Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/251

Rh dank and dirty ground I thought she had cast aside the slough of her past life, and began a new existence beneath the sun of a true Ideal.

‘But here (in the Lettres d’un Voyageur) what do I see? An unfortunate bewailing her loneliness, bewailing her mistakes, writing for money! She has genius, and a manly grasp of mind, but not a manly heart! Will there never be a being to combine a man’s mind and woman's heart, and who yet finds life too rich to weep over? Never?

‘When I read in Leone Lioni the account of the jeweller's daughter's life with her mother, passed in dress and in learning to be looked at when dressed, avec un front impassible, it reminded me exceedingly of ——, and her mother. What a heroine she would be for Sand! She has the same fearless softness with Juliet, and a sportive naïveté, a mixture of bird and kitten, unknown to the dupe of Lioni.

‘If I were a man, and wished a wife, as many do, merely as an ornament, or silken toy, I would take —— as soon as any I know. Her fantastic, impassioned, and mutable nature would yield an inexhaustible amusement. She is capable of the most romantic actions; — wild as the falcon, and voluptuous as the tuberose, — yet she has not in her the elements of romance, like a deeper and less susceptible nature. My cold and reasoning E., with her one love lying, perhaps, never to be unfolded, beneath such sheaths of pride and reserve, would make a far better heroine.

‘Both these characters are natural, while S. and T. are naturally factitious, because so imitative, and her mother differs from Juliet and her mother, by the impulse a single strong character gave them. Even at this distance