ese, James Freeman Clarke,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Henry Channing, set their hand, some
thirty or more years ago, to the happy task of preserving for posterity
their strong personal impressions of her character and influence. With
these precious reminiscences were interwoven such extracts from her
correspondence and diary as were deemed fittest to supply the outline of
her own life and experience.

What, it may be asked, can such biographers have left for others to do?
To surpass their work is not to be thought of. But, in the turning and
perseverance of this planet, present soon becomes past, and that which
has been best said asks to be said again. This biography, so rich in its
suggestions and so valuable in its details, is already set in a past
light by the progress of men and of things. Its theme has lost none of
its interest. Nay, it is through the growing interest felt in Margaret
and her work that a demand seems to have arisen for a later word about
her, which cannot hope to be better or wiser than the words already made
public, but which may borrow from them the inspiration for a new study
and presentment.

According to the authorities already established, Sarah Margaret Fuller,
the child of Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane, was born at
Cambridgeport, near Boston, on the 23d of May, 1810. She has herself
given some account of her early life in an autobiographical sketch which
forms the prelude to the work already published. Her father, she says,
"was a lawyer and a politician," the son of a country clergyman,
Harvard-bred both as to his college and his professional studies. She
remembers him chiefly as absorbed in the business and interest of his
profession, intent upon compassing the support of his family, and
achieving such distinction as might prove compatible with that object.
Her mother she describes as "one of those fair, flower-like natures,
which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of
life,--bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic
birds." And in the arduous labor of her father's life, his love for this
sweet mother "was the green spot on which he stood apart from the
commonplaces of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence."

The case between Margaret and her father is the first to be disposed of
in our consideration of her life and character. In the document just
quoted from she does not paint him _en beau_. Here and elsewhere she
seems to have