She never
speaks, never did speak, for any clique or sect, but as her individual
judgment, her reason and conscience, her observation and experience,
taught her to speak.
I could have wished that some one other than a brother should have
spoken a few fitting words of Margaret Fuller, as a woman, to form a
brief but proper accompaniment to this volume, which may reach some
who have never read her "Memoirs," recently published, or have never
known her in personal life. This seemed the more desirable, because
the strictest verity in speaking of her must seem, to such as knew her
not, to be eulogy. But, after several disappointments as to the
editorship of the volume, the duty, at last, has seemed to devolve
upon me; and I have no reason to shrink from it but a sense of
inadequacy.
It is often supposed that literary women, and those who are active and
earnest in promoting great intellectual, philanthropic, or religious
movements, must of necessity neglect the domestic concerns of life. It
may be that this is sometimes so, nor can such neglect be too severely
reprehended; yet this is by no means a necessary result. Some of the
most devoted mothers the world has ever known, and whose homes were
the abode of every domestic virtue, themselves the embodiment of all
these, have been women whose minds were highly cultured, who loved and
devoted both thought and time to literature, and were active in
philanthropic and diffusive efforts for the welfare of the race.
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