Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 | Page 7

mother, as 'not in any respect such a person
as people in general would expect to find with her,' being a man
'absolutely ignorant of books, and with no enthusiasm of character,' but
endowed with excellent practical sense, a nice sense of duty, native
refinement, and much sweetness of temper. The peculiar circumstances
attending the marriage in that country, and at that agitated crisis,
involved Margaret in numerous afflictions, and taxed her powers of
endurance to the very uttermost.

She had to suffer compulsory separation from husband and child--the
one in hourly peril of a bloody death, the other neglected and pining
away in the hands of strangers: penury, loneliness, prostrating sickness,
and treachery on the part of those around her, were meanwhile her own
lot in the land of strangers. How this season of trial affected her
character, may be inferred from the remarks of her friend Mrs Story,
then sojourning in Italy, who says, that in Boston she had regarded
Margaret as a person on intellectual stilts, with a large share of
arrogance, and little sweetness of temper; and adds: 'How unlike to this
was she now!--so delicate, so simple, confiding, and affectionate; with
a true womanly heart and soul, sensitive and generous, and, what was
to me a still greater surprise, possessed of so broad a charity, that she
could cover with its mantle the faults and defects of all about her.' Her
devotion to her husband, and her passionate attachment to her little
Angelo, were exhibited in the liveliest colour: the influence she
exercised, too, by love and sympathy, over Italians of every class with
whom she came in contact, appears of a kind more tender, chastened,
and womanly than that which previously characterised her. When the
republican cause at Rome left no hope of present restoration, Margaret
found a tranquil refuge in Florence, devoting her mornings to literary
labours, and her evenings to social intercourse with cultivated natives
and a few foreign visitors, among whom the Brownings occupied a
distinguished place. Greatly straitened in means at this time, the repose
she and her husband enjoyed at Florence, in their small and
scantily-furnished room, seems to have been peculiarly grateful to both.
Soon, however, arrangements were made for their departure to the
United States; for Margaret was heart-weary at the political reaction in
Europe, and the pecuniary expediency of publishing to advantage her
chronicles of the revolution, seconded by a yearning to see her family
and friends once more, constrained to this step.
From motives of economy, they took passage in a merchantman from
Leghorn, the Elizabeth, the expense being one-half what a return by
way of France would have been. The remonstrances of her
acquaintance, founded on the fatigues of a two months' voyage--the
comparative insecurity of such a bark--the exposed position of the
cabin (on deck)--and so on, were not unaided by Margaret's own

presentiments. Ossoli, when a boy, had been told by a fortune-teller, to
'beware of the sea,' and this was the first ship he had ever set his foot in.
In a letter where she describes herself 'suffering, as never before, all the
horrors of indecision,' his wife expresses a fervent prayer that it 'may
not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid
the howling waves; or if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together,
and that the anguish may be brief.' That 'or if so' is affecting--and was
realised, except, indeed, that the anguish was not brief, for it lasted
twelve terrible hours--a long communion face to face with Death! The
bark sailed May 17, 1850. Captain Hasty, 'so fine a model of the
New-England seaman,' inspired the passengers with cheerful
confidence, and for a few days all went prosperously. But early in June,
Captain Hasty died of confluent small-pox. The child Angelino caught
it, but recovered, and won all hearts by his playful innocence, loving
especially to be walked up and down in the arms of the steward, who
had just such a boy at home waiting his arrival. On Thursday, July 15,
the Elizabeth was off the Jersey coast: at evening-tide, a breeze sprang
up, which by midnight had become a hurricane. About four o'clock
next morning, she struck on Fire Island beach, and lay at the mercy of
the maddened ocean. Mr Channing's description of the wreck is a most
picturesque narrative, but too long for quotation. Very touching is the
sketch of the Ossoli group, remaining on board after nearly all the
passengers and crew had perished or escaped to land, which was distant
only a few hundred yards--the infant crying passionately, shivering in
the wet, till soothed and lullabied to sleep by his mother, a calm
expectant of death; and Ossoli tranquillising by counsel and prayer
their