Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I | Page 5

honey. He takes a noble bronze in camps and
battle-fields; the wrinkles of council well beseem his brow, and the eye
cuts its way like the sword. The Eagle should never have been used as a
symbol by any other nation: it belonged to Rome.
'The history of Rome abides in mind, of course, more than the literature.
It was degeneracy for a Roman to use the pen; his life was in the day.
The "vaunting" of Rome, like that of the North American Indians, is
her proper literature. A man rises; he tells who he is, and what he has
done; he speaks of his country and her brave men; he knows that a
conquering god is there, whose agent is his own right hand; and he
should end like the Indian, "I have no more to say."
'It never shocks us that the Roman is self-conscious. One wants no
universal truths from him, no philosophy, no creation, but only his life,
his Roman life felt in every pulse, realized in every gesture. The
universal heaven takes in the Roman only to make us feel his
individuality the more. The Will, the Resolve of Man!--it has been
expressed,--fully expressed!
'I steadily loved this ideal in my childhood, and this is the cause,
probably, why I have always felt that man must know how to stand
firm on the ground, before he can fly. In vain for me are men more, if
they are less, than Romans. Dante was far greater than any Roman, yet
I feel he was right to take the Mantuan as his guide through hell, and to
heaven.
'Horace was a great deal to me then, and is so still. Though his words
do not abide in memory, his presence does: serene, courtly, of darting
hazel eye, a self-sufficient grace, and an appreciation of the world of
stern realities, sometimes pathetic, never tragic. He is the natural man
of the world; he is what he ought to be, and his darts never fail of their
aim. There is a perfume and raciness, too, which makes life a banquet,
where the wit sparkles no less that the viands were bought with blood.
'Ovid gave me not Rome, nor himself, but a view into the enchanted
gardens of the Greek mythology. This path I followed, have been
following ever since; and now, life half over, it seems to me, as in my

childhood, that every thought of which man is susceptible, is intimated
there. In those young years, indeed, I did not see what I now see, but
loved to creep from amid the Roman pikes to lie beneath this great vine,
and see the smiling and serene shapes go by, woven from the finest
fibres of all the elements. I knew not why, at that time,--but I loved to
get away from the hum of the forum, and the mailed clang of Roman
speech, to these shifting shows of nature, these Gods and Nymphs born
of the sunbeam, the wave, the shadows on the hill.
'As with Rome I antedated the world of deeds, so I lived in those Greek
forms the true faith of a refined and intense childhood. So great was the
force of reality with which these forms impressed me, that I prayed
earnestly for a sign,--that it would lighten in some particular region of
the heavens, or that I might find a bunch of grapes in the path, when I
went forth in the morning. But no sign was given, and I was left a waif
stranded upon the shores of modern life!
'Of the Greek language, I knew only enough to feel that the sounds told
the same story as the mythology;--that the law of life in that land was
beauty, as in Rome it was a stern composure. I wish I had learned as
much of Greece as of Rome,--so freely does the mind play in her sunny
waters, where there is no chill, and the restraint is from within out; for
these Greeks, in an atmosphere of ample grace, could not be impetuous,
or stern, but loved moderation as equable life always must, for it is the
law of beauty.
'With these books I passed my days. The great amount of study exacted
of me soon ceased to be a burden, and reading became a habit and a
passion. The force of feeling, which, under other circumstances, might
have ripened thought, was turned to learn the thoughts of others. This
was not a tame state, for the energies brought out by rapid acquisition
gave glow enough. I thought with rapture of the all-accomplished man,
him of the many talents, wide resources, clear sight, and omnipotent
will. A Cæsar seemed great enough. I did not then know that such men
impoverish the