to
the soul.'

VI.

THE WOMAN.

* * * * *

In 1839 I had met Margaret upon the plane of intellect. In the summer
of 1840, on my return from the West, she was to be revealed in a new
aspect.

It was a radiant and refreshing morning, when I entered the parlor of
her pleasant house, standing upon a slope beyond Jamaica Plain to the
south. She was absent at the moment, and there was opportunity to look
from the windows on a cheerful prospect, over orchards and meadows,
to the wooded hills and the western sky. Presently Margaret appeared,
bearing in her hand a vase of flowers, which she had been gathering in
the garden. After exchange of greetings, her first words were of the
flowers, each of which was symbolic to her of emotion, and associated
with the memory of some friend. I remember her references only to the
Daphne Odora, the Provence Rose, the sweet-scented Verbena, and the
Heliotrope; the latter being her chosen emblem, true bride of the sun
that it is.

From flowers she passed to engravings hanging round the room. 'Here,'
said she, 'are Dante and Beatrice.

"Approach, and know that I am Beatrice.
The power of ancient love was strong within me."

'She is beautiful enough, is not she, for that higher moment?
But Dante! Yet who could paint a Dante,--and Dante in heaven?
They give but his shadow, as he walked in the forest-maze of
earth. Then here is the Madonna del Pesce; not divine, like
the Foligno, not deeply maternal, like the Seggiola, not
the beaetified "Mother of God" of the Dresden gallery, but
graceful, and "not too bright and good for human nature's
daily food." And here is Raphael himself, the young seer of
beauty, with eyes softly contemplative, yet lit with central
fires,' &c.

There were gems, too, and medallions and seals, to be examined, each
enigmatical, and each blended by remembrances with some fair hour of
her past life.

Talk on art led the way to Greece and the Greeks, whose mythology
Margaret was studying afresh. She had been culling the blooms of that
poetic land, and could not but offer me leaves from her garland. She
spoke of the statue of Minerva-Polias, cut roughly from an olive-tree,
yet cherished as the heaven-descended image of the most sacred shrine,
to which was due the Panathenaic festival.

'The less ideal perfection in the figure, the greater the
reverence of the adorer. Wa