ers of Gunderode and Bettine, and published them as
far as the sale warranted the work. In 1843, she made a tour to Lake
Superior and to Michigan, and published an agreeable narrative of it,
called "Summer on the Lakes."

Apparently a more pretending, but really also a private and friendly
service, she edited the "Dial," a quarterly journal, for two years
from its first publication in 1840. She was eagerly solicited to
undertake the charge of this work, which, when it began, concentrated
a good deal of hope and affection. It had its origin in a club of
speculative students, who found the air in America getting a little
close and stagnant; and the agitation had perhaps the fault of being
too secondary or bookish in its origin, or caught not from primary
instincts, but from English, and still more from German books. The
journal was commenced with much hope, and liberal promises of many
cooeperators. But the workmen of sufficient culture for a poetical and
philosophical magazine were too few; and, as the pages were filled
by unpaid contributors, each of whom had, according to the usage and
necessity of this country, some paying employment, the journal did not
get his best work, but his second best. Its scattered writers had
not digested their theories into a distinct dogma, still less into a
practical measure which the public could grasp; and the magazine was
so eclectic and miscellaneous, that each of its readers and writers
valued only a small portion of it. For these reasons it never had a
large circulation, and it was discontinued after four years. But the
Dial betrayed, through all its juvenility, timidity, and conventional
rubbish, some sparks of the true love and hope, and of the piety to
spiritual law, which had moved its friends and founders, and it was
received by its early subscribers with almost a religious welcome.
Many years after it was brought to a close, Margaret was surprised in
England by very warm testimony to its merits; and, in 1848, the writer
of these pages found it holding the same affectionate place in many
a private bookshelf in England and Scotland, which it had secured at
home. Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious labor from those
who served it, and from Margaret most of all. As editor, she received
a compensation for the first years, which was intended to be two
hundred dollars _per annum_, but which, I fear, never reached even
that amount.

But it made no difference to her exertion.