Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/209

Rh myself certain persons translated, illuminated. There are a few in whom I see occasionally the future being piercing, promising, — whom I can strip of all that masks their temporary relations, and elevate to their natural position. Sometimes I have not known these persons intimately, — oftener I have; for it is only in the deepest hours that this light is likely to break out. But some of those I have best befriended I cannot thus portray, and very few men I can. It does not depend at all on the beauty of their forms, at present; it is in the eye and the smile, that the hope shines through. I can see exactly how —— will look: not like this angel in the paper; she will not bring flowers, but a living coal, to the lips of the singer; her eyes will not burn as now with smothered fires, they will be ever deeper, and glow more intensely; her cheek will be smooth, but marble pale; her gestures nobly free, but few.’

Another was a lady who was devoted to landscape-painting, and who enjoyed the distinction of being the only pupil of Allston, and who, in her alliance with Margaret, gave as much honor as she received, by the security of her spirit, and by the heroism of her devotion to her friend. Her friends called her “the perpetual peace-offering,” and Margaret says of her, — ‘She is here, and her neighborhood casts the mildness and purity too of the moonbeam on the else parti-colored scene.’

There was another lady, more late and reluctantly entering Margaret’s circle, with a mind as high, and more mathematically exact, drawn by taste to Greek, as Margaret to Italian genius, tempted to do homage to Margaret's flowing expressive energy, but still more