University of Virginia Library

MR. EVELYN TO ANNA.

From the tone of your letters, I gather that Margaret, in
what she writes you, treats of her own agency in these matters
Livingstonian, in a manner somewhat obscure. I shall take
the liberty to elucidate this point briefly. I do not intend to
overtax her modesty, or involve her singleness of heart, beyond
what is meet; but in truth I must declare, the first person in
her letters would be more fitting and exact, than any second;
it is she herself, and not we, who is, under God, and in Christ,
the soul of all that which we now behold. This may be as
frankly avowed, as it is sincerely felt. Nor do I fear inducing
a dispute with my dear wife, by saying as much. She knows
that I know it, and if she has not confidence enough in herself
to confess the fact, she has in me to yield to it. If she has not
a consciousness of her own strength, it is because it is so absolutely
and plenarily great that she lacks the contentions and
annoyances of weakness which reveal to most of us the little
strength we do possess. Wherein she is conscious of her
strength, she so expends it in action as to leave no carking and
petted residuum to trouble her with. Her self-consciousness
is not, what we sometimes behold, a crying infant, but a grown-up
sister; it resides quite as much with her industry as in her
heart, and she is not obliged to quit her work and rock the
cradle of herself. She thus escapes a morbid tendency on the
one hand, and a heedless one on the other; she can be self-forgetful
and self-moved; she can love and she can labor.—

She will not charge me with any adroit humility that seeks to
hide itself under her laurels. You have known me, Anna,
that I had some vis in my composition, but of that kind which
the books call mortua, more than the description viva; in
other words, that I was sluggish and lazy. I saw, and thought,
and speculated enough, I attained many correct conclusions;
but I never did anything. When I left College, I soon convinced
myself, that like many other rare geniuses, I was doomed
to be the victim of circumstances. I was not poverty-stricken,
but man-stricken. The forms and the spirit of error
and evil had distorted the face of the globe; but why should
I attempt to remove mountains, or change the bed of rivers?
Let me travel over the one, and sail on the other. I would
not perish where so many of my kith and kin had come to
their end, that is to say in contention. I essayed poetry, but
soon learned, that I had not only to make verses, but remodel
the standards of taste; that if I would succeed, I must first
put all the critics to death, as the Emperor Hadrian did Apollodorus,
for blaming the proportions of a Temple he had erected.
Of the Professions, Theology I could not, Law and Medicine
I would not; and then, as a last resort, I concluded to
fall in love with a very pretty, and very poor girl, here in Livingston.
I knew I could live with her, whereas I must die in
all the world besides. Well for me that I had sense enough to
understand her, or heart enough to love her. I could always
philosophize, but lacked the energy of execution. In place
of hastening the better day, I was disposed to yield most implicit
obedience to that direction of the Apostle, “Wait until
the Lord come.” Margaret's energy has inspired all my capabilities,
and given motion to my will. But more than this,
for example, I could sit with Phidias in his studio, and out of
ideal gold and ivory make a Jupiter, with all suitable enrichments.
She takes the veritable materials, and the statue
is done. Thus is our whole history; I have been able to impart
a certain fanciful existence to Ideality; she perpetually
reduces the same to the Actual. Nor does she seem to study
her plan, with most artists, and then go to work; she goes to
work, and the plan and the result are both before you. She
seems to be only embodying herself in what is about her, her
profuse and impulsive being creates life in all things, her own
going forth is the signal for the appearance of Beauty and Virtue;
she translates Nature to Man; and Man to himself. I
talk like a doting husband, but this is what I am, and what
she has made me. She was reared on bread and cider, and
bean porridge; she slept in a cold chamber, she hardened her
constitution among snow-banks; her mind, never overloaded,
was always occupied; her nature would neither endure, nor
did it ever receive, the fetters of fashion, conventionality, dog-ma,
or world-fear. Without education, in the common sense
of the term, her faculties were matured; without instruction,
she was wise; and having never heard of Mr. Nash, she was
graceful and polite. Christianity she was unembarrassed to
receive, and in that alone has she found a master. For this
indeed she was somewhat prepared by her night-visions; but
when it came, it overpowered and aggrandized her. I never
could have imagined so perfect an incarnation of Christ, as she
is; and that without parting with any of her proper individuality.
She drinks in Christ as the oaks do the dews, to replenish
herself in greater proportion and beauty thereby. The
Bread from Heaven, designed for the aliment, development,
and ripening of all souls, she feeds daily upon. I know not
that she is a Philosopher, save that she acts philosophically. Our
Philosophers, for the most part, by an industrious collation of
many facts, like travellers with heavy packs on their shoulders,
fare slowly up the hill of their conclusions. On a few facts
her conclusions rest; one fact stands with her for many facts,
and this from a certain comprehensive and nice power of analogy
she possesses. That law by which all facts in the physical,
moral and religious world gravitate towards a common centre,
and coalesce in one, she has an intuitive perception of. Or
rather the soul of all things, the Truth and Love, of which
facts are but the signs, she understands by the correspondence
of her own soul therewith. Hence is her logic rapid, and correct,
and her action perfect and sure. She is perhaps more
Philosophy than a Philosopher; and if, as has been observed,
History be Philosophy teaching by example, Nature is Margaret
teaching by practice. She also possesses much of the
Universal Heart; a variety of hearts enter into the ingredients of
hers. Hence, occupying the stand-point of the many, her sight
is extensive, her projects are feasible, and her success certain.
When I first saw her, she was more purely in a state of nature,
than any civilized person I ever encountered. To this, partly,
I attribute the power of the Gospel on her. Neither internal
sin nor external evil had deformed or diseased her, and she
was prepared, like a new-born babe, to breathe the atmosphere
of Christ the moment she came in contact with it, and to drink
the sincere milk of the word. I once wholly despaired of
seeing a Christian; she is one! I might say, I more than
despaired of fulfilling my ideal in myself; she has aided me to
do it! Christ pervades every corner and cranny of her being;
she is filled with the fullness of God. And yet she loves me,
with a most devout and child-like love. “And yet?” Why
should she not?—In pursuing her objects in town, she is no
dry, hoarse-voiced, arrow-speeding, denunciatory, monomaniac;
she gushes up like a fountain, and having supplied her home,
has enough wherewithal to overflow, and run down the hill.
She is meek and lowly of heart in an uncommon degree.
Whatever manly qualities she exhibits, it is without masculineness,
and she is a woman, without effeminacy. She has no
bitterness of spirit; the only person in the world whom she
was disposed to view as thoroughly and hopelessly depraved,
was the Widow Wright; but I believe she has got the better
of that judgment. She has no blur in her own eye when she
would remove that of her brothers.

