These lines appeared in the Keepsake for 1843, then edited by the Countess of Blessington, and from a note added to the poem by the fair editress, we learnt for the first time that the authoress of the numerous verses in the Athenæum, which we, in common with thousands more, had so greatly admired, were written by a blind girl!

    We immediately felt interested about the writer's history, and longed to know how, in a remote village in the north of Ireland, a young woman, deprived of most of the ordinary helps to knowledge, having no intercourse with nature except through books, and doomed to live in solitary darkness in the midst of the beauties of the external world, should nevertheless have reared a temple of beauty in her own mind, and found therein not only joy and rejoicing for herself, but to all others whom the press has brought within reach of her utterances.

    The story of the inner life of such an one, if it could be related in all its fullness, were indeed most interesting as well as most instructive.  In any case, it is curious to watch a strong mind developing itself; but where, as in this case, it is under conditions of social and physical disadvantage so great, it is most profitable as an example, even to those more favourably circumstanced, to watch the ardent mind groping, by the aid of its strong instincts, through the darkness of which it was conscious, appropriating to itself everything whence it could draw nourishment in the barren elements by which it was surrounded, and seizing upon all that could help it onward, while, by its own undirected energies, it was struggling upwards to the light.

    Frances Brown is of humble birth.  She was born at Stranorlar, in the county Donegal, where her father was postmaster, a humble man of small means but respectable character.  At eighteen months old, Frances was seized by the smallpox in its severest form, and when she recovered from the disease it was at the sacrifice of her sight.  She has never since seen the light of day.  Of her early calamity Miss Brown has no recollection; and no forms of the outer world have followed her into her world of darkened meditations.  The hues and shapes of things, as they present themselves to human eyes, are to her an utter blank, even in memory.  She has been spared that perplexity which often haunts the blind who have lost their sight later in life, in the baffled attempts to summon up and recover the fading impressions and images of a past life; for of things as seen by her infant eyes she has no recollection whatever, nor is she pursued by regret for the loss of that which she was too young to appreciate.  The mind has thus been left more clear to act in the conditions to which it was limited; and by devices of her own, by the promptings of a clear natural intellect, by a careful process of self-culture, she has been enabled to see into the world of thought, and made the unpromising soil about her yield intellectual fruit of the most delightful and profitable kind.

    We cannot better relate the story of Miss Brown's early education than in her own words.

"I recollect very little," she says,

"of my infant years.  I never received any regular education, but very early felt the want of it: and the first time I remember to have experienced this feeling strongly was about the beginning of my seventh year, when I heard our pastor (my parents being members of the Presbyterian Church) preach for the first time.  On the occasion alluded to, I was particularly struck by many words in the sermon, which, though in common use, I did not then understand; and from that time adopted a plan for acquiring information on this subject.  When a word unintelligible to me happened to reach my ear, I was careful to ask its meaning from any person I thought likely to inform me,—a habit which was probably troublesome enough to the friends and acquaintance of my childhood; but, by this method, I soon acquired a considerable stock of words; and, when further advanced in life, enlarged it still more by listening attentively to my young brothers and sisters reading over the tasks required at the village school.  They were generally obliged to commit to memory a certain portion of the Dictionary and English Grammar, each day; and by hearing them read it aloud frequently for that purpose, as my memory was better than theirs, (perhaps rendered so by necessity,) I learned the task much sooner than they, and frequently heard them repeat it.

    "My first acquaintance with books was necessarily formed amongst those which are most common in country villages.  'Susan Gray,' 'The Negro Servant,' 'The Gentle Shepherd,' 'Mungo Park's Travels,' and, of course, 'Robinson Crusoe,' were among the first of my literary friends; for I have often heard them read by my relatives, and remember to have taken a strange delight in them, when I am sure they were not half understood.  Books have been always scarce in our remote neighbourhood, and were much more so in my childhood: but the craving for knowledge which then commenced grew with my growth; and, as I had no books of my own in those days, my only resource was borrowing from the few acquaintances I had, to some of whom I owe obligations of the kind that will never be forgotten.  In this way, I obtained the reading of many valuable works, though generally old ones;—but it was a great day for me when the first of Sir Walter Scott's works fell into my hands.  It was "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and was lent me by a friend, whose family were rather better provided with books than most in our neighbourhood.  My delight in the work was very great, even then; and I contrived, by means of borrowing, to get acquainted, in a very short time, with the greater part of the works of its illustrious author,—for works of fiction, about this time, occupied all my thoughts.  I had a curious mode of impressing on my memory what had been read,—namely, lying awake, in the silence of night, and repeating it all over to myself.  To that habit I probably owe the extreme tenacity of memory which I now possess; but, like all other good things, it had its attendant evil,—for I have often thought it curious that, whilst I never forget any scrap of knowledge collected, however small, yet the common events of daily life slip from my memory so quickly, that I can scarcely find anything again which I have once laid aside.  But this misfortune has been useful in teaching me habits of order.

