The Friendships of Women

Friendships of Mothers and Daughters

The first species of exclusively female friendship is that which exists between mother and daughter. The maternal tie of organic instinct and moral guardianship on the one side, and the filial tie of respect, dependence, and gratitude on the other, form the ordinary connection of mothers and daughters. In exceptional cases, these bonds of affectionate protection and pious love are lifted out of the faded commonplace of custom by deep mutual appreciation and sympathy, broadened and brightened into a friendship emphatically worthy of the name. The sight of a mother and a daughter thus happily paired is beautiful and holy. And there are far more examples of it than the world knows.

Probably, the best representation of this union is the one afforded by Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Grignan. These celebrated ladies, among the most brilliant of the long roll of distinguished French women, were possessed of every charm of person and spirit, fascinating grace, dignity, intelligence, accomplishments, purity, and generosity. In their early years, they were inseparable. They hung on each other’s looks and motions. The wish of the mother was the instinctive law of the child. The beautiful image of the daughter, loved to the verge of distraction, seemed gradually to occupy the whole being of the mother. For, as Madame de Sévigné successively lost her idolized husband and her most endeared friend, the unhappy Fouquet, the maternal instinct seemed to take up into itself all the baffled or bereaved passions, and, magnified and vivified by the appropriation, to transform itself into a friendship which almost annihilated her individuality, beneath the ideal stamp and transfused impression of that of her daughter. The pain of parting from her was like the anguish of tearing the soul out of the body. During the period of their separation, memory took the place of sight; ideas, of actions; correspondence, of conversation. She constantly writes to the absent one, and seems to live only for this. Every observation, reflection, emotion, finds a place in the tender and immortal record. She spares no pains to make her letters interesting to the receiver. She writes, “I shall live for the purpose of loving you. I abandon my life to that occupation.” It is affecting to note the agitation of the mother at every ruffle on the life of the daughter. In tracing the thoughts, feelings, events, that vibrated across the relation between them, one can hardly escape the conviction, that the soul of the younger friend was ideally superimposed on the self-abnegating soul of the elder friend, and governed it, as the mental processes of a magnetized person are said to be superseded by the personality and states of consciousness of the magnetizer. A single passion has seldom so consistently ruled a being as the affection of Madame de Sévigné for her daughter; and it was returned by the latter with all the fervor of which her less ardent nature was capable. The collection of letters in which the sentiment and its manifold workings are enshrined, created, as Lamartine says in his eloquent sketch, a new species of literature, and formed an epoch in authorship. “The genius of the hearth held the pen, and the heart flowed through it. The literature of the family, or confidential conversation written out, began. It is the classic of closed doors.”

This friendship had an earthly close worthy of its progress. For, when Madame de Grignan was attacked by a dangerous and lingering malady, her mother watched incessantly by her bedside, as she had formerly watched by her cradle. After three months of sleepless care, she had the joy of seeing the beloved patient return to life; but she had given her own in exchange. “Intense affection alone seemed to have enabled her to retain existence until the convalescence of Madame de Grignan, when it fled, having fulfilled its last object upon earth. She expired in the arms of her daughter, and surrounded by her weeping grandchildren. Her last glance fell upon the being enshrined in her soul, and restored to health by her care. She was interred in the chapel of the Chateau de Grignan. But her letters are her true and living sepulchre. Grignan holds her body; but her correspondence contains her soul.”

Another fine example of a noble and glowing friendship between a mother and her daughter is furnished by Madame de Rambouillet and Julie d’Angenne. They were equally endowed with loveliness of person, attractiveness of mind, elevation of character, and perfection of manners. They were the magic centres of every circle in which they moved together. When the plague, of which all Paris was in terror, seized Madame de Rambouillet’s youngest son, she nursed him; and Julie shut herself in the room with them till the boy died. The sweet harmony of their souls and intercourse was unmarred, unalloyed, in life and in death. Some mothers make slaves of their daughters; some are slaves to them; some even find rivals in them. Some are prevented from forming friendships, by tyranny on one side or by insubordination on the other; by selfishness there or by heartlessness here. Envy, vanity, fickleness, spite, festering incompatibilities of character, often prove fatal in these veiled and intimate relations. But when the characters of mother and daughter are happy accords, or accurate counterparts, rich, lofty, ardent, and disinterested, the solidly assured friendship which results, is a felicity scarcely inferior to any known on earth. The example of such a relation between Mrs. Browne and Mrs. Hemans was charming. Its inexpressible preciousness to the sensitive soul of that sweet singer, every reader of sensibility, who traces the numerous allusions to it in her letters and poems, will recognize with emotion. There is much in the relation between a mother and the wife of her son to create peculiar interest and love. And they, allowing for exceptions of an opposite character, become the warmest friends in unnumbered instances. A better example can hardly be desired than is furnished in the sweet pastoral tale of Hebrew Scripture. What passage in literature is more pervaded with the pathetic charm of the affection of the early world than the story of Naomi and her widowed daughter-in-law, Ruth, the Moabitish ancestress of David and of Jesus? Ruth said, “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; and thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I he buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.” So they two, Naomi and Ruth, went till they came to Bethlehem; and there did they sojourn together until the end.

All the near ties of kindred, by the closeness of association and sympathy naturally consequent on them, must often prove the fostering occasions or incentives of warm and lasting friendships between those whom they draw together. In thousands of families there is an aunt who becomes to her nieces a friend only less intimate and trusted than the mother herself. Such was the case with Mrs. Barhauld and her brother’s only daughter, Lucy Aikin. In a multitude of families there are likewise cousins bound to each other by bonds as numerous and glowing as those of sisterhood. So, too, there are countless examples in which a wife and the sister of her husband grow into the most ardent sincerity of friendship. An interesting instance of this union is celebrated by Pliny in his famous panegyric of Trajan. Pliny says it is a wonder for two ladies of the same quality to dwell in the same place, without feuds or contention. But he declares that Plotina and Marciana, the wife and the sister of Trajan, never disputed over the right of precedence; but had the same intentions, and followed the same course of life; nay, were scarcely to be distinguished as two different persons.

Mrs. Hemans writes, on the eve of the removal of her brother George to Ireland, “I fear I shall feel very lonely and brotherless, as I have always been one of a large family circle before. I could laugh or cry when I think of the helplessness I have contrived to accumulate.” And then she adds, with reference to her sister-in-law, “In her I shall be deprived of the only real companion I ever had. She is to leave me on Saturday next; and I am haunted by those melancholy words of St. Leon’s guest, the unhappy old man with his immortal gifts, Alone! Alone!”

THERE is also another unspeakably important class of womanly friendships; namely, those subsisting between sisters. In the fourth book of the Aeneid, Virgil powerfully paints this union in the example of Dido and Anna. Scott has drawn an impressive picture of such a friendship, in the characters of Minna and Brenda Troil; and a still more affecting one in the story of Jeannie and Effie Deans. Thrown into constant intimacy, with an endearing community of inheritance, duties, and associations-multitudes of sisters must become ardent friends. The failure of that result, in consequence of base qualities, irritating circumstances, or cold and meagre natures, is a great misfortune and loss in a household: the fruition of it is a blessing worthy of the most earnest gratitude of its subjects. Perhaps there is no species of friendship more sure to elude publicity. It plays its undramatic part in domestic scenes, avoiding, rather than asking, the notice of the world. We need not wonder, that there are so few examples of it sufficiently exciting and public to induce the historian or biographer to narrate their stories.

Hannah More and her four sisters were a group of happy friends, who kept house together for more than half a century. The union of Hannah and Martha was especially one of entire admiration and fondness. In Wrington churchyard the remains of the five sisters rest together under a stone slab, enclosed by an iron railing, and overshadowed by a yew-tree.

Mary and Agnes Berry, who were such widely courted favorites, in the most intellectual society of the time of their ardent friend, Horace Walpole, dwelt together, for over eighty years, in entire and fervent affection: and they now sleep side by side in their grave at Petersham.

The three wonderful sisters, Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte, were joined by uncommonly deep and intense bonds. Their strange, fervid personalities; their solitary, melancholy lives; their tastes and pursuits; their joys and triumphs, were held in common. Writing to her best friend, Charlotte says, “You, my dear Miss W., know, as well as I do, the value of sisters’ affection to each other; there is nothing like it in this world, I believe, when they are nearly equal in age, and similar in education, tastes, and sentiments.” In another letter, written after she had lost both her sisters, she says, “Emily had a particular love for the moors; and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne’s delight; and, when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon.” Let any one, who would understand what these rare natures felt for each other, read the memoir of her two sisters, prefixed by Charlotte to “Wuthering Heights” and “Agnes Grey.”

In 1846, Margaret Fuller wrote an account of a visit she had just paid to Joanna Baillie, whom she had long honored almost above any of her sex. She says, “I found on her brow, not, indeed, a coronal of gold, but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation which her thoughts have received. We found her in her little calm retreat, at Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character, and their mutual relations, she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline.” This admirable, semi-biographical, semi-psychological poem was addressed by Joanna to her sister Agnes, her dear, life-long companion, on one of the latest anniversaries of her birthday. It is an interesting fragment in the literature of the friendships of sisters.

THE friendship of woman with woman, outside of the ties of blood, is pictured with varying degrees of fidelity in the works of many romance writers and novelists. One of the most glowing delineations of it, also one of the most famous, is given by Richardson in the character of Clarissa Harlowe. Jane Austen, in her “Northanger Abbey,” treats it with great insight, in the relations of Catherine Morland, Isabella Thorpe, and Eleanor Tilney. Miss Edgeworth’s “Helen” is likewise full of it: both its sympathies and its antagonisms are forcibly depicted. Helen Stanley is Lady Cecilia’s double, her second self, her better self. Lady Katrine Hawksby is such an acidified piece of envy, so jealous of all her sex, that “every commonly decent marriage of her acquaintance gives her a sad headache.” That there is truth in this bitter stroke cannot be denied; but there is truth as well in the extreme opposite. Many a girl, with a sublime self-renunciation, stifling an agony sharper than death, has given up a lover to a friend, in silence and secrecy. Women are capable of any sacrifice, and their grandest deeds are hidden. Could any woman capable of voluntarily withdrawing herself, in order that her friend might marry the man they both loved, be capable of boasting of it, or willingly letting it be known?

Mrs. Barbauld gives a beautiful description of pious friendship in her hymn beginning,

How blest the sacred tie that binds
In union sweet according minds!
How swift the heavenly course they run
Whose hearts, whose faith and hope, are one!
Their streaming tears together flow
For human grief and mortal woe;
Their ardent prayers together rise
Like mingling flames in sacrifice.

Pictures of female friendships, in all their glory and tragedy, their ecstatic fusions and heroic sacrifices, their bitter jealousies and inversions, abound in the great dramatists, who are the crowned expositors of human nature. Auger, Secretary of the French Academy, in his “Philosophical and Literary Miscellanies,” has an excellent little essay entitled, “The Friendships of Women among themselves compared with the Friendships of Men among themselves; Difference of the two Friendships, and the Causes of that Difference.” The essay, though not adequate, is true and suggestive. Charles Lamb’s poem of “The Three Friends, “—Mary, Martha, and Margaret—is an extremely truthful and effective description of female friendship, its fervor, jealousy, estrangement, generosity, and restoration.

Grace Aguilar has written a work expressly on the subject of Woman’s Friendship. Though not a work of a high order, it possesses considerable interest as a tale; and, as a treatment of the theme, it is full of sincere feeling and discriminating observations. In Lady Ida Villiers and Florence Leslie we have a picture of a pair of noble friends, proof against every trial. The black-hearted falsehood and hate of Flora Rivers form an effective foil; and, incidentally, there are many telling strokes and sidelights on the relations of women to each other. “It is the fashion to deride female friendship,” Grace Aguilar says: “to look with scorn on those who profess it. There is always to me a doubt of the warmth, the strength, and purity of her feelings, when a girl merges into womanhood, looking down on female friendship as romance and folly.” The subtile and masterly knowledge of the characters of women, their weaknesses and their strengths, is not the least of the charms of that consummate work of art, “The Princess” of Tennyson. Blanche, Melissa, Ida, Psyche, in their unions, Two women faster welded in one love Than pairs of wedlock, in their jealousies, quarrels, aspirations, sorrows, are psychological studies full of delicate truth. Mrs. Browning’s “Aurora Leigh” discusses many of the same topics, in a manner characteristically contrasting with Tennyson’s, but marked by all her own conscientiousness, power, and care. Lady Waldemar, Marian Erle, Aurora Leigh, with the unsparing censures, magnanimous thoughts, and burning aspirations strewn through this profound and massive work, are lasting lessons for all womankind. It seems to have been much easier for most of the critics of this great work to feel its artistic faults, its jarring metre, and cumbrous forms, than to appreciate the transcendent nobleness and wisdom wrought into it from the soul of its creator.

School-girl friendships are a proverb in all mouths. They form one of the largest classes of those human attachments whose idealizing power and sympathetic interfusions glorify the world and sweeten existence. With what quick trust and ardor, what eager relish, these susceptible creatures, before whom heavenly illusions float, surrender themselves to each other, taste all the raptures of confidential conversation, lift veil after veil till every secret is bare, and, hand in hand, with glowing feet, tread the paths of paradise Perhaps a more impassioned portrayal of this kind of union is not to be found in literature than the picture in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” which Shakespeare makes Helena hold before Hermia, when the death of their love was threatened by the appearance of Lysander and Demetrius:

Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us, O! is all forgot?
All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles ccreated both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides; voices, and minds
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem:
So with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
And will you rend our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?

Romantically warm and generous as the friendships of school-boys are, those of school-girls are much more so. They are more purposed and absorbing, more sedulously cultivated and consciously important. School-girls often have their distinctly defined and well-understood degrees of intimacy—their first, their second, their third, friend. Thus a thousand little dramas are daily played, full of delights and woes, of which outsiders, who have no key to them, never so much as dream. Probably no chapter of sentiment in modern fashionable life is so intense and rich as that which covers the experience of budding maidens at school. In their mental caresses, spiritual nuptials, their thoughts kiss each other, and more than all the blessedness the world will ever give them is foreshadowed. They have not yet reached the age for a public record or confession of their pangs and raptures; so these dramas are for the most part only guessed at. But keener agonies, more delicious passages, are nowhere else known than in the bosoms of innocent school-girls, in the lacerations or fruitions of their first consciously given affections. A startling illustration has come to the knowledge of the writer just as he is penning these words. Two girls, about sixteen years old, attending a private school together, in one of the chief cities of the United States, formed a strong attachment to each other, and were almost inseparable. The father of one of the girls, for some reason, had a dislike for the other, and forbade his daughter to associate with her. The two friends preferred death to separation. They took laudanum, and were found dead in each other’s arms. What element of romance or tragedy ever known, is not every day experienced, all about us, under the thin disguise of commonplace?

