Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/182

180 I dismissed them; but none stirred, and we all sat for some moments, weeping. Then I went round the circle and bade each, separately, farewell.’

Margaret’s Providence journals are made extremely piquant and entertaining, by her life-like portraiture of people and events; and every page attests the scrupulous justice with which she sought to penetrate through surfaces to reality, and, forgetting personal prejudices, to apply universally the test of truth. A few sketches of public characters may suffice to show with what sagacious, all-observing eyes, she looked about her.

‘At the whig caucus, I heard Tristam Burges,—“The old bald Eagle!” His baldness increases the fine effect of his appearance, for it seems as if the locks had retreated, that the contour of his very strongly marked head might be revealed to every eye. His personnel, as well as I could see, was fitted to command respect rather than admiration. He is a venerable, not a beautiful old man.

‘He is a rhetorician, — if I could judge from this sample; style inwoven and somewhat ornate, matter frequently wrought up to a climax, manner rather declamatory, though strictly that of a gentleman and a scholar. One art in his oratory was, no doubt, very effective, before he lost force and distinctness of voice. I allude to his way, — after having reasoned a while, till he has reached the desired conclusion, — of leaning forward, with hands reposing but figure very earnest, and communicating, confidentially as it were, the result to the audience. The impression produced in former days, when those low, emphatic passages could be dis-