influence, speaking strictly,--an efflux, that is, purely of mind and
character, excluding all effects of power, wealth, fashion, beauty, or
literary fame,--she had an extraordinary degree; I think more than any
person I have known. An interview with her was a joyful event. Worthy
men and women, who had conversed with her, could not forget her, but
worked bravely on in the remembrance that this heroic approver had
recognized their aims. She spoke so earnestly, that the depth of the
sentiment prevailed, and not the accidental expression, which might
chance to be common. Thus I learned, the other day, that, in a copy
of Mrs. Jameson's Italian Painters, against a passage describing
Correggio as a true servant of God in his art, above sordid ambition,
devoted to truth, "one of those superior beings of whom there are so
few;" Margaret wrote on the margin, 'And yet all might be such.' The
book lay long on the table of the owner, in Florence, and chanced to
be read there by a young artist of much talent. "These words," said
he, months afterwards, "struck out a new strength in me. They revived
resolutions long fallen away, and made me set my face like a flint."

But Margaret's courage was thoroughly sweet in its temper. She accused
herself in her youth of unamiable traits, but, in all the later years
of her life, it is difficult to recall a moment of malevolence. The
friends whom her strength of mind drew to her, her good heart held
fast; and few persons were ever the objects of more persevering
kindness. Many hundreds of her letters remain, and they are alive with
proofs of generous friendship given and received.

Among her early friends, Mrs. Farrar, of Cambridge, appears to have
discovered, at a critical moment in her career, the extraordinary
promise of the young girl, and some false social position into which
her pride and petulance, and the mistakes of others, had combined to