MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.

BY T. W. HIGGINSON.

TRAVELLING by rail in Michigan, some ten years ag▸, I found myself seated next to a young Western girl, with a very intelligent face, who soon began to talk with me about literary subjects. She afterwards gave me, as a reason for her confidence, that I "looked like one who would enjoy Margaret Fuller's writings," these being, as I found, the object of her special admiration. I certainly took the remark for a compliment; and it was, at any rate, a touching tribute to the woman whose intellectual influence thus brought strangers together.

Margaret Fuller is connected, slightly but firmly, with my earliest recollections. We were born and bred in the same town (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and I was the playmate of her younger brothers. Their family then lived at the old "Brattle House," which still stands behind its beautiful lindens, though the great buildings of the University Press now cover the site of the old-fashioned garden, whose formal fishponds and stone spring-house wore an air of European stateliness to our home-bred eyes. There I dimly remember the discreet elder sister, book in hand, watching over the gambols of the lovely little Ellen, who became, long after, the wife of my near kinsman, Ellery Channing. This later connection cemented a new tie, and led to a few interviews in maturer years with Margaret Fuller, and to much intercourse with

others of the family. It is well to mention even such slight ties of association as these, for they unconsciously influence one's impressions; and, after all, it is the personal glimpses which make the best part of biography, great or small, and indeed of all literature. How refreshing it is, amid the chaff of Aulus Gellius, to come upon a reference to Virgil's own copy of the Eneid, which the writer had once seen, "quem ipsius Virgilii fuisse credebat;" and nothing in all Lord Bacon's works ever stirred me like that one magic sentence, "When I was a child, and Queen Elizabeth was in the flower of her years." I can say that when I was a child, Margaret Fuller was the queen of Cambridge, though troubled with a large minority of rather unwilling and insurrectionary subjects.

Her mother I well remember as one of the sweetest and most sympathetic of women; she was tall and not unattractive in person, refined and gentle, but with a certain physical awkwardness, proceeding in part from extreme nearsightedness. Of the father I have no recollection, save that he was mentioned with a sort of respect, as being a lawyer and having been a congressman. But his daughter has described him, in her fragment of autobiography, with her accustomed frankness and precision :

"My father was a lawyer and a politician. He was a man largely endowed with that sagacious energy which the state of New England society for the last half century has been so well fitted to develop. His father was a clergyman, settled as pastor in Princeton, Massachusetts, within the bounds of whose parish farm was Wachusett. His means were small, and the great object of his ambition was to send his sons to college. As a boy, my father was taught to think only of preparing himself for Harvard University, and, when there, of preparing himself for the profession of law. As a lawyer,

again, the ends constantly presented were to work for distinction in the community, and for the means of supporting a family. To be an honored citizen and to have a home on earth were made the great aims of existence. To open the deeper fountains of the soul, to regard life here as the prophetic entrance to immortality, to develop his spirit to perfection, motives like these had never been suggested to him, either by fellow-beings or by outward circumstances. The result was à character, in its social aspect, of quite the common sort. A good son and brother, a kind neighbor, an active man of business, in all these outward relations, he was but one of a class which surrounding conditions have made the majority among us. In the more delicate and individual relations he never approached but two mortals, my mother and myself.

"His love for my mother was the green spot on which he stood apart from the commonplaces of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence. She was one of those fair and flower-like natures which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of life, a creature not to be shaped into a merely useful instrument, but bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic birds. Of all persons whom I have known she had in her most of the angelic, of that spontaneous love for every living thing, for man, and beast, and tree, which restores the golden age."

Sarah Margaret Fuller was born May 23, 1810; the eldest child of Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane. Her birthplace was a house on Cherry Street, in Cambridge, before whose door still stand the trees planted by her father on the year when she saw the light. The family afterwards removed to the "Dana House," which then crowned, in a stately way, the hill between Old Cambridge and Cambridgeport. It was later still that they resided in the "Brattle House," as I have

described. This was Margaret Fuller's home until 1833, exept that she spent a year or more at the school of the Misses Prescott, in Groton, Mass., where she went through that remarkable experience described by herself, under the assumed character of Mariana, in "Summer on the Lakes." In 1826 she returned to Cambridge.

The society of that University town had then, as it still has, great attractions for young people of talent. It offers something of that atmosphere of culture for which such persons yearn, tinged, perhaps, with a little narrowness and constraint. She met there in girlhood the same persons who were afterwards to be her literary friends, colaborers, and even biographers. It was a stimulating and rather perilous position, for she found herself among a circle of highly cultivated young men, with no equal female companion; although she read Locke and Madame de Stael with Lydia Maria Francis, afterwards better known as Mrs. Child. Carlyle had just called attention to the rich stores of German literature; all her friends were exploring them, and some had just returned from the German universities. She had the college library at command, and she had that vast and omnivorous appetite for books which is the most common sign of literary talent in men, but is for some reason exceedingly rare among women. At least I have known but two young girls whose zeal in this respect was at all comparable to that reported of Margaret Fuller, these two being Harriet Prescott and the late Charlotte Hawes.

In 1833 her father removed to Groton, Mass., much to her regret. Yet her life there was probably a good change in training for one who had been living for several years in an atmosphere of mental excitement. In March, 1834, she

wrote thus of her mode of life:

March, 1834. Four pupils are a serious and fatiguing

charge for one of my somewhat ardent and impatient disposition. Five days in the week I have given daily lessons in three languages, in geography and history, besides many other exercises on alternate days. This has consumed often eight, always five hours of my day. There has been also a great deal of needle-work to do, which is now nearly finished, so that I shall not be obliged to pass my time about it when everything looks beautiful, as I did last summer. We have had very poor servants, and, for some time past, only one. My mother has been often ill. My grandmother, who passed the winter with us, has been ill. Thus you may imagine, as I am the only grown-up daughter, that my time has been considerably taxed.

"But as, sad or merry, I must always be learning, I laid down a course of study at the beginning of winter, comprising certain subjects, about which I had always felt deficient. These were the History and Geography of modern Europe, beginning the former in the fourteenth century; the Elements of Architecture; the works of Alfieri, with his opinions on them; the historical and critical works of Goethe and Schiller, and the outlines of history of our own country.

"I chose this time as one when I should have nothing to distract or dissipate my mind. I have nearly completed this course, in the style I proposed, — not minute or thorough, I confess, though I have had only three evenings in the week, and chance hours in the day for it. I am very glad I have undertaken it, and feel the good effects already. Occasionally I try my hand at composition, but have not completed anything to my own satisfaction."

On September 23, 1835, her father was attacked by cholera, and died within three days. Great as must have been the blow to the whole family, it was greatest of all to Margaret. The tie between them had been very close, and