FRANCOIS DOMINique Rouquette, the brother of the preceding, is also an author. He was born January 2, 1810, at New Orleans, educated there under Prof. Rochefort at the Orleans college, and pursued his classical studies at Nantes, in France. In 1828 he returned to the United States; studied law with Rawle, the author of the work on the Constitution of the United States, at Philadelphia; but preferring the profession of literature, returned to France, where he published a volume of poetry, Les Meschac b ́ennes, and was couraged by Beranger, Victor Hugo, Barthelemy, and others. M. Rouquette has led the life of a traveller or of retirement, and has prepared a work on the Choctaw Nation, which he proposes to publish in French and English, as he writes with ease in both languages.

JONES VERY

en

Is the author of a volume of Essays and Poems published in Boston in 1839. It contains three articles in prose on Epic Poetry, Shakespeare, and Hamlet, and a collection of Poems, chiefly sonnets, which are felicitous in their union of thought and emotion. They are expressions of the spiritual life of the author, and in a certain metaphysical vein and simplicity, their love of nature, and sincerity of utterance, remind us of the meditations of the philosophical and pious writers in the old English poetry of the seventeenth century. The subtle essay on Shakespeare illustrates the universality of his genius by a condition of the higher Christian life.

Jones

Cones Very

The author of these productions is a native and resident of Salem, Massachusetts. His father was a sea captain, with whom he made several voyages to Europe. Upon the death of this parent he prepared himself for college, and was a graduate of Harvard of 1836, where he became for awhile a tutor of Greek. "While he he.d this office," says Griswold, "a religious enthusiasm took possession of his mind, which gradually produced so great a change in him, that his friends withdrew him from Cambridge, and he returned to Salem, where he wrote most of the poems in the collection of his writings."*

TO THE PAINTED COLUMBINE.

Bright image of the early years

When glowed my cheek as red as thou,
And life's dark throng of cares and fears
Were swift-winged shadows o'er my sunny brow!

Thou blushest from the painter's page,
Robed in the minnie tints of art;

But Nature's hand in youth's green age
With fairer hues first traced thee on my heart.

The morning's blush, she made it thine,
The morn's sweet breath, she gave it thee,
And in thy look, my Columbine!
Each fond-remembered spot she bade me see.
I see the hill's far-gazing head,
Where gay thou noddest in the gale;
I hear light-bounding footsteps tread
The grassy path that winds along the vale.

Poets and Poetry of America.

I hear the voice of woodland song

Break from each bush and well-known tree, And on light pinions borne along,

Comes back the laugh from childhood's heart of glee.
O'er the dark rock the dashing brook,
With look of anger, leaps again,
And, hastening to each flowery nook,
Its distant voice is heard far down the glen.

Fair child of art! thy charms decay,
Touched by the withered hand of Time;
And hushed the music of that day,
When my voice mingled with the streamlet's chime;
But in my heart thy cheek of bloom
Shall live when Nature's smile has fled;
And, rich with memory's sweet perfume,
Shall o'er her grave thy tribute incense shed.
There shalt thou live and wake the glee
That echoed on thy native hill;
And when, loved flower! I think of thee,
My infant feet will seem to seek thee still.

THE WIND-FLOWER.

Thou lookest up with meek confiding eye
Upon the clouded smile of April's face,
Unharmed though Winter stands uncertain by
Eyeing with jealous glance each opening grace.
Thou trustest wisely! in thy faith arrayed
More glorious thou than Israel's wisest King;
Such faith was his whom men to death betrayed
As thine who hear'st the timid voice of Spring,
While other flowers still hide them from her call
Along the river's brink and meadow bare.
These will I seek beside the stony wall,
And in thy trust with childlike heart would share,
O'erjoyed that in thy early leaves I find

A lesson taught by him who loved all human kind.

THE NEW BIRTH.

'Tis a new life;-thoughts move not as they did
With slow uncertain steps across my mind,
In thronging haste fast pressing on they bid
The portals open to the viewless wind
That comes not save when in the dust is laid
The crown of pride that gilds each mortal brow,
And from before man's vision melting fade
The heavens and earth;-their walls are falling

now,

Fast crowding on, each thought asks utterance strong;

Storm-lifted waves swift rushing to the shore,
On from the sea they send their shouts along,
Back through the cave-worn rocks their thunders

roar;

And I a child of God by Christ made free Start from death's slumbers to Eternity.

