Margaret Fuller Ossoli - At Home And Abroad

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The artistes form a class by themselves. Yet among them, though
seeking special aims by special means, may also be found the
lineaments of these two classes, as well as of the third, of which I
am now to speak.

This is that of the thinking American,--a man who, recognizing the
immense advantage of being born to a new world and on a virgin soil,
yet does not wish one seed from the past to be lost. He is anxious
to gather and carry back with him every plant that will bear a new
climate and new culture. Some will dwindle; others will attain a bloom
and stature unknown before. He wishes to gather them clean, free from
noxious insects, and to give them a fair trial in his new world. And
that he may know the conditions under which he may best place them in
that new world, he does not neglect to study their history in this.

The history of our planet in some moments seems so painfully mean
and little,--such terrible bafflings and failures to compensate some
brilliant successes,--such a crushing of the mass of men beneath, the
feet of a few, and these, too, often the least worthy,--such a small
drop of honey to each cup of gall, and, in many cases, so mingled that
it is never one moment in life purely tasted,--above all, so little
achieved for Humanity as a whole, such tides of war and pestilence
intervening to blot out the traces of each triumph,--that no wonder
if the strongest soul sometimes pauses aghast; no wonder if the many
indolently console themselves with gross joys and frivolous prizes.
Yes! those men _are_ worthy of admiration who can carry this cross
faithfully through fifty years; it is a great while for all the
agonies that beset a lover of good, a lover of men; it makes a soul
worthy of a speedier ascent, a more productive ministry in the next
sphere. Blessed are they who ever keep that portion of pure, generous
love with which they began life! How blessed those who have deepened
the fountains, and have enough to spare for the thirst of others! Some
such there are; and, feeling that, with all the excuses for failure,
still only the sight of those who triumph, gives a meaning to life or
makes its pangs endurable, we must arise and follow.

Eighteen hundred years of this Christian culture in these European
kingdoms, a great theme never lost sight of, a mighty idea, an
adorable history to which the hearts of men invariably cling, yet are
genuine results rare as grains of gold in the river's sandy bed! Where
is the genuine democracy to which the rights of all men are holy?
where the child-like wisdom learning all through life more and more
of the will of God? where the aversion to falsehood, in all its myriad
disguises of cant, vanity, covetousness, so clear to be read in all
the history of Jesus of Nazareth? Modern Europe is the sequel to that
history, and see this hollow England, with its monstrous wealth and
cruel poverty, its conventional life, and low, practical aims! see
this poor France, so full of talent, so adroit, yet so shallow and
glossy still, which could not escape from a false position with all
its baptism of blood! see that lost Poland, and this Italy bound down
by treacherous hands in all the force of genius! see Russia with its
brutal Czar and innumerable slaves! see Austria and its royalty that
represents nothing, and its people, who, as people, are and have
nothing! If we consider the amount of truth that has really been
spoken out in the world, and the love that has beat in private
hearts,--how genius has decked each spring-time with such splendid
flowers, conveying each one enough of instruction in its life of
harmonious energy, and how continually, unquenchably, the spark of
faith has striven to burst into flame and light up the universe,--the
public failure seems amazing, seems monstrous.

Still Europe toils and struggles with her idea, and, at this moment,
all things bode and declare a new outbreak of the fire, to destroy old
palaces of crime! May it fertilize also many vineyards! Here at this
moment a successor of St. Peter, after the lapse of near two thousand
years, is called "Utopian" by a part of this Europe, because he
strives to get some food to the mouths of the _leaner_ of his flock.
A wonderful state of things, and which leaves as the best argument
against despair, that men do not, _cannot_ despair amid such dark
experiences. And thou, my Country! wilt thou not be more true? does no
greater success await thee? All things have so conspired to teach, to
aid! A new world, a new chance, with oceans to wall in the new thought
against interference from the old!--treasures of all kinds, gold,
silver, corn, marble, to provide for every physical need! A noble,
constant, starlike soul, an Italian, led the way to thy shores, and,
in the first days, the strong, the pure, those too brave, too sincere,
for the life of the Old World, hastened to people them. A generous
struggle then shook off what was foreign, and gave the nation a
glorious start for a worthy goal. Men rocked the cradle of its hopes,
great, firm, disinterested, men, who saw, who wrote, as the basis
of all that was to be done, a statement of the rights, the _inborn_
rights of men, which, if fully interpreted and acted upon, leaves
nothing to be desired.

