your theme, if you will rise out of commonplace; any amount of erudition, eloquence of phrase, scope of comprehension; figure and symbol sparingly but fitly. Who speaks to the eye, speaks to the whole mind.

Most people are too exclusively individual for conversing. It costs too great expenditure of magnetism to dissolve them; who cannot leave himself out of his discourse, but embarrasses all who take part in it. Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.

Conversation with plain people proves more agreeable and profitable, usually, than with companies more pretentious and critical. It is wont to run the deeper and stronger without impertinent interruptions, inevitable where cultivated egotism and self-assurance are present with such. There remains this resource, of ignoring civilly the interruption, and proceeding as if the intrusion had not been interposed.

"Oft when the wise

Appears not wise, he works the greater good."

"Never allow yourself," said Goethe, "to be betrayed into a dispute. Wise men fall into ignorance if they dispute with ignorant men." Persuasion is the finest artillery. It is the unseen guns that do execution without smoke or tumult. If one cannot win by force of wit, without cannonade of abuse, flourish of trumpet, he is out of place in parlors, ventures where he can neither forward nor grace fellowship. The great themes

are feminine, and to be dealt with delicately. Debate is masculine; conversation is feminine.

Here is a piece of excellent counsel from Plotinus: "And this may everywhere be considered, that he who pursues our form of philosophy, will, besides all other graces, genuinely exhibit simple and venerable manners, in conjunction with the possession of wisdom, and will endeavor not to become insolent or proud, but will possess confidence, accompanied with reason, with sincerity and candor, and great circumspection."

MARGARET FULLER.

THURSDAY, 20.

ORACE GREELEY has just issued from the "Tribune" office a uniform edition of Margaret Fuller's works, together with her Memoirs first published twenty years ago. And now, while woman is the theme of public discussion, her character and writings may be studied to advantage. The sex has had no abler advocate. Her book entitled "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" anticipated most of the questions now in the air, and the leaders in the movement for woman's welfare might take its counsels as the text for their action. Her methods, too, suggest the better modes of influence. That she wrote books is the least of her merits. She

was greatest when she dropped her pen. She spoke best what others essayed to say, and what women

speak best. Hers was a glancing logic that leaped straight to the sure conclusion; a sibylline intelligence that divined oracularly; knew by anticipation; in the presence always, the open vision. Alas, that so much should have been lost to us, and this at the moment when it seemed we most needed and could profit by it! Was it some omen of that catastrophe which gave her voice at times the tones of a sadness almost preternatural? What figure were she now here in times and triumphs like ours! She seemed to have divined the significance of woman, dared where her sex had hesitated hitherto, was gifted to untie social knots which the genius of a Plato even failed to disentangle. "Either sex alone," he said, " was but half itself." Yet he did not complement the two in honorable marriage in his social polity. "If a house be rooted in wrong," says Euripides, "it will blossom in vice." As the oak is cradled in the acorn's cup, so the state in the family. Domestic licentiousness saps every institution, the morals of the community at large, a statement trite enough, but till it is no longer needful to be made is the commonwealth established on immovable foundations.

"Revere no God whom men adore by night."

Let the sexes be held to like purity of morals, and equal justice meted to them for any infraction of the laws of social order. Women are the natural leaders of society in whatever concerns private morals, lead where it were safe for men to follow. About the like

number as of men, doubtless, possess gifts to serve the community at large; while most women, as most men, will remain private citizens, fulfilling private duties. Her vote as such will tell for personal purity, for honor, temperance, justice, mercy, peace, - the domestic virtues upon which communities are founded, and in which they must be firmly rooted to prosper and endure. The unfallen souls are feminine..

Crashaw's Ideal Woman should win the love and admiration of her sex as well as ours.

"Whoe'er she be

That not impossible she

That shall command my heart and me;

"Where'er she lie

Lock'd up from mortal eye

In shady leaves of destiny;

"Till that ripe birth

Of studied fate stand forth,

And teach her fair steps to our earth:

"Till that divine

Idea take a shrine

Of crystal flesh, through which to shine,

"Meet you her my wishes,

Bespeak her to my blisses,

And be ye called my absent kisses.

"I wish her beauty

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy tire, or glistening shoe-ty.

"Something more than

Taffata or tissue can,

Or rampant feather, or rich fan.

"More than the spoil

Of shop, or silkworm's toil,

Or a bought blush, or a set smile.

"A face that's best

By its own beauty drest,

And can alone command the rest.

"A face made up

Out of no other shop

Than what nature's white hand sets ope.

"A cheek where youth

And blood, with pen of truth,

Write what the reader sweetly rueth.

"A cheek where grows

More than a morning rose,

Which to no box his being owes.

"Lips, where all day

A lover's kiss may play,

Yet carry nothing thence away.

"Looks, that oppress

Their richest tires, but dress

And clothe their simplest nakedness.