But of her connection with this Livingstonian re-Christianization—I
say, she may report to you what she does, more than
what we do. This is a palpable truth. For instance, our Festivals;
I had witnessed their working in the Old World, I was
convinced of their utility; I could relate their history, distinguish
their errors and defects; while I was speaking on the
subject, she had elaborated the system we now enjoy. Is it my
doings or hers? At the same time, standing as she does in
the common heart, corresponding with so many minds, it
seemed to emanate as much from the people as from herself.
The hierophancy that exists in all souls, needed only to be awakened,
to make every one a practical interpreter of Nature.
This, you will recollect, was after the extraneous habits and
factitious modes of the people had somewhat worn away, and
they were prepared to act on an original native sense of things.
How this superincrustation, hardened by many years duration,
and even converted into the commonest uses of life, became
removed, would puzzle a greater philosopher than she thinks
I am, to tell. Its disappearance was gradual, and yet perceptible.
The Spirit of God entered into men's souls, and these
dead forms were uplifted, the oppressive bands were broken
asunder. Truth and Love, here as everywhere, like that
Nebuchadnezzarean tree, had their branches cut off, and its
leaves shaken off, but the stump of the roots was in the earth,
and needed but to be wet with the dew of Heaven, to shoot
forth in primeval, paradisian vigor and bloom. Humanity,
like a buried giant, heaved off its superincumbence, and rose
to life; Religion cast aside her Harlequin robes. Margaret

ever courted alliance with an imperishable Nature. The sentiments
of Deacon Ramsdill, sound as they are homely, must
have assisted her. From breast to breast an electrical fire
spread itself. She subsidized all my strength, she drew your
brother into the field; and she had also a most serviceable
coadjutorship in many other wise and valiant men and women.
Her knowledge of human nature would strike you as very
great. She says Jesus Christ taught her this knowledge; that
since she has been a Christian, and a student of the gospels,
this intuition, or experience, has been singularly developed in
her. Our taking up our abode at Mons Christi was, on the
whole, her own suggestion; what we did for the No. 4's, and
particularly the setting up of the Statue, was for the most part
a plan of hers. A pink she once saw in one of their filthy
houses seemed to suggest the Statue; and a beautiful image
of Diligence she felt would carry a varied impression to the
hearts of those gross people, that should work their complete
reformation. And the result did not disappoint her. Many,
many things about our house, grounds, ways, and in the town
are purely her own inventions. All our superb statues are
chiefly hers. I would not applaud her at the expense of any
others. I shall not write myself altogether a “puppet;” your
brother has done a great work for us. He came with purposes
possibly not fully ripe, but with talents of the first order, and
a heart glowing with a Christ-like ambition. There is a host
besides of whom, if not the world, Livingston is worthy.

Of Margaret I was speaking. I have translated to her the
whole of the New Testament; and, she, I must concede, understands
it better than I do. She has a most accurate perception
of the general sense, she detects hidden springs of
beauty, she harmonizes varying passages and contradictory
language, she gathers what may be termed the manner of
Christ, his accents and emphases, his moods and feelings; she
is not constrained by those unnatural prominences which to
those of us who have been long accustomed to hear particular
topics discussed, and particular texts dwelt upon, occur everywhere
in the Bible. A parable, a trope, an hyperbole, never
embarrasses her. There may be a reason for this, in the fact
that she understands Christ so well; she is, if I may so say,
so much in his vein. She goes deeper than the partial, varying
human letter, even into the spirit of Jesus, and comes up
full of his meaning. Then, she brings to the Gospel so fresh
and pure a nature. Do the best I can, I still find myself
stumbling upon certain passages which have been detached

from Scripture, inwrought into some human system, and
invested with a sense wholly remote from the original. She
has been troubled by no systems, and these passages, to her,
all melt down, and flow on in harmony with the great stream
of Gospel truth.

My dearest wife! I see her now on the Pond. She comes
from the Islands; and our little Gottfried is with her. Her
head is wreathed with evergreens, and the boy has a cincture
of the same. With featest stroke she drives forward her
canoe, firmly the child clutches the seat. Happy husband
and father of so good a wife, so good a child am I! Fresh
and warm is she in heart and complexion, as when I with her
first looked on these beautiful waters. Yearly does my love
for her increase, with every holy deed our souls are knitted
more closely together. She leaps upon the beach, she runs
along the grass, the little Gottfried chases his mother. I must
go and meet them, for I am made young and agile too. She
will bide what I have written; she never blushes at truth, but
only when I love her.