PROBLEMS OF LIFE
WOMAN, OR ARTIST?
HEROISM
TRUTH
ECSTASY
CONVERSATION

V. BOSTON, _By R.W. Emerson_
CONVERSATIONS ON THE FINE ARTS

YOUTH.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

* * * * *

"Aus Morgenduft gewebt und Sonnenklarheit
Der Dichtung Schleir aus der Hand der Wahrheit."

GOETHE.

"The million stars which tremble
O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy."

TENNYSON.

"Wie leicht ward er dahin gefragen,
Was war dem Gluecklichen zu schwer!
Wie tanzte vor des Lebens Wagen
Die luftige Begleitung her!
Die Liebe mit dem suessen Lohne,
Das Glueck mit seinem gold'nen Kranz,
Der Ruhm mit seiner Sternenkrone,
Die Wahrheit in der Sonne Glanz."

SCHILLER

What wert thou then? A child most infantine,
Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age,
In all but its sweet looks and mien divine;
Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage
A patient warfare thy young heart did wage,
When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought
Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage
To overflow with tears, or converse fraught
With passion o'er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.'

SHELLE

"And I smiled, as one never smiles but once;
Then first discovering my own aim's extent,
Which sought to comprehend the works of God.
And God himself, and all God's intercourse
With the human mind."

BROWNING.

I.

YOUTH.

* * * * *

'Tieck, who has embodied so many Runic secrets, explained to
me what I have often felt toward myself, when he tells of
the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted
home, sat down on a stone and so pitied herself that she wept.
Yet me also, the wonderful bird, singing in the wild forest,
has tempted on, and not in vain.'

Thus wrote Margaret in the noon of life, when looking back through
youth to the "dewy dawn of memory." She was the eldest child of
Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane, and was born in Cambridge-Port,
Massachusetts, on the 23d of May, 1810.

Among her papers fortunately remains this unfinished sketch of youth,
prepared by her own hand, in 1840, as the introductory chapter to an
autobiographical romance.

PARENTS.

'My father was a lawyer and a politician. He was a man largely
endowed with that sagacious energy, which the state of New
En