    "About the beginning of my thirteenth year," continues Miss Brown, "I happened to hear a friend read a part of Barnes's History of the French War.  It made a singular impression on my mind; and works of fiction, from that time, began to lose their value, compared with the far more wonderful romance of History. But books of the kind were so scarce in our neighbourhood, that Hume's History of England, and two or three other works on the same subject, were all I could read, till a kind friend, who was then the teacher of our village school, obliged me with that voluminous work, 'The Universal History.'  There I heard, for the first time, the histories of Greece and Rome, and those of many other ancient nations.  My friend had only the ancient part of the work; but it gave me a fund of information, which has been subsequently increased from many sources; and at present I have a tolerable knowledge of history.

    "In the pursuit of knowledge, my path was always impeded by difficulties too minute and numerous to mention; but the want of sight was, of course, the principal one,—which, by depriving me of the power of reading, obliged me to depend on the services of others,—and, as the condition of my family was such as did not admit of much leisure, my invention was early taxed to gain time for those who could read.  I sometimes did the work assigned to them, or rendered them other little services; for, like most persons similarly placed, necessity and habit have made me more active in this respect than people in ordinary circumstances would suppose.  The lighter kinds of reading were thus easily managed; but my young relatives were often unwilling to waste their breath and time with the drier, but more instructive works which I latterly preferred.  To tempt them to this, I used, by way of recompense, to relate to them long stories, and even novels, which perhaps they had formerly read but forgotten: and thus my memory may be said to have earned supplies for itself.

    "About the end of my fifteenth year, having heard much of the Iliad, I obtained the loan of Pope's translation.  That was a great event to me but the effect it produced on me requires some words of explanation.

    "From my earliest years, I had a great and strange love of poetry; and could commit verses to memory with greater rapidity than most children.  But at the close of my seventh year, when a few Psalms of the Scotch version, Watts's Divine Songs, and some old country songs (which certainly were not divine), formed the whole of my poetical knowledge, I made my earliest attempt in versification,—upon that first and most sublime lesson of childhood, the Lord's Prayer.

    "As years increased, my love of poetry and taste for it increased also, with increasing knowledge.  The provincial newspapers, at times, supplied me with specimens from the works of the best living authors.  Though then unconscious of the cause, I still remember the extraordinary delight which those pieces gave me,—and have been astonished to find that riper years have only confirmed the judgments of childhood.  When such pieces reached me, I never rested till they were committed to memory: and afterwards repeated them for my own amusement, when alone, or during those sleepless nights to which I have been all my life subject.

    "But a source of still greater amusement was found in attempts at original composition; which, for the first few years, were but feeble imitations of everything I knew,—from the Psalms to Gray's Elegy.  When the poems of Burns fell in my way, they took the place of all others in my fancy:—and this brings me up to the time when I made my first acquaintance with the Iliad.  It was like the discovery of a new world, and effected a total change in my ideas on the subject of poetry.  There was at the time a considerable manuscript of my own productions in existence,—which, of course, I regarded with some partiality; but Homer had awakened me, and, in a fit of sovereign contempt, I committed the whole to the flames.  Soon after I had found the Iliad, I borrowed a prose translation of Virgil,—there being no poetical one to be found in our neighbourhood; and in a similar manner made acquaintance with many of the classic authors.

    "But after Homer's, the work that produced the greatest impression on my mind was Byron's Childe Harold.  The one had induced me to burn my first manuscript, and the other made me resolve against verse-making in future; for I was then far enough advanced to know my own deficiency, but without apparent means for the requisite improvements.  In this resolution I persevered for several years, and occupied my mind solely in the pursuit of knowledge; but owing to adverse circumstances, my progress was necessarily slow.  Having, however, in the summer of the year 1840, heard a friend read the story of La Perouse, it struck me that there was a remarkable similarity between it and the one related in an old country song, called 'The Lost Ship,' which I had heard in my childhood.  The song in question was of very low composition; but there was one line at the termination of each verse which haunted my imagination, and I fancied might deserve a better poem.  This line and the story of La Perouse, together with an irresistible inclination to poetry, at length induced me to break the resolution I had so long kept; and the result was the little poem called 'La Perouse' [since published in Frances Brown's collection of poems and lyrics].

    "Soon after, when Messrs. Gunn and Cameron commenced the publication of their 'Irish Penny Journal,' I was seized with a strange desire to contribute something to its pages.  My first contribution was favourably received, and I still feel grateful for the kindness and encouragement bestowed upon me by both the editor and the publishers.  The three small pieces which I contributed to that work were the first of mine that ever appeared in print, with the exception of one of my early productions, which a friend had sent to a provincial paper.  The Irish Penny Journal was abandoned on the completion of the first volume; but the publishers, with great kindness, sent me one of the copies, and this was the first book of any value that I could call my own. But the gift was still more esteemed as an encouragement, and the first of the kind."

    About this time Miss Brown, in her remote retreat, heard of the Athenæum, and probably desirous of obtaining access to a wider circle of readers, she addressed a number of her small pieces to the editor.  Months passed, and she had given up all for lost, when at length the arrival of many numbers of the journal, and a letter from the editor, astonished her, and gratified a wish which had haunted her very dreams.  One may easily imagine the interest and the delight which a complimentary letter from the editor of a London journal will excite in the mind of a literary aspirant in a remote village in the country.  From that time Frances Brown's name has been often seen in the public journals and magazines,—in Hood's, in the Keepsake, and in several literary periodicals.  She has also published a collection of her poems, which we cannot help thinking are full of interest and beauty.  And doubtless the reader, who chances to see her name in print again, will read her productions with all the greater interest, after having read the above account of her sufferings, her difficulties, and her triumphs.

