She appears to
have been without creative faculty, yet her perception of the gift in
others was often remarkable, and it pleased her to hold the possessor
of it up to admiration. Hence she devoted much time and attention to
the critical examination of art, music, and literature, and succeeded
in giving the works and lives which she reviewed a fresh interest and a
fuller meaning. Her articles on Goethe and Beethoven, in this volume,
furnish ample evidence of her capacity to appreciate the works and the
men of genius, and that, if she could not give good reasons for the
aberrations and eccentricities of their courses, she at least had a
heart large enough to look kindly upon them. Of books she was
a student and a lover; and in the short notices of new ones, which are
transferred from "The Tribune" to these pages, there is hardly one that
has not some thought of value to author as well as reader. Indeed, all
her prose writings are suggestive, and thus are capable of opening
vistas in the quickened mind which were unknown before. Authors of this
class often dart a ray into the recesses of our souls, so that we see
what they never saw, gain what they never gave.
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