We should have, probably, mortifications to suffer;
but we should be encouraged by the rapid gain that comes from
making a simple and earnest effort for expression.'
Miss Fuller had proposed the Grecian Mythology as the subject of the
first conversations, and now gave her reasons for the choice.
'It is quite separated from all exciting local subjects. It is
serious, without being solemn, and without excluding any mode
of intellectual action; it is playful, as well as deep. It
is sufficiently wide, for it is a complete expression of the
cultivation of a nation. It is objective and tangible. It is,
also, generally known, and associated with all our ideas of
the arts.
'It originated in the eye of the Greek. He lived out of doors:
his climate was genial, his senses were adapted to it. He was
vivacious and intellectual, and personified all he beheld. He
_saw_ the oreads, naiads, nereids. Their forms, as poets and
painters give them, are the very lines of nature humanized, as
the child's eye sees faces in the embers or in the clouds.
'Other forms of the mythology, as Jupiter, Juno, Apollo,
are great instincts, or ideas, or facts of the internal
constitution, separated and personified.
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