n a person was overwhelmed by
her, and answered not a word, except, "Margaret, be merciful to me, a
sinner," then her love and tenderness would come like a seraph's,
and often an acknowledgment that she had been too harsh, and even a
craving for pardon, with a humility,--which, perhaps, she had caught
from the other. But her instinct was not humility,--that was always an
afterthought.

This arrogant tone of her conversation, if it came to be the subject
of comment, of course, she defended, and with such broad good nature,
and on grounds of simple truth, as were not easy to set aside. She
quoted from Manzoni's _Carmagnola_, the lines:--

"Tolga il ciel che alcuno
Piu altamente di me pensi ch'io stesso."

"God forbid that any one should conceive more highly of me than
I myself." Meantime, the tone of her journals is humble, tearful,
religious, and rises easily into prayer.

I am obliged to an ingenious correspondent for the substance of the
following account of this idiosyncrasy:--

Margaret was one of the few persons who looked upon life as an
art, and every person not merely as an artist, but as a work
of art. She looked upon herself as a living statue, which
should always stand on a polished pedestal, with right
accessories, and under the most fitting lights. She would have
been glad to have everybody so live and act. She was annoyed
when they did not, and when they did not regard her from the
point of view which alone did justice to her. No one could
be more lenient in her judgments of those whom she saw to be
living in this light. Their faults were to be held as "the
disproportions of the ungrown giant." But the faults of
persons who were unjustified by this ideal, were odious.
Unhappily, her constitutional self-esteem sometimes blinded
the eyes that should have seen that an idea lay at the bottom
of some lives which she did not quite so readily comprehend as
beauty; that truth had other manifestations than those which
engaged her natural sympathies; that sometimes the soul
illuminated only the smallest arc--of a circle so large that
it was lost in the clouds of another world.

This apology reminds me of a little speech once made to her, at his
own house, by Dr. Channing, who held her in the highest regard: "Miss
Fuller, when I consider that you are and have all that Miss ---- has
so long wished for, and that you scorn her, and t