There was little in the life of the people of New England in the early part of the present century upon which to feed the imagination of a precocious and romantic child like Margaret Fuller; and her childhood, though outwardly fortunate and well placed, was one of labor and repression, and far from happy, if we may judge by her own account of it. The theology of the people was gloomy. They made everything connected with religion unlovely, and this austerity was particularly distasteful to one of Margaret's imaginative temperament and heroic disposition. Her ungratified imagination brought her early into conflict with the circumstances and surroundings of her life. All the poetry of her nature cried out against the lives of toil and care by which she was surrounded,--lives at that time lighted up by little of art or literature or music, but held to a stern standard of duty and self-abnegation. Margaret's nature craved beauty and poetry and art and lavish affection, and it was nursed on a somewhat grim diet of hard work and little expressed affection, although her parents were both loving and intelligent. Her father himself educated her, being a Harvard graduate, and a lawyer and politician of that day. He taught her Latin at the age of six years; and she says that the lessons set for her were as many and various as the hours would allow, and on subjects far beyond her age. These lessons were recited to her father after office hours, which kept the poor tired child up till late in the evening, and as a result the youthful prodigy was terrified at night by dreams and illusions, and given to sleep-walking. The result of such over-tension of a childish mind was a morbid and unhealthy state of both body and mind; and though she loved study, these great demands made upon her powers almost overcame her with their weight. She had a natural passion for reading, and when a mere child singled out Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Molière, from all the books in the library, for her especial favorites. She was but eight years old when she took a passionate interest in "Romeo and Juliet," and was disgraced in the family for perusing it on Sunday; and the imaginative child was always seeking for the heroic figures of her Shakespearian world in the every-day life about her, and was always disappointed. Altogether, we must call it an unhappy and unfortunate childhood, and cannot but think much finer intellectual as well as moral results would have followed a different treatment in her home.