DAY.

Day! I lament that none can hymn thy praise In fitting strains, of all thy riches bless; Though thousands sport them in thy golden rays, Yet none like thee their Maker's name confess. Great fellow of my being! woke with me Thou dost put on thy dazzling robes of light, And onward from the east go forth to free Thy children from the bondage of the night; I hail thee, pilgrim! on thy lonely way, Whose looks on all alike benignant shine; A child of light, like thee, I cannot stay, But on the world I bless must soon decline, New rising still, though setting to mankind, And ever in the eternal West my dayspring find.

NIGHT.

I thank thee, Father, that the night is near When I this conscious being may resign; Whose only task thy words of love to hear, And in thy acts to find each act of mine; A task too great to give a child like me, The myriad-handed labors of the day, Too many for my closing eyes to see, Thy words too frequent for my tongue to say; Yet when thou see'st me burthened by thy love, Each other gift more lovely then appears, For dark-robed night comes hovering from above, And all thine other gifts to me endears; And while within her darkened couch I sleep, Thine eyes untired above will constant vigils keep.

THE LATTER RAIN.

The latter rain,-it falls in anxious haste
Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare,
Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste,
As if it would each root's lost strength repair;
But not a blade grows green as in the Spring,
No swelling twig puts forth its thickening leaves;
The robins only 'mid the harvests sing
Pecking the grain that scatters from the sheaves;
The rain falls still,-the fruit all ripened drops,
It pierces chestnut burr and walnut shell,
The furrowed fields disclose the yellow crops,
Each bursting pod of talents used can tell,
And all that once received the early rain
Declare to man it was not sent in vain.

NATURE.

The bubbling brook doth leap when I come by,
Because my feet find measure with its call,
The birds know when the friend they love is nigh,
For I am known to them both great and small;
The flower that on the lovely hill-side grows
Expects me there when Spring its bloom has given;
And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows,
And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven;
For he who with his Maker walks aright,
Shall be their lord as Adam was before;
His ear shall catch each sound with new delight,
Each object wear the dress that then it wore;
And he, as when erect in soul he stood,
Hear from his Father's lips that all is good.

THE PRAYER.

Wilt thou not visit me?

The plant beside me feels thy gentle dew;
And every blade of grass I see,
From thy deep earth its moisture drew.

Wilt thou not visit me?

Thy morning calls on me with cheering tone;
And every hill and tree

Lend but one voice, the voice of Thee alone.

Come, for I need thy love,

More than the flower the dew, or grass the rain
Come gentle as thy holy dove,

And let me in thy sight rejoice to live again.

I will not hide from them,

When thy storms come, though fierce may be their wrath;

But bow with leafy stem,

And strengthened follow on thy chosen path.

Yes, Thou wilt visit me;

Nor plant nor tree thy eye delight so well, As when from sin set free

My spirit loves with thine in peace to dwell,

MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI

MARGARET FULLER, whose native disposition, studies, association with her contemporaries, and remarkable fate, will secure her a permanent place among the biographies of literary women, was born in Cambridgeport, Mass., the 23d of May, 1810. In a chapter of autobiography which was found among her papers, she speaks of her father as a working lawyer (he was also a politician and member of Congress), with the ordinary activities of men of his class; but of her mother as of a delicate, sensitive, spontaneous nature. During her early years the whole attention of Margaret was confined to books. She was tanght the Latin and English grammar at the same time, and began to read the former language at six years of age. Her father set her this task-work of study, which soon grew into a necessity. At fifteen she describes her day's performances to a friend. She was studying Greek, French, and Italian literature, Scottish metaphysics-we may be sure a full share of English reading—and writing a critical journal of the whole at night. The result of this was a forced product of the parental discipline; but it would have been no product at all without a vigorous, generous nature. This the pupil possessed. Her temperament, bold and confident, assimilated this compulsory education; and .she extracted a passionate admiration for Rome out of her Latin studies. The passage in which she records this is noticeable as an illustration of her character:

