should say that these few words were, to the initiated mind, an
unconscious expression of the lonely frigidity which characterised
most attempts at social recreation in the New England world some forty
years ago. There was at that time a great desire for culture, a great
interest in knowledge, in art, in æsthetics, together with a very
scanty supply of the materials for such pursuits. Small things were
made to do large service; and there is something even touching in the
solemnity of consideration that was bestowed by the emancipated New
England conscience upon little wandering books and prints, little
echoes and rumours of observation and experience. There flourished at
that time in Boston a very remarkable and interesting woman, of whom
we shall have more to say, Miss Margaret Fuller by name. This lady was
the apostle of culture, of intellectual curiosity, and in the
peculiarly interesting account of her life, published in 1852 by
Emerson and two other of her friends, there are pages of her letters
and diaries which narrate her visits to the Boston Athenæum and the
emotions aroused in her mind by turning over portfolios of engravings.
These emotions were ardent and passionate--could hardly have been more
so had she been prostrate with contemplation in the Sistine Chapel or
in one of the chambers of the Pitti Palace. The only analogy I can
recall to this earnestness of interest in great works of art at a
distance from them, is furnished by the great Goethe's elaborate study
of plaster-casts and pencil-drawings at Weimar. I mention Margaret
Fuller here because a glimpse of her state of mind--her vivacity of
desire and poverty of knowledge--helps to define the situation. The
situation lives for a moment in those few words of Mr. Lathrop's. The
initiated mind, as I have ventured to call it, has a vision of a
little unadorned parlour, with the snow-drifts of a Massachusetts
winter piled up about its windows, and a group of sensitive and
serious people, modest votaries of opportunity, fixing their eyes upon