critical
yet aspiring intellect filled her with longing for germs of positive
affirmation in place of the chaff of thrice-sifted negation; while her
æsthetic instinct responded in accord to the praise of Beauty as the
beloved heir of Good and Truth, whose right it is to reign. On the
other hand, strong common-sense saved her from becoming visionary,
while she was too well-read as a scholar to be caught by conceits, and
had been too sternly tried by sorrow to fall into fanciful effeminacy.
It was a pleasing surprise to see how this friend of earlier days was
acknowledged as a peer of the realm, in this new world of thought.
Men,--her superiors in years, fame and social position,--treated
her more with the frankness due from equal to equal, than the
half-condescending deference with which scholars are wont to adapt