No doubt there is often something a little grotesque or laughable in these youthful relations. An anecdote will illustrate it, and, at the same time, convey the corrective moral. There were a couple of school-girl friends, each of whom loved to do and experience whatever the other did or experienced. One of them accidentally set fire to the window-curtains in her chamber, and the house came near being burned down. She wrote word to her friend of the dangerous accident. The other at once proceeded carefully to set fire to the curtains in her chamber, so as to be just like her friend in everything.

One may well reprove, with a complacent smile of superiority, the folly of the act; but the sentiment underneath should never be ridiculed.

A harrowing instance of the suffering consequent on the overstrung feelings of girls is furnished by Margaret Fuller in the story of “Mariana,” a vivid autobiographic leaf inserted in her “Summer on the Lakes.” Much precious wisdom is learned, many cruel scars are received, in these sincere, though often fickle, connections—these inebriating preludes to the sober strain of existence. There is a touch of sadness in the thought that the earliest friendship of youth must so frequently fade and cease. But there is comfort for that sadness in the knowledge that the fair flowers of April are but precursors of those which June shall fill with the richer fragrance of a more royal fire.

Oft first love must perish
Like the poor snow-drop, boyish love of Spring,
Born pale to die, and strew the path of triumph
Before the imperial glowing of the rose,
Whose passion conquers all.

Some of the conditions for friendship between women are furnished in a high degree in the secluded intimacy of conventual life, with its stimulus of solitude and religious romance. Under such circumstances, Madame Roland, in her youth, had an ardent union with Angélique Boufflers. She had likewise a precious friendship of this kind with the two sisters, Sophie and Henrietta Cannet. Her description of the sisters’ arrival at the convent, of the sensation which they made, and of her own love for them, is extrernel, graphic and spirited. Her letters to them, extending through many years, and reaching in number to near two hundred and fifty, give us one of the best record of the value and joy of a friendship whose parties, b: freely unbosoming themselves to each other, assuage every pang and double every delight.

Among the crowds of nuns, young ladies of noble families and refined education, early set apart to this mode of existence, with all their glowing sentiments and dreams undispelled by the cold touch of the world, the inviting and innocent vent of sisterly love must often have been welcomed as a heavenly boon, and improved with enthusiasm. Also a deep affection, mixed of many choice ingredients of authority, dependence, admiration, sympathy, and tenderness, must frequently have sprung up, and been nourished to an intense development, between Lady Superiors and their pupils, Abbesses and nuns. The relation of Mother Agnes Arnauld and Jacqueline Pascal exhibits an instance. The correspondence and memoirs of Madame de Chantal afford many striking examples. In the Order of the Visitation, founded by her, and whose outlines were drawn by St. Francis of Sales, the element of Christian friendship plays a large part. The Lady Superior has an aide, a sister chosen by herself, to admonish and warn her of her faults, and to receive all complaints from those who might feel that she had wronged or aggrieved them. The duty of the directress of the novices is to exercise them in obedience, sweetness, and modesty; to clear from their minds all those follies, whims, sickly tendernesses, by which their characters might be enfeebled; to instruct them in the practice of virtue, the best methods of prayer and meditation; and to give them a wise and patient sympathy and guidance in every exigency.

Madame de Longueville and Angeliaue Arnauld formed an impassioned friendship, worthy of mention as one of the richest on record—after the conversion of the former, and her retirement from the world. Unquestionably, if, at the waving of a wand, all the secrets of conventual life, of the female religious orders, could be revealed, a host of friendships would swarm to light, many of them as pure as those which link the white-robed angels. Yet, in affirming this, one need not be supposed ignorant of the meagre and repulsive phase of the life sometimes led in the convent, its mechanical ritual, its cold rules, and its irritating espionage.

The unions of heart formed between queens, princesses, or other great ladies, and their favorite maids of honor or their chosen companions, when these happen to be especially congenial, compose a still further class of female friendships. They are very frequent, and are especially attractive, on account of the scenes of rank and splendor, conspicuous romance and tragedy, amidst which they occur. Kadidasa, in his “Sakoontahi,” that exquisite picture of ancient Hindu life, shows us the beautiful akoontaltl, constantly accompanied by her two confidential friends, Priyamvada and Anastiya. In the biographies of royal houses, it is a common occurrence to meet with an unhappy queen who was so fortunate as to find refuge and consolation for the sorrows inflicted on her by an unfaithful or cruel husband, in the ever-ready sympathy of some attendant, some true and loving woman of her court. In the annals of courts, the examples of jealousies and quarrels, of confidants turning rivals, and of maids undermining and ousting their mistresses, are also unhappily frequent. So, for instance, Maintenon displaced her patroness, Montespan; so Anne of Austria, after years of utter devotion, successively alienated her self-forgetful friends, Madame de Chevreuse, Mademoiselle de la Fayette, and the incomparable Mademoiselle de Hautefort; so did the unhappy Marie de Medicis, after half a life-time of lavished fondness, forsake her faithful Eleonora Galigäi, and turn against her in the cruel selfishness of misfortune and danger.

Catherine Picard was the beloved companion of Blanche of Lancaster. Her sister, Philippa Picard, was the favorite of Philippa, queen of Edward the Third. She was so attached to her mistress, that she kept her lover, the immortal Chaucer, waiting for her hand eight years, until the death of the queen set her free. Catherine Douglas, maid of honor to the Lady Jane Beaufort, wife of James the First of Scotland, showed her love for her queen by a deed which history and song will never forget to celebrate. When the assassins were forcing their way into the royal chamber, Catherine thrust her beautiful arm into the stanchion of the door, as a bolt, and held it there till it was broken.

Mary Stuart was blessed with the society of four maids of honor, lovely girls of rank, about her own age, named for her, and appointed from childhood to be her companions. Their names were Mary Flemming, Mary Seton, Mary Beton, and Mary Livingstone; and they were called the Queen’s Marys. Through her unhappy fortunes, imprisonments and all, they remained with her, and ardently loved her, whatever her errors may have been. With the exception of Mary Seton, who, on account of illness, had withdrawn to a convent in France, they accepted, for the sake of supporting and comforting her, even the anguish of witnessing her execution.

The attendants of Queen Elizabeth, on the other hand, detested her. When, in her age and ugliness, she would no longer look in a glass, it is said they used to amuse themselves with powdering her cheeks, and rouging her nose. Elizabeth, as a woman, no doubt hated Mary for her fascinations more than, as a queen, she feared her for her political pretensions; and, in spite of every justifying argument, it must be said, that she treated her with cruel treachery. In their earlier days, Elizabeth sent Mary a most rare diamond ring as a pledge of her friendship, and accompanied it with earnest promises of aid and sympathy. Aubrey describes this ring as consisting of separate parts, which, united, formed the device of two right hands supporting a heart between them, the heart itself being composed of two diamonds held together by a spring. The Queen of Scots, in her final distress, dispatched this token to Elizabeth by a trusty messenger, and in return was ordered to the block. Mrs. Jameson eloquently thinks, we must feel that the scale was set even, when we remember how Mary was loved, how Elizabeth was hated, and died at last in loneliness, writhing on the floor like a crushed spider. However much to be regretted, it is yet natural that the powerful facts and logic of the later historians, like Froude, should find our prejudices so stubbornly set in favor of Mary, and against Elizabeth. They will change slowly; but I suppose they must, in a large degree, change. Sarah Jennings, famous as that Duchess of Marlborough whom Pope so fearfully satirized under the name of Atossa, having been selected as lady in waiting of Queen Anne, was immediately taken to her bosom. The queen asked no subserviency: “Afriend is what I most want,” she said. They laid aside all titles, and addressed each other as equals under the assumed names of Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Morley. This lackadaisical relation subsisted for several years. At length Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman disappeared in the Queen and the Duchess. The familiarity and arrogance of “Queen Sarah” became insufferable to Queen Anne, and the quondam friends parted as irreconcilable foes. Swift says of Queen Anne, that she “had not a sufficient stock of amity for more than one person at a time.” She would always have a favorite, now, Miss Jennings; afterwards, Miss Hill, better known as Lady Masham, the earnest friend of Locke; then, somebody else.

In the terrible romance of the life of Marie Antoinette, the deserved friendships and the undeserved hatreds that clustered around the stately, affectionate, ill-fated queen, are clothed with exceeding interest. In the memoirs of the Countess D’Adhemar, the most beloved and steadfast of her attendants, who was equally her watchful servant and her trusted friend, all the details of these attractions and aversions may be found, drawn as only a woman would draw them. Madame Geniis, whose overtures for familiarity were repulsed, plotted against her with spiteful vindictiveness. Madame Campan, whom the queen loved and took into her service, in return idolized and sought to shield and bless her. By far the first, however, in the heart of the queen, was the Princess Lamballe, a young widow, whose charms of person and of character made her one of the most universally admired women of that period. The queen revived for the princess the office of superintendent of the household, that she might live at Versailles. Their attachment, based on mutual esteem and tenderness, and nurtured by many events, grew enthusiastic. It became the fashion for every lady to have a friend, who accompanied her wherever she went, to whom morning notes were written, and with whom tea was sipped, and the evening spent, after the pattern of Antoinette and Lamballe. The princess showed herself as heroic in devotion to her friend, amidst the horrible carnival which surrounded the close of their lives, as she had been modest, gentle, and sympathizing in the brilliant season that preceded. A few days before the terrible crisis of the Revolution burst on the head of the queen herself, the princess, who occupied a room in the palace, adjoining that of her friend, that she might share all her tears and dangers, was called for a short time to the Chateau de Vernon, by the illness of her aged father-in-law. Marie seized the opportunity to write a letter to her friend, begging her to take care of herself and not return. “Your heart would be too deeply wounded, you would have too many tears to shed over my misfortunes, you who love me so tenderly. Adieu, my dear Lamballe; I am always thinking of you; and you know I never change.”

The princess hastened back to the side of her imperilled mistress. With unfaltering fondness and resolution she clung to her through the sack which filled the palace with ruins and blood; through the tedious and brutal examinations in the Assembly; and through the fearful imprisonment in the Temple, until the jailers violently tore her from the arms of her sobbing friend. In vain the ferocious wretches in power strove to wring from her something prejudicial to the queen. The brave and beautiful woman preferred death; and was delivered over to the crowd to be murdered. Madame de Lebel, to whom the princess had been very kind, was going to inquire after the fate of her beloved benefactress, when she heard the howls of an approaching procession. She ran into the shop of a hairdresser; and was quickly followed by one of the mob, who ordered the master of the shop to dress the head of Madame de Lamballe. The princess was celebrated for the length and richness of her fine, golden locks. At this very moment, concealed among their bright, clustering masses, was found the letter from Antoinette, quoted above. The barber took the poor, disfigured head into his hands, cleansed the face from blood, and arranged and powdered the ringlets. The ruffian said, “Antoinette will recognize it now;” and, replacing it on the point of his pike, moved forward with the mob to the prison of the unhappy queen, before whose windows they elevated the appalling trophy, at the same time shrieking to her to look on it. After this experience, and others scarcely less revolting, we may well believe that the high-souled daughter of Maria Theresa welcomed the executioner’s axe as a blessed relief. We see her, clad in the pale royalty of her personal beauty and grief, refusing insult, moving, in the death-cart, through the yelling masses of the populace, to her doom, like a goddess, incapable of degradation, borne in a car above an infuriated herd of apes, who vainly struggle to drag her down to themselves. Madame Salvage de Faverolles had a passionate faculty of admiration. She was fascinated with Madame Weamer, who was not much drawn to her, though she always treated her with kindness. Her unclaimed affection at length found its home in Queen Hortense, the daughter of Josephine, and the mother of Louis Napoleon. She was inseparable from her, and was called, with a touch of satire or humor, her body-guard. She identified herself with every enterprise, hope, or thought of her friend; accompanied her on every journey; watched over her in her last sickness, night and day, with heroic fidelity; and, after her death, executed her will in all particulars. The present Emperor of France has always had the credit of an ardent love for his mother. A just sentiment of gratitude would seem to require him—if he has not already done it—to enshrine, with tributary honor, close beside the ashes of the unhappy queen of Holland, those of Madame Salvage, the most unwearied and inalienable of all her friends.

PAIRS OF FEMALE FRIENDS.

PASSING on from the classes of feminine friendships now described, we come to individual instances of this affection in pairs of women. The young Beatrice Portinari, and Giovanna, that chosen companion of hers, who, for the singular freshness of her beauty, was called by the Florentines, Primavera, the Spring, are immortalized as a pair of friends by the divine touch of Dante, in his “Vita Nuova,” where he mentions them under the names of Monna Vanna and Monna Bice. Very likely they were schoolgirls together, who did not suffer the fondness engendered in their shared studies and painted hopes and opening dreams of life to cease with the close, of that enchanted era.

Lady Dorothea Sydney and Lady Sophia Murray were a pair of friends whom it must have been delightful to contemplate, and is still, in a paler way, delightful to recall by literary reminiscence. They were the Sacharissa and Amoret of Waller. He dedicates a graceful poem to their friendship. These lines Occur in it:

Not the silver doves that fly
Yoked to Cytherea’s car;
Not the wings that lift so high,
And convey her son so far,
Are so lovely, sweet, and fair,
Or do more ennoble love,
Are so choicely matched a pair,
Or with more consent do move.

Regina Collier and Katherine Phillips were, for a long period, a happy pair of friends. Friendship held so large a place in the life and writings of the latter lady that a brief sketch of her experience, and of its expression, will be interesting. The Mrs. Katherine Phillips, to whom Jeremy Taylor dedicated his celebrated discourse on the “Offices and Measures of Friendship,” enjoyed a great reputation among her contemporaries, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and in the succeeding generation, as a woman of accomplishments and genius. Now that she is almost forgotten, it surprises one to read the extravagant published compliments lavished on her, in her life-time, by so many distinguished persons. The most remarkable peculiarity, alike of her character and of her literary productions, is the extraordinary prominence in them of the sentiment of friendship. She seems nearly all her life to have been enamored of this experience. Her affectionate spirit drew people to her by its strong charms, and still breathes vividly in her neglected pages. The overcharged and somewhat fantastic ideal of friendship which she unweariedly strove to realize in her relations with various persons, was so sincere and earnest in heart, that no one, who appreciates it, can suffer himself to ridicule, though he may smile at, its apparent affectation on the surface. Its deep ear nestness is proved in her life and character, as set forth by her associates: its superficial fancifullness appears in the sentimental names she was pleased to give herself and her friends. She was Orinda: her friends were Palmon, Poliarchus, Philaster, Silvander, Polycrite, Valeria, Lucasia, Rosania. Friendship is prominently treated in nearly every thing that she wrote. Her friendships with men, Jeremy Taylor, Francis Finch, Sir Charles Cotterel, and others, were as happy and unbroken as they were fervent and pure. Her long correspondence with Cotterel was published under the title, “Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus.” When Finch had written his treatise on friendship, Mrs. Phillips addressed to him a poem, inscribed, “To the Noble Palmon, on his Incomparable Discourse of Friendship:”

Temples and statues time will eat away;
And tombs, like their inhabitants, decay:
But here Palm non lives, and so he must
When marbles crumble to forgotten dust.

