James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[255] learned woman of her country, perhaps of her time. Her understanding was greater than her gift. She could appreciate, not create. She was the noblest victim of that modern error, which makes Education and Book-knowledge synonymous terms. Her brain was terribly stimulated in childhood by the study of works utterly unfit for the nourishment of a child's mind, and in after life, it was further stimulated by the adulation of circles who place the highest value upon Intelligence, and no value at all upon Wisdom. It cost her the best years of her life to unlearn the errors, and to overcome the mental habits of her earlier years. But she did it. Her triumph was complete. She attained modesty, serenity, disinterestedness, self-control. ‘The spirit in which we work,’ says Goethe, ‘is the highest matter.’ What charms and blesses the reader of Margaret Fuller's essays, is not the knowledge they convey, nor the understanding they reveal, but the ineffably sweet, benign, tenderly humane and serenely high spirit which they breathe in every paragraph and phrase.

During a part of the time of her connection with the Tribune, Miss Fuller resided at Mr. Greeley's house, on the banks of the East river, opposite the lower end of Blackwell's island. ‘This place,’ she wrote, ‘is to me entirely charming; it is so completely in the country, and all around is so bold and free. It is two miles or more from the thickly-settled parts of New York, but omnibuses and cars give me constant access to the city, and, while I can readily see what and whom I will, I can command time and retirement. Stopping on the Harlem road, you enter a lane nearly a quarter of a mile long, and going by a small brook and pond that locks in the place, and ascending a slightly rising ground, get sight of the house, which, old-fashioned and of mellow tint, fronts on a flower-garden filled with shrubs, large vines, and trim box borders. On both sides of the house are beautiful trees, standing fair, full-grown, and clear. Passing through a wide hall, you come out upon a piazza, stretching the whole length of the house, where one can walk in all weathers. * * The beauty here, seen by moonlight, is truly transporting. I enjoy it greatly, and the genius loci receives me as to a home.’

Mr. Greeley has written a singularly interesting account of the rise and progress of his friendship with Margaret Fuller, which was