Emerson in that path of literary independence which led New England away from servile imitation of English models; but in 1838 the hour for him had not struck. It dawned in the light of love when (possibly at Concord, where she sometimes visited, in the home of Miss Anne Whiting, or at Squire Hoar's) Lowell first appreciated the gentle beauty of Maria White. She had accepted the extreme views of the emancipationists, like Anne Phillips, Maria Weston Chapman, Augusta King, Jane Whiting and Sophia and Helen Thoreau; and it was not long before her lover joined the ranks of the same party, and became the junior laureate of the Abolitionists,—Whittier being his senior in office, but not so enthusiastically Garrisonian.
The Peabody sisters, Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia (Mrs. Hawthorne), went part way along the same radical road, but not so far in all directions; and they were intimate with the White family, as also with the Channings and Parkers and Phillipses. Mrs. Hawthorne was married in July, 1842, two years before Maria White, and her first child, Una (referred to in the letter), was born in March, 1844, at the
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