Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/112

110 ‘As regards crime, we cannot understand what we have not already felt; — thus, all crimes have formed part of our minds. We do but recognize one part of ourselves in the worst actions of others. When you take the subject in this light, do you not incline to consider the capacity for action as something widely differing from the experience of a feeling?’

‘How beautiful the life of Benvenuto Cellini! How his occupations perpetually impelled to thought, — to gushings of thought naturally excited!’

‘Father lectured me for looking satirical when the man of Words spake, and so attentive to the man of Truth,— that is, of God.’

Margaret used often to talk about the books which she and I were reading.

. ‘I think you will be more and more satisfied with Godwin. He has fully lived the double existence of man, and he casts the reflexes on his magic mirror from a height where no object in life’s panorama can cause one throb of delirious hope or grasping ambition. At any rate, if you study him, you may know all he has to tell. He is quite free from vanity, and conceals not miserly any of his treasures from the knowledge of posterity.

. ‘I am swallowing by gasps that cauldrony beverage of selfish passion and morbid taste, the letters of M’lle D'Espinasse. It is good for me. How odious is the abandonment of passion, such as this, unshaded by pride or delicacy, unhal-