Many years after it was brought to a close, Margaret was surprised in
England by very warm testimony to its merits; and, in 1848, the writer
of these pages found it holding the same affectionate place in many
a private bookshelf in England and Scotland, which it had secured at
home. Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious labor from those
who served it, and from Margaret most of all. As editor, she received
a compensation for the first years, which was intended to be two
hundred dollars _per annum_, but which, I fear, never reached even
that amount.
But it made no difference to her exertion. She put so much heart into
it that she bravely undertook to open, in the Dial, the subjects which
most attracted her; and she treated, in turn, Goethe, and Beethoven,
the Rhine and the Romaic Ballads, the Poems of John Sterling, and
several pieces of sentiment, with a spirit which spared no labor; and,
when the hard conditions of journalism held her to an inevitable day,
she submitted to jeopardizing a long-cherished subject, by treating it
in the crude and forced article for the month. I remember, after she
had been compelled by ill health to relinquish the journal into my
hands, my grateful wonder at the facility with which she assumed the
preparation of laborious articles, that might have daunted the most
practised scribe.
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