is honor,
       That boldened innocence bears in her eyes;
  And her fair countenance, like a goodly banner,
       Spreads in defiance of all enemies. 
  Was never in this world aught worthy tried,
       Without a spark of some self-pleasing pride.”

BOOKS.

She had been early remarked for her sense and sprightliness, and for her skill in school exercises.  Now she had added wide reading, and of the books most grateful to her.  She had read the Italian poets by herself, and from sympathy.  I said, that, by the leading part she naturally took, she had identified herself with all the elegant culture in this country.  Almost every person who had any distinction for wit, or art, or scholarship, was known to her; and she was familiar with the leading books and topics.  There is a kind of undulation in the popularity of the great writers, even of the first rank.  We have seen a recent importance given to Behmen and Swedenborg; and Shakspeare has unquestionably gained with the present generation.  It is distinctive, too, of the taste of the period,—­the new vogue given to the genius of Dante.  An edition of Cary’s translation, reprinted in Boston, many years ago, was rapidly sold; and, for the last twenty years, all studious youths and maidens have been reading the Inferno.  Margaret had very early found her way to Dante, and from a certain native preference which she felt or fancied for the Italian genius.  The following letter, though of a later date, relates to these studies:—­

    TO R.W.E.

’December, 1842.—­When you were here, you seemed to think I might perhaps have done something on the Vita Nuova; and the next day I opened the book, and considered how I could do it.  But you shall not expect that, either, for your present occasion.  When I first mentioned it to you, it was only as a piece of Sunday work, which I thought of doing for you alone; and because it has never seemed to me you entered enough into the genius of the Italian to apprehend the mind, which has seemed so great to me, and a star unlike, if not higher than all the others in our sky.  Else, I should have given you the original, rather than any version of mine.  I intended to translate the poems, with which it is interspersed, into plain prose.  Milnes and Longfellow have tried each their power at doing it in verse, and have done better, probably, than I could, yet not well.  But this would not satisfy me for the public.  Besides, the translating Dante is a piece of literary presumption, and challenges a criticism to which I am not sure that I am, as the Germans say, gewachsen.  Italian, as well as German, I learned by myself, unassisted, except as to the pronunciation.  I have never been brought into connection with minds trained to any severity in these kinds of elegant culture.  I have used all the means within my reach, but my not going abroad is an insuperable defect in the technical