Yet, O Eagle! whose early flight showed this clear sight of the sun,
how often dost thou near the ground, how show the vulture in these
later days! Thou wert to be the advance-guard of humanity, the herald
of all progress; how often hast thou betrayed this high commission!
Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from
thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die
beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we
speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the
liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are
found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the
minds of our people are alert, and that talent has a free chance to
rise. This is much. But dare I further say that political ambition is
not as darkly sullied as in other countries? Dare I say that men of
most influence in political life are those who represent most virtue,
or even intellectual power? Is it easy to find names in that career of
which I can speak with enthusiasm? Must I not confess to a boundless
lust of gain in my country? Must I not concede the weakest vanity,
which bristles and blusters at each foolish taunt of the foreign
press, and admit that the men who make these undignified rejoinders
seek and find popularity so? Can I help admitting that there is as yet
no antidote cordially adopted, which will defend even that great, rich
country against the evils that have grown out of the commercial system
in the Old World? Can I say our social laws are generally better, or
show a nobler insight into the wants of man and woman? I do, indeed,
say what I believe, that voluntary association for improvement in
these particulars will be the grand means for my nation to grow, and
give a nobler harmony to the coming age. But it is only of a small
minority that I can say they as yet seriously take to heart these
things; that they earnestly meditate on what is wanted for their
country, for mankind,--for our cause is indeed, the cause of all
mankind at present. Could we succeed, really succeed, combine a deep
religious love with practical development, the achievements of genius
with the happiness of the multitude, we might believe man had now
reached a commanding point in his ascent, and would stumble and faint
no more. Then there is this horrible cancer of slavery, and the wicked
war that has grown out of it. How dare I speak of these things here?
I listen to the same arguments against the emancipation of Italy, that
are used against the emancipation of our blacks; the same arguments
in favor of the spoliation of Poland, as for the conquest of Mexico.
I find the cause of tyranny and wrong everywhere the same,--and lo! my
country! the darkest offender, because with the least excuse; forsworn
to the high calling with which she was called; no champion of the
rights of men, but a robber and a jailer; the scourge hid behind her
banner; her eyes fixed, not on the stars, but on the possessions of
other men.

How it pleases me here to think of the Abolitionists! I could never
endure to be with them at home, they were so tedious, often so narrow,
always so rabid and exaggerated in their tone. But, after all, they
had a high motive, something eternal in their desire and life; and if
it was not the only thing worth thinking of, it was really something
worth living and dying for, to free a great nation from such a
terrible blot, such a threatening plague. God strengthen them, and
make them wise to achieve their purpose!

I please myself, too, with remembering some ardent souls among the
American youth, who I trust will yet expand, and help to give soul to
the huge, over-fed, too hastily grown-up body. May they be constant!
"Were man but constant, he were perfect," it has been said; and it is
true that he who could be constant to those moments in which he has
been truly human, not brutal, not mechanical, is on the sure path to
his perfection, and to effectual service of the universe.

It is to the youth that hope addresses itself; to those who yet burn
with aspiration, who are not hardened in their sins. But I dare not
expect too much of them. I am not very old; yet of those who, in
life's morning, I saw touched by the light of a high hope, many have
seceded. Some have become voluptuaries; some, mere family men, who
think it quite life enough to win bread for half a dozen people,
and treat them, decently; others are lost through indolence and
vacillation. Yet some remain constant;

"I have witnessed many a shipwreck,
Yet still beat noble hearts."

I have found many among the youth of England, of France, of Italy,
also, full of high desire; but will they have courage and purity to
fight the battle through in the sacred, the immortal band? Of some
of them I believe it, and await the proof. If a few succeed amid the
trial, we have not lived and loved in vain.

To these, the heart and hope of my country, a happy new year! I do
not know what I have written; I have merely yielded to my feelings
in thinking of America; but something of true love must be in these
lines. Receive them kindly, my friends; it is, of itself, some merit
for printed words to be sincere.

LETTER XIX.

