The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I, No. 6 | Page 6

velvet waistcoat and amber gloves, is not by any means the veritable Sir Edward Lytton, who is discoverable only in 'Ernest Maltravers,' where his soul is deliberately and nakedly set forth. And who would ever know Dickens by looking at him or talking with him, or doing anything with him except reading his 'Curiosity Shop?' What poet, in especial, but must feel at least the better portion of himself more fairly represented in even his commonest sonnet, (earnestly written,) than in his most elaborate or most intimate personalities?
"I put all this as a general proposition, to which Miss Fuller affords a marked exception--to this extent, that her personal character and her printed book are merely one and the same thing. We get access to her soul as directly from the one as from the other--no more readily from this than from that--easily from either. Her acts are bookish, and her books are less thoughts than acts. Her literary and her conversational manner are identical. Here is a passage from her 'Summer on the Lakes:'--
"'The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift that they cease to seem so--you can think only of their beauty. The fountain beyond the Moss Islands I discovered for myself, and thought it for some time an accidental beauty which it would not do to _leave_, lest I might never see it again. After I found it _permanent_, I returned many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall, beyond, Nature seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some larger design. She delights in this--a sketch within a sketch--a dream within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are _delighted_; for all the lineaments become _fluent_, and we mould the scene in congenial thought with its genius.'
"Now all this is precisely as Miss Fuller would speak it. She is perpetually saying just such things in just such words. To get the conversational woman in the mind's eye, all that is needed is to imagine her reciting the paragraph just quoted: but first let us have the personal woman. She is of the medium height; nothing remarkable about the figure; a profusion of lustrous light hair; eyes a bluish gray, full of fire; capacious forehead; the mouth when in repose indicates profound sensibility, capacity for affection, for love--when moved by a slight smile, it becomes even beautiful in the intensity of this expression; but the upper lip, as if impelled by the action of involuntary muscles, habitually uplifts itself, conveying the impression of a sneer. Imagine, now, a person of this description looking at you one moment earnestly in the face, at the next seeming to look only within her own spirit or at the wall; moving nervously every now and then in her chair; speaking in a high key, but musically, deliberately, (not hurriedly or loudly,) with a delicious distinctness of enunciation--speaking, I say, the paragraph in question, and emphasizing the words which I have italicized, not by impulsion of the breath, (as is usual) but by drawing them out as long as possible, nearly closing her eyes, the while--imagine all this, and we have both the woman and the authoress before us."
* * * * *
[FROM THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE.]
ON THE DEATH OF S. MARGARET FULLER.
BY G.F.R. JAMES
High hopes and bright thine early path bedecked, And aspirations beautiful, though wild, A heart too strong, a powerful will unchecked, A dream that earth-things could be undefiled.
But soon, around thee, grew a golden chain, That bound the woman to more human things, And taught with joy--and, it may be, with pain-- That there are limits e'en to Spirits' wings.
Husband and child--the loving and beloved-- Won, from the vast of thought, a mortal part, The empassioned wife and mother, yielding, proved Mind has, itself, a master--in the heart.
In distant lands enhaloed by old fame Thou found'st the only chain the spirit knew, But, captive, led'st thy captors from the shame Of ancient freedom, to the pride of new.
And loved hearts clung around thee on the deck, Welling with sunny hopes 'neath sunny skies; The wide horizon round thee had no speck; E'en Doubt herself could see no cloud arise.
The loved ones clung around thee, when the sail, O'er wide Atlantic billows, onward bore Thy freight of joys, and the expanding gale Pressed the glad bark toward thy native shore.
The loved ones clung around thee still, when all Was darkness, tempest, terror, and dismay-- More closely clung around thee, when the pall Of fate was falling o'er the mortal clay.
With them to live--with them, with them to die-- Sublime of human love