Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/120

118 ‘1832.—I am thinking how I omitted to talk a volume to you about the “Elective Affinities.” Now I shall never say half of it, for which I, on my own account, am sorry. But two or three things I would ask: —

‘What do you think of Charlotte’s proposition, that the accomplished pedagogue must be tiresome in society?

‘Of Ottilia’s, that the afflicted, and ill-educated, are oftentimes singled out by fate to instruct others, and her beautiful reasons why?

‘And what have you thought of the discussion touching graves and monuments?

‘I am now going to dream of your sermon, and of Ottilia’s china-asters. Both shall be driven from my head to-morrow, for I go to town, allured by despatches from thence, promising much entertainment, Woe unto them if they disappoint me!

‘Consider it, I pray you, as the “nearest duty” to answer my questions, and not act as you did about the sphinx-song,’

‘I have not anybody to speak to, that does not talk common-place, and I wish to talk about such an uncommon person, — about Novalis! a wondrous youth, and who has only written one volume. That is pleasant! I feel as though I could pursue my natural mode with him, get acquainted, then make my mind easy in the belief that I know all that is to be known. And he died at twenty-nine, and, as with Körner, your feelings may be single; you will never be called upon to share his experience, and compare his future feelings with his present. And his life was so full and so still.