There is also in her volume of poems, another one addressed to “Mr. Francis Finch, the Excellent Palmmon:”

’Twas he that rescued gasping friendship, when The bell tolled for her funeral with men: ’Twas he that made friends more than lovers burn, And then made love to sacred friendship turn.

Mrs. Phillips was less fortunate in the sequels to her friendships with persons of her own sex; though, while they lasted, they were, at least on her side, moreardent and entire. Her principal female friends were Regina Collier, whom she named Rosania, and Mrs. Anne Owen, designated, in all their communications, as Lucasia. Many of her poems were written to these two idolized friends. She concludes a most glowing celebration of her union with the former, thus:

A dew shall dwell upon our tomb,
Of such a quality
That fighting armies, thither come,
Shall reconciled be.
We’ll ask no epitaph, but say,
ORINDA and ROSANIA.

The exaggerated pitch of sentiment in Orinda, the sensitive and absorbing demands of her affection, and, perhaps, some lightness, or even falsity, on the part of Rosania, led to a rupture. The indignant and unhappy Orinda expressed her sorrows in several heartfelt poems, one of which bears the superscription, “To the Queen of Inconstancy, Regina Collier:”

Unworthy, since thou hast decreed
Thy love and honor both shall bleed,
My friendship could not choose to die
In better time or company.

Another is entitled, “On Rosania’s Apostacy and Lucasia’s Friendship.” For the injured Orinda tried to find solace for the loss of an old, in the arms of a new, friend; or, rather, by transferring to one, in intensified unity, the love and attention she had before divided between two. She writes “To my Lucasia, in Defence of Declared Friendship,”

I did not live until this time Crowned my felicity,
When I could say, without a crime,
I am not thine but thee.

And, again, in “Friendship’s Mystery, To my dearest Lucasia,”

Our hearts are mutual victims laid,
While they, such power in friendship lies,
Are altars, priests, and offerings made;
And each heart which thus kindly dies,
Grows deathless by the sacrifice.

For a good while this attachment kept its keen flavor, and was only heightened by sympathy in misfortunes and distress. Cowley celebrated it in the following lines:

The fame of friendship which so long had told
Of three or four illustrious names of old,
Till hoarse and weary of the tale she grew,
Rejoices now to have got a new,
A new and more surprising story,
Of fair Lucasia and Orinda’s glory.

Mr. Owen, Lucasia’s husband, died. Mrs. Phillips went from a distance to visit her bereaved friend, and they fell into each other’s arms with copious tears. In a poem, Orinda describes this meeting under the beautiful image of two sister rivulets, which, creeping from their separate springs, in secret currents under ground, burst together at last, swollen by their own embraces to a flood. Lucasia marries again, and becomes Lady Dungannon. This marriage, by the new scenes, ties, and pleasures it introduces, proves the undoing of poor Orinda’s happiness. Lucasia cools towards her, allows her less space in her heart than she craves; and finally we have a reluctant farewell poem, bearing the ominous title, “Orinda to Lucasia. Parting, October, 1661, at London:

“Adieu, dear object of my love’s excess,
And with thee all my hopes of happiness.
I to resign thy dear converse submit,
Since I can neither keep nor merit it:
I ask no inconvenient kindness now,
To move thy passion or to cloud thy brow;
And thou wilt satisfy my boldest plea
By some few soft remembrances of me.

The lines may remind one of the pathetic sentiment expressed almost two hundred years later by a kindred heart. Eugénie de Guérin says, “In the moment of union, the seed of separation is sown. Cruel illusion, the belief in friendships that are eternal. The knowledge is bitter, but let me learn the lesson.” Yes: learn the lesson indeed, so far as it is true; but do not exaggerate it, nor let it cast too wide and dense a shadow over the rest of life.

Elizabeth Rowe seems to have had a heart peculiarly alive to tender attachments. And she was happy in winning and retaining many friends. Her superiors, her equals, her servants, all loved her as one of the best of women. Her “Friendship in Death, in Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living,” enjoyed great celebrity in its day. The beautiful Countess Hertford was her enthusiastic friend. She exchanged many visits with her, again and again leaving her own stately mansion to abide in the humble house of her admired friend; and she sacredly cherished her memory after death had parted them. Thomson, in the original form of his “Hymn to Solitude,” celebrated these friends as “Philomela and the gentle-looking Hertford.” Lady Hertford had so affectionate a heart, so rich a mind, so gracious a mien, and was so tenacious in her fondnesses, that she captivated the souls of many of her contemporaries. She was the patron of Thomson, who, in some exquisite lines, dedicated his “Spring” to her. She rewarded the young Elizabeth Carter for a poem in honor of Mrs. Rowe, with her steadfast love and her correspondence. But her most important friendship was that with the Countess of Pomfret. This ran through the largest part of her life, was a source of the greatest comfort and edification to them both, and has left a monument of its unwavering sincerity and fullness in the long series of their published letters.

Mrs. Montague’s passion for friendships led her to form intimacies with many of the most distinguished persons of her time, both men and women. When she was Elizabeth Robinson, at the age of twelve she exchanged her doll for a living friend, in the person of Lady Margaret Harley, who became the celebrated Duchess of Portland. This intimacy was kept up to the end of their lives, by constant letters, visits, and other endearments. The admirable Mrs. Barbauld, Hannah More, and Elizabeth Carter, were also her cherished friends. She was the founder of the far-famed “Blue-Stocking Club.” Few friendships, it is certain, have ever existed between women more thoroughly sound and comforting than that of Hannah More and Mrs. Garrick. After the death of the great tragedian, Hannah spent a large part of her time with his widow. Mrs. Garrick fondly called Miss More her chaplain. As friends of Elizabeth Carter, besides those already named, Pulteney, Earl of Bath, Mr. Montague, Dr. Johnson, Sir George Lyttleton, Archbishop Seeker, Miss Sutton, Mrs. Vesey, and, above all, Miss Catherine Talbot, deserve to be especially Mentioned. Miss Carter and Miss Talbot corresponded regularly for thirty years, and shared almost every secret. Not a single misunderstanding occurred to mar the placidity of their solid confidence and good will. It is a pleasure, even at this day, to look through their voluminous, rather stiff and prosy, but entirely sensible and affectionate correspondence.

There was an ardent friendship, of which the details have perished, between the once famous novelist and poet, Charlotte Smith, and the lovely, unhappy, romantic Henrietta, Lady O’Niel.

Twelve times the moon, that rises red
O’er yon tall wood of shadowy pine,
Has filled her orb, since low was laid,
My Harriet, that sweet form of thine!

No more thy friendship soothes to rest
This wearied spirit, tempest-tossed:
The cares that weigh upon my breast
Are doubly felt since thou art lost.

But, ere that wood of shadowy pine
Twelve times shall yon full orb behold,
This sickening heart, that bleeds for thine,
My Harriet, may like thine be cold!

Anna Seward, considerably admired in her own generation, as a beauty and as a writer, though the great faults of her judgment and style are fast bringing oblivion over her pages, was a devoted friend of that beautiful Honora Sneyd of whom Major Andre was the rejected lover. It was a profound sympathy with both the parties which prompted the composition of her once famous “Monody on Major Andre.” One is sorry to learn, that, on the marriage of Honora with Mr. Edgeworth, and her removal to Ireland, her friendship for Anna, as often happens in such cases, died of a slow consumption. But, on the other side, the early affection never ceased to glow. Miss Seward writes to one of her lady friends, “When my attachment to Cornet sunk in the snow-drifts of his altered conduct, Honora Sneyd, educated in our family from five years old, was commencing woman, and only eight years younger than myself; more lovely, more amiable, more interesting than any thing I ever saw in the female form. Death had deprived me of my beloved and only sister, who had shared with me in the delightful task of instructing our angelic pupil; and, when disappointed love threw all the energies of my soul into the channel of friendship, Honora was its chief object. The charms of her society, when her advancing youth gave equality to our connection, made Lichfield an Edenic scene to me. Ah, how deeply was I a fellow sufferer with Major Andre on her marriage! We both lost her for ever.”

The following verses, written by Anna to Honora, from the seaside, are pleasing in the picture they present and in the sentiment they enshrine. The prophecy they make has also been fulfilled:

I write Honora on the sparkling sand!
The envious waves forbid the trace to stay:
Honora’s name again adorns the strand,
Again the waters bear their prize away!

So Nature wrote her charms upon thy face,
The cheek’s bright bloom, the lip’s envermeilled dye,
And every gay and every witching grace
That youth’s warm hours and beauty’s stores supply.

But Time’s stern tide, with cold Oblivion’s wave,
Shall soon dissolve each fair, each fading charm;
E’en Nature’s self, so powerful, cannot save
Her own rich gifts from this o’erwhelming harm.

Love and the Muse can boast superior power;
Indelible the letters they shall frame:
They yield to no inevitable hour,
But on enduring tablets write thy name.

Romney, in his fancy-picture of Serena reading by candle-light, accidentally produced an accurate likeness of this lost friend of Miss Seward’s heart. “Drawing his abstract idea of perfect loveliness, the form and the face of Honora Sneyd rose beneath his pencil.” This beauteous resemblance Anna hung in her room, and made her constant companion. “It contributes to endear, as the bright reality endeared, in times long past, this pleasant mansion to my affections. Thus are those dear lineaments ever present to my sight, retouching the traits of memory, over which indistinctness is apt to steal.” Again she says, “The luxury of mournful delight with which I continually gaze upon that form, is one of the most precious comforts of my life.” Years after, in giving to Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby an account of a recent journey she had made, Miss Seward writes, “The stars glimmered in the lake of Weston, as we travelled by its side: but their light did not enable me to distinguish the church, beneath the floor of whose porch rests the mouldered form of my heart, dear Honora. Yet of our approach to that consecrated spot my spirit felt all the mournful consciousness.” In her poem on the death of her intimate friend. Andre, Miss Seward had written,

O Washington! I thought thee great and good,
Nor knew thy Nero-thirst for guiltless blood,
Severe to use the power that Fortune gave,
Thou cool, determined Murderer of the Brave!

It is interesting to read in a letter, written by her long afterwards to the Ladies of Llangollen, “A few years after peace was signed between this country and America, an officer introduced himself, commissioned by Washington to call upon me, and to assure me from the general himself, that no circumstance of his life had been so mortifying as to be censured in the “Monody on Andre” as the pitiless author of his ignominions fate; that he had labored to save him; that he requested my attention to papers on the subject, which he had sent by this officer for my perusal. On examining them, I found they entirely acquitted the general. They filled me with contrition for the rash injustice of my censure.”

An extraordinary instance of feminine friendship, of the courage and sacrifice the affections will prompt in woman, was afforded in the relation of Anna Seward to the Countess of Northesk. The countess, afflicted by a malady which had baffled the most skilful physicians in London, was drawn to Lichfield by the fame of Dr. Darwin. She staid for some time at his house, and awakened the deepest interest in his family and friends. Miss Seward was especially attracted by her engaging manners and disposition, as well as by sympathy for her peril, and for the distress of her husband and children. She was unwearied in efforts to alleviate the sufferings and the weary hours of the countess, whose fervent gratitude re-acted to enhance to enthusiasm the interest of the fair ministrant. One day, Dr. Darwin suggested the possibility of effecting a cure of his patient by transfusing into her veins a supply of vital blood, freshly taken from some healthy person. Anna, then in the full bloom of youth, instantly offered her own veins. The project was abandoned from want of sufficiently delicate instruments. But the countess was deeply affected by the generous offer of her friend, and repaid it with the most affectionate attachment. She was restored to health; and, on returning home, sent Miss Seward the gift of a set of jewels, in token of her love. They continued to correspond with each other until the tragic death of the countess by the accidental burning of her dress.

The most remarkable instance in history, perhaps, of a pair of female friends is the romantic example of the Ladies of Llangollen, whose story, widely renowned two generations ago, is now obliterated from popular knowledge, save in meagre literary allusions.

A little after the middle of the eighteenth century, Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, two young women of wealth and high station, formed an extreme mutual attachment, and were possessed with an ardent desire to forsake the world, and devote their lives to each other. Taking measures accordingly, they departed to an obscure retreat in the country. Their relatives frowned on this eccentricity, traced them out in their hiding-place, and, despite their protestations, separated them, and brought them back. But they soon effected a second elopement, which proved a successful and permanent one. Confiding the place of their flight only to a single faithful servant, they sacrificed, in the prime of their lives, the prizes and the glare of the fashionable world, and settled down in a secret nook of beauty and peace. In the romantic Valley of Llangollen, in Wales, one of the sweetest and quietest spots on earth, they bought a charming cottage, fitted it up with every comfort, and adorned it with exquisite taste. Here, in this remote and lovely haunt, amply provided with books, pictures, and other means of culture, giving themselves up to the enjoyment of their own society, they lived together in uninterrupted contentment for nearly threescore years. For a long period, their neighbors, ignorant of their names, knew them only as the “Ladies of the Vale.” For a quarter of a century, it is said, they never spent twenty-four hours at a time out of their happy valley.

They seem never to have fallen out, never to have wearied of each other, never to have repented of their repudiation of public life. By books and correspondence, they kept up a close connection with the brilliant world they had deserted. The romance of their action, penetrating far and wide, through cultivated circles, brought many distinguished visitors to their hospitality, literary and titular celebrities from all parts of Great Britain, likewise from the continent. Many of these became fast friends to them; and, in letters to other persons, speak of their fine qualities of sentiment and taste, their engaging traits of character and manners. Madame Geniis writes rapturously of her tarry with them, the charms of their residence, and especially of the Aeolian harp, which she there heard for the first time, amid the befitting associations of the mystic legends and natural minstrelsy of Welsh landscape. Mrs. Tighe also, the winsome but unfortunate authoress of the “Loves of Psyche and Cupid,” on departing from their cottage after a delighted stay, left upon her table a beautiful sonnet addressed to them.

