Julia Ward Howe

“ Margaret already possessed the spirit of all that is most valuable in European culture. She knew the writers of the Old World by study, its brave souls by sympathy, its works of art, more imperfectly, through copies and engravings. The Europe which she carried in her mind was not that which the superficial observer sees with careless eyes, nor could it altogether correspond with that which she, in her careful and thoughtful travel, would discern. ”

“ Death gives an unexpected completeness to the view of individual character. The secret of a noble life is only fully unfolded when its outward envelope has met the fate of all things perishable. And so the mournful tragedy just recounted set its seal upon a career whose endeavor and achievement the world is bound to hold dear. When all that could be known of Margaret was known, it became evident that there was nothing of her which was not heroic in intention; nothing which, truly interpreted, could turn attention from a brilliant exterior to meaner traits allowed and concealed. ”

“ Margaret wished to lead her pupils beyond all discord, into the high and happy unity. Her own nature was both fervent and religious, but she could not accept intolerance either in belief or in disbelief. To study with her friends the ethics of an ancient faith, too remote to become the occasion of personal excitement, seemed to her a step in the direction of freer thought and a more unbiassed criticism. The Greek mythology, instinct with the genius of a wonderful people, afforded her the desired theme. ”

“ In the later Papal Rome she discerns, through the confusion of rite and legend, a sense which to her marks the growth "of the human spirit struggling to develop its life." And the Rome of that day was dear to her in spite of its manifold corruptions; dear for the splendor of the race, surviving every enslaving and deforming influence; dear for the new-born hope of freedom which she considered safe in the nursing of Pope Pius.
Most of the occasions chronicled by Margaret in her letters of this period are of the sort familiarly known to travellers, and even to readers of books of travel. ”

“ To those of us who remember these things in the vividness of their living presence, it is most satisfactory to be assured of the excellence of Margaret's judgment. The great Frenchwoman, at the period of which we write, appeared to many the incarnation of all the evil which her sex could represent. To those of opposite mind she appeared the inspired prophetess of a new era of thought and of sentiment. To Margaret she was neither the one nor the other. Much as she loved genius, that of George Sand could not blind her to the faults and falsities that marred her work. ”

“ The friend whom we now quote is so much impressed by Margaret's power as to say: "I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in her presence. She distances all who talk with her." Even Mr. Emerson served only to display her powers, his uncompromising idealism seeming narrow and hard when contrasted with her glowing realism. "She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion, as Mr. Emerson does, but by comprehension, and so no poorest, saddest spirit but she will lead to hope and faith." ”

“ Channing's reminiscences preserve for us a valuable aperçu of the Transcendental movement in New England, and of Margaret's relation to it.
The circle of the Transcendentalists was, for the moment, a new church, with the joy and pain of a new evangel in its midst. In the very heart of New England Puritanism, at that day hard, dry, and thorny, had sprung up a new growth, like the blossoming of a century-plant, beautiful and inconvenient. ”

“ Only the guardian of the beginning of life, only the sharer in all its duties and inspirations? Culture and Christianity recognized as much as this, but the doctrine still remained an abstract one, and equal rights were scarcely thought of as a corollary to equal duties. Margaret never saw, though she foresaw, the awakening and recognition of the new womanhood which is already changing the aspect of civilized society. An eccentric in her own despite, she had dared assume her full height, and to demand her proper place. Her position was as exceptional as was her genius. ”

“ Of these, Margaret deeply knows the value. But, in her view, these duties will never be noble, these graces sincere, until women stand as firmly as men do upon the ground of individual freedom and legal justice.
"If principles could be established, particulars would adjust themselves aright. Ascertain the true destiny of woman; give her legitimate hopes, and a standard within herself.... What woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, [152] but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded." ”

“ Among other grievances, Margaret especially felt the manner in which Miss Martineau had written about Mr. Alcott. This she could not pass over without comment: "A true and noble man; a philanthropist, whom a true and noble woman, also a philanthropist, should have delighted to honor; a philosopher, worthy the palmy times of ancient Greece; a man whom the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror as the worldlings of ancient Athens did Socrates. They smile to hear their verdict confirmed from the other side of the Atlantic by their censor, Harriet Martineau." ”

“ In the conversations of this winter (1840-41) the fine arts held a prominent place.
Margaret stated, at the beginning, that the poetry of life would be found in the advance "from objects to law, from the circumference of being, where we found ourselves at our birth, to the centre." This poetry was "the only path of the true soul," life's prose being the deviation from this ideal way. The fine arts she considered a compensation for this prose, which appeared to her inevitable. The beauties which life could not embody might be expressed in stone, upon canvas, or in music and verse. ”

“ The world of the last decade and of the present is too deeply wedded to the hard worship of money to be touched by the pathos of women who perish, or of men who starve. The grievances of the poor against the rich find to-day no one to give ear to them, and few even to utter them; since those who escape starvation are too busy with beggary and plunder to waste time in such useless musings. Of the three here cited, Balzac alone remains a king among novelists; and Margaret's study of him imports as much to us to-day as it did to the world of her time. ”

“ Here, as in much that Margaret has written, a solid truth is found side by side with an illusion. The statement that an American idea should lie at the foundation of our national life and its expression is a truth too often lost sight of by those to whom it most imports. On the other hand, the great body of the world's literature is like an ocean in whose waves and tides there is a continuity which sets at naught the imposition of definite limits. Literature is first of all human ”

