prevails--as for instance when she writes that she feels "that there
is plenty of room in the Universe for my faults, and as if I could not
spend time in thinking of them when so many things interest me more."
She has left the same sort of reputation as a great actress. Some of
her writing has extreme beauty, almost all of it has a real interest,
but her value, her activity, her sway (I am not sure that one can say
her charm), were personal and practical. She went to Europe, expanded
to new desires and interests, and, very poor herself, married an
impoverished Italian nobleman. Then, with her husband and child, she
embarked to return to her own country, and was lost at sea in a
terrible storm, within sight of its coasts. Her tragical death
combined with many of the elements of her life to convert her memory
into a sort of legend, so that the people who had known her well, grew
at last to be envied by later comers. Hawthorne does not appear to
have been intimate with her; on the contrary, I find such an entry as
this in the American Note-Books in 1841: "I was invited to dine at Mr.
Bancroft's yesterday, with Miss Margaret Fuller; but Providence had
given me some business to do; for which I was very thankful!" It is
true that, later, the lady is the subject of one or two allusions of a
gentler cast. One of them indeed is so pretty as to be worth
quoting:--

"After leaving the book at Mr. Emerson's, I returned through
the woods, and, entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady
reclining near the path which bends along its verge. It was
Margaret herself. She had been there the whole afternoon,
meditating or reading, for she had a book in her hand with
some strange title which I did not understand and have
forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and
was just giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of