But Miss Anna Seward; between whom and the pair of friends a warm affection was cherished, has given the fullest description known to us of the home and habits of the Ladies of Llangollen. She thought that the compliment Hayley paid to Miers, the miniature painter,

“His magic pencil in its narrow space
Pours the full portion of uninjured grace”

might be transferred to the talents and exertion which converted a cottage in two acres and a half of turnip ground to a fairy palace amid the bowers of Calypso. It consisted of four small apartments; the exquisite cleanliness of the kitchen, its utensils and auxiliary offices, vying with the finished elegance of the light-some little dining-room, as that contrasted with the gloomy grace of the library into which it opened. This room was fitted up in the Gothic style, the door and large sash windows of that form—the latter of painted glass, shedding a dim religious light. Candles were seldom admitted into this apartment. The ingenious friends had invented a kind of prismatic lantern, which occupied the whole elliptic arch of the Gothic door. This lantern was of cut glass, variously colored, inclosing two lamps with their reflectors. The light it imparted resembled that of a volcano—sanguine and solemn. It was assisted by two glowworm lamps, that, in little marble reservoirs, stood on the opposite chimney-piece. These supplied the place of the daylight, when the dusk of evening sabled, or night wholly involved the solitude. A large Aeolian harp was fixed in one of the windows; and, when the weather permitted them to be open, it breathed its deep tones to the gale, swelling and softening as that rose and fell.

Ah me! what hand can touch the strings so fine?
Who up the lofty diapason roll
Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine,
And let them down again into the soul?

This saloon of the two Minervas, Miss Seward says, contained the finest editions, superbly bound, and arranged in neat wire cases, of the best authors in prose and verse, which the English, French, and Italian languages boast. Over them hung the portraits in miniature, and some in larger ovals, of the favored friends of these celebrated votaries to the sentiment which exalted the characters of Theseus and Peirithous, of David and Jonathan.

The wavy and shaded gravel-walk which encircled this elysium was enriched with curious shrubs and flowers. It was nothing in extent, every thing in grace and beauty and in variety of foliage. In one part of it you turned upon a small knoll, which overhung a deep, hollow glen. At the tangled bottom of this glen, a frothing brook leaped and clamored over the rough stones in its channel. A large spreading beech canopied the knoll, and beneath its boughs a semilunar seat admitted four persons. It had a fine effect to enter the Gothic library at dusk, as Miss Seward says she first entered it. The prismatic lantern diffused a light gloomily glaring, assisted by the paler flames of the little lamps on the chimney-piece. Through the open windows was shown a darkling view of the lawn, of the concave shrubbery of tall cypresses, yews, laurels, and lilacs, of the wooded amphitheatre on the opposite hill, and of the gray, barren mountain which forms the background. The evening star had risen above the mountain; and the airy harp rang loudly to the breeze, completing the magic of the scene.

And what of the enchantresses themselves, beneath whose wand these graces arose? Lady Eleanor was of middle height, and somewhat over-plump, her face round and fair, with the glow of luxuriant health. She had not fine features, but they were agreeable, enthusiasm in her eye, hilarity and benevolence in her smile. She had uncommon strength and fidelity of memory, an exhaustless fund of knowledge, and her taste for works of imagination, particularly for poetry, was very awakened; and she expressed all she felt with an ingenuous ardor, at which cold-spirited beings stared. Both the ladies read and spoke most of the modern languages, and were warm admirers of the Italian poets, especially of Dante. Miss Ponsonby, somewhat taller than her friend, was neither slender nor otherwise, but very graceful. Easy, elegant, yet pensive, was her address; her voice, kind and low. A face rather long than round, a complexion clear, but without bloom, with a countenance whose soft melancholy lent it peculiar interest. If her features were not beautiful, they were very attractive and feminine. Though the pensive spirit within permitted not her dimples to make her smile mirthful, they increased its sweetness, and, consequently, her power of engaging the affections. We could see, through the veil of shading reserve, that all the talents and accomplishments which enriched the mind of Lady Eleanor, existed with equal power in her charming friend. Such are the portraits drawn by Miss Seward, of the two extraordinary women, who, in the bosom of their deep retirement, were sought by the first characters of the age, both as to rank and talents. To preserve that retirement from too frequent invasion, they were obliged to be somewhat coy of approach. Yet they were generous in a select hospitality; and when, toward the end of their lives, they welcomed a coming guest, Miss Martineau says it was a singular sight to see these ancient ladies, in their riding habits, with their rolled and powdered hair, their beaver hats, and their notions and manners of the last century.

When we consider their intellectual resources, their energy and industry, their interludes of company and correspondence, we need not be surprised at the assertion they made to one of their most intimate visitors, that neither the long summer’s day, nor winter’s night, nor weeks of imprisoning snows, had ever inspired one weary sensation, one wish of returning to the world they had abandoned.

Anna Seward had so interested Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby in the character of her dear friend, Honora Sneyd, by the sonnet addressed to her, which she showed them, by impassioned descriptions of her loveliness, as well as by the celebrated poem on the fate of Major Andre, that the two ladies were desirous of possessing a portrait of the deceased beauty.

With great pains, Anna succeeded in obtaining for them a copy of what was a perfect image of her, Romney’s ideal picture of Serena in the “Triumphs of Temper.” Writing on it, “Such was Honora Sneyd,” she had it framed and glazed, and sent it as a gift to the Ladies of Llangollen. They received it with delight, and hung it in a prominent position, where the fair giver afterward had the pleasure of gazing on it with romantic emotion.

Miss Seward paid several happy tributes in verse to her admired friends. One of these, written at the close of a prolonged visit, began thus:

Oh, Cambrian Tempe! Oft with transport hailed,
I leave thee now, as I did ever leave
Thee and thy peerless mistresses, with heart
Where lively gratitude and fond regret For mastery strive.

She also published, in a little volume by itself, an enthusiastic poem in praise of the Cambrian Arden, Llangollen Valley, adorned with an engraving of the landscape as seen from the home of its Rosalind and Celia. They fully appreciated her affection, and returned it. They sent her the gift of a jewel consisting of the head and lyre of Apollo, making a ring and seal in one. In acknowledgment of this, the pleased and grateful poet wrote, “I have to thank you, dearest ladies, for a beautiful but too costly present. It is a fine gem in itself, and a rich and elegant circlet for the finger.”

When Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby left their splendid family residences in Ireland to seek in Wales a retirement where they might spend their days in the culture of letters and friendship, a faithful and affectionate servant who pined for them, after a few months of their absence, set out to search for them in England. She had no clew to direct her pursuit; since, to avoid solicitations to return, they had kept their place of abode secret even from their nearest relatives. Learning, however, of her attempt, they sent for her. She went, and was their fond servitor until her death, thirty years afterward. Miss Seward once writes to Lady Eleanor, “I was concerned to hear that you had lately been distressed by the illness and alarmed for the life of your good Euryclea. That she is recovering, I rejoice. The loss of a domestic, faithful and affectionate as Orlando’s Adam, must have cast more than a transient gloom over the Cambrian Arden: the Rosalind and Celia of real life give Llangollen Valley a right to that title.” When this endeared servant died, her mourning mistresses buried her in the grave which they had prepared for themselves, and inscribed above her a cordial tribute in verse.

Drawn by the pleasing sentiment that invests the story of these ladies, the writer, being then in England, made a pilgrimage from London to Llangollen in the early autumn of 1865.

It was Saturday afternoon when I arrived at the little Welsh inn. The next morning I found my way to the classic cottage. The fingers of Time had indeed been busy on it. The vestiges of its former glory were still apparent, but the ornaments were crumbled and dim. The prismatic lantern over the door was a mixture of garishness and dust. The bowers were broken, the vines and plants dead, the walks draggled and uneven, the gates rickety, the fences tottering or prostrate. The numerous tokens of art and care in the past made the present ruinousness and desolation more pathetic. I could not help recalling the final couplet of Miss Seward’s poem, prophesying the fame of this place:

While all who honor virtue gently mourn Llangollen’s vanished Pair, and wreathe their sacred urn.

Threading the briery dell, and following the brook that prattled down the steep slope, I climbed the hill which directly overhangs the hamlet. It was church-time as I sat down on the top, and slowly drank in the charms of that celebrated landscape. To such a scene, at such an hour, the very heart-strings grow. The fields were clothed with a dense velvety-green. Across the narrow glen, on the strange cone of Dinas Bran, frowned threateningly, in dark mass, unsoftened by distance, the huge, bare fragments of an old castle, the immemorial type of an iron age when the hearts of men were iron. Beneath my feet, the vapors of the morning floated here and there in the sunshine, like torn folds of a satin gauze. A hundred smokes curled from the village chimneys, and the tones of the sabbath bells were wafted up to me with no mixture of profane toils. The very cattle seemed to know the holy day, and to browse and gaze, or ruminate and look around, with an unusual assurance of repose and satisfaction. But the spell must be broken, however reluctantly.

Descending into the village, just as the religious service was ended, I went into the churchyard, and copied from the triangular tomb in which the Ladies of Llangollen sleep, with their favorite servant, amid the magical loveliness of the pastoral scenery, these three inscriptions. On the first side:

IN MEMORY OF MRS. MARY CARRYL,
Deceased 22 November, 1809,
This Monument is erected by Eleanor Butler
And Sarah Ponsonby, of Plas Newydd, in this Parish.

Released from earth and all its transient woes,
She, whose remains beneath this stone repose,
Steadfast in faith resigned her parting breath,
Looked up with Christian joy, and smiled in death.
Patient, industrious, faithful, generous, kind,
Her conduct left the proudest far behind.
Her virtues dignified her humble birth,
And raised her mind above this sordid earth.
Attachment (sacred bond of grateful breasts)
Extinguished but with life, this tomb attests;
Reared by two friends who will her loss bemoan,
Till with her ashes here shall rest their own.

On the second side:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
The Right Honorable
LADY ELEANOR CHARLOTTE BUTLER,
Late of Plas Newydd, in this parish,
Deceased 2d June, 1829,
Aged Ninety Years,
Daughter of the Sixteenth, Sister of the Seventeenth
Earls of Ormonde and Ossory,
Aunt to the late and to the present
Marquess of Ormonde.

Endeared to her many friends by an almost
Unequalled excellence of heart, and by manners
Worthy of her illustrious birth, the admiration
And delight of a very numerous acquaintance,
From a brilliant vivacity of mind, undiminished
To the latest period of a prolonged existence.
Her amiable condescension and benevolence
Secured the grateful attachment of those
By whom they had been so long and so
Extensively experienced: her various perfections,
Crowned by the most pious and cheerful
Submission to the Divine Will, can only be
Appreciated where, it is humbly believed, they are
Now enjoying their eternal reward; and by her.
Of whom for more than fifty years they constituted
That happiness which, through our blessed Redeemer,
She trusts will be renewed when this Tomb
Shall have closed over its Latest Tenant.

On the third side:

SARAH PONSONBY departed this life On the 9th of December, 1831, aged 76.

She did not long survive her beloved companion,
Lady Eleanor Butler, with whom she had lived in this
Valley for more than half a century of uninterrupted friendship
But they shall no more return to their house, neither
Shall their place know them any more.

In that sequestered valley, how quietly, with what blessed joy and peace, their lives kept the even tenor of their way Standing beside their grave, in the shadow of the old church, while the little Welsh river ran whispering by, and thinking how the eyes and hearts in which so long and happy a love had burned, were now fallen to atoms, and literally mixed in the dust below, as once they morally mixed in life above, I felt, What a pity that those thus blessed cannot live forever! Then I thought, No, it is better as it is. They were happy. They drained the best cup existence can offer. When the world was becoming an infirmary, and the song of the grasshopper a burden, it was meet that they should sleep. Those only are to be pitied who die without the experience of affection.

This attempt to revive the story and brighten the urn of the Ladies of Llangollen may suggest that friendship lies within the province of women as much as within the province of men; that there are pairs of feminine friends as worthy of fame as any of the masculine couples set by classic literature in the empyrean of humanity; that uncommon love clothes the lives of its subjects with the interest of unfading romance; that the true dignity, happiness, and peace of women and of men, too—are to be found rather in the quiet region of personal culture, and the affections, than in the arena of ambitious publicity. Mrs. Thrale and Fanny Burney were every thing to each other for a long time. But, on the marriage of the former with Mr. Piozzi, a breach occurred, which was never repaired. Four years after this coldness, Fanny writes in her diary, “Oh, little does she know how tenderly, at this moment, I could run into her arms, so often opened to receive me with a cordiality I believed inalienable.” Two years after that, Mrs. Piozzi writes in her diary, “I met Miss Burney at an assembly last night. She appeared most fondly rejoiced in good time I answered with ease and coldness, but in exceeding good humor; and all ended, as it should do, with perfect indifference.” Thirty-one years later still, Fanny enters in her diary this brief record: “I have just lost my once most dear, intimate, and admired friend, Mrs. Thrale Piozzi.”

The young Bettine Brentano, several years before her acquaintance with Goethe, was placed temporarily in the house of a female religious order to pursue her studies. There she soon made the acquaintance of a canoness named Günderode, considerably older than herself, though still young, with rare mental endowments and romantic affections. The cultivated intellect, spirituality, and mystic melancholy of Günderode, under her singularly attractive features and calm demeanor, drew the impassioned and redundant Bettine to her by an irresistible bond. Their companionship ripened into romantic friendship. Their letters, collected and published by the survivor, compose one of the most original and stimulative delineations of the inner life of girlhood to be met with in literature. To cold and shallow readers, this correspondence will prove an unknown tongue; but those who can appreciate the reflection of wonderful personalities, and the workings of intense sentiment, will prize it as a unique treasure.

Bettine was electrical, magical, seeming ever to be overcharged with the spirit of nature; Günderode, cloudy, opalescent, suggesting a spirit native of some realm above nature. The interplaying of the two was strangely delightful to them both; and they made day after day rich by hoarding and sharing what life brought, the wealth of their souls. The fresh vitality of Bettine, her rushing inspiration, her dithyrambic love of wild nature, breathed a balsamic breath over her drooping friend, who yet had a more than counterbalancing depth of consciousness to impart in return.

