which will serve at once to exemplify Miss Fuller's more earnest
(declamatory) style, and to show the tenor of her prospective
speculations:--

"'At Chicago I read again 'Philip Van Artevelde,' and certain
passages in it will always be in my mind associated with the
deep sound of the lake, as heard in the night. I used to read
a short time at night, and then open the blind to look out.
The moon would be full upon the lake, and the calm breath,
pure light, and the deep voice, harmonized well with the
thought of the Flemish hero. When will this country have
such a man? It is what she needs--no thin Idealist, no coarse
Realist, but a man whose eye reads the heavens while his
feet step firmly on the ground, and his hands are strong and
dexterous in the use of human instruments. A man, religious,
virtuous, and--sagacious; a man of universal sympathies, but
self-possessed; a man who knows the region of emotion, though
he is not its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere
spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to be
played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value,
yet who, if his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by
the falsehood of others. A man who lives from the past, yet
knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose
comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by its
golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses
prescience, as the wise man must, but not so far as to be
driven mad to-day by the gift which discerns to-morrow. When
there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her
on will be expressed."