Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister,"
reading also the works of Jean Paul, Matthias Claudius, and Herder.

Thus was a new influence introduced into the life of one who had been
brought up after the strictest rule of New England Puritanism. I derived
from these studies a sense of intellectual freedom so new to me that it
was half delightful, half alarming. My father undertook one day to read
an English translation of "Faust." He presently came to me and said,--

"My daughter, I hope that you have not read this wicked book!"

I must say, even after an interval of sixty years, that I do not
consider "Wilhelm Meister" altogether good reading for the youth of our
country. Its great author introduces into his recital scenes and
personages calculated to awaken strange discords in a mind ignorant of
any greater wrong than the small sins of a well-ordered household.
Although disapproving greatly of Goethe, my father took a certain pride
in my literary accomplishments, and was much pleased, I think, at the
commendation which followed some of my early efforts. One of these, a
brief essay on the minor poems of Goethe and Schiller, was published in
the "New York Review," perhaps in 1848, and was spoken of in the "North
American" of that time as "a charming paper, said to have been written
by a lady."

I have already said that a vision of some important literary work which
I should accomplish was present with me in my early life, and had much
to do with habits of study acquired by me in youth, and never wholly
relinquished. At this late day, I find it difficult to account for a
sense of literary responsibility which never left me, and which I must
consider to have formed a part of my spiritual make-up. My earliest
efforts in prose, two review articles, were probably more remarked at
the time of their publication than their merit would have warranted. But
women writers were by no means as numerous sixty years ago as they are
to-day. Neither was it possible for a girl student in those days to find
that help and guidance toward a literary career which may easily be
commanded to-day.

The death, within one year, of my father and most dearly loved brother
touched within me a deeper train of thought than I had yet known. The
anguish which I then experienced sought relief in expression, and took
form in a small collection of poems, which Margaret Fuller urged me to
publish, but which have never seen the light, and never will.

Among the frien