THE CLIMATE OF ITALY.--REVIEW OF FIRST IMPRESSIONS.--ROME IN ITS
VARIOUS ASPECTS.--THE POPE.--CEMETERY OF SANTO SPIRITO.--CEREMONIES AT
THE CHAPELS.--THE WOMEN OF ITALY.--FESTIVAL OF ST. CARLO BORROMEO.--AN
INCIDENT IN THE CHAPEL.--ENGLISH RESIDENTS IN THE SEVEN-HILLED
CITY.--MRS. TROLLOPE A RESIDENT OF FLORENCE.--THE POPE AS HE
COMMUNICATES WITH HIS PEOPLE.--THE POSITION OF AFFAIRS.--LESSER
POTENTATES.--THE INAUGURATION OF THE NEW COUNCIL.--THE CEREMONIES
THERETO APPERTAINING.--THE AMERICAN FLAG IN ROME.--A BALL.--A FEAST,
AND ITS REVERSE.--THE FUNERAL OF A COUNCILLOR.

Rome, December 17, 1847.

This 17th day of December I rise to see the floods of sunlight
blessing us, as they have almost every day since I returned to
Rome,--two months and more,--with scarce three or four days of rainy
weather. I still see the fresh roses and grapes each morning on my
table, though both these I expect to give up at Christmas.

This autumn is _something like_, as my countrymen say at home. Like
_what_, they do not say; so I always supposed they meant like their
ideal standard. Certainly this weather corresponds with mine; and
I begin to believe the climate of Italy is really what it has been
represented. Shivering here last spring in an air no better than the
cruel cast wind of Puritan Boston, I thought all the praises lavished
on

"Italia, O Italia!"

would turn out to be figments of the brain; and that even Byron,
usually accurate beyond the conception of plodding pedants, had
deceived us when he says, you have the happiness in Italy to

"See the sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow,"

and not, according to a view which exercises a withering influence on
the enthusiasm of youth in my native land, be forced to regard each
pleasant day as a _weather-breeder_.

How delightful, too, is the contrast between this time and the spring
in another respect! Then I was here, like travellers in general,
expecting to be driven away in a short time. Like others, I went
through the painful process of sight-seeing, so unnatural everywhere,
so counter to the healthful methods and true life of the mind. You
rise in the morning knowing there are a great number of objects worth
knowing, which you may never have the chance to see again. You go
every day, in all moods, under all circumstances; feeling, probably,
in seeing them, the inadequacy of your preparation for understanding
or duly receiving them. This consciousness would be most valuable if
one had time to think and study, being the natural way in which the
mind is lured to cure its defects; but you have no time; you are
always wearied, body and mind, confused, dissipated, sad. The objects
are of commanding beauty or full of suggestion, but there is no quiet
to let that beauty breathe its life into the soul; no time to follow
up these suggestions, and plant for the proper harvest. Many persons
run about Rome for nine days, and then go away; they might as well
expect to appreciate the Venus by throwing a stone at it, as hope
really to see Rome in this time. I stayed in Rome nine weeks, and came
away unhappy as he who, having been taken in the visions of the night
through some wondrous realm, wakes unable to recall anything but the
hues and outlines of the pageant; the real knowledge, the recreative
power induced by familiar love, the assimilation of its soul and
substance,--all the true value of such a revelation,--is wanting; and
he remains a poor Tantalus, hungrier than before he had tasted this
spiritual food.

No; Rome is not a nine-days wonder; and those who try to make it such
lose the ideal Rome (if they ever had it), without gaining any notion
of the real. To those who travel, as they do everything else, only
because others do, I do not speak; they are nothing. Nobody counts in
the estimate of the human race who has not a character.

For one, I now really live in Rome, and I begin to see and feel the
real Rome. She reveals herself day by day; she tells me some of her
life. Now I never go out to see a sight, but I walk every day; and
here I cannot miss of some object of consummate interest to end a
walk. In the evenings, which are long now, I am at leisure to follow
up the inquiries suggested by the day.

As one becomes familiar, Ancient and Modern Rome, at first so
painfully and discordantly jumbled together, are drawn apart to the
mental vision. One sees where objects and limits anciently wore; the
superstructures vanish, and you recognize the local habitation of so
many thoughts. When this begins to happen, one feels first truly
at ease in Rome. Then the old kings, the consuls and tribunes, the
emperors, drunk with blood and gold, the warriors of eagle sight and
remorseless beak, return for us, and the togated procession finds
room to sweep across the scene; the seven hills tower, the innumerable
temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once
more.

