Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[191] Bettina is now little read, even by young people, apparently, but she then gave food for the most thoughtful. Emerson says: “Once I took such delight in Plato that I thought I never should need any other book; then in Swedenborg, then in Montaigne,--even in Bettina;” and Mr. Alcott records in his diary (August 2, 1839), “he [Emerson] seems to be as much taken with Bettina as I am.” For the young, especially, she had a charm which lasts through life, insomuch that the present writer spent two happy days on the Rhine, so lately as 1878, in following out the traces of two impetuous and dreamy young women whom it would have seemed natural to meet on any hillside path, although more than half a century had passed since they embalmed their memory there.

When first at work upon this translation, Margaret Fuller wrote thus to the Rev. W. H. Channing:--

I meant to have translated for you the best passages of ‘ Die Gunderode’ (which I prefer to the correspondence with Goethe. The two girls are equal natures, and both in earnest. Goethe made a puppet-show for his private entertainment of Bettina's life, and we wonder she did not feel he was not worthy of her homage). But I have not been well enough to write much, and these pages are only what I have dictated; they are not the best, yet will interest you. The exquisite little poem by Gunderode read aloud two or three times, that you may catch the music; it is of most sweet mystery.