――――♦――――

 
SARAH MARGARET FULLER.

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli {Margaret Fuller}, (1810-50):
American teacher, critic and author.
Picture Internet Text Archive.

FEW women of her time have created a livelier interest throughout the literary world than Margaret Fuller, of Boston, has done.  The tragic circumstances connected with her death, which involved at the same time the destruction of her husband and child, have served to deepen that interest; and therefore it is that the Memoirs of her life and labours, edited by Emerson and Ellery Channing, have been hailed in England as among the most welcome books which have come across the Atlantic for many a day. [p.470]

    Margaret Fuller had not done much as a writer; but she had given great promise of what she could do.  Her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," [p.470] and a collection of papers on Literature and Art, originally published in the American periodical called "The Dial," with the book entitled "A Summer on the Lakes," include her principal writings, and even these are of a comparatively fragmentary character.  It was chiefly through her remarkable gifts of conversation that she was known and admired among her contemporaries; it was to this that her great influence among them was attributable; and, like John Sterling, Charles Pemberton, and others of kindred gifts, the wonder to many who never came within the reach of her personal influence is, how to account for the literary reputation she has achieved, upon a basement of writings so slender and so incomplete.  It was the individual influence, the magnetic attraction, which she exercised over the minds within her reach, which accounts for the whole.

    From early years Margaret Fuller was regarded as a kind of prodigy.  Her father, Mr. Timothy Fuller, who was a lawyer and a representative of Massachusetts in Congress, from 1817 to 1825, devoted great pains—far too great pains—to the intellectual culture of the little girl.  Her brain was unmercifully taxed, to the serious injury of her health.  In after-life she compared herself to the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted home, sat down on a stone, and so pitied herself that she wept.  The poor girl was kept up late at her tasks, and went to bed with stimulated brain and nerves, unable to sleep.  She was haunted by spectral illusions, nightmare, and horrid dreams; while by day she suffered from headache, weakness, and nervous affections of all kinds.  In short, Margaret Fuller had no natural childhood.  Her mind did not grow,—it was forced.  Thoughts did not come to her,—they were thrust into her.  A child should expand in the sun, but this dear little victim was put under a glass frame, and plied with all manner of artificial heat.  She was fed, not on "milk for babes," but on the strongest of meat.

    Thus Margaret Fuller leaped into precocious maturity.  She was petted and praised as a "prodigy."  She lived among books,—read Latin at six years old, and was early familiar with Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.  Then she went on to Greek.  At eight years of age she devoured Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Molière!  Her world was books.  A child without toys, without romps, without laughter; but with abundant nightmare and sick-headaches!  The wonder is, that this monstrously unnatural system of forced intellectual culture did not kill her outright!  "I complained of my head," she said afterwards; "for a sense of dullness and suffocation, if not pain, was there constantly."  She had nervous fevers, convulsions, and so on; but she lived through it all, and was plunged into still deeper studies.  After a course of boarding-school, she returned home at fifteen to devote herself to Ariosto, Helvetius, Sismondi, Brown's Philosophy, De Stael, Epictetus, Racine, Castilian Ballads, Locke, Byron, Sir William Temple, Rousseau, and a host of other learned writers!

    Conceive a girl of fifteen immersed in all this farrago of literature and philosophy!  She had an eye to politics, too; and in her letters to friends notices the accession of Duke Nicholas, and its effect on the Holy Alliance and the liberties of Europe!  Then she goes through a course of the Italian poets, accompanied by her sick-headache.  She lies in bed one afternoon, from dinner till tea, "reading Rammohun Roy's book, and framing dialogues aloud on every argument beneath the sun."  She had her dreams of the affections, too, indulging largely in sentimentality and romance, as most young girls will do.  She adored the moon,—fell in love with other girls, and dreamt often of the other subject uppermost in most growing girls' minds.

    This wonderfully cultivated child, as might be expected, ran some risk of being spoilt.  She was herself brilliant, and sought equal brilliancy in others.  She had no patience with mediocrity, and regarded it with feelings akin to contempt.  But this unamiable feeling she gradually unlearned, as greater experience and larger-heartedness taught her wisdom,—a kind of wisdom, by the way, which is not found in books.  The multitude regarded her, at this time, as rather haughty and supercilious,—fond of saying clever and sarcastic things at their expense,—and also as very inquisitive and anxious to "read characters."  But it is hard to repress or dwarf the loving of a woman.  She was always longing for affection, for sympathy, for confidence, among her more valued friends.  She wished to be "comprehended,"—she looked on herself as a "femme incomprise," as the French term it.  Even her sarcasm was akin to love.  She was always making new confidants, and drawing out their heart-secrets, as she revealed her own.