Ah! how joyful to see once more _this_ Rome, instead of the pitiful,
peddling, Anglicized Rome, first viewed in unutterable dismay from the
_coupe_ of the vettura,--a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses,
cheating chambermaids, vilest _valets de place_, and fleas! A Niobe
of nations indeed! Ah! why, secretly the heart blasphemed, did the sun
omit to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore her crown
fell beneath his ray? Thank Heaven, it is possible to wash away all
this dirt, and come at the marble yet.

Their the later Papal Rome: it requires much acquaintance, much
thought, much reference to books, for the child of Protestant
Republican America to see where belong the legends illustrated by rite
and picture, the sense of all the rich tapestry, where it has a united
and poetic meaning, where it is broken by some accident of history.
For all these things--a senseless mass of juggleries to the uninformed
eye--are really growths of the human spirit struggling to develop its
life, and full of instruction for those who learn to understand them.

Then Modern Rome,--still ecclesiastical, still darkened and damp in
the shadow of the Vatican, but where bright hopes gleam now amid the
ashes! Never was a people who have had more to corrupt them,--bloody
tyranny, and incubus of priestcraft, the invasions, first of
Goths, then of trampling emperors and kings, then of sight-seeing
foreigners,--everything to turn them from a sincere, hopeful, fruitful
life; and they are much corrupted, but still a fine race. I cannot
look merely with a pictorial eye on the lounge of the Roman dandy, the
bold, Juno gait of the Roman Contadina. I love them,--dandies and all?
I believe the natural expression of these fine forms will animate them
yet. Certainly there never was a people that showed a better heart
than they do in this day of love, of purely moral influence. It makes
me very happy to be for once in a place ruled by a father's love, and
where the pervasive glow of one good, generous heart is felt in every
pulse of every day.

I have seen the Pope several times since my return, and it is a real
pleasure to see him in the thoroughfares, where his passage is always
greeted as that of _the_ living soul.

The first week of November there is much praying for the dead here in
the chapels of the cemeteries. I went to Santo Spirito. This cemetery
stands high, and all the way up the slope was lined with beggars
petitioning for alms, in every attitude find tone, (I mean tone that
belongs to the professional beggar's gamut, for that is peculiar,)
and under every pretext imaginable, from the quite legless elderly
gentleman to the ragged ruffian with the roguish twinkle in his eye,
who has merely a slight stiffness in one arm and one leg. I could
not help laughing, it was such a show,--greatly to the alarm of my
attendant, who declared they would kill me, if ever they caught me
alone; but I was not afraid. I am sure the endless falsehood in which
such creatures live must make them very cowardly. We entered the
cemetery; it was a sweet, tranquil place, lined with cypresses, and
soft sunshine lying on the stone coverings where repose the houses of
clay in which once dwelt joyous Roman hearts,--for the hearts here do
take pleasure in life. There were several chapels; in one boys were
chanting, in others people on their knees silently praying for the
dead. In another was one of the groups in wax exhibited in such
chapels through the first week of November. It represented St. Carlo
Borromeo as a beautiful young man in a long scarlet robe, pure and
brilliant as was the blood of the martyrs, relieving the poor who were
grouped around him,--old people and children, the halt, the maimed,
the blind; he had called them all into the feast of love. The chapel
was lighted and draped so as to give very good effect to this group;
the spectators were mainly children and young girls, listening with
ardent eyes, while their parents or the nuns explained to them the
group, or told some story of the saint. It was a pretty scene, only
marred by the presence of a villanous-looking man, who ever and anon
shook the poor's box. I cannot understand the bad taste of choosing
him, when there were _frati_ and priests enough of expression less
unprepossessing.

I next entered a court-yard, where the stations, or different periods
in the Passion of Jesus, are painted on the wall. Kneeling before
these were many persons: here a Franciscan, in his brown robe and
cord; there a pregnant woman, uttering, doubtless, some tender
aspiration for the welfare of the yet unborn dear one; there some
boys, with gay yet reverent air; while all the while these fresh young
voices were heard chanting. It was a beautiful moment, and despite the
wax saint, the ill-favored friar, the professional mendicants, and
my own removal, wide as pole from pole, from the positron of mind
indicated by these forms, their spirit touched me, and. I prayed too;
prayed for the distant, every way distant,--for those who seem to have
forgotten me, and with me all we had in common; prayed for the dead in
spirit, if not in body; prayed for myself, that I might never walk the
earth

"The tomb of my dead self";

and prayed in general for all unspoiled and loving hearts,--no less
for all who suffer and find yet no helper.