In accordance with this discipline in heroic common sense, was the influence of those great Romans, whose thoughts and lives were my daily food during those plastic years. The genius of Rome displayed itself in Character, and scarcely needed an occasional wave of the torch of thought to show its lineaments, so marble strong they gleamed in every light. Who, that has lived with those men, but admires the plain force of fact, of thought passed into action? They take up things with their naked hands. There is just the man, and the block he casts before you,-no divinity, no demon, no unfulfilled aim, but just the man and Rome, and what he did for Rome. Everything turns your attention to what a man can become, not by yielding himself freely to impressions, not by letting nature play freely through him, but by a single thought, an earnest purpose, an indomitable will, by hardihood, self-command, and force of expression. Architecture was the art in which Rome excelled, and this corresponds with the feeling these men of Rome excite. They did not grow,-they built themselves up, or were built up by the fate of Rome, as a temple for Jupiter Stator. The ruined Roman sits among the ruins; he flies to no green garden; he does not look to heaven; if his intent is defeated, if he is less than he meant to be, he lives no more. The names which end in “us,” seem to speak with lyric cadence. That measured cadence,-that tramp and march-which are not stilted, because they indicate real force, yet which seem so when compared with any other lauguage,―make Latin a study in itself of mighty influence. The language alone, without the literature, would give one the thought of Rome. Man present in nature, commanding nature too sternly to be inspired by it, standing like the rock amid the sea, or moving like the fire over the land, either impassive or irresistible; knowing not the soft mediums or fine flights of life, but by the force which he expresses, piercing to the centre.

We are never better understood than when we speak of a "Roman virtue," a "Roman outline." There is somewhat indefinite, somewhat yet unful filled in the thought of Greece, of Spain, of modern Italy; but RoME! it stands by itself, a clear Word. The power of will, the dignity of a fixed purpose is what it utters Every Roman was an Emperor. It is well that the infallible church should have been founded on this rock; that the presumptuous Peter should hold the keys, as the conquering Jove did before his thunderbolts, to be seen of all the world. The Apollo tends flocks with Admetus; Christ teaches by the lonely lake, or plucks wheat as he wanders through the fields some Sabbath morning. They never come to this stronghold; they could not have breathed freely where all became stone as soon as spoken, where divine youth found no horizon for its all-promising glance, but every thought put on before it dared issue to the day in action, its toga virilis.

Suckled by this wolf, man gains a different complexion from that which is fed by the Greek honey. He takes a noble bronze in camps and battle-fields; the wrinkles of councils well beseem his brow, and the eye cuts its way like the sword. The Eagle should never have been used as a symbol by any other nation: it belonged to Rome.

The history of Rome abides in mind, of course, more than the literature. It was degeneracy for a Roman to use the pen; his life was in the day. The "vaunting" of Rome, like that of the North American Indians, is her proper literature. A man rises; he tells who he is, and what he has done; he speaks of his country and her brave men; he knows that a conquering god is there, whose agent is his own right hand; and he should end like the Indian, "I have no more to say."

It never shocks us that the Roman is self-conscious. One wants no universal truths from him, no philosophy, no creation, but only his life, his Roman life felt in every pulse, realized in every gesture. The universal heaven takes in the Roman only to make us feel his individuality the more. The Will, the Resolve of Man!-it has been expressed,-fully expressed!

I steadily loved this ideal in my childhood, and this is the cause, probably, why I have always felt that man must know how to stand firm on the ground, before he can fly. In vain for me are men more, if they are less, than Romans. Dante was far greater than any Roman, yet I feel he was right to take the Mantuan as his guide through hell, and to heaven.

This education acting upon a sensitive nature made excitement a necessity. Her school life, described by herself in the sketch of Mariana in her book the Summer on the Lakes, appears a constant effort to secure activity for herself and the notice of others by fantastic conduct. One of her companions at Cambridge, the Rev. F. II. Hedge, then a student of Harvard, describes her at thirteen: "A child in years, but so precocious in her mental and physical developments, that she passed for eighteen or twenty. Agreeably to this estimate, she had her place in society as a lady full-grown." At twenty-two, led by the review articles of Carlyle, she entered upon the study of German literature, reading the works of Goethe, Schiller, Tieck, Novalis, and Richter, within the year. She was at this time fond of society, as she always was. Her admiration of the personal qualities of others was strong and undisguised. In possession of power and au

thority and self-will, in the world of books, nature was not to be defeated: she was dependent to a proportionate degree upon the sympathy of others. In this way she became a kind of female confessor, listening to the confidences and experiences of her young friends.