    The family removed from Cambridge Port, where she was born, to Cambridge, where they remained till 1833, when they went to reside at Groton.  Margaret had by this time written verses which friends deemed worthy of publication, and several appeared.  But her spirit and soul, which gave such living power to her conversation, usually evaporated in the attempt to commit her thoughts to writing.  Of this she often complains.  "After all," she says in one of her letters, "this writing is mighty dead.  O for my dear old Greeks, who talked everything!"  Again she said: "Conversation is my natural element.  I need to be called out, and never think alone without imagining some companion.  Whether this be nature, or the force of circumstances, I know not it is my habit, and bespeaks a second-rate mind."

    But she was a splendid talker,—a New England Corinne,—an improvisatrice of unrivalled powers.  Her writings give no idea of her powers of speech,—of the brilliancy with which she would strike a vein of happy thought, and bring it to the daylight.  Her talk was decidedly masculine, critical, common-sense, full of ideas, yet, withal, graceful and sparkling.  She is said to have had a kind of prophetic insight into characters, and drew out, by a strong attractive power in herself, as by a moral magnet, all their best gifts to the light.  "She was," says one friend, "like a moral Paganini: she played always on a single string, drawing from each its peculiar music,—bringing wild beauty from the slender wire no less than from the deep-sounding harp-string."

    In 1832 she was busy with German literature, and read Goethe, Tieck, Körner, and Schiller.  The thought and beauty of these works filled her mind and fascinated her imagination.  She also went through Plato's Dialogues.  She began to have infinite longings for something unknown and unattainable, and gave vent to her feelings in such thoughts as this:

"I shut Goethe's 'Second Residence in Rome,' with an earnest desire to live as he did,—always to have some engrossing object of pursuit. I sympathize deeply with a mind in that state.  While mine is being used up by ounces, I wish pailfuls might be poured into it.  I am dejected and uneasy when I see no results from my daily existence; but I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression."

    But she was always full of projects, which remained such.  She meditated writing "six historical tragedies, the plans of three of which are quite perfect."  She had also "a favourite plan" of a series of tales illustrative of Hebrew history.  She also meditated writing a life of Goethe.  She tried her hand on the tragedies.  Alas! what a vast difference is there, she confesses, between conception and execution!  She proceeded, as Coleridge calls it, "to take an account of her stock," but fell back again almost in despair.  "With me," she says, "it has ended in the most humiliating sense of poverty; and only just enough pride is left to keep your poor friend off the parish."  But in this confession you will find the germs of deep wisdom.  She now, more than ever, felt the need of self-culture.  "Shall I ever be fit for anything," she asked, "till I have absolutely re-educated myself?  Am I, can I make myself, fit to write an account of half a century of the existence of one of the master-spirits of this world?  It seems as if I had been very arrogant to dare to think it."  She nevertheless proceeded to accumulate materials for the Life of Goethe, which, however, was never written.

    Yet often would the woman come uppermost!  She longed to possess a home for her heart.  Capable of ardent love, her affections were thrown back upon herself, to become stagnant, and for a while to grow bitter there.  She could not help feeling how empty and worthless were all the attainments and triumphs of the mere intellect.  A woman's heart must be satisfied, else there is no true, deep happiness of repose for her.  She longed to be loved as a woman, rather than as a mere human being.  What woman does not?  The lamentation that she was not so loved broke out bitterly from time to time.  She knew that she was not beautiful; and, conceal her chagrin as she might, she felt the defect keenly.  There was weakness in this, but she could not master it.

    In her journal is a bitter sentence on this topic, the meaning of which cannot be misunderstood.  She is commenting on the character of Mignon, by Goethe:

"Of a disposition that requires the most refined, the most exalted tenderness, without charms to inspire it, poor Mignon! fear not the transition through death; no penal fires can have in store worse torments than thou art familiar with already."

Again she writes, in the month of May:

"When all things are blossoming, it seems so strange not to blossom too,—that the quick thought within cannot remould its tenement.  Man is the slowest aloe, and I am such a shabby plant of coarse tissue.  I hate not to be beautiful, when all around is so."

She writes elsewhere:

"I know the deep yearnings of the heart, and the bafflings of time will be felt again; and then I shall long for some dear hand to hold.  But I shall never forget that my curse is nothing, compared with those who have entered into these relations, but not made them real; who only seem husbands, wives, and friends."

But she endeavours to force herself to feel content:

"I have no child; but now, as I look on these lovely children of a human birth, what low and neutralizing cares they bring with them to the mother!  The children of the Muse come quicker, and have not on them the taint of earthly corruption."

Alas!  It is evidently a poor attempt at self-comfort.

    Her personal appearance may be noted.  A florid complexion, with a tendency to robustness, of which she was painfully conscious, and endeavoured to compress by artificial methods, which did additional injury to her already wretched health.  Rather under the middle size, with fair complexion, and strong, fair hair.  She was near-sighted, from constant reading when a child, and peered oddly, incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids with great rapidity.  She spoke through the nose.  From her passionate worship of Beauty in all things, perhaps she dwelt with the more bitterness on her own personal short-comings.  The first impression on meeting her was not agreeable; but continued intercourse made many fast friends and ardent admirers,—that is, intellectual admirers.  An early attack of illness destroyed the fineness of her complexion. "My own vanity," she said of this,

"was severely wounded; but I recovered, and made up my mind to be bright and ugly.  I think I may say, I never loved.  I but see my possible life reflected in the clouds.  The bridal spirit of many a spirit, when first it was wed, I have shared, but said adieu before the wine was poured out at the banquet."

