Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/215

200 the very opposite of that which Margaret had best known and most admired. To one wearied with the over-intellectuality and restless aspiration of the accomplished New Englander of that time, 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. In her husband she found its most worthy features, and her heart, wearied with long seeking and wandering, rested at last in the confidence of a simple and faithful attachment.

She writes from Florence: “My love for Ossoli is most pure and tender; nor has anyone, except my mother or little children, loved me so genuinely as he does. To sore, I have been obliged to make myself known. Others have loved me with a mixture of fancy and enthusiasm, excited at my talent of embellishing life. But Ossoli loves me from simple affinity; he loves to be with me, and to serve and soothe me."

And in another letter she says: “Ossoli will be a good father. He has very little of what is called intellectual development, but has unspoiled instincts, affections pure and constant, and a quiet sense of duty which, to me who have seen much of the great faults in characters of enthusiasm and genius, seems of highest value."

Some reminiscences contributed by the accomplished littérateur, William Henry Hurlbut, will help to complete the dim portrait of the Marchese:—

“The frank and simple recognition of his wife's singular nobleness, which he always displayed, was the best evidence that his own nature was of a fine and noble strain. And those who knew him best are, I believe, unanimous in testifying that his character did