Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/39

Rh In the fragment of an autobiographical romance, given in her “ Memoirs,” there is a graphic sketch of this early home; and the following briefer one, hitherto unpublished, occurs in a journal of travel kept, many years after, for her brother Richard: —

“I feel satisfied, as I thought I should, with reading these bolder lines in the manuscript of Nature. Merely gentle and winning scenes are not enough for me; I wish my lot had been cast amid the sources of the streams, where the voice of the hidden torrent is heard by night; where the eagle soars, and the thunder resounds in long peals from side to side; where the grasp of a more powerful emotion has rent asunder the rocks, and the long purple shadows fall like a broad wing upon the valley. All places, like all persons, I know, have beauty which may be discovered by a thoughtful and observing mind; but only in some scenes and with some people can I expand, and feel myself at home. I feel this all the more for having passed my childhood in such a place as Cambridgeport. There I had nothing except the little flower-garden behind the house, and the elms before the door. I used to long and pine for beautiful places such as I read of. There was not one walk for me except over the bridge; I liked that very much, the river, and the city glittering in sunset, and the lovely undulating line all round, and the light smokes seen in some weather.”

Her father, from her early childhood, took charge of her education, and devoted to it much time. She began to study Latin at the age of six, and was carried on, from that period, by an intel-