“No! no! I know better. You can not deceive me. It can not be so. I know the sort of genius which is popular in those cities. It is the gentleman and lady genius. Look at their verses for example. I can show you thousands of such things that come to us here, from all quarters of the Union--verses written by nice people--people of small tastes and petty invention, who would not venture upon the utterance of a noble feeling, or a bold sentiment of originality, for fear of startling the fashionable nerves with the strong words which such a novelty would require. Consider, in the first place, how conclusive it is of the feeblest sort of genius that these people should employ themselves, from morning to night, in spinning their small strains, scraps of verse, song, and sonnet, and invariably on such subjects of commonplace, as can not admit of originality, and do not therefore task reflection. Not an infant dies or is born, but is made the subject of verse; nay, its smiles and tears are put on record; its hobby-horse, and its infant ideas as they begin to bud and breathe aloud. Then comes the eternal strain about summer blooms and spring flowers; autumn's melancholy and winter's storms, until one sickens of the intolerable monotony. Such are the things that your great cities demand. Such things content them. Speak the fearless and always strange language of originality and strength, and you confound and terrify them.” “But, Margaret, these things are held at precisely the same value in the big cities as they are held by you here in Charlemont. The intelligent people smile--they do not applaud. If they encourage at all it is by silence.” “No! no! that you might say, if, unhappily, public opinion did not express itself. The same magazines which bring us the verses bring us the criticism.” “That is to say, the editor puffs his contributors, and disparages those who are not. Look at the rival journal and you will find these denounced and another set praised and beplastered.” “Ah! and what would be my hope, my safety, in communities which tolerate these things; in which the number of just and sensible people is so small that they dare not speak, or can not influence those who have better courage? Where would be my triumphs? I, who would no more subscribe to the petty tyranny of conventional law, than to that baser despotism which is wielded by a mercenary editor, in the absence of a stern justice in the popular mind. Here I may pine to death--there, my heart would burst with its own convulsions.”