know words, and
have vague impressions, and compel ourselves to define those
words. We should have, probably, mortifications to suffer;
but we should be encouraged by the rapid gain that comes from
making a simple and earnest effort for expression.'

Miss Fuller had proposed the Grecian Mythology as the subject of the
first conversations, and now gave her reasons for the choice.

'It is quite separated from all exciting local subjects. It is
serious, without being solemn, and without excluding any mode
of intellectual action; it is playful, as well as deep. It
is sufficiently wide, for it is a complete expression of the
cultivation of a nation. It is objective and tangible. It is,
also, generally known, and associated with all our ideas of
the arts.

'It originated in the eye of the Greek. He lived out of doors:
his climate was genial, his senses were adapted to it. He was
vivacious and intellectual, and personified all he beheld. He
_saw_ the oreads, naiads, nereids. Their forms, as poets and
painters give them, are the very lines of nature humanized, as
the child's eye sees faces in the embers or in the clouds.

'Other forms of the mythology, as Jupiter, Juno, Apollo,
are great instincts, or ideas, or facts of the internal
constitution, separated and personified.'

After exhibiting their enviable mental health, and rebutting the
cavils of some of the speakers,--who could not bear, in Christian
times, by Christian ladies, that heathen Greeks should be
envied,--Miss Fuller declared,

'that she had no desire to go back, and believed we have the
elements of a deeper civilization; yet, the Christian was in
its infancy; the Greek in its maturity; nor could she look
on the expression of a great nation's intellect, as
insignificant. These fables of the Gods were the result of
the universal sentiments of religion, aspiration, intellectual
action, of a people, whose political and aesthetic life had
become immortal; and we must leave off despising, if we would
begin to learn.'

The reporter closes her account by saying:--"Miss Fuller's thoughts
were much illustrated, and all was said with the most captivating
address and grace, and with beautiful modesty. The position in which
she placed herself with respect to the rest, was entirely ladylike,
and companionable. She told what she intended, the earnest pu