We are never better understood than when we speak of a "Roman virtue," a "Roman outline." There is somewhat indefinite, somewhat yet unful filled in the thought of Greece, of Spain, of modern Italy; but ROME! it stands by itself, a clear Word. The power of will, the dignity of a fixed purpose is what it utters. Every Roman was an Emperor. It is well that the infallible church should have been founded on this rock; that the presumptuous Peter should hold the keys, as the conquering Jove did before his thunderbolts, to be seen of all the world. The Apollo tends flocks with Admetus; Christ teaches by the lonely lake, or plucks wheat as he wanders through the fields some Sabbath morning. They never come to this stronghold; they could not have breathed freely where all became stone as soon as spoken, where divine youth found no horizon for its all-promising glance, but every thought put on before it dared issue to the day in action, its toga virilis.

Suckled by this wolf, man gains a different complexion from that which is fed by the Greek honey. He takes a noble bronze in camps and battle-fields; the wrinkles of councils 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 inore, 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.

This education acting upon a sensitive nature made excitement a necessity. Her school life, described by herself in the sketch of Mariana in her book the Summer on the Lakes, appears a constant effort to secure activity for herself and the notice of others by fantastic conduct. One of her companions at Cambridge, the Rev. F. H. Hedge, then a student of Harvard, describes her at thirteen: "A child in years, but so precocious in her mental and physical developments, that she passed for eighteen or twenty. Agreeably to this estimate, she had her place in society as a lady full-grown." At twenty-two, led by the review articles of Carlyle, she entered upon the study of German literature, reading the works of Goethe, Schiller, Tieck, Novalis, and Richter, within the year. She was at this time fond of society, as she always was. Her admiration of the personal qualities of others was strong and undisguised. In possession of power and au

thority and self-will, in the world of books, nature was not to be defeated: she was dependent to a proportionate degree upon the sympathy of others. In this way she became a kind of female confessor, listening to the confidences and experiences of her young friends.

In 1833 she removed with her father to Groton. His death occurred there shortly after, in 1835, and the following year Margaret Fuller became a teacher in Boston of Latin and French in Mr. Alcot's school, and had her own aesthetic classes of young ladies in French, German, and Italian, with whom she read portions of Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, Tasso, Ariosto, and Dante.

In 1837 she became principal teacher in the Greene-street school at Providence, "to teach the elder girls her favorite branches."

These literary engagements are of less consequence in her biography than her friendships-of the story of which the memoirs published after her death are mostly composed. She became acquainted with Miss Martineau on her visit to this country in 1835. Her intimacy with Emerson grew up in visits to Concord about the same time. His notices of her conversation and spiritual refinements are graphic. Her conversational powers, in the familiarity of the congenial society at Concord, were freely exercised. Emerson says, "the day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory; and I, who knew her intimately for ten years from July, 1836, till August, 1846, when she sailed for Europe-never saw her without surprise at her new powers." Nor was this charm confined to her philosophical friends: she had the art of drawing out her humblest companions. Her mind, with all its fine culture, was essentially manly, giving a common-sense, dogmatic tone to her remarks. It is noticeable how large a space criticism occupies in her writings. It is her chief province; and criticism as exhibited by her pen or words, whether antagonistic or otherwise, is but another name for sympathy.

The Providence arrangement does not appear to have lasted long. She soon took up her residence in Boston or its vicinity, employing herself in 1839 in a species of lectureship or class of ladies they were called Conversations-in which German philosophy, æsthetic culture of the Fine Arts, etc., were made the topics of instruction. These exercises are thus described "by a very competent witness," in Mr. Emerson's portion of the Memoirs, in a few sentences, which show the spirit in which they were received by her admirers:-"Margaret used to come to the conversations very well dressed, and altogether looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent, from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess, and from the gracefulness with which they were brought down, at last, to a possible level for others to follow. She made a pause, and invited the others to come in. Of course, it was not easy for every one to venture her remark, after an eloquent discourse, and in the presence of twenty superior women, who were all inspired. But whatever was said, Margaret knew how to seize the good meaning of it with hospitality, and

to make the speaker feel glad, and not sorry, that she had spoken."

