Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 | Page 3

be wanting. His heart
laughs, and his eyes are filled with that kindly, sympathetic smile
which inspires friendship and confidence. On the sympathy within,
these external phenomena depend; and this sympathy it is which keeps
societies of men together, and is the true freemasonry of the good and

wise. It is an imperfect sympathy that grants only sympathetic tears: we
must join in the mirth as well as melancholy of our neighbours. If our
countrymen laughed more, they would not only be happier, but better;
and if philanthropists would provide amusements for the people, they
would be saved the trouble and expense of their fruitless war against
public-houses. This is an indisputable proposition. The French and
Italians, with wine growing at their doors, and spirits almost as cheap
as beer in England, are sober nations. How comes this? The laugh will
answer that leaps up from group after group--the dance on the
village-green--the family dinner under the trees--the thousand
merry-meetings that invigorate industry, by serving as a relief to the
business of life. Without these, business is care; and it is from care, not
from amusement, men fly to the bottle.
The common mistake is to associate the idea of amusement with error
of every kind; and this piece of moral asceticism is given forth as true
wisdom, and, from sheer want of examination, is very generally
received as such. A place of amusement concentrates a crowd, and
whatever excesses may be committed, being confined to a small space,
stand more prominently forward than at other times. This is all. The
excesses are really fewer--far fewer--in proportion to the number
assembled, than if no gathering had taken place. How can it be
otherwise? The amusement is itself the excitement which the wearied
heart longs for; it is the reaction which nature seeks; and in the
comparatively few instances of a coarser intoxication being superadded,
we see only the craving of depraved habit--a habit engendered, in all
probability, by the want of amusement.
No, good friends, let us laugh sometimes, if you love us. A dangerous
character is of another kidney, as Cæsar knew to his cost:--
'He loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music; Seldom
he laughs;'
and when he does, it is on the wrong side of his mouth.
Let us be wiser. Let us laugh in fitting time and place, silently or aloud,
each after his nature. Let us enjoy an innocent reaction rather than a

guilty one, since reaction there must be. The bow that is always bent
loses its elasticity, and becomes useless.

MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.[1]
The authoress of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, known also in this
country by her Papers on Literature and Art, occupied among her own
people a station as notable as that of De Staël among the French, or of
Rahel von Ense in Germany. Mystic and transcendental as she was, her
writings teem with proof of original power, and are the expression of a
thoughtful and energetic, if also a wayward and undisciplined, mind.
One of the two compilers of these Memoirs (Emerson and W. H.
Channing) observes, that his first impression of her was that of a
'Yankee Corinna;' and such is not unlikely to be the last impression of
ordinary readers, ourselves among the number. In a letter, dated 1841,
we find her saying: 'I feel all Italy glowing beneath the Saxon crust'--an
apt illustration of her mental structure and tone of sentiment,
compounded of New Worldedness, as represented by Margaret Fuller,
and of the feelings of Southern Europe, as embodied in the Marchesa
Ossoli. Without at this time pausing to review her literary position, and
her influence upon contemporary minds, we proceed to draw from
these interesting, but frequently eccentric and extravagantly worded
Memoirs, a sketch of her remarkable life-history.
Margaret Fuller was born at Cambridge-Port, Massachusetts, in May
1810. Her father was a shrewd, practical, hard-headed lawyer, whose
love for his wife 'was the green spot on which he stood apart from the
commonplaces of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence.'
That wife is described as a fair and flower-like nature, 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.'[2] Mr Fuller, in undertaking the
education of his daughter, committed the common error of excessive
stimulation--thinking to gain time by forwarding the intellect as early
as possible. He was himself a scholar, and hoped to make her the heir

of all he knew, and of as much more as might be elsewhere attained. He
was a severe and exacting disciplinarian, and permanently marred the
nervous system of