Günderode, keyed too high for common companionship, too deep and tenacious in her moods, of a delicacy preternaturally lofty and far-reaching in its sensitiveness, was solitary, sad, thoughtful, yearning, prescient of an early death; yet, by the whole impression of her being, she gave birth, in those who lovingly looked on her, to the surmise that she was mysteriously self-sufficing and happy. Bettine writes to her, “I begin to believe thy feelings are enthroned beyond clouds which cast their shadows on the earth; while thou, borne on them, art revelling in celestial light.” The best way to indicate briefly what this friendship was, will be to quote a selection of the characteristic expressions of it, though such a compilation of fragments does great wrong to a correspondence so compacted of the sparks of love and genius. Let those who find in this relation only the expression of a fantastic sentimentality, weigh what Sarah Austin says, a woman who speaks with the utmost weight of authority which learning, experience, and wisdom can give: “We, in England and France,” Mrs. Austin says, “have no measure for the character of a German girl, brought up in comparative solitude, nurtured on poetry and religion, knowing little of the actual world, but holding close converse with the ideal in its grandest forms. She is capable of an enthusiasm we know not of.”

At different times, Günderode writes thus: “I have bad many thoughts of thee, dear Bettine. Some nights ago I dreamed thou wast dead: I wept bitterly at it; and the dream left, for a whole day, a mournful echo in my heart.” “My mood is often very sad, and I have not power over it.” “Thou art my bit of a sun that warms me, while everywhere else frost falls on me.” “Thy letter, dear Bettine, I have sipped as wine from the goblet of Lyus.” “I am studying the distinguished Spartan women. If I cannot be heroic, and am always ill from hesitation and timidity, I will at least fill my soul with that heroism, and feed it with that vital power, in which I am so sadly deficient.” “Thou seemest to me the clay which a god is moulding with his feet; and what I perceive in thee is the fermenting fire, that, by his transcendent contact, he is strongly kneading into thee.” “When I read what I have written some time ago, I think I see myself lying in my coffin, staring at my other self in astonishment.”

“Clemens’s letters make me think and consider, while over thine I only feel; and they are grateful as a breath of air from the Holy Land.” “If two are to understand each other, it requires the inspiring influence of a third divine one. And so I accept our mutual existence as a gift of the gods, in which they themselves play the happiest part.”

And thus, on the other side, Bettine at various times writes to Günderode: “I wrote down, To-day I saw Günderode: it was a gift of God. To-day, as I read it again, I would gladly do every thing for the love of thee. How much do I think of thee and of thy words, of the black lashes that shaded thy blue eyes as I saw thee for the first time; of thy kindly mien, and thy hand that stroked my hair!” “Thy letter today has drawn a charmed ring around me.” “On the castle of the hill, in the night-dew, it was fair to be with thee. Those were the dearest hours of all my life; and, when I return, we will again dwell together there. We will have our beds close together, and talk all night.” “Thou and I think in harmony: we have as yet found no third who can think with us, or to whom we have confided what we think.” “Thou art the sweet cadence by which my soul is rocked.” “What will become of me, if ever I pass out of the light which beams on me from thine eyes? for thou seemest to me an ever-living look, and as if on that my life hung.” “I feel a deep longing to be with thee again; for, beautiful as it is here on the Rhine, it is sad to be without an echo in a living breast. Man is nothing but the desire to feel himself in another.” “When I dare look up to thee from my childish pursuits, I think I see a bride whose priestly robes do not betray, nor her face express, whether she is sad or joyous in her ecstasy.” “Thou lookest deeper into my breast, knowest more of my spiritual fate, than I, because I need only read in thy soul to find myself.” “I would possess every thing, wealth and power of beautiful ideas, art and science, only to give it to thee, to gratify my love to thee, and my pride in thy love.” “Formerly, I often thought, Why was I born? but, after thou wert with me, I never asked again.” “I see thee wandering past the grove where I am at home, just as a sparrow, concealed by dense foliage, watches a solitary swan swimming on the quiet waters, and, hidden, sees how it bends its neck to dip into the flood, drawing circles around it; sacred signs of its isolation from the impure, the reckless, the unspiritual!” “I have been made happy to-day: some one secretly placed in my room a rose-tree with twenty-seven buds; these are just thy years.”

Many plaintive presentiments of unknown woe, parting, death, gave a mysterious undertone of sadness to much of the correspondence of these two friends. The forebodings were destined to be more than fulfilled in the tragic reality. Poor Günderode, wrought to madness by a disappointment in love, committed suicide. She drowned herself in a river, where her body was found entangled in the long sedge. Years afterwards, Bettine relates the story in a letter to Goethe, the perusal of which has made many a gentle heart ache. The substance of the tragedy may be briefly told:

“One day,” Bettine writes, “Günderode met me with a joyful air, and said, “Yesterday I spoke with a surgeon, who told me it was very easy to make away with one’s self. She hastily opened her gown, and pointed to the spot beneath her beautiful breast. Her eyes sparkled with delight. I gazed at her, and felt uneasy. And what shall I do when thou art dead?’ I asked. Oh! ere then,’ said she, thou wilt not care for me any more; we shall not remain so intimate till then: I will first quarrel with thee.’ I turned to the window to hide my tears and my anger. She had gone to the other window, and was silent. I glanced secretly at her: her eye was lifted to heaven; but its ray was broken, as though its whole fire were turned within. After I had observed her awhile, I could no longer control myself: I broke into loud crying, I fell on her neck, I dragged her down to a seat, and sat upon her knee, and wept, and kissed her on her mouth, and tore open her dress, and kissed her on the spot where she had learned to reach the heart. I implored her, with tears of anguish, to have mercy upon me; and fell again on her neck, and kissed her cold and trembling hands. Her lips were convulsed; and she was quite cold, stiff, and deadly pale. Speaking with difficulty, she said slowly, Bettine, do not break my heart.’ I wanted to recover myself, and not give her pain. But as, amidst my smiles and tears and sobs, she grew more anxious, and laid herself on the sofa, I jestingly tried to make her believe I had taken all as a joke.

“A few days after, she showed me a dagger with a silver hilt, which she had bought at the mart. She was delighted with the beauty and sharpness of the steel. I took the blade, and pressed on her with it, exclaiming, Rather than suffer thee to kill thyself, I myself will do it.’ She retreated in alarm, and I flung the dagger away. I took her by the hand, and led her to the garden, into the vine-bower, and said, Thou mayest depend on me: there is no hour when, if thou wert to utter a wish, I would hesitate for a moment. Come to my window at midnight and whistle, and I will, without preparation, go round the world with thee. What right hast thou to cast me off? How canst thou betray such devotion? Promise me now.’ She hung her head and was pale. ‘Günderode,’ said I, if thou art in earnest, give me a sign. She nodded.

“Two months passed away, when I again came to Frankfort. I ran to the chapter-house of the canonesses, opened the gate, and lo! there she stood, and looked coldly at me. ‘Günderode,’ I cried, may I come in?’ She was silent, and turned away. ‘Günderode, say but one word, and my heart beats against thine.’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘come no nearer, turn back, we must separate.’ ‘What does this mean?’ I asked. ‘Thus much, that we have been deceived, and do not belong to one another.’ Ah! I turned away. First despair; first cruel blow, so dreadful to a young heart! I, who knew nothing but entire abandonment to my love, must be thus rejected.”

A short period elapsed, when news was brought to Bettine that a young and beautiful lady, who was seen walking a long time at evening beside the Rhine, had been found the next morning, on the bank, among the willows. She had filled her handkerchief with stones, and tied it about her neck, probably intending to sink in the river; but, as she stabbed herself to the heart, she fell backward; and they found her thus lying under the willows by the Rhine, in a spot where the water was deepest. It was the poor, unhappy Günderode.

The next day, Bettine, who was then with her brother and a small party of friends, sailing on the Rhine, landed at Rudesheim. “The story was in every one’s mouth. I ran past all with the speed of wind, and up to the summit of Mount Ostein, a mile in height, without stopping. When I had come to the top, I had far outstripped the rest; my breath was gone, and my head burned. There lay the splendid Rhine, with his emerald island gems. I saw the streams descending to him from every side, the rich, peaceful towns on both banks, and the slopes of vines on either side. I asked myself if time would not wear out my loss. And then I resolved to raise myself above grief; for it seemed to me unworthy to utter sorrow which the future would enable me to subdue.”

The dithyrambic exuberances in this relation, the romantic extravagances of sentiment, illustrate both the strength and the weakness of a genius bordering close on disease. They show how much such a genius needs to apply to itself the balancing and rectifying criticisms of a sober wisdom. They may also contribute something to awaken and enrich more cold and sluggish natures, which are yet aspiring and docile.

Lucy Aikin has left record of the warm and faithful friendships with which she was blessed by some of the most gifted and amiable women of her time. She was a person of strong character, of highly cultivated talents, and quite remarkable for her powers of conversation, an accomplishment which seems hastening to join the lost arts. The parties which modern fashion gathers, are not so much groups of friends, drawn together for rational and affectionate communion, as they are jabbering herds, among whom all individuality and docile earnestness are lost in the general buzz and clack of simultaneous speech.

One of these friends was Miss Benger, an estimable literary lady, who had considerable celebrity a quarter of a century ago. Miss Aikin has written a brief memoir of her. The following extract sufficiently shows the cordiality and comfort of their union: “To those who knew and enjoyed the friendship of Miss Benger, her writings, pleasing and beautiful as they are, were the smallest part of her merit and her attraction. Endowed with the warmest and most grateful of human hearts, she united to the utmost delicacy and nobleness of sentiment, active benevolence, which knew no limit but the furthest extent of her ability, and a boundless enthusiasm for the good and fair, wherever she discovered them. Her lively imagination, and the flow of eloquence which it inspired, aided by one of the most melodious of voices, lent an inexpressible charm to her conversation; which was heightened by an intuitive discernment of character, rare in itself, and still more so in combination with such fertility of fancy and ardency of feeling. As a companion, whether for the graver or the gayer hour, she had, indeed, few equals; and her constant forgetfullness of self, and unfailing sympathy for others, rendered her the general friend, favorite, and confidante of persons of both sexes, all classes, and all ages. Many would have concurred in judgment with Madame de Staël, when she pronounced Miss Benger the most interesting woman she had seen during her visit to England. Of envy and jealousy there was not a trace in her composition; her probity, veracity, and honor were perfect. Though as free from pride as from vanity, her sense of independence was such, that no one could fix upon her the slightest obligation capable of lowering her in any eyes. She had a generous propensity to seek those most, who needed her offices of friendship. No one was more scrupulously just to the characters and performances of others, no one more candid, no one more deserving of every kind of reliance. It is gratifying to reflect to how many hearts her unassisted merit found its way. Few persons have been more widely or deeply deplored in their sphere of acquaintance; but even those who loved her best could not but confess that their regrets were purely selfish. To her the pains of sensibility seemed to be dealt in even fuller measure than its joys: her childhood and early youth were consumed in a solitude of mind, and under a sense of contrariety between her genius and her fate, which had rendered them sad and full of bitterness; her maturer years were tried by cares, privations, and disappointments, and not seldom by unfeeling slights or thankless neglect. The irritability of her constitution, aggravated by inquietude of mind, had rendered her life one long disease. Old age, which she neither wished nor expected to attain, might have found her solitary and ill-provided: now she has taken the wings of the dove to flee away and be at rest.”

Miss Aikin also held a constant intercourse, through a large part of her life, with Joanna Baillie, whom she always regarded with profound honor and love. She had a personal acquaintance with almost every literary woman of celebrity in England, from the last decade of the eighteenth, to the middle of the nineteenth, century. And of all these, with the sole exception of Mrs. Barbauld, she says, Joanna Baillie made by far the deepest impression on her. “Her genius,” writes this admiring friend, “was surpassing; her character, the most endearing and exalted.” No one had suspected the great genius of Joanna Baillie, so thick a veil of modest reserve had covered it. Soon after the publication of her “Plays on the Passions,” Miss Aikin says, “She and her sister I well remember the scene arrived on a morning call at Mrs. Barbauld’s. My aunt immediately introduced the topic of the anonymous tragedies, and gave utterance to her admiration with that generous delight in the manifestation of kindred genius which distinguished her. But not even the sudden delight of such praise, so given, could seduce our Scottish damsel into self-betrayal. The faithful sister rushed forward to bear the brunt, while the unsuspected author lay snug in the asylum of her taciturnity. She had been taught to repress all emotions, even the gentlest. Her sister once told me that their father was an excellent parent; when she had once been bitten by a dog thought to be mad, he had sucked the wound, at the hazard, as was supposed, of his own life; but that he had never given her a kiss. Joanna spoke to me once of her yearning to be caressed, when a child. She would sometimes venture to clasp her little arms about her mother’s knees, who would seem to chide her; but I know she liked it. Be that as it may, the first thing which drew upon Joanna the admiring notice of society was the devoted assiduity of her attention to her mother, then blind as well as aged, whom she waited on day and night.

“An innocent and maiden grace still hovered over Miss Baillie to the end of her old age. It was one of her peculiar charms, and often brought to my mind the line addressed to the vowed Isabella, in Measure for Measure: I hold you for a thing enskyed and saintly. If there were ever human creature pure in the last recesses of the soul, it was surely this meek, this pious, this noble-minded, and nobly-gifted woman, who, after attaining her ninetieth year, carried with her to the grave the love, the reverence, the regrets, of all who had ever enjoyed the privilege of her society.” The graves of these friends are side by side in the old churchyard at Hampstead.

The exquisite delicacy and wealth of Mrs. Hemans’s nature, her winning beauty, modesty, and sweetness, drew a circle of dear friends around her wherever she tarried. In her poems and letters and memoirs, they numerously appear, in becoming lights, men and women, lofty and lowly in rank, from Wordsworth and Scott, to whom she paid visits, giving and receiving the choicest delight, to her own dependants, who worshipped her. She tells one of her correspondents, “I wish I could give you the least idea of what kindness is to me, how much more, how far dearer, than fame.” The most interesting of her many prized friendships is that which she formed with Miss Jewsbury, who, having long admired her with the whole ardor of her powerful nature, passed a summer in Wales, near Mrs. Hemans, for the express purpose of making her acquaintance. The enthusiastic admiration on one side, the grateful appreciation of it on the other, the spiritual purity and earnestness and high literary and personal aspirations on both sides, quickly produced an attachment between these two gifted women, which yielded them full measures of encouragement, comfort, and bliss. They had just those resemblances and those contrasts of person and mind, together with community of moral aims, which made them delightfully stimulative to each other. Miss Jewsbury dedicated to her friend her “Lays of Leisure Hours,” addressed her in the poem “To an Absent One,” and described her in the first of the “Poetical Portraits” contained in the same book. Also, in her “Three Histories,” Mrs. Hemans is the original of Egeria. “Egeria was totally different from any other woman I had ever seen, either in Italy or England. She did not dazzle, she subdued, me. I never saw another woman so exquisitely feminine. Her movements were features. Her strength and her weakness alike lay in her affections. Her gladness was like a burst of sunlight; and if, in her depression, she resembled night, it was night wearing her stars. She was a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy of human beings.” Miss Jewsbury married, and went to India, where she soon died. Mrs. Hemans paid a heartfelt tribute to her memory, in the course of which she says, “There was a strong chain of interest between us, that spell of mind on mind, which, once formed, can never be broken. I felt, too, that my whole nature was understood and appreciated by her; and this is a sort of happiness which I consider the most rare in earthly affection.”