She also employed herself at this time, as afterwards, in composition. She published in 1839 a translation of Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, and in 1841 the Letters of Gunderode and Bettine. The two first volumes of the Dial were edited by her in 1840-41. For this quarterly publication, supported by the writings of Emerson and his friends, she wrote papers on Goethe, Beethoven, the Rhine and Romaic ballads, and the poems of Sterling. The Dial made a reputation for itself and its conductors; but they might have starved on its products. Emerson tells us that "as editor she received a compensation which was intended to be two hundred dollars per annum, but which, I fear, never reached even that amount."

In 1843 she travelled to the West, to Lake Superior and Michigan, and published an account of the journey, full of subtle reflection, and with some studies of the Indian character, in the book entitled Summer on the Lakes.

ROBERTS.SC.

1.1. Julle

In 1844 Margaret Fuller came to New York, induced by an offer of well paid, regular employ. ment upon the Tribune newspaper. She resided in the family of Mr. Greeley, in a picturesquely situated house on the East river, one of the last footholds of the old rural beauties of the island falling before the rapid mercantile encroachments of the city. Here she wrote a series of somewhat sketchy but always forcible criticisms on the higher literature of the day, a complete collection of which would add to her reputation. A portion of them were included in the volume from her pen, Papers on Literature and Art, published in New York in 1846. Her work entitled Woman in the Nineteenth Century was published at this time from the Tribune office.

In the spring of 1846 she accompanied her friends, Mr. Marcus Spring of Brooklyn, New York, and his wife to Europe. Her contributions to the Tribune were continued in letters from England and the Continent. She saw the chief literary celebrities, Wordsworth, De Quincey, Chalmers, and Carlyle. At Paris she became in

timate with George Sand. At Rome she took part in the hopes and revolutionary movements of Mazzini, and when the revolution broke out was appointed by the Roman commissioner for the service of the wounded, during the siege by the French troops, to the charge of the hospital of the Fate-Bene Fratelli. In a letter to Emerson dated June, 1849, she describes her visits to the sick and wounded, and her walks with the convalescents in the beautiful gardens of the Pope's palace on the Quirinal:- The gardener plays off all his water-works for the defenders of the country, and gathers flowers for me, their friend." At this time she acquainted her mother with her marriage.

Shortly after her arrival at Rome, in 1847, she had been separated on the evening of Holy Thursday from her companions at vespers in St. Peter's. A stranger, an Italian, seeing her perplexity, offered his assistance. This was the son of the Marquis Ossoli. The acquaintance was continued, and Ossoli offered his hand. He was at first refused, but afterwards they were married in December, after the death of his father. The marriage was for a while kept secret, on the ground that the avowal of his union with a person well known as a liberal would render him liable to exile by the government, while he might, by secresy, be ready to avail himself of employment under the new administration then looked forward to. September 5, 1848, their child, Angelo, was born at Rieti among the mountains.

The fortunes of the revolution being now broken by the occupation of the French, Ossoli with his wife and child left Rome on their way to America. They passed some time in Florence, and on the 17th May, 1850, embarked from Leghorn in the ship Elizabeth, bound for New York. The captain fell ill of small-pox, and died the 3d of June, off Gibraltar. On the 9th they set sail again; the child sickened of the disease and recovered; on the 15th of July the vessel was off the Jersey coast, and the passengers made their preparations for arriving in port the next day. That night the wind increased to a gale of great violence. The ship was driven past Rockaway to the beach of Fire Island, where, early on the morning of the 16th, she struck upon the sand. The bow was elevated and the passengers took refuge in the forecastle, the sea sweeping over the vessel. Some of the passengers were saved by floating ashore on a plank. One of them, Horace Sumner of Boston, perished in the attempt. It was proposed to Margaret to make the trial. She would not be separated from her husband and child, but would wait for the life-boat. It never came. The forecastle became filled with water. The small party left went on the deck by the foremast. A sea struck the quarter. The vessel was entirely broken up. The dead body of the child floated to the shore; the husband and wife were lost in the sea. This happened at nine o'clock in the morning, in mid-summer of the year, and at a place the usual resort at that time of pleasureloving citizens. As if to enhance the sudden contrast of life and death the disaster took place within full sight of the people on the shore. The simple expedient of passing a rope to the land, attached to a barrel, at the proper time, might, one of the most experienced of those present told us, have

saved every life: but the captain was not there.

