eet.
O injured lyre! thy golden frame is marred,
No garlands deck thee, no libations poured
Tell to the earth the triumphs of thy song;
No princely halls echo thy strains along.
But still the strings are there; and, if they break,
Even in death rare melody will make,
Might'st thou once more be tuned, and power be given
To tell in numbers all thou canst of heaven!'
VISITS TO CONCORD.
BY R.W. EMERSON.
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM MADAME ARCONATI TO R.W. EMERSON.
Je n'ai point rencontre, dans ma vie, de femme plus noble; ayant
autant de sympathie pour ses semblables, et dont l'esprit fut plus
vivifiant. Je me suis tout de suite sentie attiree par elle. Quand je
fis sa connoissance, j'ignorais que ce fut une femme remarquable.
IV.
VISITS TO CONCORD.
* * * * *
I became acquainted with Margaret in 1835. Perhaps it was a year
earlier that Henry Hedge, who had long been her friend, told me of
her genius and studies, and loaned me her manuscript translation of
Goethe's Tasso. I was afterwards still more interested in her, by the
warm praises of Harriet Martineau, who had become acquainted with her
at Cambridge, and who, finding Margaret's fancy for seeing me, took a
generous interest in bringing us together. I remember, during a week
in the winter of 1835-6, in which Miss Martineau was my guest, she
returned again and again to the topic of Margaret's excelling genius
and conversation, and enjoined it on me to seek her acquaintance:
which I willingly promised. I am not sure that it was not in Miss
Martineau's company, a little earlier, that I first saw her. And I
find a memorandum, in her own journal, of a visit, made by my brother
Charles and myself, to Miss Martineau, at Mrs. Farrar's. It was not,
however, till the next July, after a little diplomatizing in billets
by the ladies, that her first visit to our house was arranged, and
she came to spend a fortnight with my wife. I still remember the first
half-hour of Margaret's conversation. She was then twenty-six years
old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fulness and tenacity
of life. She was rather under the middle height; her complexion was
fair, with strong fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and
becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-possession. For the rest, her
appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness,--a trick
of incessantly opening an
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