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But that was not enough. Our thought must fly through the air faster than the locomotive itself,literally with the speed of thought. In the prophetic words of Pope, it now "lives along the line." London and Edinburgh talk together at lightning speed along the wires, and almost ere the echoes of the revolutionary shots have died away in the streets of Paris, we know all about it on 'Change, for the news has come across by the Submarine Telegraph. This is going ahead, as the Yankees would say, "like greased lightning."

We are, indeed, a terribly go ahead age. In machinery, in institutions, in everything. We won't stand still. See! there is policeman, X 156,-what does he say?"Keep moving!" We must go ahead. There is no other way for it.

Doubtless the go-ahead principle is abused,-in puffing, for instance. A. B. wheels his Gigantic Hat through the streets, advertizing the unparalleled Four and Nine castor. C. D. sends along his donkeyvan, and all the other letters of the alphabet send out regiments of Walking Sandwiches to illustrate the go-ahead principle. One man starts a political reform organ to puff his coffee, and another starts a religious reform paper to puff his pills. Thus "Go ahead" is pressed into all manner of service creditable and discreditable.

"Go ahead" in competition! Everybody goes ahead there, each struggling to outstrip his neighbour. In one case it is competition of industry, in another of talent, in another of enterprise. The weak may be trampled down in the race towards the goal (for Go ahead is rather selfish and unfeeling, it must be admitted), but Success is the prize to be won, and the most go-ahead competitor usually secures it.

"Go ahead!" It is the Yankee's watchword. Across the big pond they go ahead in everything. They are the fastest people in the world, and profess to "beat creation." They do it slick; and are tarnation 'cute, so 'cute that the story of the two Yankee boys who could make a dollar apiece by "swopping jackets," when shut up in a room together for five minutes, has almost become proverbial. They go ahead in education, in religion, in suffrage, in gold gathering, in nigger driving, in everything. See a steamboat race on the Ohio or the Mississippi, when the rival captains have got their steam and blood up, and sit each upon his safety valve at the risk of a burst "biler," cheering their men to "pile on the logs," though they should go sky-high for it! There, indeed, you have "Go ahead" in an attitude in which his portrait might be taken!

Hear, for instance, what the writer in the New York Reveille says, in imploring his fellow countrymen to " 'go ahead" with greater rapidity,-to stir up the fire and throw in the resin :-"Just look: 1776-an infant, untried republic,-thirteen states, and 3,000,000 of people! 1851-thirty-one states, 25,000,000 of inhabitants, and marching onward, onward, onward! The young West,-big plains, big rivers, big bones, and big people; on she goes with mastodon strides ; one jump from the Alleghany to the Mississippi; another, she is on the Rocky Mountains, and with another she is coolly eating oysters from the waters of the Pacific! Hurrah! who cares? and who says turn back?"

The phrase has, indeed, become familiar amongst ourselves. Young England adopts it. What so contemptuous as the word slow in speaking of another? The slow man, like the duck-legged drummer-boy, is behind the age. We must go a-head. There is nothing else for it, even though the "biler" should burst. Some, indeed, think the age too fast,-for

instance, that in keeping up appearances, and style, and standard of living, we go ahead sometimes beyond our means. There is doubtless some truth in this view; and yet, as a general rule, "Go ahead" holds good.

"Go ahead" has been going the round of the political and social world lately. What a year was 1848! What a number of spick and span new constitutions were framed and set up in that year,more than Sieyes or Jeremy Bentham had ever dreamt of! But already they are pounded into nothing by tyrant cannon, and all over the continent the cry of "Go ahead" has been drowned in shrieks and groans of the dying.

But "Go ahead has power in it yet, and the cry will arise again, ay, and again. Printing, the electric wires, and the locomotive, will prove too strong for bayonets. As an old writer has said, “An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. It is neither the Rhine, nor the Channel, nor the Ocean that can arrest its progress. It will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer." The world's clock cannot be put back. The progress of man cannot be stayed. For he will 'go ahead," in spite of all opposing influences. Stem the tide with a broom; stop gravitation by a declaration of war against it; stay the tempest by a charge of fixed bayonets. No! Twere as absurd to attempt any of these fool's tricks, as it were to stay the majestic progress of humanity towards the fulfilment of its divine mission.

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As individuals, as communities, as nations, we cannot go back, we cannot stand stand still; there is, therefore, nothing for it but to "Go Ahead!

BEAUTY EVERYWHERE.