    The Fuller family removed to Groton in 1833, and two years after Margaret's father died suddenly of cholera.  He left no will behind him; there was little property to will,—only enough to maintain the widow and educate the children.  Margaret was thrown into fresh lamentations,—wished she had been a man, in order to take charge of the family; but she "always hated the din of such affairs."  About this time she had made the acquaintance of Miss Martineau, then in the States, and clung to her as an "intellectual guide," hoping to be "comprehended" by her.  She had strongly desired to accompany Miss Martineau back to England, but the sad turn in the family affairs compelled her to give up the project; and she went to Boston instead, to teach Latin, Italian, and French, in Mr. Alcott's school.  She afterwards went to teach, as principal, in another school at Providence.  She still read tremendously,—almost living upon books, and tormented by a "terrible feeling in the head."  She had a "distressing weight on the top of the brain," and seemingly was "able to think with only the lower part of the head."  "All my propensities," she once said, "have a tendency to make my head worse: it is a bad head,—as bad as if I were a great man."

    Amid all this bodily pain and disease, she suffered moral agony,—heartache for long days and weeks,—and on self-examination, she was further "shocked to find how vague and superficial is all my knowledge."  Some may say there is a degree of affectation in all this; but it is the fate of the over-cultivated, without any solid basis of wisdom; they are ever longing after further revelations, greater light,—to pry into the unseen, to aim after the unattainable.  Hence profound regrets and life-long lamentations.  The circlet which adorns the brow of genius, though it may glitter before the gazer's eye, has spiked thorns for the brow of her who wears it, and the wounds they make bleed inwards.  Poor Margaret!

    Emerson's memoir of his intercourse with Margaret Fuller is by far the most interesting part of the volume.  He was repelled by her at first, being a man rather given to silence; but she gradually won upon him as upon others, and her bright speech at length reached his heart.  He met her first in the society of Miss Martineau, and often afterwards in the company of others, and alone.  He was struck by the night side of her nature;—her speculations in mythology and demonology; in French Socialism; her belief in the ruling influence of planets; her sympathy with sortilege; her notions as to the talismanic influence of gems; and her altogether mystic apprehensions.  She was strangely affected by dreams, was a somnambule, was always full of presentiments.  In short, as Emerson says, "there was somewhat a little pagan about her."  She found no rest for the sole of her restless foot, except in music, of which she was a passionate lover.  Take a few instances of her strange meditations.  "When first I met with the name Leila," she said,

"I knew from the very look and sound, it was music; I knew that it meant night,—night, which brings out stars, as sorrow brings out truths."  Later on, she wrote: "My days at Milan were not unmarked.  I have known some happy hours, but they all lead to sorrow, and not only the cups of wine, but of milk, seem drugged with poison for me.  It does not seem to be my fault, this destiny.  I do not court these things,—they come.  I am a poor magnet, with power to be wounded by the bodies I attract."

    But Emerson, like everybody else, was especially attracted by Margaret's powers of conversation.

"She wore her circle of friends, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck.  The confidences given her were their best, and she held to them.  She was an active, inspiring correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New England seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it.  Persons were her game, especially if marked by fortune, or character, or success; to such was she sent.  She addressed them with a hardihood,—almost a haughty assurance,—queen-like.  She drew her companions to surprising confessions.  She was the wedding-guest to whom the long-pent story must be told; and they were not less struck, on reflection, at the suddenness of the friendship which had established, in one day, new and permanent covenants.  She extorted the secret of life, which cannot be told without setting mind and heart in a glow; and thus had the best of those she saw: the test of her eloquence was its range.  It told on children and on old people; on men of the world, and on sainted maids.  She could hold them all by the honeyed tongue.  The Concord stage-coachman distinguished her by his respect; and the chambermaid was pretty sure to confide to her, on the second day, her homely romance."

But she lived fast.  In society she was always on the stretch.  She was in jubilant spirits in the morning, and ended the day with nervous headache, whose spasms produced total prostration.  She was the victim of disease and pain.

"She read and wrote in bed, and believed she could understand anything better when she was ill.  Pain acted like a girdle, anything to give tension to her powers."

Her enjoyment consisted of brief but intense moments.  The rest was a void. Emerson says:

"When I found she lived at a rate so much faster than mine, and which was violent compared with mine, I foreboded a rash and painful crisis, and had a feeling as if a voice had said, Stand from under! as if, a little farther on, this destiny was threatened with jars and reverses, which no friendship could avert or console."

    There was one very prominent feature in Margaret Fuller, which she could never conceal, and that was her intense individuality,—some would call it self-esteem: she was always thoroughly possessed by herself.  She could not hide the "MOUNTAINOUS ME," as Emerson calls it.  In enumerating the merits of someone, she would say, "He appreciates me."  In the coolest way, she boasted, "I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own."  She idealized herself as a queen, and dwelt upon the idea that she was not her parents' child, but a European princess confided to their care.  "I take my natural position always," she said to a friend; "and the more I see, the more I feel that it is regal.  Without throne, sceptre, or guards, still a queen."  In all this there was exhibited a very strong leaning towards a weak side.

