EMERSON had sent Sophia Peabody several fine engravings. One of these, a Correggio, represented a woman of Parma as a Madonna. It might give any woman a similar desire. William Story, Frank Shaw, Mr. Mack and his friends, Mrs. Ripley, Ida Russell, and Mrs. S. G. Ward were all missing to-night. MARGARET said that she was sorry she had allowed our subject to embrace so much. The Grecian Mercury seemed to mean so little that she had not thought of the depth and difficulty connected with the Egyptian Hermes. Among the Greeks, Ceres, Persephone, and Juno represent the productive faculties, Jupiter and Apollo the divine, and Mercury simply the human understanding, the God of eloquence and of thieves. MARIANNE JACKSON thought it strange that he should be at once the God of persuasion and the Deity of theft! MARGARET said eloquence was a kind of thieving! Did the Greeks so consider it? asked MARIANNE. MARGARET said, Yes, more than any nation in the world, and taught their children so to do; and in fact such mental recognitions were what distinguished the nation from all other peoples. The Egyptian Hermes represented the whole intellectual progress of man. If one made a discovery it was signed Hermes, and under that name transmitted to posterity. Hence the forty volumes of Hermetic theology, philosophy, and so on. Individuals were merged in the God. Hermes was always the mediator, the peacemaker, and it was in this relation that the beautiful story was told of the caduceus. Mercury has originally only the divining-rod which Apollo had given him, but, finding two serpents fighting one day, he pacified them, and had ever after the right to bear them embracing on his rod. There was another story, Margaret said, which she could not understand,—the story of his obtaining the head of the Ibis from Osiris. Hermes kept the _first_ or outside gates of Heaven, a significant fact typically considered. I am sure there is something in Heeren’s researches about the Ibis story, but Caroline Sturgis said, No. WILLIAM WHITE asked if the God gave the name to the planet? MARGARET said, Yes; and it was given because it stood nearest the sun. E. P. P. said Plutarch had written something about Hermes in his “Morals.” MARGARET said, Perhaps so, but she didn’t know, as she never _could_ read them. Plutarch went round and round a story; presented all the corners of it, told all the pretty bits of gossip he could find, instead of penetrating to its secret. So she preferred his anecdotes of Heroes to his Parallels or Essays. I said, in surprise, how much I liked the “Morals.” “Yes,” MARGARET said, “even Emerson paid the book the high compliment of calling it his tuning-key, when he was about to write.” E. P. P. said Coleridge was _her own_ tuning-key, and asked Margaret if she had no such friendly instigator.