We all of us, in a great measure, create our own happiness, which is not half so much dependent upon scenes and circumstances as most people are apt to imagine and so it is with beauty. : Nature does

little more than furnish us with the materials of both, leaving us to work them out for ourselves. "Stars and flowers, and hills, and woods, and streams, are letters, and words, and voices, vehicles, and missionaries," but they need to be interpreted in the right spirit. We must read, and listen for them, and endeavour to understand and profit by them. And when we look around us upon earth, we must not forget to look upward to heaven; "Those who can see God in everything," writes a popular author,

are sure to see good in everything." We may add with truth, that they are also sure to see beauty in everything and everywhere. When we are at peace with ourselves and the world, it is as though we gazed upon outward things through a golden-tinted glass, and saw a glory resting upon them all. We know that it cannot be long thus; sin and sorrow, and blinding tears, will dim the mirror of our inmost thoughts; but we must pray and look again, and by-and-by the cloud will pass away. There is beauty everywhere, but it requires to be sought, and the seeker after it is sure to find it ;-it may be in some out-of-the-way place, where no one else would think of looking. Beauty is a fairy; sometimes she hides herself in a flower-cup, or under a leaf, or creeps into the old ivy, and plays hide-and-seek with the sunbeams, or haunts some ruined spot, or laughs out of a bright young face. Sometimes she takes the form of a white cloud, and goes dancing over the green fields, or the deep blue sea, where her misty form, marked out in momentary darkness, looks like the passing shadow of an angel's wing. Beauty is a coquette, and weaves herself a robe of various hues, according to the season,-and it is hard to say which is the most becoming.

(ORIGINAL.)

ALABAMA!

[There is a tradition that a tribe of Indians, fleeing from an enemy through the forests of the south-west, reached a noble river, flowing through a beautiful country, when the chieftain of the band struck his tent-pole into the ground, exclaiming, “Alabama! Alabama!" signifying "Here we rest! here we rest!"]

THE whole wide world is but the same,

Tracked by those foemen, Care and Grief,
While every human hope would claim

The spot that cheered the Indian chief.
Yet where is that Elysian tide

Which saved the warriors of the West?
Where can we find the river's side

Where mortal fears say "Here we rest?"

We often think that gold,-hard gold,
Will form the spot of dreamy joy,
But all we get, and all we hold,

Brings something with it of alloy.
Good does not always mate with Gain,

And wearied brow or cheerless breast,
Bends o'er a golden stream in vain,
Seeking the sweet words, "Here we rest!"

We put our trust in robe or crown,—

In ribbon band or jewelled star;

Such things may gleam in Fortune's dream,
But dazzle most when seen afar.

Ambition's temple rarely yet

Let in a well-contented guest,-
Some spoil unwon, some deed undone,

Will choke the soft words, "Here we rest!"

Some place their faith in safer creed,—
The wise, the God-directed few,
Who think a heart is what we need

To yield the peace that's pure and true ;
And happy they who seek and find
A shelter in a kindred breast,
And, leaving foes and fears behind,

Say to some dear one, "Here we rest!"

Go carve long epitaphs who will

On sculptured brass or marble wall, The Indian's "Alabama" still

Speaks with the fittest voice of all. I ask no more than sod enough

To make the grasshopper a nest, And that a stone bear but this oneThis only record-" Here we rest!" ELIZA COOK.

THINNESS OF LEAF GOLD.

In the process of gold-beating the metal is reduced to laminæ, or leaves, of a degree of tenuity which would appear fabulous, if we had not the stubborn evidence of the common experience in the arts as its verification. A pile of leaf-gold the height of an inch would contain 282,000 distinct leaves of metal! the thickness, therefore, of each leaf is in this case the 282,000th part of an inch; nevertheless, such a leaf completely conceals the object which it is used to gild; it moreover protects such object from the action of external agents as effectually as though it were plated with gold an inch thick.-Lardner's Handbook of Natural Philosophy.

WHERE DOES WOOD COME FROM?

