George Sanford, seaman (Swede).
Henry Westervelt, seaman (Swede).
George Bates, steward.
DEATH OF MARGARET FULLER.
A great soul has passed from this mortal stage of being by the death of MARGARET FULLER, by marriage Marchioness Ossoli, who, with her husband and child, Mr. Horace Sumner of Boston,[O] and others, was drowned in the wreck of the brig Elizabeth from Leghorn for this port, on the south shore of Long Island, near Fire Island, on Friday afternoon last. No passenger survives to tell the story of that night of horrors, whose fury appalled many of our snugly sheltered citizens reposing securely in their beds. We can adequately realize what it must have been to voyagers approaching our coast from the Old World, on vessels helplessly exposed to the rage of that wild southwestern gale, and seeing in the long and anxiously expected land of their youth and their love only an aggravation of their perils, a death-blow to their hopes, an assurance of their temporal doom!
Margaret Fuller was the daughter of Hon. Timothy Fuller, a lawyer of Boston, but nearly all his life a resident of Cambridge, and a Representative of the Middlessex District in Congress from 1817 to 1825. Mr. Fuller, upon his retirement from Congress, purchased a farm at some distance from Boston, and abandoned law for agriculture, soon after which he died. His widow and six children still survive.
Margaret, if we mistake not, was the first-born, and from a very early age evinced the possession of remarkable intellectual powers. Her father regarded her with a proud admiration, and was from childhood her chief instructor, guide, companion, and friend. He committed the too common error of stimulating her intellect to an assiduity and persistency of effort which severely taxed and ultimately injured her physical powers.[P] At eight years of age he was accustomed to require of her the composition of a number of Latin verses per day, while her studies in philosophy, history, general science, and current literature were in after years extensive and profound. After her father's death, she applied herself to teaching as a vocation, first in Boston, then in Providence, and afterward in Boston again, where her "Conversations" were for several seasons attended by classes of women, some of them married, and including many from the best families of the "American Athens."
In the autumn of 1844, she accepted an invitation to take part in the conduct of the Tribune, with especial reference to the department of Reviews and Criticism on current Literature, Art, Music, &c.; a position which she filled for nearly two years,—how eminently, our readers well know. Her reviews of Longfellow's Poems, Wesley's Memoirs, Poe's Poems, Bailey's "Festus," Douglas's Life, &c. must yet be remembered by many. She had previously found "fit audience, though few," for a series of remarkable papers on "The Great Musicians," "Lord Herbert of Cherbury," "Woman," &c., &c., in "The Dial," a quarterly of remarkable breadth and vigor, of which she was at first co-editor with Ralph Waldo Emerson, but which was afterward edited by him only, though she continued a contributor to its pages. In 1843, she accompanied some friends on a tour via Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinac to Chicago, and across the prairies of Illinois, and her resulting volume, entitled "Summer on the Lakes," is one of the best works in this department ever issued from the American press. It was too good to be widely and instantly popular. Her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century"—an extension of her essay in the Dial—was published by us early in 1845, and a moderate edition sold. The next year, a selection from her "Papers on Literature and Art" was issued by Wiley and Putnam, in two fair volumes of their "Library of American Books." We believe the original edition was nearly or quite exhausted, but a second has not been called for, while books nowise comparable to it for strength or worth have run through half a dozen editions.[Q] These "Papers" embody some of her best contributions to the Dial, the Tribune, and perhaps one or two which had not appeared in either.