Her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" is a scholarly, refined, and noble plea for the freedom of her sex. In point of ability, no book can be named with it, if we except that of Madame d'Héricourt. It has an advantage over that of Mary Wollstonecraft, in being, so far as the author could make it, a _complete_ statement; but it is written so much more from the stand-point of thought and feeling, that it has had a far more limited influence. There is not a word in the "Vindication" which the most simple might not read as he ran, and, reading, understand; but much of the "Nineteenth Century" depends upon a critical scholarship, and an evasive delicacy of sentiment and thought, which elude the common grasp. Precious passages have become axioms. "Let her be a sea-captain, if she will," has a power in both hemispheres; for it has been justified to learned and simple, by Captain Betsy, of the Scotch schooner, "Cleotus," and the sweet and noble woman who so lately carried an American ship round Cape Horn. The life of Margaret Fuller is in everybody's hands; but not even Boston _women_ appreciate her personal influence. Who _else_ could be expected to understand it? Her very existence was a stimulus to endeavor; and hundreds of women become practical "Exaltadas," because they saw the position she was permitted to hold. "I always know a Boston woman," said a rough German miner to me, beyond Lake Huron: "she always has Margaret Fuller's stamp upon her;" and I felt that his words were true. We have missed her sadly since she was taken from us. Ever memorable will be the "Life and Writings," which revive our memories better than they satisfy our demands. "It will be seen," she once wrote, "that my youth was not unfriended, since those great minds came to me in kindness." We have not been unfriended either, since she was permitted to come to us. If I were to characterize her in two words, it would be as "Truth-teller and Truth-compeller." She not only spoke what she thought, in her own way, let it be abrupt or gentle, but she compelled us to do the same. There was something in her presence which tore away all disguises: even unconscious pretension could not bear it. We were soon made to feel whether we had any right to our own thoughts. "What I especially admired in her," says Dr. Hedge, "was her intellectual sincerity. Her judgments took no bribe from her sex or sphere, nor from custom nor tradition nor caprice. She valued truth supremely, both for herself and others. The question with her was, not what _should_ be believed, nor what _ought_ to be true, but what is true. Her 'yes' and 'no' were never conventional; and she often amazed people by a cool and unsuspected dissent from the commonplaces of popular acceptation." "Truth-teller and Truth-compeller,"--the words seem to fall like the shadow of Omnipotence, a noble fillet for a woman's forehead. What a noble _character_ that must have been, which inspired the remark made after her marriage:--