It was known that Madame Ossoli had with her the manuscript of a History of the Revolution in Italy, which her study of the people, her knowledge of the leaders, her love of freedom, and participation in the struggle, well qualified her to write. Diligent search was made for it among the property which came ashore from the wreck, but it could not be found. The waves had closed over that too which might long have survived the longest term of life.

So perished this intellectual, sympathetic, kind, generous, noble-hearted woman.

The materials for the study of her life are ample in the jointly prepared Memoirs by her friends, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, the Rev. F. H. Hedge, the Rev. W. H. Channing, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. These able writers have taken separate portions of her career, with which they have been particularly acquainted, for illustration, and the result is a biography preservative of far more than is usually kept for posterity of the peculiar moods and humors of so individual a life.

A DIALOGUE.

POET. Approach me not, man of cold, steadfast eye and compressed lips. At thy coming nature shrouds herself in dull mist; fain would she hide her sighs and smiles, her buds and fruits even in a veil of snow. For thy unkindly breath, as it pierces her mystery, destroys its creative power. The birds draw back into their nests, the sunset hues into their clouds, when you are seen in the distance with your tablets all ready to write them into prose.

CRITIC. O my brother, my benefactor, do not thus repel me. Interpret me rather to our common mother; let her not avert her eyes from a younger child. I know I can never be dear to her as thou art, yet I am her child, nor would the fated revolutions of existence be fulfilled without my aid.

POEг. How meanest thou? What have thy measurements, thy artificial divisions and classificatious, to do with the natural revolutions? In all real growths there is a "give and take" of unerring accuracy; in all the acts of thy life there is falsity, for all are negative. Why do you not receive and produce in your kind, like the sunbeam and the rose? Then new light would be brought out, were it but the life of a weed, to bear witness to the healthful beatings of the divine heart. But this perpetual analysis, comparison, and classification, never add one atom to the sum of existence.

CRITIC. I understand you.

POET. Yes, that is always the way. You understand me, who never have the arrogance to pretend that I understand myself.

CRITIC. Why should you?-that is my province. I am the rock which gives you back the echo. I am the tuning-key, which harmonizes your instrument, the regulator to your watch. Who would speak, if no ear heard? nay, if no mind knew what the ear heard?

POET. I do not wish to be heard in thought but in love, to be recognised in judgment but in life. I would pour forth my melodies to the rejoicing winds. I would scatter my seed to the tender earth. I do not wish to hear in prose the meaning of my melody. I do not wish to see my seed neatly put away beneath a paper label. Answer in new pæeans to the soul of our souls. Wake me to sweeter childhood by a fresher growth. At present you are but an ex

crescence produced by my life; depart, self-conscious Egotist, I know you not.

CRITIC. Dost thou so adore Nature, and yet deny me? Is not Art the child of Nature, Civilization of Man? As Religion into Philosophy, Poetry into Criticism, Life into Science, Love into Law, so did thy lyric in natural order transmute itself into my review.

POET. Review! Science! the very etymology speaks. What is gained by looking again at what has already been seen? What by giving a technical classification to what is already assimilated with the mental life?

CRITIC. What is gained by living at all? POET. Beauty loving itself,-Happiness! CRITIC. Does not this involve consciousness? POET. Yes! consciousness of Truth manifested in the individual form.

CRITIC. Since consciousness is tolerated, how will you limit it?

POET. By the instincts of my nature, which rejects yours as arrogant and superfluous.

