pell alone;
by sympathy she brought out the invisible characters traced by
experience on his heart; and in the mirror of her conscience he might
see the image of his very self, as dwarfed in actual appearance, or
developed after the divine ideal. Her sincerity was terrible. In her
frank exposure no foible was spared, though by her very reproof she
roused dormant courage and self-confidence. And so unerring seemed
her insight, that her companion felt as if standing bare before a
disembodied spirit, and communicated without reserve thoughts and
emotions, which, even to himself, he had scarcely named.

This penetration it was that caused Margaret to be so dreaded, in
general society, by superficial observers. They, who came nigh
enough to test the quality of her spirit, could not but perceive how
impersonal was her justice; but, contrasted with the dead flat of
conventional tolerance, her candor certainly looked rugged and sharp.
The frivolous were annoyed at her contempt of their childishness, the
ostentatious piqued at her insensibility to their show, and the decent
scared lest they should be stripped of their shams; partisans were
vexed by her spurning their leaders; and professional sneerers,--civil
in public to those whom in private they slandered,--could not pardon
the severe truth whereby she drew the sting from their spite. Indeed,
how could so undisguised a censor but shock the prejudices of the
moderate, and wound the sensibilities of the diffident; how but enrage
the worshippers of new demi-gods in literature, art and fashion, whose
pet shrines she demolished; how but cut to the quick, alike by silence
or by speech, the self-love of the vain, whose claims she ignored?
So gratuitous, indeed, appeared her hypercriticism, that I could not
refrain from remonstrance, and to one of my appeals she thus replied:

'If a horror for the mania of little great men, so prevalent
in this country,--if aversion to the sentimental exaggerations
to which so many minds are prone,--if finding that most men
praise, as well as blame, too readily, and that overpraise
desecrates the lips and makes the breath unworthy to blow the
coal of devotion,--if rejection of the ----s and ----s, from
a sense that the priestess must reserve her paeans for
Apollo,--if untiring effort to form my mind to justice and
revere only the superlatively good, that my praise might be
praise; if this be to offend, then h