Going out, I took my road by the cross which marks the brow of the
hill. Up the ascent still wound the crowd of devotees, and still the
beggars beset them. Amid that crowd, how many lovely, warm-hearted
women! The women of Italy are intellectually in a low place,
_but_--they are unaffected; you can see what Heaven meant them to be,
and I believe they will be yet the mothers of a great and generous
race. Before me lay Rome,--how exquisitely tranquil in the sunset!
Never was an aspect that for serene grandeur could vie with that of
Rome at sunset.

Next day was the feast of the Milanese saint, whose life has been made
known to some Americans by Manzoni, when speaking in his popular novel
of the cousin of St. Carlo, Federigo Borromeo. The Pope came in state
to the church of St. Carlo, in the Corso. The show was magnificent;
the church is not very large, and was almost filled with Papal court
and guards, in all their splendid harmonies of color. An Italian child
was next me, a little girl of four or five years, whom her mother
had brought to see the Pope. As in the intervals of gazing the child
smiled and made signs to me, I nodded in return, and asked her name.
"Virginia," said she; "and how is the Signora named?" "Margherita,"
"My name," she rejoined, "is Virginia Gentili." I laughed, but did not
follow up the cunning, graceful lead,--still I chatted and played with
her now and then. At last, she said to her mother, "La Signora e molto
cara," ("The Signora is very dear," or, to use the English equivalent,
_a darling_,) "show her my two sisters." So the mother, herself a
fine-looking woman, introduced two handsome young ladies, and with the
family I was in a moment pleasantly intimate for the hour.

Before me sat three young English ladies, the pretty daughters of
a noble Earl; their manners were a strange contrast to this Italian
graciousness, best expressed by their constant use of the pronoun
_that_. "_See that man!_" (i.e. some high dignitary of the Church,)
"Look at that dress!" dropped constantly from their lips. Ah! without
being a Catholic, one may well wish Rome was not dependent on English
sight-seers, who violate her ceremonies with acts that bespeak their
thoughts full of wooden shoes and warming-pans. Can anything be
more sadly expressive of times out of joint than the fact that Mrs.
Trollope is a resident in Italy? Yes! she is fixed permanently in
Florence, as I am told, pensioned at the rate of two thousand pounds
a year to trail her slime over the fruit of Italy. She is here in Rome
this winter, and, after having violated the virgin beauty of America,
will have for many a year her chance to sully the imperial matron of
the civilized world. What must the English public be, if it wishes to
pay two thousand pounds a year to get Italy Trollopified?

But to turn to a pleasanter subject. When the Pope entered, borne in
his chair of state amid the pomp of his tiara and his white and gold
robes, he looked to me thin, or, as the Italians murmur anxiously
at times, _consumato_, or wasted. But during the ceremony he seemed
absorbed in his devotions, and at the end I think he had become
exhilarated by thinking of St. Carlo, who was such another over the
human race as himself, and his face wore a bright glow of faith. As he
blessed the people, he raised his eyes to Heaven, with a gesture quite
natural: it was the spontaneous act of a soul which felt that moment
more than usual its relation with things above it, and sure of support
from a higher Power. I saw him to still greater advantage a little
while after, when, riding on the Campagna with a young gentleman who
had been ill, we met the Pope on foot, taking exercise. He often quits
his carriage at the gates and walks in this way. He walked rapidly,
robed in a simple white drapery, two young priests in spotless purple
on either side; they gave silver to the poor who knelt beside the way,
while the beloved Father gave his benediction. My companion knelt;
he is not a Catholic, but he felt that "this blessing would do him
no harm." The Pope saw at once he was ill, and gave him a mark of
interest, with that expression of melting love, the true, the only
charity, which assures all who look on him that, were his power equal
to his will, no living thing would ever suffer more. This expression
the artists try in vain to catch; all busts and engravings of him are
caricatures; it is a magnetic sweetness, a lambent light that plays
over his features, and of which only great genius or a soul tender as
his own would form an adequate image.

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