of his social status, she
says:--

"Our nation is not silly in striving for an aristocracy. Humanity longs
for its upper classes. The silliness consists in making them out of
clothes, equipage, and a servile imitation of foreign manners, instead
of the genuine elegance and distinction that can only be produced by
genuine culture.... Our merchant shall be a real nobleman, whose noble
manners spring from a noble mind; his fashions from a sincere,
intelligent love of the beautiful."

Margaret's "Poor Man" is an industrious artisan, not too poor to be sure
of daily bread, cleanliness, and reasonable comfort. His advantages will
be in the harder training and deeper experience which his circumstances
will involve. Suffering privation in his own person, he will, she
thinks, feel for the sufferings of others. Having no adventitious aids
to bring him into prominence, there will be small chance for him "to
escape a well-tempered modesty." He must learn enough to convince
himself that mental growth and refinement are not secured by one set of
employments, or lost through another. "Mahomet was not a wealthy
merchant; profound philosophers have ripened on the benches, not of the
lawyers, but of the shoemakers. It did not hurt Milton to be a
school-master, nor Shakespeare to do the errands of a London playhouse.
Yes, 'the mind is its own place;' and if it will keep that place, all
doors will be opened from it." This ideal poor man must be "religious,
wise, dignified, and humble, grasping at nothing, claiming all; willing
to wait, never willing to give up; servile to none, the servant of
all,--esteeming it the glory of a man to serve." Such a type of
character, she tells us, is rare, but not unattainable.

The poems in this volume may be termed fugitive pieces, rhymes twined
and dropped in the pathway of a life too busy for much versification.
They somewhat recall Mr. Emerson's manner, but have not the point and
felicity which have made him scarcely less eminent in verse than in
prose. They will, however, well repay a perusal. In order that this
volume may not be wholly lacking in their grace, we subjoin two short
poems, which we have chosen from among a number of perhaps equal
interest. One of these apostrophizes an artist whose rendering of her
Greeks made him dear to her:--

FLAXMAN.

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and he