Woman. Nor will anything pertaining to the education and care of
children be deemed irrelevant, especially by mothers, upon whom these
duties must always largely devolve.

Of the intellectual gifts and wide culture of Margaret Fuller there is
no need that I should speak, nor is it wise that one standing in my
relation to her should. Those who knew her personally feel that no
words ever flowed from her pen equalling the eloquent utterances of
her lips; yet her works, though not always a clear oppression of her
thoughts, are the evidences to which the world will look as proof of
her mental greatness.

On one point, however, I do wish to bear testimony--not needed with
those who knew her well, but interesting, perhaps, to some readers
into whose bands this volume may fall. It is on a subject which one
who knew her from his childhood up--at _home_, where best the
_heart_ and _soul_ can be known,--in the unrestrained hours
of domestic life,--in various scenes, and not for a few days, nor
under any peculiar circumstances--can speak with confidence, because
he speaks what he "doth know, and testifieth what he hath seen." It
relates to her Christian faith and hope. "With all her intellectual
gifts, with all her high, moral, and noble characteristics," there are
some who will ask, "was her intellectual power sanctified by Christian
faith as its basis? Were her moral qualities, her beneficent life, the
results of a renewed heart?" I feel no hesitation here, nor would
think it worth while to answer such questions at all, were her life to
be read and known by all who read this volume, and were I not
influenced also, in some degree, by the tone which has characterized a
few sectarian reviews of her works, chiefly in foreign periodicals.
Surely, if the Saviour's test, "By their fruits ye shall know them,"