regard to central laws and habitual communion with the Life of
life. Critics, indeed, might have been tempted to sneer at a certain
oracular grandiloquence, that bore away her soberness in moments of
elation; though even the most captious must presently have smiled at
the humor of her descriptive touches, her dexterous exposure of
folly and pretension, the swift stroke of her bright wit, her shrewd
discernment, promptitude, and presence of mind. The reverential,
too, might have been pained at the sternness wherewith popular men,
measures, and established customs, were tried and found guilty, at
her tribunal; but even while blaming her aspirations as rash,
revolutionary and impractical, no honest conservative could fail
to recognize the sincerity of her aim. And every deep observer of
character would have found the explanation of what seemed vehement
or too high-strung, in the longing of a spirited woman to break every
trammel that checked her growth or fettered her movement.

In conversations like these, one saw that the richness of Margaret's
genius resulted from a rare combination of opposite qualities. To her
might have been well applied the words first used as describing George
Sand: "Thou large-brained Woman, and large-hearted Man." She blended
in closest union and swift interplay feminine receptiveness with
masculine energy. She was at once impressible and creative,
impulsive and deliberate, pliant in sympathy yet firmly self-centred,
confidingly responsive while commanding in originality. By the vivid
intensity of her conceptions, she brought out in those around their
own consciousness, and, by the glowing vigor of her intellect, roused
into action their torpid powers. On the other hand, she reproduced a
truth, whose germ had just been imbibed from others, moulded after her
own image and quickened by her own life, with marvellous rapidity. And
the presence of congenial minds so stimulated the prolific power of