II.

CAMBRIDGE

* * * * *

The difficulty which we all feel in describing our past intercourse and friendship with Margaret Fuller, is, that the intercourse was so intimate, and the friendship so personal, that it is like making a confession to the public of our most interior selves.  For this noble person, by her keen insight and her generous interest, entered into the depth of every soul with which she stood in any real relation.  To print one of her letters, is like giving an extract from our own private journal.  To relate what she was to us, is to tell how she discerned elements of worth and beauty where others could only have seen what was common-place and poor; it is to say what high hopes, what generous assurance, what a pure ambition, she entertained on our behalf,—­a hope and confidence which may well be felt as a rebuke to our low attainments and poor accomplishments.

Nevertheless, it seems due to this great soul that those of us who have been blessed and benefited by her friendship should be willing to say what she has done for us,—­undeterred by the thought that to reveal her is to expose ourselves.

My acquaintance with Sarah Margaret Fuller began in 1829.  We both lived in Cambridge, and from that time until she went to Groton to reside, in 1833, I saw her, or heard from her, almost every day.  There was a family connection, and we called each other cousin.[A] During this period, her intellect was intensely active.  With what eagerness did she seek for knowledge!  What fire, what exuberance, what reach, grasp, overflow of thought, shone in her conversation!  She needed a friend to whom to speak of her studies, to whom to express the ideas which were dawning and taking shape in her mind.  She accepted me for this friend, and to me it was a gift of the gods, an influence like no other.

For the first few months of our acquaintance, our intercourse was simply that of two young persons seeking entertainment in each other’s society.  Perhaps a note written at this time will illustrate the easy and graceful movement of her mind in this superficial kind of intercourse.

’March 16th, 1830.  Half-past six, morning.—­I have encountered that most common-place of glories, sunrise, (to say naught of being praised and wondered at by every member of the family in succession,) that I might have leisure to answer your note even as you requested.  I thank you a thousand times for “The Rivals."[B] Alas!!  I must leave my heart in the book, and spend the livelong morning in reading to a sick lady from some amusing story-book.  I tell you of this act of (in my professedly unamiable self) most unwonted charity, for three several reasons.  Firstly, and foremostly, because I think that you, being a socialist by vocation, a sentimentalist by nature, and a Channingite from force of circumstances