Margaret Fuller, or the Marchioness d'Ossoli, possessed among a host of professed admirers, many grateful, loving friends, to whom her sad, untimely death was a bitter grief. These mourn also, that she left her mission unfinished, because they believe a work she had prepared "On the Revolution in Italy," (the MS. was lost with her,) would have given her enduring fame. One indication of true mental improvement she exhibited—her enthusiasm for Goethe had abated; and a friend of hers, a distinguished scholar, asserts that, "with the Reformers of the Transcendental School she had no communion, nor scarcely a point in common." Whatever she might have done, we are constrained to add, that of the books she has left, we do not believe that they are destined to hold a high place in female literature. There is no true moral life in them. The simple "Prose Hymns for Children," of Mrs. Barbauld, or the "Poems" of Jane Taylor, will have a place in the hearts and homes of the Anglo-Saxon race, as long as our language endures; but the genius of Margaret Fuller will live only while the tender remembrance of personal friendship shall hold it dear. Her fame, like that of a great actor, or singer, was dependent on her living presence,—gained more by her conversational powers than by her writings. Those who enjoyed her society declare, that her mind shone most brightly in collision with other minds, and that no adequate idea of her talents can be formed by those who never heard her talk. This was also true of Coleridge; and Dr. Johnson is certainly a greater man in Boswell's Reports than in the "Rambler." Margaret Fuller had no reporter.
FULVIA,
An extraordinary Roman lady, wife of Marc Antony, had, as Paterculus expresses it, nothing of her sex but the body; for her temper and courage breathed only policy and war. She had two husbands before she married Antony—Clodius, the great enemy of Cicero, and Curio, who was killed while fighting in Africa, on Cæsar's side, before the battle of Pharsalia. After the victory, which Octavius and Antony gained at Philippi over Brutus and Cassius, Antony went to Asia to settle the affairs of the East. Octavius returned to Rome, where, falling out with Fulvia, he could not decide the quarrel but with the sword. She retired to Præneste, and withdrew thither the senators and knights of her party; she armed herself in person, gave the word to her soldiers, and harangued them bravely.
Bold and violent as Antony was, he met his match in Fulvia. "She was a woman," says Plutarch, "not born for spinning or housewifery, not one that would be content with ruling a private husband, but capable of advising a magistrate, or ruling the general of an army." Antony had the courage, however, to shew great anger at Fulvia for levying war against Octavius; and when he returned to Rome, he treated her with so much contempt and indignation, that she went to Greece, and died there of a disease occasioned by her grief.
She participated with, and assisted her cruel husband, during the massacres of the triumvirate, and had several persons put to death, on her own authority, either from avarice or a spirit of revenge. After Cicero was beheaded, Fulvia caused his head to be brought to her, spit upon it, drawing out the tongue, which she pierced
