ut influence upon her plan of thought and of life. From this
interval of religious contemplation she returned to her labors with the
feeling of a new power. In opening the first meeting of this second
series, on November 22, 1840, Margaret spoke of great changes which had
taken place in her way of thinking. These were of so deep and sacred a
character that she could only give them a partial expression, which,
however, sufficed to touch her hearers deeply. "They all, with
glistening eyes, seemed melted into one love." Hearts were kindled by
her utterance to one enthusiasm of sympathy which set out of sight the
possibility of future estrangement.

In the conversations of this winter (1840-41) the fine arts held a
prominent place.

Margaret stated, at the beginning, that the poetry of life would be
found in the advance "from objects to law, from the circumference of
being, where we found ourselves at our birth, to the centre." This
poetry was "the only path of the true soul," life's prose being the
deviation from this ideal way. The fine arts she considered a
compensation for this prose, which appeared to her inevitable. The
beauties which life could not embody might be expressed in stone, upon
canvas, or in music and verse. She did not permit the search for the
beautiful to transcend the limits of our social and personal duties. The
pursuit of aesthetic pleasure might lead us to fail in attaining the
higher beauty. A poetic life was not the life of a _dilettante_.

Of sculpture and music she had much to say, placing them above all other
arts. Painting appeared to her inferior to sculpture, because it
represented a greater variety of objects, and thus involved more prose.
Several conversations were, nevertheless, devoted to Painting, and the
conclusion was reached that color was consecrate to passion and
sculpture to thought; while yet in some sculptures, like the Niobe, for
example, feeling was recognized, but on a grand, universal scale.

The question, "What is life?" occupied one meeting, and brought out many
differences of view, which Margaret at last took up into a higher
ground, beginning with God as the eternally loving and creating life,
and recognizing in human nature a kindred power of love and of creation,
through the exercise of which we also add constantly to the total sum of
existence, and, leaving behind us ignorance and sin, become godlike in
the ability to give, as well as to receive, happiness.

With