In 1833 she removed with her father to Groton. His death occurred there shortly after, in 1885, and the following year Margaret Fuller became a teacher in Boston of Latin and French in Mr. Alcot's school, and had her own æsthetic classes of young ladies in French, German, and Italian, with whom she read portions of Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, Tasso, Ariosto, and Dante.

In 1837 she became principal teacher in the Greene-street school at Providence, "to teach the elder girls her favorite branches."

These literary engagements are of less consequence in her biography than her friendships-of the story of which the memoirs published after her death are mostly composed. She became acquainted with Miss Martineau on her visit to this country in 1835. Her intimacy with Emerson grew up in visits to Concord about the same time. His notices of her conversation and spiritual refinements are graphic. Her conversational powers, in the familiarity of the congenial society at Concord, were freely exercised. Emerson says, "the day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory; and I, who knew her intimately for ten years-from July, 1836, till August, 1846, when she sailed for Europe-never saw her without surprise at her new powers." Nor was this charm confined to her philosophical friends: she had the art of drawing out her humblest companions. Her mind, with all its fine culture, was essentially manly, giving a common-sense, dogmatic tone to her remarks. It is noticeable how large a space criticism occupies in her writings. It is her chief province; and criticism as exhibited by her pen or words, whether antagonistic or otherwise, is but another name for sympathy.

The Providence arrangement does not appear to have lasted long. She soon took up her residence in Boston or its vicinity, employing herself in 1839 in a species of lectureship or class of ladies-they were called Conversations-in which German philosophy, æsthetic culture of the Fine Arts, etc., were made the topics of instruction. These exercises are thus described "by a very competent witness," in Mr. Emerson's portion of the Memoirs, in a few sentences, which show the spirit in which they were received by her admirers:-"Margaret used to come to the conversations very well dressed, and altogether looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent, from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess, and from the gracefulness with which they were brought down, at last, to a possible level for others to follow. She made a pause, and invited the others to come in. Of course, it was not easy for every one to venture her remark, after an eloquent discourse, and in the presence of twenty superior women, who were all inspired. But whatever was said, Margaret knew how to seize the good meaning of it with hospitality, and

to make the speaker feel glad, and not sorry, that she had spoken."

She also employed herself at this time, as afterwards, in composition. She published in 1889 a translation of Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, and in 1841 the Letters of Gunderode and Bettine. The two first volumes of the Dial were edited by her in 1840-41. For this quarterly publication, supported by the writings of Emerson and his friends, she wrote papers on Goethe, Beethoven, the Rhine and Romaic ballads, and the poems of Sterling. The Dial made a reputation for itself and its conductors; but they might have starved on its products. Emerson tells us that "as editor she received a compensation which was intended to be two hundred dollars per annum, but which, I fear, never reached even that amount."

In 1843 she travelled to the West, to Lake Superior and Michigan, and published an account of the journey, full of subtle reflection, and with some studies of the Indian character, in the book entitled Summer on the Lakes.

1.1. Julle

In 1844 Margaret Fuller came to New York, induced by an offer of well paid, regular employment upon the Tribune newspaper. She resided in the family of Mr. Greeley, in a picturesquely situated house on the East river, one of the last footholds of the old rural beauties of the island falling before the rapid mercantile encroachments of the city. Here she wrote a series of somewhat sketchy but always forcible criticisms on the higher literature of the day, a complete collection of which would add to her reputation. A portion of them were included in the volume from her pen, Papers on Literature and Art, published in New York in 1846. Her work entitled Woman in the Nineteenth Century was published at this time from the Tribune office.

