Mrs. Child and Miss Sedgwick, chosen favorites of the public, stand forth as typical figures. Both have the art-instinct, both the desire for reform; in Mrs. Child the latter decidedly triumphs, in spite of her romances; in Miss Sedgwick, the former, though less decidedly, in spite of her incidental preachments. She wrote “without any purpose or hope to slay giants,” aiming merely “to supply mediocre readers with small moral hints on various subjects that come up in daily life.” It is interesting to note just what public favor meant, materially, to the most popular women writers of those days. Miss Sedgwick, at a time when she had reached high-water mark, wrote in reply to one who expected her to acquire a fortune, that she found it impossible to make much out of novel-writing while cheap editions of English novels filled the market. “I may go on,” she says, “earning a few hundred dollars a year, and precious few too.” One could not even earn the “precious few” without observing certain laws of silence. The “Appeal in Behalf of that class of Americans called Africans” seriously lessened the income of Mrs. Child. That dubious America of 1833 was decided on one point: this was not what she expected of “the female writer.” She was willing to be instructed by a woman—about the polishing of furniture and the education of daughters. And now there arises before us another figure, of striking singularity and power. Margaret Fuller never appeared as a candidate for popular favor. On the polishing of furniture she was absolutely silent; nor, though she professed “high respect for those who ‘cook something good,’ and create and preserve fair order in houses,” did she ever fulfill the understood duty of woman by publishing a cookery-book. On the education of daughters she had, however, a vital word to say; demanding for them “a far wider and more generous culture.” Her own education had been of an exceptional character; she was fortunate in its depth and solidity, though unfortunate in the forcing process that had made her a hard student at six years old. Her equipment was superior to that of any American woman who had previously entered the field of literature; and hers was a powerful genius, but, by the irony of fate, a genius not prompt to clothe itself in the written word. As to the inspiration of her speech, all seem to agree; but one who knew her well has spoken of the “singular embarrassment and hesitation induced by the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper.” The reader of the Sibylline leaves she scattered about her in her strange career receives the constant impression of hampered power, of force that has never found its proper outlet. In “Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” there is certainly something of that “shoreless Asiatic dreaminess” complained of by Carlyle; but there are also to be found rich words, fit, like those of Emerson, for “gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.” The critical