She finds herself happier in the companionship of Schiller than in that of Goethe, of whom she says, "That perfect wisdom and merciless reason seem cold after those seducing pictures of forms more beautiful than truth." The "Elective Affinities" suggests to her various critical questions, but does not carry her away with the sweep of its interest. From "the immense superiority of Goethe" she finds it a relief to turn to the simplicity of Novalis, "a wondrous youth, who has written only one volume," and whose "one-sidedness, imperfection, and glow seem refreshingly human" to her. Körner becomes a fixed star in the heaven of her thought. Lessing interests her less. She credits him with the production of "well conceived and sustained characters and interesting situations," but not with any profound knowledge of human nature. "I think him easily followed; strong, but not deep." This was with Margaret, as Dr. Hedge has well observed, the period of romance. Her superiority to common individuals appeared in the fact that she was able to combine with intense personal aspirations and desires a wide outlook into the destinies of the human race. We find her, in these very days, "engaged in surveying the level on which the public mind is poised." She turns from the poetic tragedy and comedy of life to study, as she says, "the rules of its prose," and to learn from the talk of common people what elements and modes of thought go to make up the average American mind. She listens to George Thompson, the English anti-slavery orator, and is led to say that, if she had been a man, she should have coveted the gift of eloquence above all others, and this for the intensity of its effects. She thinks of writing six historical tragedies, and devises the plan for three of them. Tales of Hebrew history it is also in her mind to compose. Becoming convinced that "some fixed opinion on the subject of metaphysics is an essential aid to systematic culture," she addresses herself to the study of Fichte and Jacobi, of Brown and Stewart. The first of these appeared to her incomprehensible. Of the second, she conjectures that his views are derived from some author whom she has not read. She thinks in good earnest of writing a life of Goethe, and wishes to visit Europe in order to collect the material requisite for this. Her appreciation of Dr. Channing is shown in a warm encomium on his work treating of slavery, of which she says, "It comes like a breath borne over some solemn sea which separates us from an island of righteousness."