In the spring of 1846 she accompanied her friends, Mr. Marcus Spring of Brooklyn, New York, and his wife to Europe. Her contributions to the Tribune were continued in letters from England and the Continent. She saw the chief literary celebrities, Wordsworth, De Quincey, Chalmers, and Carlyle. At Paris she became in

timate with George Sand. At Rome she took part in the hopes and revolutionary movements of Mazzini, and when the revolution broke out was appointed by the Roman commissioner for the service of the wounded, during the siege by the French troops, to the charge of the hospital of the Fate-Bene Fratelli. In a letter to Emerson dated June, 1849, she describes her visits to the sick and wounded, and her walks with the convalescents in the beautiful gardens of the Pope's palace on the Quirinal:-"The gardener plays off all his water-works for the defenders of the country, and gathers flowers for me, their friend." At this time she acquainted her mother with her marriage.

Shortly after her arrival at Rome, in 1847, she had been separated on the evening of Holy Thurs day from her companions at vespers in St. Peter's. A stranger, an Italian, seeing her perplexity, offered his assistance. This was the son of the Marquis Ossoli. The acquaintance was continued, and Ossoli offered his hand. He was at first refused, but afterwards they were married in December, after the death of his father. The marriage was for a while kept secret, on the ground that the avowal of his union with a person well known as a liberal would render him liable to exile by the government, while he might, by secresy, be ready to avail himself of employment under the new administration then looked forward to. September 5, 1848, their child, Angelo, was born at Rieti among the mountains.

The fortunes of the revolution being now broken by the occupation of the French, Ossoli with his wife and child left Rome on their way to America. They passed some time in Florence, and on the 17th May, 1850, embarked from Leghorn in the ship Elizabeth, bound for New York. The captain fell ill of small-pox, and died the 3d of June, off Gibraltar. On the 9th they set sail again; the child sickened of the disease and recovered; on the 15th of July the vessel was off the Jersey coast, and the passengers made their preparations for arriving in port the next day. That night the wind increased to a gale of great violence. The ship was driven past Rockaway to the beach of Fire Island, where, early on the morning of the 16th, she struck upon the sand. The bow was elevated and the passengers took refuge in the forecastle, the sea sweeping over the vessel. Some of the passengers were saved by floating ashore on a plank. One of them, Horace Sumner of Boston, perished in the attempt. It was proposed to Margaret to make the trial. She would not be separated from her husband and child, but would wait for the life-boat. It never came. The forecastle became filled with water. The small party left went on the deck by the foremast. A sea struck the quarter. The vessel was entirely broken up. The dead body of the child floated to the shore; the husband and wife were lost in the sea. This happened at nine o'clock in the morning, in mid-summer of the year, and at a place the usual resort at that time of pleasureloving citizens. As if to enhance the sudden contrast of life and death the disaster took place within full sight of the people on the shore. The simple expedient of passing a rope to the land, attached to a barrel, at the proper time, might, one of the most experienced of those present told us, have

saved every life: but the captain was not there.

It was known that Madame Ossoli had with her the manuscript of a History of the Revolution in Italy, which her study of the people, her knowledge of the leaders, her love of freedom, and participation in the struggle, well qualified her to write. Diligent search was made for it among the property which came ashore from the wreck, but it could not be found. The waves had closed over that too which might long have survived the longest term of life.

So perished this intellectual, sympathetic, kind, generous, noble-hearted woman.

The materials for the study of her life are ample in the jointly prepared Memoirs by her friends, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, the Rev. F. H. Hedge, the Rev. W. H. Channing, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. These able writers have taken separate portions of her career, with which they have been particularly acquainted, for illustration, and the result is a biography preservative of far more than is usually kept for posterity of the peculiar moods and humors of so individual a life.

A DIALOGUE.

POET. Approach me not, man of cold, steadfast eye and compressed lips. At thy coming nature shrouds herself in dull mist; fain would she hide her sighs and smiles, her buds and fruits even in a veil of snow. For thy unkindly breath, as it pierces her mystery, destroys its creative power. The birds draw back into their nests, the sunset hues into their clouds, when you are seen in the distance with your tablets all ready to write them into prose.

CRITIC. O my brother, my benefactor, do not thus repel me. Interpret me rather to our common mother; let her not avert her eyes from a younger child. I know I can never be dear to her as thou art, yet I am her child, nor would the fated revolu tions of existence be fulfilled without my aid.