Mary Mitford and Mrs. Browning were blessed with a friendship enviably full and satisfying. It has recorded itself in a correspondence, which, if published, would add fresh honor to them both in the hearts of their admirers. It was likewise celebrated with happy heartiness by Miss Barrett, in her maiden days, in her fine poem, “To Flush, my Dog;” the dog, Flush, being a valued gift from Miss Mitford.

Margaret Fuller, after seeing an engraving of Madame Récamier, writes in her journal,

“I have so often thought over the intimacy between her and Madame de Staël. It is so true, that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man. I like to be sure of it; for it is the same love which angels feel, where Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib.”

Of the friendships of women, perhaps none is more historic than this. A large selection from the correspondence was published, in 1862, by Madame Lenormant, in connection with a volume called “Madame de Staël and the Grand Duchess Louise.” It is impossible to read these letters, without being struck by the rare grace that reigned in the union of which they are the witnesses, and being affected by the sight of a friendship so faithful, a confidence so entire.

The first meeting of these celebrated women took place when Madame de Staël was thirty-two years old; Madame Récamier, twenty-one. Among the few existing papers from the pen of the latter is a description of this interview:

“She came to speak with me for her father, about the purchase of a house. Her toilet was odd. She wore a morning gown, and a little dress bonnet, adorned with flowers. I took her for a stranger in Paris. I was struck with the beauty of her eyes and her look. She said, with a vivid and impressive grace, that she was delighted to know me; that her father, M. Necker at these words I recognized Madame de Staël. I heard not the rest of her sentence. I blushed, my embarrassment was extreme. I had just come from reading her ‘Letters on Rousseau,’ and was full of the excitement. I expressed what I felt more by my looks than by my words. She at the same time awed and drew me. She fixed her wonderful eyes on me, with a curiosity full of kindness, and complimented me on my figure, in terms which would have seemed exaggerated and too direct if they had not been marked by an obvious sincerity, which made the praise very seductive. She perceived my embarrassment, and expresssd a desire to see me often, on her return to Paris; for she was going to Coppet. It was then a mere apparition in my life; but the impression was intense. I thought only of Madame de Staël, so strongly did I return the action of this ardent and forceful nature.”

Madame de Staël was a plain, energetic embodiment of the most impassioned genius. Madame Récamier was a dazzling personification of physical loveliness, united with the perfection of mental harmony. She had an enthusiastic admiration for her friend, who, in return, found an unspeakable luxury in her society. Her angelic candor of soul, and the frosty purity which enveloped her as a shield, inspired the tenderest respect; while her happy equipoise calmed and refreshed the restless and expensive imagination of the renowned author. There could be no rivalry between them. Both had lofty and thoroughly sincere characters. They were partly the reflection, partly the complement, of each other; and their relation was a blessed one, charming and memorable among such records. “Are you not happy,” writes Madame de Staël, “in your magical power of inspiring affection? To be sure always of being loved by those you love, seems to me the highest terrestrial happiness, the greatest conceivable privilege.” Again, acknowledging the gift from her friend of a bracelet containing her portrait, she says, “It has this inconvenience: I find myself kissing it too often.” In 1800, Madame Récamier had a brilliant social triumph in England: “Ah, well, beautiful Juliette! do you miss us? Have your successes in London made you forget your friends in Paris?” Madame Récamier was the original of the picture of the shawl-dance in “Corinne;” and her friend says of her, in the “Ten Years of Exile,” that “her beauty expressed her character.” The following passages, taken from letters written in 1804, show how the intimacy had deepened:

“For four clays, faithless beauty, I have not heard the noise of the wind without thinking it was your carriage. Come quickly. My mind and my heart have need of you more than of any other friend.” “I have just seen Madame Henri Belmont. People say that all beautiful persons remind them of you. It is not so with me. I have never found any one who looks like you; and the eyes of this Madame Henri seem to me blind by the side of yours.” “Dear and beautiful Juliette, they give me the hope of seeing you when I return from Italy; then only shall I no longer feel myself an exile. I will receive you in the chateau where I lost what of all the world I most loved; and you will bring the feeling of happiness which no more exists there. I love you more than any other woman in France. Alas! when shall I see you again?”

The friends passed the autumn of 1807 together at Coppet, with Matthieu de Montmorency, Benjamin Constant, and a brilliant group of associates, amidst all the romance in which the scenery and atmosphere of that enchanted spot are steeped. One day they made a party for an excursion on Mont Blanc. Weary, scorched by the sun, De Staël and Récamier protested that they would go no farther. In vain the guide boasted, both in French and German, of the spectacle presented by the Mer de Glace. “Should you persuade me in all the languages of Europe,” replied Madame de Staël, “I would not go another step.” During the long and cruel banishment inflicted by Napoleon on this eloquent woman, the bold champion of liberty, her friend often paid her visits, and constantly wrote her letters:

“Dear Juliette, your letters are at present the only interest of my life.” “How much, dear friend, I am touched by your precious letter, in which you so kindly send me all the news! My household rush from one room to another, crying, A letter from Madame Récamier!’ and then all assemble to hear her” “Every one speaks of my beautiful friend with admiration.. You have an ethereal reputation which nothing vulgar can approach.” “Adieu, dear angel. My God, how I envy all those who are near you!”

When an envious slanderer had greatly vexed and grieved Madame Récamier, Madame de Staël wrote to her, “You are as famous in your kind as I am in mine, and are not banished from France. I tell you there is nothing to be feared but truth and material persecution. Beyond these two things, enemies can do absolutely nothing; and your enemy is but a contemptible woman, jealous of your beauty and purity.” “Write to me. I know you address me by your deeds; but I still need your words.”

In 1811, Madame de Staël resolved to flee to Sweden. Montmorency, paying her a parting visit, received from Napoleon a decree of instant exile. Madame Récamier determined, at any risk, to embrace her friend before this great distance should separate them. The generous fugitive wrote, imploring her not to come: “I am torn between the desire of seeing you, and the fear of injuring you.” No dissuasion could avail; but no sooner did she arrive at Coppet than the mean soul of Napoleon sought revenge by exiling her also. The distress of Madame de Staël knew no bounds. On learning the fatal news, she wrote,

“I cannot speak to you; I fling myself at your feet; I implore you not to hate me.” “What your noble generosity has cost you! If you could read my soul, you would pity me.” “The only service I can do my friends is to make them avoid me. In all my distraction, I adore you. Farewell, farewell! When shall I see you again? Never in this world.”

Throughout the period of their banishment, the friends kept up an incessant correspondence, and often interchanged presents.

“Dear friend,” writes Madame de Staël, “how this dress has touched me! I shall wear it on Tuesday, in taking leave of the court. I shall tell everybody that it is a gift from you, and shall make all the men sigh that it is not you who are wearing it.”

In return, some time later, she sends a pair of bracelets, and a copy of a new work from her pen, adding, “In your prayers, dear angel, ask God to give peace to my soul.” In another letter she says, “Adieu, dear angel: promise to preserve that friendship which has given me such sweet days.” And again,

“Angel of goodness, would that my eternal tenderness could recompense you a little for the penalties your generous friendship has brought on you!” “You cannot form an idea, my angel, of the emotion your letter has caused me. It is at the extremity of Moravia that these celestial words have reached me. I have shed tears of sorrow and tenderness in hearkening to the voice which comes to me in the desert, as the angel came to Hagar.”

What a rare and high compliment is contained in the following passage! “You are the most amiable person in the world, dear Juliette; but you do not speak enough of yourself. You put your mind, your enchantment, in your letters, but not that which concerns yourself. Give me all the details pertaining to yourself.” “The hundred fine things Madame de Boigne and Madame de Belle-garde say of you and me, prove to me that I live a double life: one in you, one in myself.”

When Napoleon fell, in 1814, Madame de Staël hurried home from her long exile. The great news found Madame Récamier at Rome. In a few days, she embraced her illustrious friend in Paris. Close was their union, great their joy. It was engrossing admiration and devotion on one side; absorbing sympathy, respect, and gratitude, on the other. The power and charm of Madame Récamier were not merely in her ravishing beauty, imperturbable good nature, and all-subduing graciousness, but also in her mind and character. Madame de Staël, who was a great critic, and no flatterer, says to her,

“What a charm there is in your manner of writing! I wish you would compose a romance, put in it some celestial being, and give her your own natural expressions, without altering a word. You have a character of astonishing nobleness; and the contrast of your delicate and gracious features, with your grand firmness of soul, produces an incomparable effect.”

The last letter written by the dying author to her friend concluded with the words, “All that is left of me embraces you.” The survivor paid the pious rites of affection to the departed, with the devotion which had marked their whole relation. And when, years afterward, on the loss of her property, Madame Récamier betook herself to the Abbaye-aux-Bois, in her humble chamber, where she was more sought and admired than ever in her proudest prosperity, the chief articles to be seen, in addition to the indispensable furniture, were, as Chateaubriand has described the scene, a library, a harp, a piano, a magnificent portrait of Madame de Staël by Gerard, and a moonlight view of Coppet. Madame de Staël had once written to her, “Your friendship is like the spring in the desert, that never fails; and it is this which makes it impossible not to love you.” Death caused no decay of that sentiment, but raised and sanctified it. Her translated friend now became an object of worship; and she devoted her whole energies to extend and preserve the memory of the illustrious writer.

The self-forgetting sympathy of Madame Récamier, and the magical atmosphere of loveliness she carried around her, obtained for her many warm friendships with women. Foremost, by far, among these was that with Madame de Staël. But others also were very dear. The widow of Matthieu de Montmorency was extremely attached to her, wrote her touching letters, and took every opportunity to see her. Madame de Boigne, too, was joined with Madame Récamier in a relation of respect and affection truly profound and vivid. This lady was greatly distinguished for her beauty as well as for her voice, which was compared with that of Catalani. She was much impressed by the noble behavior of Madame Récamier at the time of her husband’s bankruptcy; and, by her delicate attentions, secured the most grateful love in return. Their earnest and faithful affection lasted until death. A novel, entitled “Une Passion dans le Grande Monde,” in which Madame de Staël and Madame Reeamier are the two chief characters, was left for publication by Madame de Boigne at her death. It was published in 1866.

One of Madame Récamier’s sweetest friendships was with the accomplished and charming Elizabeth Foster, Duchess of Devonshire, the fame of whose exquisite loveliness traversed the earth. The duchess said of her friend, “At first she is good, then she is intellectual, and after this she is very beautiful,” a striking compliment, when spoken, in relation to an admired rival, by one who was herself so dazzlingly gifted. The order of precedence in her charms, however, was differently recognized by men. They were subdued successively by her beauty, her goodness, her judgment, her character. The Duchess of Devonshire had known all the romance and all the sorrow of life. Her experience had left upon her a melancholy which attracted the heart almost as quickly as it did the eye, and lent to her something pensive and caressing. Although a Protestant, she had formed, during her long residence in Rome, an entire friendship with the Cardinal Consalvi, who was the prime-minister and favorite of Pope Pius VII through his whole pontificate. These two beautiful women, as soon as they met, felt, by all the laws of elective affinity, that they belonged to each other. The death of the Pope was followed, in a few months, by that of his minister and friend. During the illness of Consalvi, Madame Récamier shared all the hopes, fears, and distresses of the duchess. And when the fatal event had befallen, and the cardinal was laid in state, and the romantic and despairing woman would go to look on her dead friend, she accompanied her, deeply veiled, through the crowd, and knelt with her, amidst the solemn pomp, in tears and prayer, beside the unanswering clay. The duchess was struck to the heart by this irreparable loss. All that a devoted sympathy could yield to soothe and sustain, she received from Madame Récamier. And when, soon after, unable to speak, she lay dying, she silently pressed the hand of this faithful friend, as the final act of her existence.

Madame Récamier retained to the last her enviable power of inspiring affection. Madame Lenormant says that the Countess Caffarelli found her, in her age and blindness, watching by the death-bed of Chateaubriand. Drawn by her singular goodness, she sought to share with her in these holy cares. She thus became the loving and beloved associate of the final hour. This admirable person worthily closes the list the rich and bright list of the friends of Madame Récamier.

In her youth, the first wish of Madame Récamier was the wish to please; and she was, no doubt, a little too coquettish, not enough considerate of the masculine hearts she damaged, and the feminine hearts she pained. The Duke de Laval said, “The gift of involuntary and powerful fascination was her talisman.” Not, sometimes, to make a voluntary use of that talisman, she must have been more than human. As years and trials deepened her nature, she sought rather to make happy than merely to please. She always cared more to be respected than to be flattered, to be loved than to be admired. Admiration and sympathy were stronger in her than vanity and love of pleasure: reason and justice were strongest of all. Her judgment was as clear, her conscience as commanding, her sincerity, courage, and firmness as admirable, as her heart was rich and good. When Fouche said to her, in her misfortunes and exile, “The weak ought to be amiable,” she instantly replied, “And the strong ought to be just.” Her exquisite symmetry of form, her dazzling purity of complexion, her graciousness of disposition, her perfect health, her desire to please, and generous delight in pleasing, composed an all-potent philter, which the sympathy of every spectator drank with intoxicating effect. She discriminated, with perfect truthfullness, the various degrees of acquaintance and friendship. She made all feel self-complacent, by her unaffected attention causing them to perceive that she wished their happiness and valued their good opinion. Ballanche tells her, “You feel yourself the impression you make on others, and are enveloped in the incense they burn at your feet.” Wherever she went, as if a celestial magnet passed, all faces drifted towards her with admiring love and pleasure. By her lofty integrity and her matchless sweetness and skill, as by a rare alchemy, she transmuted her fugitive lovers into permanent friends. Her talents were as attractive as her features: little by little her conversation made the listener forget even her loveliness. Saint-Beuve says, “As her beauty slowly retreated, the mind it had eclipsed gradually shone forth, as on certain days, towards twilight, the evening star appears in the quarter of the heaven opposite to the setting sun.” Her voice was remarkably fresh, soft, and melodious. Her politeness never forsook her: with an extreme ease of manner, she had a horror of familiarity, as well as of all excess and violence. Her moderation of thought, serenity of soul, and velvet manner, were as unwearying as reason and harmony. Without pretence of any sort, she hid, under the full bloom of her beauty and her fame, like humble violets, modesty and disinterestedness. At the time of her death, Guizot, when a distinguished American lady asked him what was the marvel of her fascination, replied, with great emotion, “Sympathy, sympathy, sympathy.” She had none of that aridity of heart which regular coquetry either presupposes or produces. Deprived by destiny of those relations which usually fill the heart of woman, she carried into the only sentiment allowed her, an ardor, a faithfullness, and a delicacy, which were unequalled; and the veracity of her soul, joined with her singular discretion, gave her friends a most enjoyable sense of security. Ballanche called her “the genius of devotedness;” and Montalembert, “the genius of confidence.”