If we were to take up a handful of soil and examine it under the microscope, we should probably find it to contain a number of fragments of wood, small broken pieces of the branches, or leaves, or other parts of the tree. If we could examine it chemically, we should find yet more strikingly that it was nearly the same as wood in its composition. Perhaps, then, it may be said, the young plant obtains its wood from the earth in which it grows? The following experiment will show whether this conjecture is likely to be correct or not. Two hundred pounds of earth were dried in an oven, and afterwards put into a large earthen vessel; the earth was then moistened with rain-water, and a willow-tree, weighing five pounds, was planted therein. During the space of five years the earth was carefully watered with rain-water or pure water. The willow grew and flourished, and, to prevent the earth being mixed with fresh earth, or dirt being blown upon it by the winds, it was covered with a metal plate full of very minute holes, which would exclude everything but air from getting access to the earth below it. After growing in the earth for five years, the tree was removed, and, on being weighed, was found to have gained one hundred and sixty-four pounds, as it now weighed one hundred and sixtynine pounds. And this estimate did not include the weight of the leaves or dead branches which in five years fell from the tree. Now came the application of the test. Was all this obtained from the earth? It had not sensibly diminished; but, in order to make the experiment conclusive, it was again dried in an oven and put in the balance. Astonishing was the result, the earth weighed only two ounces less than it did when the willow was first planted in it! yet the tree had gained one hundred and sixty-four pounds. Manifestly, then, the wood thus gained in this space of time was not obtained from the earth; we are therefore compelled to repeat our question, "Where does the wood come from?" We are left with only two alternatives; the water with which it was refreshed, or the air in which it lived. It can be clearly shown that it was not due to the water; we are, consequently, unable to resist the perplexing and wonderful conclusion, it was derived from the air.

Can it be? Were those great ocean-spaces of wood, which are as old as Man's introduction into Eden, and wave in their vast but solitary luxuriance over the fertile hills and plains of South America, were these all obtained from the thin air? Were the particles which unite to form our battle-ships, Old England's walls of wood, ever borne the world about, not only on wings of air, but actually as air themselves? Was the firm table on which I write, the chair on which I rest, the solid floor on which I tread, and much of the house in which I dwell, once in a form which I could not as much as lay my finger on, or grasp in my hand? Wonderful truth all this was air.-Life of a Tree.

LOVERS.

People that are in love with each other wonder that third persons should discover their sentiments. They fancy themselves in a kind of Calypso's Island and are astonished when a strange sail is seen approaching the coast. There is, in point of fact, no paradise that has such a low and thin fence as this; every passer-by can see through it.

Printed by Cox (Brothers) & WYMAN, 74-75, Great Queen Street, London; and published by CHARLES COOK, at the Office of the Journal, 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street.

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SLAVE HUNTS OF DAR-WADEY AND
DÂR-FOUR.

SLAVERY is perhaps one of the most hideous features of savage life. With rare exceptions, Christianity has destroyed this painful evil, and, in all probability, will end by wholly eradicating it. But in the United States, the Spanish colonies, Brazil, and a few other Christian lands, in Islam generally, this plague-spot still exists. The supplies are almost wholly taken from Africa, whose people, from time immemorial, have been the sufferers from a traffic odious in its

every characteristic. Sheikh El-Tousny, already quoted, has made known the whole details of those tremendous razzias, by which the markets of DârWadey and Dâr-Four are supplied. They will be read with melancholy interest, and will excite more than ever a desire to see an institution which, allowed by paganism, is condemned without hesitation by every idea emanating from Christianity. Without further notice, we shall give, in an abridged form, the narrative of our Arab.

The ghazoua, or expeditions for the hunting of slaves in Dâr-Fertyt and Dâr-el-Djénâkhérah, are carried out differently by the Fourians and Wadeyans. In Dâr-Seleîh, they send to these hunts an aguyd of their own, with a troop chosen beforehand, and which alone carries out the expedition without assistance. In Dâr-Four it is different. Every Fourian, even a private individual, who is able to manage a ghazoua, asks for a salatyeh; if he obtains it, he starts with as many persons as he can collect. The first step is to make a present to the Sultan, by means of some protector, who takes it to the Facher in the first days of the rains. The usual present is a saddled-horse, with the slaves who lead it. If the Sultan accepts, he gives the suitor a salatych, or lance, with a formal firman, or permission. With this the suitor takes up his post in the Facher, on a carpet, his lance stuck in the ground, and a servant beating a tambourine. Crowds collect, shopkeepers advance with their goods. The chief buys whatever he requires for his expedition, on credit, under various circumstances. Thus, if the trader accompanies the expedition, and sells goods to the value of a slave on the Facher, the

* See Journal, No. 140. Art.: Facetiæ of Despotism.

[PRICE 14d.

chief of the ghazoua agrees to give five or six slaves in Dâr-Fertyt. If, on the contrary, the trader does not go with the expedition, then he agrees only for two or three slaves. An agreement is given in writing for stuffs, cloths, horses, camels, donkeys, &c.