CRITIC. And the dictate of my nature compels me to the processes which you despise, as essential to my peace. My brother (for I will not be rejected), I claim my place in the order of nature. The Word descended and became flesh for two purposes, to organize itself, and to take cognizance of its organization. When the first Poet worked alone, he paused between the cantos to proclaim, "It is very good." Dividing himself among men, he made some to create, and others to proclaim the merits of what is created.

POET. Well! if you were content with saying, "it is very good;" but you are always crying, "it is very bad," or ignorantly prescribing how it might be better. What do you know of it? Whatever is good could not be otherwise than it is. Why will you not take what suits you, and leave the rest? True communion of thought is worship, not criticism. Spirit will not flow through the sluices nor endure the locks of canals.

CRITIC. There is perpetual need of protestantism in every church. If the church be catholic, yet the priest is not infallible. Like yourself, I sigh for a perfectly natural state, in which the only criticism shall be tacit rejection, even as Venus glides not into the orbit of Jupiter, nor do the fishes seek to dwell in fire. But as you soar towards this as a Maker, so do I toil towards the same aim as a Seeker. Your pinions will not upbear you towards it in steady flight. I must often stop to cut away the brambles from my path. The law of my being is on me, and the ideal standard seeking to be realized in my mind bids me demand perfection from all I see. To say how far each object answers this demand is my criticism.

POET. If one object does not satisfy you, pass on to another, and say nothing.

CRITIC. It is not so that it would be well with me. I must penetrate the secret of my wishes, verify the justice of my reasonings. I must examine, compare, sift, and winnow; what can bear this ordeal remains to me as pure gold. I cannot pass on till I know what I feel and why. An object that defies my utmost rigor of scrutiny is a new step ou the stair I am making to the Olympian tables.

POET. I think you will not know the gods when you get there, if I may judge from the cold presumption I feel in your version of the great facts of literature.

CRITIC. Statement of a part always looks like ignorance, when compared with the whole, yet may promise the whole. Consider that a part implies the whole, as the everlasting No the everlasting

Yes, and permit to exist the shadow of your light, the register of your inspiration.

As he spake the word he paused, for with it his companion vanished, and left floating on the cloud a starry banner with the inscription "Afflatur Numine." The Critic unfolded one on whose flagstaff he had been leaning. Its heavy folds of pearly gray satin slowly unfolding, gave to view the word NOTITIA, and Causarum would have followed, when a sudden breeze from the west caught it, those heavy folds fell back round the poor man, and stifled him probably, at least he has never since been heard of.

JAMES H. PERKINS.

JAMES HANDASYD PERKINS, a writer of an acute mind and versatile powers, was born in Boston July 31, 1810. His parents were Samuel G. Perkins and Barbara Higginson. He was educated by Mr. S. P. Miles, afterwards a tutor of mathematics at Harvard, and at the Phillips Academy at Exeter, and the Round Hill school at Northampton. He wrote clever tales and verses at this period, humorous and sentimental.

At the age of eighteen he entered the countinghouse of his uncle, Mr. Thomas H. Perkins, who was engaged in the Canton trade. He remained faithful to the discharge of the routine duties of this occupation for more than two years. The necessities of a poetic and naturally despondent nature, however, grew upon him, and demanded other employment for his faculties. In the winter of 1830 he found relief in a business tour to England and thence to the West Indies, of which his faithful friend and biographer, Mr. William Henry Channing, has preserved some interesting memorials. His letters on the journey are spirited and abounding with character; thoughtful on serious points and amusing in the lighter.

