Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/65

Rh events that the only thing surely moulded by their efforts is their own character. This she thus illustrates: —

“Leonidas saved his country by a strong exertion of will, inspired by the most generous sentiment. Brutus nerved his soul to break those ties most sacred to one like him — and failed. Resolved, united hearts, freed America. The strongest exertion, the most generous concentration of will, for a similar purpose, left Poland in blood and chains at the feet of a tyrant.”

Her conclusion is that, although all outward results may fail, “it is not in the power of circumstance to prevent the earnest will from shaping round itself the character of a great, a wise, or a good man.” It was strong meat, surely, for a young girl to be feeding on such thoughts as these; such is not the diet on which mere sentimentalists and dreamers are reared.

It is a striking fact in the development of her mind, that when we next find her writing something to please her father, she is still harping on Brutus. The first composition ever published by her, so far as I know, was in the “Daily Advertiser,” in 1834. She had wished during the previous autumn to print her translation of Goethe’s “Tasso,” but had failed; and this newspaper communication was called forth by something written by George Bancroft. In a letter to Dr. Hedge (March 6, 1835), she thus describes the occurrence: —