O.—OSSOLI. (MARGARET FULLER.)
IF the young readers of The Pansy had lived forty years ago, and had been readers of the New York Tribune, they would, without doubt, have been interested in certain letters upon art and literature written by Margaret Fuller; or, if you are so fortunate as to belong to a grandfather who stored away his files of the Tribune in some now long-forgotten chest in the attic, you may find in the old, yellow and musty papers these same letters, and may read them now. I do not like musty old papers very much! What's the use, when we have fresh ones in such numbers that we cannot begin to read all that are taken by the different members of the family?
Sarah Margaret Fuller was a native of Cambridgeport, Mass. Very early in life she gave promise of the brilliant literary career which she afterwards ran. She was a fine scholar even in childhood, especially in the languages, and in general literature. Her education was carried on in private. After she entered her teens, she became a teacher of the languages in classes in Boston, and in Mr. Alcott's school, and was at one time the principal of a school in Providence. While she was a contributor to the Tribune, she was a member of the family of Horace Greeley. Her views of life were modelled after the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and about the year 1839, or 1840, she gave a series of lectures, or talks, though I believe they were called conversazioni, especially for ladies, the object being the propagation of then somewhat novel ideas. She also became the editor of a paper. She wrote much, and with considerable brilliancy. Her "Summer on the Lakes" gives pictures of the Lake Superior region. Her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" has to do with some phases of the "Woman's Rights Question." In 1846 she went abroad, and married, in Rome, a nobleman, Giovanni Angelo Ossoli. But she bore the name and the title attached to it only a few years. For when she was returning to America, accompanied by her husband, both lost their lives in a shipwreck. She was a woman of strong passions, indeed it has been said of her that "She was noted for her eccentricities and her ungovernable passions." Not just what I would wish to be written of any of my young friends of The Pansy. It is a sad thing when a great and gifted woman misses the happiness of a quiet spirit.
Faye Huntington.
RARE SPORT.
Volume 13, Number 38. Copyright, 1886, by D. Lothrop & Co. July 24, 1886.
THE PANSY.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. (See [page 301].)