[2152] to the ground. For a day I thought it must make a difference, but it has served only to increase my admiration for Mr. Greeley's smiling courage. He has really a strong character.
On the other side, Mr. Greeley thus records his recollections of his friend:—
My first acquaintance with Margaret Fuller was made through the pages of “The Dial.” The lofty range and rare ability of that work, and its unAmeri-can richness of culture and ripeness of thought, naturally filled the “fit audience, though few,” with a high estimate of those who were known as its conductors and principal writers. Yet I do not now remember that any article, which strongly impressed me, was recognized as from the pen of its female editor, prior to the appearance of “The great Lawsuit,” afterwards matured into the volume more distinctively, yet not quite accurately, entitled Woman in the Nineteenth Century. I think this can hardly have failed to make a deep impression on the mind of every thoughtful reader, as the production of an original, vigorous, and earnest mind. Summer on the Lakes, which appeared some time after that essay, though before its expansion into a book, struck me as less ambitious in its aim, but more graceful and delicate in its execution; and as one of the clearest and most graphic delineations, ever given, of the Great Lakes, of the Prairies, and of the receding barbarism, and the rapidly advancing, but rude, repulsive semi-civilization, which were contending with most unequal forces for the possession of those rich lands. I still consider Summer on the Lakes unequalled,