    Yet, at other times, she was strongly conscious of her imperfections.  She was impatient of her weakness in production.  "I feel within myself," she said, "an immense force, but I cannot bring it out."  Notwithstanding her "arrogant talk," as Emerson called it, and her ambition to play the Mirabeau among her friends, she felt her defect in creative power.  Her numerous works remained projects.  She was the victim of Lord Bacon's idols of the cave.  She was a genius of impulse, but wanted the patience to elaborate.  "How can I ever write," she asked, "with this impatience of detail?  I shall never be an artist; I have no patient love of execution; I am delighted with my sketch; but if I try to finish it, I am chilled.  Never was there a great sculptor who did not love to chip the marble."  And then she attributed her inability to sex.  Speaking of the life of thought, she said: "Women, under any circumstances, can scarce do more than dip the foot in this broad and deep river; they have not strength to contend with the current.  It is easy for women to be heroic in action; but when it comes to interrogating God, the universe, the soul, and, above all, trying to live above their own hearts, they dart down to their nests like so many larks, and if they cannot find them, fret like the French Corinne."  A little later she says: "I shall write better, but never, I think, so well as I talk; for then I feel inspired.  The means are pleasant; my voice excites me, my pen never.  I want force, to be either a genius or a character."

    She had, however, a genuine fund of practical benevolence about her.  She visited the prisons and penitentiaries on many occasions, for the purpose of restoring to new life and virtue the poor, degraded women confined there.  Behind all her wit, there was always a fountain of woman's tears ready to flow.  She had a passionate love of truth, and ardent thirst for it.

"In the chamber of death I prayed in early years, 'Give me Truth; cheat me by no illusion.'  O, the granting of this prayer is sometimes terrible to me!  I walk on the burning ploughshares, and they sear my feet.  Yet nothing but Truth will do."

And she might be said almost to worship beauty,—in art, in literature, in music.  "Dear Beauty!" she would say,

"where, where, amid these morasses and pine-barrens, shall we make thee a temple? where find a Greek to guard it,—clear-eyed, deep-thoughted, and delicate enough to appreciate the relations and gradations which nature always observes?"

    We can only notice very briefly the remaining leading events in Margaret Fuller's life.  There was not much dramatic character in them, except towards their close.  The student's story is generally a quiet one; it is an affair of private life, of personal intimacies and friendships.  She went on teaching young ladies, conducting conversation-classes, and occasionally making translations from the German for the booksellers.  The translation of Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe" was by her, as also that of the "Letters of Gunderode and Bettine."  In 1843 she travelled into Michigan, and shortly afterwards published her "Summer on the Lakes."  She then became a writer for "The Dial," an able Boston review, chiefly supported by Emerson, Brownson, and a few more of the "Transcendental" writers of America.  There she reviewed German and English books, and first published "The Great Lawsuit, or Woman in the Nineteenth Century," an eloquent expression of discontent at the social position of woman.  Her criticisms of American books were not relished, and often gave great offence.  The other critics said of her, that she thought that books, like brown stout, were improved by the motion of a ship, and that she would praise nothing unless it had been imported from abroad.  She certainly gave a less hearty recognition to merit in American than in German or English books.  Afterwards, she went to New York, to perform an engagement on Mr. Horace Greeley's newspaper, the New York Tribune.  But she had a contempt for newspaper writing, saying of it:

"What a vulgarity there seems in this writing for the multitude!  We know not yet, have not made ourselves known, to a single soul, and shall we address those still more unknown?"

    The deep secret of her heart again and again comes up in her communications to her bosom friends.  A living female writer has said, that, though few may confess it, the human heart may know peace, content, serene endurance, and even thankfulness; but it never does and never can know happiness, the sense of complete, full-rounded bliss, except in the joy of a happy love.  The most ardent attachment of woman for others of their own sex can not supply the want.  Margaret Fuller tried this, but it failed, as you may see from her repeated complaints.  "Pray for me," she said,

"that I may have a little peace,—some green and flowery spot amid which my thoughts may rest; yet not upon fallacy, but upon something genuine.  I am deeply homesick, yet where is that home?  If not on earth, why should we look to heaven?  I would fain truly live wherever I must abide, and bear with full energy on my lot, whatever it is.  Yet my hand is often languid, and my heart is slow.  I would be gone; but whither?  I know not.  If I cannot make this spot of ground yield the corn and roses, famine must be my lot for ever and ever, surely."

This is the dart within the heart, as well as I can tell it:

"At moments the music of the universe, which daily I am upheld by hearing, seems to stop.  I fall like a bird when the sun is eclipsed, not looking for such darkness.  The sense of my individual law—that lamp of life—flickers.  I am repelled in what is most natural to me.  I feel as, when a suffering child, I would go and lie with my face to the ground, to sob away my little life."

"Once again I am willing to take up the cross of loneliness.  Resolves are idle; but the anguish of my soul has been deep.  It will not be easy to profane life by rhetoric."

In a pathetic prayer, found among her papers, she says:

"I am weary of thinking. I suffer great fatigue from living.  O God, take me!  Take me wholly!  It is not that I repine, my Father, but I sink from want of rest, and none will shelter me.  Thou knowest it all.  Bathe me in the living waters of Thy Love."

