Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/232

Rh whose pet and play-mate he had been. It was afterwards removed to the cemetery at Mount Auburn, where, beneath a marble monument which commemorates the life and death of his parents, and his own, he alone lies buried, the only one of Margaret's treasures that ever reached the country of her birth.

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 endeavour 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. That she had faults we need not deny; nor that, like other human beings, she needs must have said and done at times what she might afterwards have wished to have better said, better done. But as an example of One who, gifted with great powers, aspired only to their noblest use; who, able to rule, sought rather to counsel and to help,—she deserves a place in the highest niche of her country's affection. As a woman who believed in women, her word is still an evangel of hope and inspiration to her sex. Her heart belonged to all of God's creatures, and most to what is noblest in them. Gray-headed men of to-day, the happy companions of her youth, grow young again while they speak of her. One of these, who is also one of her earlier biographers, still recalls her as the