--perfect life,--could be the only perfect manifestation
of it. Then she spoke of the individual as surrounded,
however, by _prose_,--so we may here call the manifestation of
the temporary, in opposition to the eternal, always trenching
on it, and circumscribing and darkening. She spoke of the
acceptance of this limitation, but it should be called by the
right name, and always measured; and we should inwardly cling
to the truth that poesy was the natural life of the soul; and
never yield inwardly to the common notion that poesy was a
luxury, out of the common track; but maintain in word and
life that prose carried the soul out of its track; and then,
perhaps, it would not injure us to walk in these by-paths,
when forced thither. She admitted that prose was the necessary
human condition, and quickened our life indirectly by
necessitating a conscious demand on the source of life.
In reply to a remark I made, she very strongly stated the
difference between a poetic and a _dilettante_ life, and
sympathized with the sensible people who were tired of hearing
all the young ladies of Boston sighing like furnace after
being beautiful. Beauty was something very different from
prettiness, and a microscopic vision missed the grand whole.
The fine arts were our compensation for not being able to live
out our poesy, amid the conflicting and disturbing forces of
this moral world in which we are. In sculpture, the heights to
which our being comes are represented; and its nature is such
as to allow us to leave out all that vulgarizes,--all that
bridges over to the actual from the ideal. She dwelt long upon
sculpture, which seems her favorite art. That was grand, when
a man first thought to engrave his idea of man upon a stone,
the most unyielding and material of materials,--the backbone
of this phenomenal earth,--and, when he did not succeed,
that he persevered; and so, at last, by repeated efforts, the
Apollo came to be.

"But, no; music she thought the greatest of arts,--expressing
what was most interior,--what was too fine to be put into any
material grosser than air; conveying from soul to soul the
most secret motions of feeling and thought. This was the only
fine art which might be thought to be nourishing now. The
others had had their day. This was advancing upon a higher
in