POEг. How meanest thou? What have thy measurements, thy artificial divisions and classifications, to do with the natural revolutions? In all real growths there is a "give and take" of unerring accuracy; in all the acts of thy life there is falsity, for all are negative. Why do you not receive and produce in your kind, like the sunbeam and the rose? Then new light would be brought out, were it but the life of a weed, to bear witness to the healthful beatings of the divine heart. But this perpetual analysis, comparison, and classification, never add one atom to the sum of existence.

CRITIC. I understand you.

POET. Yes, that is always the way. You under stand me, who never have the arrogance to pretend that I understand myself.

CRITIC. Why should you?-that is my province. I am the rock which gives you back the echo. I am the tuning-key, which harmonizes your instrument, the regulator to your watch. Who would speak, if no ear heard? nay, if no mind knew what the ear heard?

POET. I do not wish to be heard in thought but in love, to be recognised in judgment but in life. I would pour forth my melodies to the rejoicing winds. I would scatter my seed to the tender earth. I do not wish to hear in prose the meaning of my melody. I do not wish to see my seed neatly put away beneath a paper label. Answer in new peans to the soul of our souls. Wake me to sweeter childhood by a fresher growth. At present you are but an ex

crescence produced by my life; depart, self-conscious Egotist, I know you not.

CRITIC. Dost thou so adore Nature, and yet deny me? Is not Art the child of Nature, Civilization of Manf As Religion into Philosophy, Poetry into Criticism, Life into Science, Love into Law, so did thy lyric in natural order transmute itself into my review.

POET. Review! Science! the very etymology speaks. What is gained by looking again at what has already been seen? What by giving a technical classification to what is already assimilated with the mental life?

CRITIC. What is gained by living at all? POET. Beauty loving itself,-Happiness! CRITIC. Does not this involve consciousness? POET. Yes! consciousness of Truth manifested in the individual form.

CRITIC. Since consciousness is tolerated, how will you limit it?

POET. By the instincts of my nature, which rejects yours as arrogant and superfluous.

CRITIC. And the dictate of my nature compels me to the processes which you despise, as essential to my peace. My brother (for I will not be rejected), I claim my place in the order of nature. The Word descended and became flesh for two purposes, to organize itself, and to take cognizance of its organization. When the first Poet worked alone, he paused between the cantos to proclaim, "It is very good." Dividing himself among men, he made some to create, and others to proclaim the merits of what is created.

POET. Well! if you were content with saying, "it is very good;" but you are always crying, "it is very bad." or ignorantly prescribing how it might be better. What do you know of it? Whatever is good could not be otherwise than it is. Why will you not take what suits you, and leave the rest? True communion of thought is worship, not criticism. Spirit will not flow through the sluices nor endure the locks of canals.

CRITIC. There is perpetual need of protestantism in every church. If the church be catholic, yet the priest is not infallible. Like yourself, I sigh for a perfectly natural state, in which the only criticism shall be tacit rejection, even as Venus glides not into the orbit of Jupiter, nor do the fishes seek to dwell in fire. But as you soar towards this as a Maker, so do I toil towards the same aim as a Seeker. Your pinions will not upbear you towards it in steady flight. I must often stop to cut away the brambles from my path. The law of my being is on me, and the ideal standard seeking to be realized in my mind bids me demand perfection from all I see. To say how far each object answers this demand is my criticism.

POET. If one object does not satisfy you, pass on to another, and say nothing.

CRITIC. It is not so that it would be well with me. I must penetrate the secret of my wishes, verify the justice of my reasonings. I must examine, compare, sift, and winnow; what can bear this or deal remains to me as pure gold. I cannot pass on till I know what I feel and why. An object that defies my utmost rigor of scrutiny is a new step ou the stair I am making to the Olympian tables.

POET. I think you will not know the gods when you get there, if I may judge from the cold presumption I feel in your version of the great facts of literature.

CRITIC. Statement of a part always looks like ig norance, when compared with the whole, yet may promise the whole. Consider that a part implies the whole, as the everlasting No the everlasting