When we consider Margaret's love of literature, and her power of making its treasures her own, we must think of this passion of hers for availing intercourse with other minds as indeed a providential gift which no doubt lavished in passing speech much that would have been eloquent on paper, but which evidently had on society the immediate and intensified effect which distinguishes the living word above the dead letter. CHAPTER IV. ART STUDIES.--REMOVAL TO GROTON.--MEETING WITH HARRIET MARTINEAU.--DEATH OF MR. FULLER.--DEVOTION TO HER FAMILY. Margaret's enthusiasm for art was in some measure the result of her study of Goethe. Yet she had in herself a love of the beautiful, and a sense of its office in life, which would naturally have led her far in the direction in which this great master gave her so strong an impulsion. In her multifarious reading she gave much time to the literature of art, and in those days had read everything that related to Michael Angelo and Raphael, Quatremère de Quincy, Condivi, Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini, and others. The masters themselves she studied in the casts of the Boston Athenæum, in the Brimmer Collection of Engravings, and in the contents of certain portfolios which a much-esteemed friend placed at her service, and which contained all the designs of Michael and Raphael. The delight which Margaret felt in these studies demanded the sympathy of her elect associates, and Mr. Emerson remembers certain months as having been "colored with the genius of these Italians." In 1839 Mr. Allston's numerous works were collected for a public exhibition which drew to Boston lovers of art from many distant places. In the same year some sculptures of Greenough and Crawford were added to the attractions of the Boston Athenæum. In Margaret's appreciation of these works, if we may believe Mr. Emerson, a certain fanciful interpretation of her own sometimes took the place of a just estimate of artistic values. Yet he found her opinion worthy of attention, as evincing her real love of beautiful things, and her great desire to understand the high significance of art. He makes some quotations from her notes on the Athenæum Gallery of sculpture in 1840.