Returning home in the summer of 1831, he abandoned mercantile life and sought a home in the West. He took up his residence at Cincinnati, and devoted his attention to the study of the law with his friend the Hon. Timothy Walker. He studied laboriously and conscientiously; but the toil was too severe in the practice of the profession for an infirm constitution, and a scrupulous conscience was still more in the way. His pen offered the next field, and he laid on the shifting foundation of the magazines and newspapers some of the corner-stones of the "Literature of the West." He conducted the Western Monthly Magazine, and edited the Evening Chronicle, a weekly paper which he purchased in the winter of 1835, and united with the Cincinnati Mirror then published by Mr. William D. Gallagher and Mr. Thomas H. Shreve, who has been since prominently associated with the Louisville Gazette. The last mentioned gentleman remarks of his friend's powers, "Had Mr. Perkins devoted himself to humorous literature he would have stood at the head of American writers in that line."* His fancy was fresh and original; and his descriptive talent, as exhibited in Mr. Channing's collection of his writings, a pleasurable and ready faculty.

Literature, however meritorious, was hardly, under the circumstances, a suflicient reliance. Mr. Perkins was now a married man in need of a

Channing's Memoir and Writings of Perkins, i. 91.

settled support, when the failure of his publisher induced him to engage in rural life. Failing in the scheme of a plantation on the Ohio he took a few acres near Cincinnati with the view of raising a nursery of fruit trees. To acquire information in this new line, and make arrangements for the publication of two books which he meditated on the "Constitutional Opinions of Judge Marshall," and "Reminiscences of the St. Domingo Insurrection," of which his father had been an eye-witness, he paid a visit to New England. Neither of his plans was carried out; but a new and honorable career was found for him on his return to C.ncinnati in the performance of the duty of Minister at Large, a mission of benevolence to which he devoted the remainder of his life. He brought his characteristic fervor to the work, and gave a practical direction to the charities of the city; almsgiving, in his view, being but subordinate to the elevation of the poor in the self-respect and rewards of labor. He also identified himself with the cause of prison discipline and reform, and gave much attention to education. He was a generous supporter of the Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati. He was the first President of the Cincinnati Historical Society in 1844, and was afterwards Vice-President of the Ohio Historical Society; his fondness for the latter pursuits being liberally witnessed by his publication, The Annals of the West, and his subsequent series of historical sketches of that region in the North American Review from 1839 to 1847, characterized by their research and excellent descriptive style.*

In the latter part of his life, Mr. Perkins interested himself in a plan of Christian Union, to which he was led by his quick sensitive mind.

His death, December 14, 1849, was under melancholy circumstances. He had been thrown, during the day, into a state of nervous agitation by the supposed loss of his children, who had failed to return home at a time appointed, and in the evening he proposed a walk to recover his spirits. He took his course to a ferry-boat on the river, and in a state of depression threw himself into the stream and was drowned.

Thus closed the career of a man of subtle powers, keen and delicate perceptions, of honorable attainments in literature, and of philanthropic usefulness in the business affairs of society.

From the few verses preserved in the interesting memoirs by Mr. Channing, who has traced his career with an unaffected admiration of his virtues, and with the warmth of personal friendship, we select two passages which exhibit something of the nature of the man.

POVERTY AND KNOWLEDGE.

Ah, dearest, we are young and strong,
With ready heart and ready will
To tread the world's bright paths along;
But poverty is stronger still.

The articles are, Fifty Years of Ohio, July, 1889: Early French Travellers in the West, January, 1839; English Discoveries in the Ohio Valley, July, 1839; The Border War of the Revolution, October, 1839; The Pioneers of Kentucky, January, 1846; Settlement of the North-Western Territory, October, 1847. He also wrote for the North American Review of January, 1850, an article on Australia; and for the New York Review, July, 1839, an article on The French Revolution.

Yet, my dear wife, there is a might
That may bid poverty defiance,-
The might of knowledge; from this night
Let us on her put our reliance.

Armed with her sceptre, to an hour

We may condense whole years and
Bid the departed, by her power,
Arise, and talk with seers and sages.
Her word, to teach us, may bid stop

The noonday sun; yea, she is able
To make an ocean of a drop,

Or spread a kingdom on our table.

In her great name we need but call

ages;

Scott, Schiller, Shakspeare, and, behold! The suffering Mary smiles on all,

And Falstaff riots as of old.

Then, wherefore should we leave this hearth,
Our books, and all our pleasant labors,
If we can have the whole round earth,
And still retain our home and neighbours!
Why wish to roam in other lands?