“ The sun is glorious, the melancholy lustres are stealing again over the Campagna, and hundreds of larks sing unwearied above its ruins. Nature seems in sympathy with the great events that are transpiring."
What were these events, which, Margaret says, stunned her by the rapidity and grandeur of their march?
The face of Italy was changed indeed. Sicily was in revolt, Naples in revolution. Milan, Venice, Modena, and Parma were driving out their tyrants; and in Rome, men and women were weeping and dancing for joy at the news. Abroad, Louis Philippe had lost his throne, and Metternich his power. ”

“ Channing had known Margaret through her intellect only. This conversation of many hours revealed her to him in a new light. It unfolded to him her manifold gifts and her deep experience, her great capacity for joy, and the suffering through which she had passed. She should have been an acknowledged queen among the magnates of European culture: she was hedged about by the narrow intolerance of provincial New England.{90}
In a more generous soil her genius would have borne fruit of the highest order. ”

“ To follow Margaret through all the fluctuations and excitements consequent upon these events would be no easy task. She was obviously in close relations with leading Italian liberals, and probably trusted their statements and shared their hopes, fears, and resentments. Constant always in her faith in human nature, and in her zeal for the emancipation of Italy, the dissolving view before her could leave her no other fixed belief. Her favorites, her beloved Italian people, even her adored Rome, appeared to her at different times in very various lights. ”

“ Margaret, before leaving Florence, wrote: "Florence is not like Rome. At first I could not bear the change; yet, for the study of the fine arts, it is a still richer place. Worlds of thought have risen in my mind; some time you will have light from all."
Here she visited the studios of her countrymen, Horatio Greenough and Hiram Powers, and, after a month's stay, went on to Bologna, where she greatly appreciated the truly Italian physiognomy of the city, and rejoiced in the record of its women artists and professors, nobly recognized and upheld by their fellow-citizens. ”

“ Ossoli seems to have belonged to a type of character the very opposite of that which Margaret had best known and most admired. To one wearied with the over-intellection and restless aspiration of the accomplished New Englander of that time, the simple geniality of the Italian nature had all the charm of novelty and contrast. Margaret had delighted in the race from her first acquaintance with it, but had found its happy endowments heavily weighted with traits of meanness and ferocity. ”

“ The rash generosity of the children is beautiful; their free, trustful lives are noble and sweet; but when they undertake to right social wrongs, and gallantly set their brave hearts and childish inexperience against the established wrongs of society, they come to grief, but in no commonplace way. Their dangers are as unusual and on as large a scale as their characters and courage are. The book is full of tender and loving things; it makes the heart larger, and brings back the splendid dreams of one's own youth," says the Boston correspondent of the Worcester Spy. ”

“ It must be remembered that Margaret's self-esteem did not really involve any disesteem of others. She honored in all their best traits, and her only ground of quarrel with humanity at large was its derogation from its own dignity, its neglect of its own best interests. Such a sense of human value as she possessed was truly a Christian gift, and it was in virtue of this that she was able to impart such exhilaration and hopefulness to those who were content to learn of her. ”

“ Margaret ends her treatise with a synopsis of her humanitarian creed, of which we can here give only enough to show its general scope and tenor. Here is the substance of it, mostly in her own words:—
Man is a being of twofold relations,—to nature beneath and intelligences above him. The earth is his school, God his object, life and thought his means of attaining it.
The growth of man is twofold,—masculine and feminine. These terms, for Margaret, represent other qualities, to wit, Energy and Harmony, Power and Beauty, Intellect and Love. ”

“ Margaret finds a decline of sentiment and poetic power in Goethe, dating from his relinquishment of Lili.
"After this period we find in him rather a wide and deep wisdom than the inspirations of genius. His faith that all must issue well wants the sweetness of piety; and the God he manifests to us is one of law or necessity rather than of intelligent love.
"This mastery that Goethe prizes seems to consist rather in the skilful use of means than in the clear manifestation of ends. Yet never let him be confounded with those who sell all their birthright. ”

“ The unruly Garibaldi Legion overtook Margaret one day between Rome and Rieti. She had been to visit her child at the latter place, and was returning to Rome alone in a vettura. While she was resting for an hour at a wayside inn, the master of the house entered in great alarm, crying: "We are lost! Here is the Legion Garibaldi! These men always pillage, and, if we do not give all up to them without pay, they will kill us." Looking out upon the road, Margaret saw that the men so much dreaded were indeed close at hand. ”

“ Books, indeed, are laid away and forgotten, manuscripts are lost or destroyed. The spoken word, fleeting though it be, may kindle a flame that ages shall not quench, but only brighten.
While, therefore, it may well grieve us to-day that we cannot know exactly what Margaret said nor how she said it, we may believe that the inspiration which she felt and communicated to others remains, not the less, a permanent value in the community.
Having already somewhat the position of a "come-outer," Margaret was naturally supposed to be in entire sympathy with the Transcendentalists. ”

“ Longfellow's inspiration be allowed to be a reflected rather than an original one, the mirror of his imagination is so pure and broad, and the images it reflects are so beautiful, that the world of our time confesses itself greatly his debtor. The spirit of his life, too, has put the seal of a rare earnestness and sincerity upon his legacy to the world of letters. But let us hear Margaret's estimate of him:—
"Longfellow is artificial and imitative. He borrows incessantly, and mixes what he borrows, so that it does not appear to the best advantage.... ”