Some chiefs of hunts contract for five or six hundred slaves in this way. All depends on the confidence inspired by the salatyeh, and on his resolution and ability. The chief then appoints lieutenants, who, with copies of his firman, start different ways, after appointing a general rendezvous beyond the southern frontier of Dar-Four. Every lieutenant, on passing through a village, sounds a drum, collects the inhabitants, reads the firman and explains the conditions of the hunt,-generally that the chief will take for himself at the first jébayeh, or division of slaves, but a third of the slaves; at the second, but a quarter. The chief himself does the same, and at last reaches the rendezvous where he takes the title of Sultan, forms a court, or guard, and appoints all the same functionaries as at the real court. He clothes his private guard, and gives them camels, asses, and horses. Many volunteers arrive, but all are absolutely under the orders of the Sultan.

All slaves taken without resistance belong to the Sultan, as are those given him by the mekk fertyt, or tributary kings. Once started, the expedition goes as far as possible. When it has advanced to its utmost limit, the Sultan, overnight, announces by a crier, that the jébayeh will take place the next morning. It is done as follows: The Sultan has planted a zerybeh, or circular inclosure, with two issues. The people of the expedition come at the point of day with all the slaves they have caught. If the number of slaves be considerable, the Sultan takes more or less, according to his character. If he be reasonable, he contents himself, even when the booty is great, with a third. If he be greedy, he takes half.

The zerybeh is made of prickly branches, with two openings. The servants, or the people of the Sultan's suite, place themselves at the two issues, and the Sultan sits down in the middle of the zerybeh. The members of the expedition bring all the slaves they have caught, and in their turn bring them inside. If they have two, the Sultan takes one, always the best; he then goes out at the other door, with a certificate that he owes nothing to the Sultan. If a man has but one

slave, he waits until another comes also with one slave; the Sultan then takes one, and leaves one to the two men. The division once over, the Sultan calls all those with whom he has contracted debts, and pays them. The next day he starts back towards DârFour, and a fresh hunt takes place. A certain portion are put on one side for the king, and for those who have aided the chief to obtain his salatych,

The leader of a hunt takes care to treat carefully those who compose his guard and suite, for to them he owes the collection of his troop, and the success of his hunt. He very often takes nothing from them, At every halt, they build him a shelter, some moving forward as a vanguard, in order to prepare the station of the Sultan at each stage. On their departure from Dâr-Four, they take canes and stakes sufficient for the Sultan's house. When they start they pull them all up. The chief of the ghazoua has also at his suite maugueh, or buffoons; he selects also a king of Kôrkoa, a king of Korayâh, a king of Soûm-in-Dogolah, an Abadyma, a Tekenyawi, and Ab-Cheik. These high functionaries look after his provisions, his table, &c.

When an expedition surrounds a station or village of Fertyt, and the inhabitants submit without resistance, the Sultan keeps the chief as a prisoner, treats him with honour, gives him a dress, and sends him to his subordinates. But he takes all the men, the lads, girls, and young men, leaving none but the old men, and those unable to endure the fatigues of a journey. These again are the property of the Sultan, all dengayeh, fekk-el-jebál, and hamel. The first are those taken without resistance in the woods and on the highways. The fekks are those who, blockaded on a mountain, have surrendered at discretion. The hamel, are those who, having belonged to some master, have escaped. On arriving at the frontier of Dâr-Four the Sultan's authority ceases.

One of the chief difficulties of an expedition is to find food. Hence the officers above-mentioned are always on the look-out. The Fertyts used to these annual hunts conceal their reserves of corn in tufted trees. They cut away a few branches from the heart, and make of these a floor; over this and a layer of leaves they lay their corn. Above this they build a little conical hut of doukku canes, and when the hut is full, stop up the opening. The thickness of the leaves and the interlacing of the boughs form a solid wall around, which almost effectually conceals the treasure from all pilferers, the more that the trees are of monstrous size. The Fertyts of the upland bury their grain in matmourahs, or bottle-shaped holes.

The Fourians capture a prodigious mass of slaves, enough to glut the market; but many die, or are killed because of their inability to walk. A weary slave throws himself on the ground, crying Kongorongo,-kill me. He is at once beaten to death with sticks. Many die of mere exhaustion, or of sickness caused by change of diet, on the road and in DârFour; some even perish from terror, fancying they are led away to be eaten; and yet El-Tousny justifies slavery and slave-hunts on the ground of its being permitted by God and his prophet in the Koran. He says the slaves are ignorant pagans, and have by this nefarious practice a chance of being converted.