From the most dangerous and deteriorating influences of her position she found a safeguard in active works of charity. Her pecuniary generosity, in her days of opulence, was boundless. She seemed to feel that every unfortunate had a right to her interest and her assistance. “Disgrace and misfortune had for her,” avowed one who knew her entirely, “the same sort of attraction that favor and success have for vulgar souls; and under no circumstances was she ever false to this characteristic.” The fine taste she had for literature and art, the great pleasure she took in their beauties, the natural grace and good-will with which she expressed her admiration, furnished precisely that kind of incense which authors and artists love to breathe. Old Laharpe, who, in her young days, had derived the deepest delight from her attention and praise, wrote to her, “I love you as one loves an angel.” The readiness with which the word “angel” rises to the lips of her friends is striking. Almost every one of them applies the word to her on nearly every occasion. Madame de Krudener writes to her, “I shall have the happiness, I hope, dear angel, of embracing you to-morrow, and talking with you.” All seemed instantly to recognize something angelic in her expression. It was in her disposition as much as in her appearance, apparently in the latter because in the former, as Ballanche said to her, “In your thought, taste, and grace will ever be united in one harmonious whole. I am fascinated at the idea of so perfect a harmony, and want the whole world to know what I so easily divine. It will be your mission to make the intrinsic character of beauty fully understood; to show that it is an entirely moral thing. Had Plato known you, he need not have resorted to so subtile an argument. You would have made him alive to a truth that was always a mystery to him; and that rare genius would thus have had one more title to the admiration of the world.”

There was something celestial in her motions, that suggested the undulations of a spirit rather than joints and muscles, and made her soul and flesh one melody. As to her heavenly temper of goodness, there is but one voice from all who knew her. She accorded to the sufferings of self-love a pity and kindness seldom shown to them. She had the sweetest faculty for dressing the wounds of envy and jealousy, soothing the lacerations of rivalry and hate, assuaging the bitterness of neglected and revengeful souls. For all those moral pains, or griefs of imagination, which burn in some natures with a cruel intensity, she was a true sister of charity. To the rest of her winsome gifts she added according to the unanimous testimony of the witnesses this rare and resistless quality, the power of listening to, and occupying herself with, others, the secret both of social success, and of happiness without that success. “She said little,” De Tocqueville avers, “but knew what each man’s forte was, and led him to it. If any thing was said particularly well, her face brightened. You saw that her attention was always active, always intelligent.” Lamartine said, “As radiant as Aspasia, but a pure and Christian Aspasia, it was not her features only that were beautiful: she was beautiful herself.” Sarah Austin affirmed, “It was the atmosphere of benignity which seemed to exhale like a delicate perfume from her whole person, that prolonged the fascination of her beauty.” And Lemoine declared, in his eloquent obituary notice, “In the hearts of those who had the honor and the happiness of living in constant intercourse with her, Madame Récamier will for ever remain the object of a sort of adoration which we should find it impossible to express.” The only fault her friends would confess in her was the generous fault of too great toleration and indulgence. And to dwell unkindly on this is as ungracious a task as to try to fix a stain on a star.

Arrayed in her divine charms; armed with irresistible goodness and archness; enriched with equal wisdom and uprightness, every movement a mixture of grace and dignity; protected by an aureole of purity which always surrounded her; walking among common mortals, “like a goddess on a cloud,” she made it the business of her life to soften the asperities, listen to the’ plans, sympathize with the disappointments, stimulate the powers, encourage the efforts, praise the achievements, and enjoy the triumphs, of her friends. No wonder they loved her, and thronged around her alike in prosperity and in adversity. To appreciate her character is a joy; to portray her example, a duty. She was a kind of saint of the world.

The single fault which Saint-Beuve finds with the spirit of the society she formed, and governed so long with her irresistible sceptre, is that there was too much of complaisance and charity in it. Stern truth suffered, and character was enervated, while courtesy and taste flourished: “The personality or self-love of all who came into the charmed circle was too much caressed.” One can scarcely help lamenting that so gracious a fault is not oftener to be met in the selfish and satirical world. For the opposite fault of a harsh carelessness is so much more frequent as to make this seem almost a virtue. Cast in an angel’s mould, and animated with an angel’s spirit, her consciousness vacant of self, vacant also of an absorbing aim, ever ready to install the aim of any worthy person who came before her, she was such a woman as Dante would have adored. It seems impossible not to recognize how much fitter a type of womanhood she is for her sex to admire than those specimens who spend their days in publicly ventilating their vanity, feverishly courting notoriety and power; or those who, without cultivation, without expansion, without devotion, without aspiration, lead a life of monotonous drudgery, with not a single interest beyond their own homes.

A certain Madame Ancelot has written a book, in which, doubtless under the pain of some galling memory—she attacks Madame Récamier as a selfish coquette, enamored only of admiration, fame, and power. Her chief weapon, as this woman asserts, was a skilful application of deliberate unprincipled flattery to the pride and vanity of everybody she met. The conduct attributed to Madame Récamier in the odious examples fabricated by this slanderer, would have been insufferably repulsive even to average persons. To persons of such insight, refinement, and elevation as marked all her most intimate associates, it would have been unutterably disgusting. The whole representation, while awakening the indignation of the reader, shows what a degrading caricature noble souls undergo when reflected in the minds of base observers. Contrast with the view of this Madame Ancelot what is said with unquestionable authority, after the intimacy of a lifetime, by the gifted and illustrious Countess de Boigne. “Amidst the overwhelming reverses of her husband’s fortunes, I found Madame Récamier so calm, so noble, so simple, lifted so far above all the vain shows of her former life, that I was extremely struck; and I date from that moment the vivid affection which subsequent events have served only to confirm. No portrait does her justice. All praise her incomparable beauty, her active beneficence, her sweet urbanity. Many declare her great talents; but few have discerned, through the habitual ease of her intercourse, the loftiness of her heart, the independence of her character, the impartiality of her judgment, and the fairness of her soul!” These are the words of one absolutely competent to judge, intrinsically incapable of falsifying; and also when death had removed every motive for flattery.

All who have written on this most admired and beloved woman have had much to say of the secret and the lesson of her sway. One ascribes her dominion to a subtile blandishment; another to a marvellous tact, another to an indescribable magic. But really the secret was simple. It was the refined suavity and Womanliness of her nature, the ineffable charm of a temper of unconquerable sweetness and kindliness, a ruling “desire to give pleasure, avert pain, avoid offence, render her society agreeable to all its members, and enable every one to present himself in the most favorable light.” Let the fair creatures made to adorn and reign over society add to their beauty, as Sarah Austin observes, the proper virtues of true-born and Christian women, gentleness, love, anxiety to please, fearfullness to offend, meekness, pity, an overflowing good-will manifested in kind words and deeds, and they may see in the example before us how high and lasting its empire is. This is the true secret revealed, this the genuine lesson taught, by the rare career which we have been reviewing.

After this glorious example of the moral mission of woman, glorious despite its acknowledged imperfections, it is not necessary to deny the common assertion, that men have a monopoly of the sentiment of friendship. Neither is it necessary to expatiate on the great happiness this sentiment is capable of yielding in the comparatively narrow and quiet lives of women, or to insist on the larger space which ought to be assigned to the cultivation of it in those lives. The moral of the whole subject may be put into one short sentence, namely this: The chief recipe for giving richness and peace to the soul is, less of vague passion, less of ambitious activity, anti more of dedicated sentiment in the private personal relations of the inner life.

How little matter unto us the great!
What the heart touches, that controls our fate.
From the full galaxy we turn to one,
Dim to all else, but to ourselves the sun;
And still, to each, some poor, obscurest life
Breathes all the bliss, or kindles all the strife.
Wake up the countless dead; ask every ghost,
Whose influence tortured or consoled the most?
How each pale spectre of the host would turn
From the fresh laurel and the glorious urn,
To point where rots, beneath a nameless stone,
Some heart in which had ebbed and flowed its own!

The salon which Madame Swetchine opened in the Rue Saint-Dominique was one of the powers of Paris for over forty years. Here she drew around her all that was most select, most distinguished, most exalted, in Catholic France; and subdued all by the holy dignity of her character, the authority of her wisdom, the sweetness of her spirit, and the charm of her manners. In the homage she inspired, the favors she distributed, and the tributes she received, she was truly a queen. Her days were divided into parts, observed with strict uniformity. She reserved the morning to herself, hearing mass and visiting the poor until eight o’clock; then returning home, and closing her door until three. From three to six she received company; secluded herself from six to nine; and welcomed her friends again from nine until midnight. Her drawing-room, if not so famous, was as influential and fascinating to its frequenters as that of Madame Récamier. Unlike as they were, they have often been compared. The Récamier salon, with its slightly intoxicating perfume of elegance, was infinitely more easy, more agreeable; the Swetchine salon, with its bracing atmosphere of sanctity, was more earnest, more religious. Though personal nobleness was honored in both, polished fashion predominated in one, devout principle in the other. The presiding genius of the former was the perfection of the best spirit of the world; the presiding genius of the latter was the perfection of the best spirit of the Catholic Church. The guests of Madame Récamier went to the Abbaye-aux-Bois to please and to be pleased, to exchange eloquent thoughts, to breathe chivalrous sentiments, and to enjoy an exquisite grace of politeness never surpassed. The guests of Madame Swetchine went to the Rue Saint-Dominique to take counsel on the affairs of the higher politics, the interests of the nation, and the welfare of the Church; to enjoy a community of faith and aspiration, to refresh their best purposes, and to learn how more effectively to serve the great ends to which they were pledged. There, liberty of opinion and speech was unlimited, and a refined complacency aimed at; here, loyalty to certain foregone principles and institutions was expected, and a tacit spiritual direction maintained: but in both were found the same delightful moderation, repose, and gracious forbearance; the same reconciling skill; the same indescribable art of ruling and leading while appearing to obey and follow.

These illustrious women were perhaps equal in the interest they awakened, and the sway they exercised over their friends; but there was a great difference in the secret of the charm which they severally possessed. There is nothing more disagreeable in a companion than pre-occupation, if it be pre-occupation with self; nothing more fascinating, if it be pre-occupation with you, or with something of universal authority and attraction. The spell of Madame Récamier lay in her irresistible personal beauty, grace, and graciousness; that of Madame Swetchine, in her unquestionable greatness and goodness and simplicity. Each was marvellously self-detached and kind to everybody. But Madame Récamier was an unoccupied mirror, ready to reflect upon you what you brought before it; Madame Swetchine, a mirror pre-occupied with the lovely and authoritative forms of virtue, wisdom, and piety. The former personally enchanted and captivated all; the latter caused all to bow, with herself, before a common sovereignty. The one was the fairest model of nature; the other, a representative of supernatural realities, a holy symbol of God.

It is extremely interesting to trace the effect of these remarkable personalities on each other. When Madame Swetchine visited Rome, at the age of forty-two, her mind was somewhat imbued with prejudices against Madame Récamier, whom she had never seen, and who was then tarrying there. Madame Récamier was forty-seven years old, with a reputation unsullied by a breath, and a beauty which was remarkable even twenty years afterwards. The manner in which Madame Swetchine speaks of her, in a letter to Madame de Montcalm, forms the least satisfactory passage we remember in all her correspondence:

“Madame Récamier seems sincerely to prefer a secluded life. It is fortunate, her beauty and celebrity being on the decline: ruins make little sensation in a country of ruins. It seems that to be drawn to her one must know her more; and, after such brilliant successes, certainly nothing can be more flattering than to reckon almost as many friends as formerly lovers. Perhaps, however, not that I would detract from her merit, had she but once loved—the number would have been sensibly diminished.”

It is charming to see, in the rich, eloquent letter which Madame Swetchine wrote to Madame Récamier, soon after their first interview, how quickly these prejudices were dispelled on personal contact, and replaced by an earnest attachment:

“I have yielded to the penetrating, indefinable charm with which you enthrall even those for whom you do not yourself care. It seems as if we had passed a long time together, and had many memories in common. This would be inexplicable, did not certain sentiments have a little of eternity in them. One should say, that, when souls touch, they put off all the poor conditions of earth; and, happier and freer, already obey the laws of a better world.”

The reciprocation of this interest is shown by the fact, that Madame Récamier urgently besought Madame Swetchine to make her residence in the same house with her, the Abbaye-aux-Bois; which she would probably have done, had it not been for the objections of General Swetchine.

The open secret of the wonderful influence which Madame Swetchine exerted on all who came in contact with her, of the extreme reverence and love with which they regarded her, was, therefore, the incomparable power, sincerity, generosity, and gentleness of her character. But to appreciate this truth, and learn the lesson it conveys, we must analyze the case more in detail. The distinguished friend who has written her life says,

“The most remarkable peculiarity of the character of Madame Swetchine was, that all the qualities, all the virtues, and all the powers were distributed in perfect harmony. She was in the same degree enthusiastic and sensible, because her reason was equal to her imagination: she thought as deeply as she felt. However often a man in mind, she always remained a woman in heart; and her personal abnegation was neither feigned nor studied. As exempt from envy as from ambition, she lived first in others, then in public works; only thought of herself after being occupied with everybody else; and great as was her dislike of egotism, never needed to rebuke it because she found such a rich joy in the opposite sentiment. Her disinterestedness reconciled others to her superiority.”