    Thus the consciousness of an unfulfilled destiny hung over the poor sufferer, and she could not escape from it; she felt as if destined to tread the wine-press of life ALONE.  To hear the occasional plaintive tone of sorrow in her thought and speech, Mr. Channing beautifully says, was "like the wail of an Æolian harp, heard at intervals from some upper window."  And amid all this smothered agony of the heart, disease was constantly preying on her.  Headache, rooted in one spot,—fixed between the eyebrows,—till it grew real torture.  The black and white guardians, depicted on Etruscan monuments, were always fighting for her life.  In the midst of beautiful dreams, the "great vulture would come, and fix his iron talons on the brain,"—a state of physical health which was not mended by her habit of drinking strong potations of tea and coffee in almost limitless quantities.

    At length, in search of health, Margaret resolved to accomplish her long-meditated, darling enterprise, of a voyage to Europe,—to the Old World, where her thoughts lived,—to England, France, Germany, and Rome.  She left New York in the summer of 1846, in the Cambria, and on reaching England sent home many delightful, though rapid, sketches of the people she had seen and the places she had visited.  These letters are, to us, the most delightful part of the volumes; perhaps because she speaks of people who are so much better known to us than her American contemporaries.  In England and Scotland, she saw Wordsworth, De Quincey, Dr. Chalmers, Andrew Combo, the Howitts, Dr. Southwood Smith, and, above all, Carlyle, of whom she gives an admirable sketch, drawn to the life.  In England, also, she first formed an acquaintance with Mazzini, which she afterwards renewed, amid most interesting circumstances, at Rome, during the tumult of the siege.  At Paris, she made the personal acquaintance of George Sand, of whom she gives a lifelike description, and saw many other notorieties of that time.

    But she longed to be at Rome; and sped southward.  She seems immediately to have plunged into the political life of the city.  But her means were cramped, and she "longed for a little money."  Yet what she had, she was always ready to give away to those who were more in need than herself.  "Nothing less than two or three years," she says,

"free from care and forced labour, would heal all my hurts, and renew my life-blood at its source.  Since destiny will not grant me that, I hope she will not leave me long in the world, for I am tired of keeping myself up in the water without corks, and without strength to swim.  I should like to go to sleep, and be born again into a state where my young life should not be prematurely taxed."

    All the great events of 1847 and 1848 occurred while Margaret Fuller remained in the Eternal City.  She was there when the Pope took the initiative in the reforms of that convulsed period; witnessed the rejoicings and the enthusiasm of the people; then the reaction, the tumult, the insurrection, and the war.  Amidst all this excitement, she is "weary."

"The shifting scenes entertain poorly.  I want some scenes of natural beauty; and, imperfect as love is, I want human beings to love, as I suffocate without."

Then came the enthusiastic entrance of Gioberti into Rome, then Mazzini, then ensued the fighting.  Margaret looked down from her window on the terrible battle before St. Angelo, between the Romans and the French.  Mazzini found her out in her lodgings, and had her appointed by the "Roman Commission for the succour of the Wounded" to the charge of the hospital of the Fata-Bene Fratelli.  She there busied herself as a nurse of those heroic wounded,—the flower of the Italian youth.  But the French entered, and she had to fly.  "I cannot tell you," she writes,

"what I endured in leaving Rome; abandoning the wounded soldiers; knowing that there is no provision made for them, when they rise from the beds where they have been thrown by a noble courage, where they have suffered with a noble patience.  Some of the poorer men, who rise bereft even of the right arm,—one having lost both the right arm and the right leg,—I could have provided for with a small sum.  Could I have sold my hair, or blood from my arm, I would have done it.  These poor men are left helpless, in the power of a mean and vindictive foe.  You felt so oppressed in the Slave States; imagine what I felt at seeing all the noblest youth, all the genius of this dear land, again enslaved."

    So the battle was lost!  Margaret Fuller fled from Rome to her child at Rieti.  Her child?  Yes!  She had married!  The dream of her life had ended, and she was now a wife and a mother.  But in this sweet, new relationship, she enjoyed but a brief term of happiness.  Her connection with Count Ossoli arose out of an accidental meeting with him in the church of St. Peter's, after vesper service.  He waited upon her to her dwelling; returned; cultivated her acquaintance; offered her his hand, and was refused.  But Ossoli was a Liberal, and moved in the midst of the strife.  He had frequent opportunities of seeing Margaret, pressed his suit, and was finally accepted.  There did not seem to be much in common between them.  He was considerably her junior; but he loved her sincerely, and that was enough for her.

Daguerreotype of Margaret Fuller (1846).
Picture Wikipedia.

    The marriage was kept secret for a time, because the Marquis's property might have gone from him at once, had his marriage with a Protestant become known while the ecclesiastical influence was paramount at Rome.  But when the Liberal cause had suffered defeat, there was no longer any need of concealment.  Ossoli had lost all; and the marriage was confessed.  Margaret had left her child in safety at Rieti, to watch over her husband, who was at Rome, engaged in the defence of the city against the French; and we have seen how she was engaged while there.  She returned to her child, whom she found ill, and half starved; but her maternal care made all right again.  Writing to her mother, she said:

"The immense gain to me is my relation with the child.  I thought the mother's heart lived within me before, but it did not; I knew nothing about it."