But these Fertyts have many notions very superior to the Islamites. Naturally enough, they can make no progress in any civilization. Exposed year after year to these abominable practices, they have no opportutunity of rising from their degraded state. They are reduced to live in the tops of tufted trees, and yet, while the Islamites allow marriages between father and daughter, brother and sister, aunts and nephews, the Fertyts prohibit such alliances. They are decenter far than the pretended Mahommedan of Dâr-Wadey

and Dâr-Four, especially in dress. But let El-Tousny speak for himself:

"All these natives lead a poor and wretched life. Nevertheless the Fertyt and all the blacks of the idolatrous Soodan love their country,-the place that gave them birth. If they are taken away from their villages, their huts, for some voyage, or if they be taken away for slaves, their thoughts and their desires draw them ever back to their country. In their childish simplicity the slaves often fly away from their masters to regain their miserable villages, their wretched dwellings. As a general rule, if you pursue a fugitive, you find him on the road that leads to his country. On the other hand, all these idolaters know well, simple and unreflecting as they are, that every year Dâr-Four, Dâr-Wadey, and others, send out numerous hunting expeditions; that these expeditions carry off all they can catch of men, women, and children; that they kill a considerable number; and yet these tribes, these populations, remain ever in the same places, where they were established from time immemorial. They simply, at the arrival of the expeditions, take to flight; once the hunts over, those who have escaped from the ravishers return to their first dwelling. The idolatrous populations of the Soodan, we have said, hide their provisions in subterraneous holes, and others in trees. Many of them even establish their habitations in robust and thick trees.

The chief of the family, after having selected the tree which suits him, ascends it, cuts away the branches from the interior of the tree, and with these materials makes two floors, one above his head of the light boughs, the other under his feet of the strong ones. Then on the lower one he spreads a layer of leaves. This done, he constructs with canes of doukku the walls of his cabin, making the whole of the form of a tent, in order to keep off the rain. The Fertyt and his wife climb and descend with ease, they aid themselves with projections and knots in the trunk. Often one tree serves for the house and the magazine of the family. These savages have in certain works of art a marvellous ability. They make the wood of lances and javelins admirably, polished and beautiful as silver. They also make koursy, or stools of ebony, of a perfectness of execution for polish and brightness to such a point, that you would think these stools had come forth from the workshop most celebrated for their industry,-so much so, that you would think the Fertyt highly advanced in civilization."

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It will be seen that the wretched victims of the abominable system of slavery have the means of being happy in their own way. Who would not prefer his castle in a tree, with his wife and children, than slavery, with the advantage of learning Islamism, and having free leave to marry his daughter, sister, or aunt? Truly, the Sheikh is warm in his sympathies, when he defends the practice, and points out what the pagan idolaters have to gain by the change.

SARAH MARGARET FULLER.*

FEW women of her time have created a livelier interest throughout the literary world than Margaret Fuller, of Boston, has done. The tragic circumstances connected with her death, which involved at the same time the destruction of her husband and child, have served to deepen that interest; and therefore it is that the Memoirs of her Life and labours, now before us, edited by Emerson and Ellery Channing, have been hailed in this country as among the most welcome

* Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. In 3 vols. Bentley.

books which have come across the Atlantic for many a day.

Margaret Fuller had not done much as a writer; but she had given great promise of what she could do. Her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," and a collection of papers on Literature and Art, originally published in the American periodical called The Dial, with the book entitled "A Summer on the Lakes," include her principal writings, and even these are of a comparatively fragmentary character. It was chiefly through her remarkable gifts of conversation that she was known and admired among her contemporaries; it was to this that her great influence among them was attributable; and, like John Sterling, Charles Pemberton, and others of kindred gifts, the wonder to many who never came within the reach of her personal influence is, how to account for the literary reputation she has achieved, upon a basement of writings so slender and so incomplete. It was the individual influence, the magnetic attraction, which she exercised over the minds within her reach, which accounts for the whole.

From early years Margaret Fuller was regarded as a kind of prodigy. Her father, Mr. Timothy Fuller, who was a lawyer and a representative of Massachusetts in Congress, from 1817 to 1825, devoted great pains-far too great pains-to the intellectual culture of the little girl. Her brain was unmercifully taxed, to the serious injury of her health. In after-life she compared herself to the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted home, sat down on a stone, and so pitied herself that she wept. The poor girl was kept up late at her tasks, and went to bed with stimulated brain and nerves, unable to sleep. She was haunted by spectral illusions, nightmare, and horrid dreams; while by day she suffered from headache, weakness, and nervous affections of all kinds. In short, Margaret Fuller had no natural childhood. Her mind did not grow-it was forced. Thoughts did not come to her-they were thrust into her. A child should expand in the sun, but this dear little victim was put under a glass frame, and plied with all manner of artificial heat. She was fed, not on "milk for babes," but on the strongest of meat.

