Miss Peabody’s rooms in West Street — those rooms where many young men and women found, both then and at a later day, the companionship of cultivated people, and the best of French, German, Italian, and English literature. The conversations continued for five winters, closing in April, 1844. Their theory was not high-flown but eminently sensible, being based expressly on the ground stated in the circular, that the chief disadvantage of women in regard to study was in not being called upon, like men, to reproduce in some way what they had learned. As a substitute for this she proposed to try the uses of conversation, to be conducted in a somewhat systematic way, under efficient leadership. Accordingly these meetings, although taking a wide range, were always concentrated, and with a good deal of effect, on certain specified subjects; the most prominent of these being, perhaps, that of Mythology, or the reappearance of religious ideas under varying forms. It is a theme which has since assumed great importance and commanded a literature of its own; but it was then new, and had to be studied at great disadvantage. Through early versions of the “Bhagvat Geeta” and the “Desatir,” Margaret Fuller had made advances into this realm: and for her, as for her early companion and life-long friend, Lydia Maria Child, it had great fascinations. She writes in her journal, for instance (February 21, 1841): —
“This Hindoo mythology is like an Indian jungle.