"He is to me a source of ineffable joys,—far purer, deeper, than anything I ever felt before,—like what Nature had sometimes given, but more intimate, more sweet.  He loves me very much; his little heart clings to mine."

    Margaret is at length happy; but how brief the time it lasted!  The poor Marquis, with his wife and child, must leave Florence, where they for a brief time resided after their flight from Rome; and they resolved to embark for the United States in May, 1850.  Writing beforehand, she said:

"I have a vague expectation of some crisis,—I know not what.  But it has long seemed that in the year 1850 I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, where I should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before.  Yet my life proceeds as regularly as the fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they, turn."

And at the close of a letter to her mother, she said:

"I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet in this world.  But if God decrees otherwise,—here and HEREAFTER, my dearest mother, I am your loving child, MARGARET."

Ossoli had never been at sea before, and he had an undefined dread of it.  A fortune-teller, when he was a boy, had uttered a singular prophecy of him, and warned him to "beware of the sea."

    The omens proved true.  Everything went amiss on the ill-fated voyage.  The captain sickened and died of smallpox.  The disease then seized the child, Angelino, whose life was long despaired of.  But he recovered, and the coast of America drew nigh.  On the eve of the landing, a heavy gale arose, and the ship struck on Fire Island Beach, on the Long Island shore.

    "At the first jar, the passengers, knowing but too well its fatal import, sprang from their berths.  Then came the cry of 'Cut away,' followed by the crash of falling timbers, and the thunder of the seas, as they broke across the deck.  In a moment more the cabin skylight was dashed in pieces by the breakers, and the spray, pouring down like a cataract, put out the lights; while the cabin-door was wrenched from its fastenings, and the waves swept in and out.  One scream—one only—was heard from Margaret's state-room; and Sumner and Mrs. Hasty, meeting in the cabin, clasped hands, with these few but touching words: 'We must die.'  'Let us die calmly, then.'  'I hope so, Mrs. Hasty.'  It was in the gray dusk, and amid the awful tumult, that the companions in misfortune met.  The side of the cabin to the leeward had already settled under water; and furniture, trunks, and fragments of the skylight were floating to and fro; while the inclined position of the floor made it difficult to stand; and every sea, as it broke over the bulwarks, splashed in through the open roof.  The windward cabin-wall, however, still yielded partial shelter, and against it, seated side by side, half-leaning backwards, with feet braced upon the long table, they awaited what next should come.  At first, Nino, alarmed at the uproar, the darkness, and the rushing water, while shivering with the wet, cried passionately; but soon his mother, wrapping him in such garments as were at hand, and folding him to her bosom, sang him to sleep.  Celeste, too, was in an agony of terror, till Ossoli, with soothing words, and a long and fervent prayer, restored her to self-control and trust.  Then calmly they rested, side by side, exchanging kindly partings, and sending messages to friends, if any should survive to be their bearer."

A long night of agony passed, and at last the tragedy drew to a close:—

"It was now past three o'clock, and as, with the rising tide, the gale swelled once more to its former violence, the remnants of the barque fast yielded to the resistless waves.  The cabin went by the board, the after-parts broke up, and the stern settled out of sight.  Soon, too, the forecastle was filled with water, and the helpless little band were driven to the deck, where they clustered round the foremast.  Presently, even this frail support was loosened from the hull, and rose and fell with every billow.  It was plain to all that the final moment drew swiftly nigh.  Of the four seamen who still stood by the passengers, three were as efficient as any among among the crew of the Elizabeth.  These were the steward, carpenter, and cook.  The fourth was an old sailor, who, broken down by hardship and sickness, was going home to die.  These men were once again persuading Margaret, Ossoli, and Celeste, to try the planks, which they held ready in the lee of the ship; and the steward, by whom Nino was so much beloved, had just taken the little fellow in his arms, with the pledge that he would save him or die, when a sea struck the forecastle, and the foremast fell, carrying with it the deck and all upon it.  The steward and Angelino were washed upon the beach, both dead, though warm, some twenty minutes after.  The cook and carpenter were thrown far upon the foremast, and saved themselves by swimming.  Celeste and Ossoli caught for a moment by the rigging, but the next wave swallowed them up.  Margaret sank at once.  When last seen, she had been seated at the foot of the foremast, still clad in her white night-dress, with her hair fallen loose upon her shoulders.  It was over,—that twelve hours' communion, face to face, with death!  It was over! and the prayer was granted, 'that Ossoli, Angelino, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief!'

    "The only one of Margaret's treasures which reached the shore was the lifeless form of little Angelino.  When the body, stripped of every rag by the waves, was rescued from the surf, a sailor took it reverently in his arms, and, wrapping it in his neck-cloth, bore it to the nearest house.  There, when washed, and dressed in a child's frock found in Margaret's trunk, it was laid upon a bed; and as the rescued seamen gathered round their late playfellow and pet, there were few dry eyes in the circle.  The next day, borne upon their shoulders in a chest, it was buried in a hollow among the sand-hills."

    And thus terribly ended the tragedy of Margaret Fuller's life.