Or mourn that poverty hath bound us? We have our hearts, our heads, our hands,

Enough to live on,-friends around us,— And, more than all, have hope and love. Ah, dearest, while those last, be sure That, if there be a God above,

We are not and cannot be poor!

ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG CHILD.

Stand back, uncovered stand, for lo! The parents who have lost their child Bow to the majesty of woe!

He came, a herald from above,

Pure from his God he came to them, Teaching new duties, deeper love;

And, like the boy of Bethlehem, He grew in stature and in grace. From the sweet spirit of his face

They learned a new, more heavenly joy, And were the better for their boy. But God hath taken whom he gave, Recalled the messenger he sent! And now beside the infant's grave The spirit of the strong is bent.

But though the tears must flow, the heart
Ache with a vacant, strange distress,―

Ye did not from your infant part
When his clear eye grew meaningless,
That eye is beaming still, and still

Upon his Father's errand he,

Your own dear, bright, unearthly boy,
Worketh the kind, mysterious will,

And from this fount of bitter grief
Will bring a stream of joy ;—

O, may this be your faith and

your

relief!

Then will the world be full of him; the sky,
With all its placid myriads, to your eye
Will tell of him; the wind will breathe his tone;
And slumbering in the midnight, they alone,
Your father and your child, will hover nigh.

Believe in him, behold him everywhere,
And sin will die within you,-earthly care
Fall to its earth,-and heavenward, side by side,
Ye shall go up beyond this realm of storms,

Quick and more quick, till, welcomed there above, His voice shall bid you, in the might of love, Lay down these weeds of earth, and wear your native forms.

OL. II.-34

BENSON J. LOSSING..

BENSON J. LOSSING, the son of a farmer, was born in the town of Beekman, Dutchess County, N. Y. His paternal ancestors came from Holland in 1670, and were the first settlers in the county. His maternal ancestors were among the early English settlers on Long Island, who came from Massachusetts Bay and intermarried with the Dutch at New Amsterdam, now New York.

At a common district school Mr. Lossing received a meagre portion of the elementary branches of an English education. After the death of his mother, young Lossing, after passing a short time on a farm, in the autumn of 1826, was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Poughkeepsie, the county town of his native place. So satisfactory had his conduct been during this period, that before the expiration of his apprenticeship his employer made him an offer of partnership in his business, which was accepted.

Beman J. Yeming

Meantime, he devoted every moment of leisure to study, although opportunities as yet for obtaining books were extremely limited. His business connexion proving unsuccessful he relinquished it, after an experiment of upwards of two years; and in the autumn of 1835, he became joint owner and editor of the Poughkeepsie Telegraph, the leading weekly paper of the county. The co-partnership of Killey and Lossing continued for six years.

In January, 1836, was commenced the publication of a small semi-monthly paper entirely devoted to literature, entitled The Poughkeepsie Casket, which was solely edited by Mr. Lossing. The Casket was a great favorite throughout Dutchess and the neighboring counties, and gave evident token of the correct taste and sound judgment of its youthful editor. Having, moreover, a taste for art, and being desirous of illustrating his little periodical, Mr. Lossing placed himself under the tuition of J. A. Adams, the eminent woodengraver in the city of New York, pleased with the practical application of engraving to his editorial business. The same autumn he went to New York to seek improvement in the use of the pen cil by drawing in the Academy of Design.

About this time, Mr. Lossing was called upon to undertake the editorship of the Family Magazine, which work he also illustrated in a superior manner. He now becaine permanently settled in New York as an engraver, but continued his business connexion in Poughkeepsie until the autumn of 1841. While engaged throughout the day in his increasing engraving business, he performed his editorial labors at night and early in the morning, and at the same period, during the winter of 1840-41, wrote a valuable little volume entitled An Outline History of the Fine Arts, which was published as No. 103 of Harpers' Family Library. In the autumn of 1846, he wrote a book entitled Seventeen Hundred and SeventySix, consisting of upwards of five hundred pages