21 JULY 1855, Page 18

WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. * THE interest excited by the

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, and a remembrance of the practical heroism of her conduct during the siege of Rome by the French, prompted us to reserve this volume for a more extended notice than we find it upon perusal to deserve, Whatever literary talent Miss Fuller possessed was marred in the expression-by an affectation of learned allusion, and an effort to be grandly philosophical, which to those who were not fascinated by her personal influence and character give to her writings a poor, rhetorical, and often ridiculous effect. Apart from the per- , nitious over-stimulating education she received from her father, and the culture of big phrases and pompous generalities fostered by her connexion With Emerson and a society in which his order of mind is the accepted belm ideal, she would have been a lively, graceful, tender, and thoughtful woman, blending a sound understanding and a warm heart with a brilliant faculty of expression. Aiming to become an Hypatia, she fails to be what Nature intended her for ; and her writings, so far as this volume gives indication of her performance, show little but unsuccessful effort. It gives her no claim in the present day to rank among distinguished female writers, though there is evidence enough of talent, and of knowledge, and of high aspiration, to explain the effect she is reputed to have produced in conversation. The prin,. cipal treatise in the volume is a string of vague declamatory pa- ragraphs on the right of woman to mental cultivation for her own sake, as an immortal soul, not as a being confined to the functions of wife, mother, or household ornament or drudge. There is nothing whatever in the treatment of this subject that is either vulgar or extravagant, nothing of Bloom- erism or licentiousness ; but the subject is feebly grasped, the style verbose and inflated, the thoughts vague and mo- notonous, the illustrations too literary, classical, and altogether far-fetched, as if the writer were desirous of showing her extensive range of reading, rather than of enforcing a matter of deep practical moment on which she felt deeply. But, consider- ing the amount of trash which is often poured out upon this sub- jeot in our day, it is no slight praise to Miss Fuller that she, with all her associations tempting her to eloquent balderdash, should have erred only in form, and have uttered nothing in substance but what is perfectly true and sound. Who in our day that thinks at all on what is presented by the social phenomena, but would acknowledge the necessity of encouraging an education for women that will render them more independent, more self-sufficing ? who would deny that the position of women is becoming more and more embarrassing in highly artificial societies, even if we look merely to the difficulties of maintenance P The question of finding proper employment for those women who do not marry is indeed becoming one of the foremost problems of our own country ; and if at present more sympathy has been excited than sound wisdom elicited with respect to it, this is only the condition of most other reforms which start from practical wants, and are not previously elaborated by speculative thinkers. Miss Fuller contributes scarcely one practical suggestion that may not be summed up in the remark that women must in this matter help themselves, by casting off the feeling which at present makes a husband the primary object in life with the majority of women, and recognizing the primary object in the development of their own moral and intellectual natures. But this appears to us moralizing of to general a scope for practical service, and much like the ordinary recommendation to invalids to exert themselves. It is the capa- city, the will that is generally wanting ; and if women willed to be more independent of men than they are now and always have been, there is nothing very definite that prevents them from so being.

• woman in the Nineteenth Century and kindred Papers relating to the Sphere, Condition, and Duties of Woman. y Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Edited by her brother, Arthur B. Fuller. With an Introduction by Horace Greely. Published by Trlibner and Co. The shorter papers in the volume are very fragmentary, and can scarcely possess much interest for any but Miss Fuller's per- sonal friends. The editor has, we think, been very ill advised in allowing the volume to be disfigured with one of the least agree- able portraits we ever encountered. It requires an effort of self- control to get rid of its mincing affected ugliness as one reads. But we remember the Boman hospitals, and know that such a noble soul must have looked far other than this to any that had eyes to see.