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Thus Margaret Fuller leapt into precocious maturity. She was petted and praised as a prodigy." She lived among books,-read Latin at six years old, and was early familiar with Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Then she went on to Greek. At eight years of age she devoured Shakspere, Cervantes, and Molière ! Her, world was books. A child without toys, without romps, without laughter; but with abundant nightmare and sick headaches! The wonder is, that this monstrously unnatural system of forced intellectual culture did not kill her outright! "I complained of my head," she said afterwards; "for a sense of dulness, and suffocation, if not pain, was there constantly." She had nervous fevers, convulsions, and so on; but she lived through it all, and was plunged into still deeper studies. After a course of boarding-school, she returned home at fifteen to devote herself to Ariosto, Helvetius, Sismondi, Brown's Philosophy, De Stael, Epictetus, Racine, Castilian Ballads, Locke, Byron, Sir William Temple, Rousseau, and a host of other learned writers!

Conceive a girl of fifteen immersed in all this farrago of literature and philosophy! She had an eye to politics, too; and in her letters to friends notices the accession of Duke Nicholas, and its effect on the Holy Alliance and the liberties of Europe! Then she goes through a course of the Italian poets, accompanied by her sick headache. She lies in bed one afternoon, from dinner till tea, "reading Rammohoun Roy's book, and framing dialogues aloud on every

argument beneath the sun." She had her dreams of the affections, too,-indulging largely in sentimentality and romance, as most young girls will do. She adored the moon-fell in love with other girls, and dreamt often of the other subject uppermost in most young women's minds.

This wonderfully cultivated girl, as might be expected, ran some risk of being spoilt. She was herself brilliant, and sought equal brilliancy in others. She had no patience with mediocrity, and regarded it with feelings akin to contempt. But this unamiable feeling she gradually unlearned, as greater experience and larger-heartedness taught her wisdoma kind of wisdom, by the way, which is not found in books. The multitude regarded her, at this time, as rather haughty and supercilious, fond of saying clever and sarcastic things at their expense, and also as very inquisitive and anxious to "read characters." But it is hard to repress or dwarf the loving nature of a woman. She was always longing for affection, for sympathy, for confidence, among her more valued friends. She wished to be " comprehended " she looked on herself as a "femme incomprise," as the French term it. Even her sarcasm was akin to love. She was always making new confidantes, and drawing out their heart-secrets, as she revealed her own.

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The family removed from Cambridge Port, where she was born, to Cambridge, where they remained till 1833, when they went to reside at Groton. Margaret had by this time written verses, which friends deemed worthy of publication, and several appeared. But her spirit and soul, which gave such living power to her conversation, usually evaporated in the attempt to commit her thoughts to writing. Of this she often complains. "After all," she says in one of her letters, "this writing is mighty dead. Oh, for my dear old Greeks, who talked everything.' Again she said "Conversation is my natural element. I need to be called out, and never think alone without imagining some companion. Whether this be nature, or the force of circumstances, I know not; it is my habit, and bespeaks a second-rate mind."

But she was a splendid talker-a Yankee Corinnean improvisatrice of unrivalled powers. Her writings give no idea of her powers of speech-of the brilliancy with which she would strike a vein of happy thought, and bring it to the daylight. Her talk was decidedly masculine, critical, common sense, full of ideas, yet, withal, graceful and sparkling. She is said to have had a kind of prophetic insight into characters, and drew out, by a strong attractive power in herself, as by a moral magnet, all their best gifts to the light. "She was," says one friend, "like a moral Paganini; she played always on a single string, drawing from each its peculiar music,-bringing wild beauty from the slender wire no less than from the deep-sounding harp string."

In 1832, she was busy with German literature, and read Goethe, Tieck, Körner, and Schiller. The thought and beauty of these works filled her mind and fascinated her imagination. She also went through Plato's Dialogues. She began to have infinite longings for something unknown and unattainable, and gave vent to her feelings in such thoughts as this: "I shut Goethe's 'Second Residence in Rome,' with an earnest desire to live as he did,-always to have some engrossing object of pursuit. I sympathize deeply with a mind in that state. While mine is being used up by ounces, I wish pailfuls might be poured into it. I am dejected and uneasy when I see no results from my daily existence; but I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression."

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