Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 | Page 6

And again: 'After all,
this writing,' she says in a letter, 'is mighty dead. Oh, for my dear old
Greeks, who talked everything--not to shine as in the Parisian saloons,
but to learn, to teach, to vent the heart, to clear the head!' Mr Alcott of
Boston considered her the most brilliant talker of the day. Miss
Martineau was fascinated by the same charm. It is thus characterised by
the author of Representative Men: 'Talent, memory, wit, stern
introspection, poetic play, religion, the finest personal feeling, the

aspects of the future, each followed each in full activity, and left me, I
remember, enriched and sometimes astonished by the gifts of my
guest.' Her self-complacency staggered many at first--as when she
spoke, in the quietest manner, of the girls she had formed, the young
men who owed everything to her, the fine companions she had long
ago exhausted. 'I now know,' she has been heard to say in the coolest
style, 'all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect
comparable to my own.' Well may Mr Emerson talk of her letting slip
phrases that betrayed the presence of 'a rather mountainous ME.' Such
phrases abound in her conversation and correspondence--mountainous
enough to be a hill of offence to the uninitiated and untranscendental.
At anyrate, there was no affectation in this; she thoroughly believed in
her own superiority; her subscription to that creed was implicit and ex
animo. Nor do we detect affectation in her most notable vagaries and
crotchets. She loved the truth, and spoke it out--we were about to write,
manfully; and why not? At heart, she was, to use the words of an
intimate and discerning friend, a right brave and heroic
woman--shrinking from no duty because of feeble nerves. Numerous
illustrations of this occur in the volumes before us. Thus we find her
going from a bridal of passing joyfulness to attend a near relative
during a formidable surgical operation--or drawing five hundred dollars
to bestow, on a New-York 'ne'er-do-weel,' half-patriot, half-author,
always in such depths of distress, and with such squadrons of enemies
that no charity could relieve, no intervention save him.
In 1839, she removed from Groton, with her mother and family, to
Jamaica Plain, a few miles from Boston; and thence, shortly, to
Cambridge and New York. Boston, however, was her point d'appui,
and in it she formed acquaintances of every class, the most utilitarian
and the most idealistic. In 1839, she published a translation of Goethe's
Conversations with Eckermann; in 1841, the Letters of Bettina; in 1843,
the Summer on the Lakes--a narrative of her tour to Lake Superior and
Michigan. During the same period she was editor of the Dial, since
conducted by Emerson and Ripley, and in which appeared her papers
on Goethe and Beethoven, the Rhine, the Romaic Ballads, John
Sterling's Poems, &c.

Exhausted by continuous exertion in teaching and writing for the press,
Miss Fuller, in 1844, sought refreshment and health in change of scene;
and, desiring rather new employments than cessation from work, she
accepted a liberal offer from Mr Horace Greeley of New York, to
become a regular contributor to the Tribune; and for that purpose to
take up her abode in his house, first spending some time in the
Highlands of the Hudson. At New York, she took an active interest,
after Mrs Fry's manner, in the various benevolent institutions, and
especially the prisons on Blackwell's Island. For more than a year she
wrote regularly for the Tribune, 'always freshly, vigorously, but not
always clearly.' The notice attracted by her articles insured fresh hosts
of acquaintances, and she became a distinguished character at Miss
Lynch's réunions, and at literary soirées of a similar order. In 1846, she
left her native land--for ever, as the melancholy event proved--to join
Mr and Mrs Spring in a European tour. Her letters home contain much
pleasant gossip about some of the Old-World notabilities. Thus she
records her interviews with Wordsworth in his Rydal retreat, with Dr
Chalmers, Dr Andrew Combe, Mr De Quincey, the Howitts, &c. She
visited Paris in the winter, and became acquainted with Lamennais,
Béranger, Mme Dudevant, and others. Thence, in the spring of 1847,
she went to Italy, where she remained until she embarked in 1850 on
board that doomed ship, the Elizabeth. As a resident in Rome, her
safety was seriously imperiled during the French siege of 1849. She
was appointed by the 'Roman Commission for the succour of the
wounded,' to the superintendence of an hospital, and all along took the
liveliest interest in the fortunes of Mazzini and the republic. She was
then a wife and a mother, having been married privately to the Marquis
Ossoli, a Roman, 'of a noble but impoverished house,' whom she
described, in a letter to her