Margaret took charge of one of the hospitals during the siege. To the writer, this period appears the noblest of her life. The formation of the strongest human ties had immeasurably deepened and softened her nature. She moved among the wounded and dying soldiers like the “Court Lady” of Mrs. Browning’s poem. She learned all the horror of wounds and death. She insisted on going with Ossoli to his post on the night when an attack was expected in that quarter; and meeting at the Angelus, they passed together to the supposed danger as to a religious service. During the days of suspense, Margaret made her secret known to her friends in Rome. As soon as the siege was ended, the father and mother hastened to Rieti, to find their child neglected and almost dying. They nursed him back to life and health, and the three passed together one happy winter in Florence, clouded only by pecuniary anxieties--for Ossoli had, by his patriotism, lost all. Margaret’s literary work at this time was a _History of the Revolution in Italy_, which perished with her. Margaret, Ossoli, and the little Angelo sailed for America on May 17, 1850, in the barque Elizabeth, Captain Hasty. On the voyage the captain died of small-pox; Angelo took the disease, but recovered. On the morning of July 19th, the Elizabeth was wrecked in a sudden storm, striking on Fire Island beach. The sea never gave back Margaret and Ossoli. The baby Angelo was washed ashore, and lies buried at Mt. Auburn. Margaret’s works, collected after her death, are in four volumes: WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; _Art, Literature, and the Drama_; _Abroad and at Home_, and _Life Without and Life Within_. A remarkable estimate of Margaret, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published, among other extracts from his papers, by his son, has lately attracted much attention. The testimony of Hawthorne as to Margaret’s Italian life, of which he had no personal knowledge, has little value. But the conclusions of so keen a mind as to her character cannot be so easily dismissed; and this passage has been included among our extracts, that both sides of the shield may be seen. Certain of Hawthorne’s expressions go far to confirm the popular belief that Margaret’s character, as he saw it, furnished him with the hint or starting-point for his creation of Zenobia in ‘The Blithedale Romance.’ Lowell, in his stinging lines on Miranda, in ‘A Fable for Critics,’ speaks of her, “I-turn-the-crank-of-the-universe air,” and pronounces that “the whole of her being’s a capital I.” She is too often remembered thus, and only thus. Let us also picture her ministering in that “house of misery” where,--to quote lines written of another famous woman,-- “Slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Her early training.] [Sidenote: Premature development.] [Sidenote: Spectral illusions.] [Sidenote: Somnambulism.]