given every day for ten weeks, and was very interesting, though very fatiguing. The labor in Mr. Alcott’s school was also quite exhausting. I, however, loved the children, and had many valuable thoughts suggested, and Mr. A.’s society was much to me.
‘As you may imagine, the Life of Goethe is not yet written; but I have studied and thought about it much. It grows in my mind with everything that does grow there. My friends in Europe have sent me the needed books on the subject, and I am now beginning to work in good earnest. It is very possible that the task may be taken from me by somebody in England, or that in doing it I may find myself incompetent; but I go on in hope, secure, at all events, that it will be the means of the highest culture.’
In addition to other labors, Margaret translated, one
evening every week, German authors into English, for
the gratification of Dr. Channing; their chief reading
being in De Wette and Herder.
‘It was not very pleasant,’ she writes, ‘for Dr. C.
takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable
to us feminine people, with our habits of ducking,
diving, or flying for truth. Doubtless, however, he
makes better use of what he gets, and if his sympathies
were livelier he would not view certain truths in so
steady a light. But there is much more talking than
reading; and I like talking with him. I do not feel that
constraint which some persons complain of, but am
perfectly free, though less called out than by other
intellects of inferior power. I get too much food for
thought from him, and am not bound to any tiresome
formality of respect on account of his age and rank in