Her faith stood so firm in the whirlwind of opinions, that she needed not to bolster it by bigotry. To the friends, who once murmured against her too great tolerance, she replied, “Of what use is it to live, if one is never to hear any thing but his own voice?” Her compassion and her patience were unconquerable. Nothing could draw from her the slightest sign of vexation or weariness. One of her constant visitors, for fifteen years, was a woman universally detested for her outrageous temper and her bad manners. The announcement of her name was the signal of dismay and dispersion. But the saintly hostess invariably gave her an affectionate reception; and to all the attempts made to induce her to cast off the obnoxious guest, she said, with a smile, “What do you wish? All the world avoids her; she is unhappy, and she has only me.” This woman died of old age; and, during her last days, Madame Swetchine went often to see her, and passed long hours beside her death-bed.

The face of Madame Swetchine, without being handsome, was remarkably expressive; and the inflections of her singularly rich and strong voice were exactly modulated to every thought and feeling of her soul. Destitute of egotism herself, she showed an invariable tolerance for the egotisms of others, and her management of them was a marvel of magnanimous considerateness and soothing skill. The unrestrained frankness of her affection, the intimate confidences she imparted, the noble grounds she assumed to be common to them and her, the tender compliments she was ever paying them with all the skill of a sincere heart, were irresistible. She writes to the Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, “Reply to all my inquiries; especially speak to me of yourself. I long to be relieved from the punishment of your reserve.” Some persons would deal with souls as carelessly as if they were pieces of mechanism; handle hearts as they would handle groceries. Madame Swetchine was unable to contemplate without awe, or treat without scrupulous delicacy, a human spirit seeking to open and show itself to her as it was in the eyes of God.

In addition to all this, she had an amazing knowledge of the mysteries of human nature and the experience of human life. She said she had traversed the whole circle of passions and affections, and was a true doctor of that law. “Reading in my own heart, I have learned to understand the hearts of others: the single knowledge of myself has given me the key of those innumerable enigmas called men.” She avowed herself an instinctive disciple of Lavater, and said, “The expression of the face is the accent of the figure.” Her biographer says that her insight amounted almost to divination. A word, a gesture, a look, a silence, hardly noticed by others, was to her a complete revelation. She had the science of souls, as physicists have the science of bodies. While the ordinary man sees in a plant merely its color or its outline, the botanist discerns, at first sight, all its specific attributes. Such was the power of Madame Swetchine: one lineament, one trait, enabled her to recognize and reconstruct a whole character. There is no luxury greater than that of unveiling our inmost souls where we are sure of meeting a superior intelligence, invincible charity, generous sympathy, and needed support and guidance. All this was certain to be found in Madame Swetchine. She had no rivalry, no envy, no desire to eclipse any one, no bigotry or asperity; and the aged, the mature, and the youthful, alike came with grateful pleasure under her empire. Women, usually little accessible to the influence of another woman, were full of trust and docility towards her. Loving solitude, plunging into metaphysics as into a bath, she yet took great delight in the beauty, freshness; playfullness, and hopes of girls just entering society. Her taste in every thing belonging to the toilet was known to be fine and sure: they loved, when in full dress for company, to pass under her eyes; and she deeply enjoyed admiring and praising them, at the same time pointing out any thing ill-judged or excessive. Not unfrequently, the same ones, who, in the evening, in their glittering array, had paused on their way to the ball, would return in the morning, and sit with her, face to face, in communion on far other and graver matters. Sick and erring hearts showed themselves to her in utter sincerity, while, with unwearied sympathy and adroit wisdom, she poured on them, drop by drop, the light, the truth, the life, they needed. No one can tell to how many she was a spiritual mother, her direction all the more welcome and efficacious that she was not a director by profession, but by instinctive fitness.

Madame Swetchine enjoyed friendships of extraordinary strewth and preciousness with the Countess de Nesselrode, the Princess Galitzin, Madame de Saint Aulaire, the Duchess de Duras, the Marchioness de Lillers, Madame Craven, the Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, and many other women of noble natures and rich interior lives. The record of their intercourse is an imperial banquet for the mind and heart of the reader. The study of it must make ordinary women sigh for envy and shame over their own cold relations, outward ambition, sterile experience, and suspicious caution. Madame Swetchine writes, “I have long made over all my invested capital to the account of those I love: their welfare, their hopes, are the income on which I live.” The Duchess de Duras writes to her, “I love you more than I should have believed it ever would be possible for me to love, after what I have experienced. I believe in you, I who have become so suspicious. I rely on you with entire security, whatever happens.” Again she writes, when her friend is absent in Russia, “I miss you every moment. Return, return. Your chamber is ready, and that of Nadine. Come, come, dear friend: life is so short, why lose it thus?” Madame Swetchine held such a high place in the esteem of her friends, because she was so serene, so wise, so steadfast, so kind, so pure, that she soothed and strengthened all who came near her. One of her friends expresses this in saying to her, “No society pleases and agrees with me like yours.” She always acted on her own aphorism, “To bear faults, to manage egotisms, is an aim perhaps best accomplished by a skilful dissimulation; but the true ideal is to correct faults and to cure self-love.”

The best example, in a relation with one of her own sex, of that sentiment of friendship which was such a pervasive need of Madame Swetchine’s nature, and which she experienced so profusely, was her connection with Roxandra Stourdza, a Greek maiden of great beauty and genius, born at Constantinople. Originally brought together at court, when the latter was maid of honor to the Empress Elizabeth, they formed an enthusiastic attachment, which, for half a century, largely constituted the richness, consolation, and joy of their lives. The monument of it preserved in their correspondence possesses extreme interest and value, and must secure for it a prominent place among the few historic friendships of women. The oriental Roxandra was the object of an admiration truly romantic from her friend, who seemed always to see her seated on an ideal throne, and to address her as some queen of Trebizond. Saint-Beuve says, the refined and exalted affection between these two young persons, living in the artificial world of the Russian court, and each throwing back, in her own way, the mystic influences derived from the sky of Alexandria, affected him as the exciting perfume exhaled by two rare plants nourished in a hot-house. It is unimaginable what lofty, exquisite, and mysterious sentiments they exchange. Their naked souls and minds, with all their workings, are visible in these ingenuous and crowded letters, as in a glass hive we can study the industry of bees. Saint-Beuve affirms, that the later difference in their religion, the Countess Edling always remaining in the Greek communion, Madame Swetchine becoming a zealous Catholic, finally made ice between them; and that, when the countess came to Paris to visit her old friend, she complained of finding coldness and reserve. Probably there was something in this, but not much. The friendship will be best revealed by citing, from the parties themselves, some of its characteristic expressions.

The letters of Roxandra have not been published; but, in those of Sophie, both souls are clearly reflected. For, as M. de Falloux says, Madame Swetchine never Ised hackneyed language, never repeated for one what he had first thought for another. She placed herself, with a skill, or rather a condescension, truly marvelous, at the point of view of those with whom she conversed; and she would never have so easily ended by bringing them to herself, had she not always begun by going to them. This habit was so familiar, this movement so natural to her, that, at the close of every correspondence, we have before our eyes the physiognomy of the correspondent as distinctly outlined as the physiognomy of the writer:

“Did you believe me, my dear Roxandra, when I mechanically said, on leaving you, that I should write to you only after five or six clays? I knew not what I said at the time. If you begin to know me a little, you have seen that I could never hear so long a silence. La Bruyere has said, How difficult it is to be satisfied with any one! Ah! well, my friend, I am satisfied with you; and, were it not for my extreme self-distrust, which nourishes so many inquietudes, I should be almost tranquil, almost happy, almost reasonable. My friend, this moment I receive your letter: how can I thank you? Ah! read my grateful heart; and sometimes tell me, that you wish to keep it, in order that it may become worthy of you.” “I feel so deeply the happiness of being loved by you, that you can never cease to love me.” “I need to know all your thoughts, to follow all your motions, and can find no other occupation so sweet and so dear.” “My heart is so full of you, that, since we parted, I have thought of nothing but writing to you.” “I see in your soul as if it were my own.” “Dear Roxandra, you are every way a privileged being: you unite the advantages of the most opposed characters without any of their inconveniences.” “My attachment for you will, without doubt, be a consolation; but that word, when not unmeaning, is so sad that I desire my friendship to fulfil higher offices. I often envy characters whose impressions are slight and transient. The sponge passes across the slate, and nothing is left. Perhaps such a nature best agrees with man, whose pleasures are for a moment, whose pains for a life. Adieu, my friend! How many times already that word has filled my heart with grief! Take good care of yourself; hasten to God; and, when the struggle is too severe, beseech grace instead of combating.” “It seems to me that souls seek each other in the chaos of this world, like elements of the same nature tending to re-unite. They touch, they feel themselves tallied; confidence is established without an assignable cause. Reason and reflection following, and fixing the seal of their approval on the union, think they have done it all, as subaltern ministers regard the transactions of their masters nothing until they have been permitted to sign their names at the bottom. I fear no misunderstanding with you; and my gratitude alone can equal the perfect security with which you inspire me.” “I must show myself to you absolutely as I am.” “I know of no pleasure more alluring than a sweet and confidential converse which begins with an interchange of ideas, and ends with one of sentiments. This I have found in our intercourse.” “It seems to me that your good angel is very busy about you, and is covering your thorns with some few flowers. How I should like to be charged with the visible execution of this charming mission!” “When near you, I breathe the atmosphere of calmness and depth, which agrees with me: although I have not the rages of King Saul, there is in the sound of your voice something, I know not what, that reminds me of the effect of the harp of David.” “Never was there a goodness more compassionate and penetrating than yours. Yours are the words that seek pain at the bottom of the soul in order to soothe it. How well you possess that divine dexterity which applies balm to wounds almost without touching them!” “My friend, I have met nothing sweeter, more consoling to love, than you. The admirable simplicity of your character, its steadiness, its frankness, have a charm which more than attracts: it fixes.” “We must carry, untouched, to the gates of eternity the deposit each has confided to the other.”

The above extracts give some idea of the warmth and preciousness of the surpassing friendship, but no idea of the high and varied range of intellectual and religious interests that entered into it. “I always,” Madame Swetchine writes, “have your little ring on my finger. This symbol, fragile as all symbols, will outlive me; but I grieve not for that, since I am sure that the sentiment which makes me prize it so highly will survive it in turn.” Dora Greenwell says, “The letters of Madame Swetchine are full of an intimate sweetness that has something in it, piercing even to pain, like the scent of the sweet-brier.” We are reminded of this when she writes, “If life were perfectly beautiful, yet death would be perfectly desirable.” Also again, when she writes to her Roxandra, “What is the pen, sad signal of our long separation, after the pleasure of flinging myself on your neck, and pouring my soul into yours through a deluge of words?” The two friends often indulged the sweet dream of passing their last years together, preparing; each other for the passage equally dreaded and desired, advancing arm in arm and heart in heart towards the unknown. The dream was not destined for fulfilment. But Madame Swetchine had the great joy of seeing her favorite nephew one of the Gargarin boys whom she loved so fondly in their childhood married to Marie Stourdza, the niece and sole heiress of her friend. The only words we have seen from Roxandra herself are worthy of the eulogies paid her, and would seem to justify the highest estimate of her character. She says, “May we all contribute, by our life and our death, to the great thought of God, the re-establishment of order and of truth among men!” And again, amid the alarming revolutions that were shaking all Europe, she says, “We are witnessing the grand judgment of human pride.”

Among the wretched children of misfortune, loved and aided by the saintly charity of Madame Swetchine, she was especially drawn to the solacement of deaf mutes. She keenly felt the sadness and danger consequent on this cruel infirmity. She took, as her own maid, a poor deaf mute, named Parisse, whose temper was so bad that she was scarcely tolerated by any one. She found a charm in taking her walks with this still companion, to whom it was not necessary to speak, and who was not humiliated in keeping silence. “With Parisse,” she said, “I can believe myself alone, and have a needed arm to support me, and an aid which does not encroach on my liberty.” Thus she loved to appear the obliged party rather than the benefactress. The haughty and quarrelsome Parisse often put on the grand airs of an outraged queen. When the other servants were battling with her, Madame Swetchine would go among them, and say, “I love you all, but know that every one shall go before Parisse: she is the most unfortunate, and much should be excused in her.” After enduring almost every thing, she succeeded, by her imperturbable good-nature and firmness, in winning the poor girl to a more amiable behavior. Parisse worshipped her mistress, and had the joy one day of being represented behind her in the likeness engraved by a celebrated artist. They became really attached friends. Is it not touchingly instructive thus to trace the religious ascent of the soul of this noble woman in her friendships, as they successively stoop from the Czarina Marie to the deaf mute Parisse? In his funeral sermon on Madame Swetchine, Lacordaire thus alludes to Parisse: “As we watched the sad setting of that beauteous star, I saw her beloved mute following her with her eyes from an adjoining chamber, the vigilant sentinel of a life which had been so lavish of itself, and whose light went out with faithful friendship on the one side, and grateful poverty on the other.”

Madame Swetchine was endowed from birth with the material, the physiological conditions, for a great and original character, force competent to the finest and the grandest things, with an over-bias of that force to the brain. For long periods, she was compelled to walk in her chamber from seven to eight hours a day, to avoid intolerable nervous pressures and pains. At sixty-six, she wrote to one of her friends, “My interior life sterilizes itself by reason of superabundance; the too great fullness causes an incessant restlessness. I cannot give body to the multitude of confused ideas which crowd each other, interweave, and suffocate me for want of articulation.” This profuse force, which continued throughout her life, enabled her to achieve an amount of work, and acquire a wealth of knowledge and wisdom, truly astonishing. Her youthful education, with the many difficult accomplishments she mastered, was the first resource for the occupation of her teeming energy. The second was the discharge of her domestic and public duties, with as much discretion and skill as if her sole ambition were to be a faultless housekeeper and member of the social order. The third was friendship, to whose genial duties of visiting and correspondence she devoted herself with a fullness and an ardor as passionate as they were genuine. And yet there remained a surplusage of unappropriated soul, whose vague and constant action distressed her. She entered on an extensive study of literature, history, psychology, and philosophy. Her biographer says, that scarcely an important work on these subjects appeared in Europe for fifty years with whose contents she did not familiarize herself, pen in hand. She interspersed these arduous labors by a systematic application to philanthropic works, personally visiting the sick and the poor, and ministering to their wants. And still her force was unexhausted she had more faculty and strength longing to be used, and disturbing her with mysterious solicitations; a solitary activity, without aliment; a wheel for ever revolving in a void; a burning ardor, which, in the absence of sufficing affections below, turned upward, and became a subtile mysticism. When practical duty, friendship, literature, philosophy, and charitable deeds had failed to absorb and satisfy her, plainly there was but one resource left, religion. She entered on the path to God and his fellowship, the sublime way of the life of perfection. She entered on it with an extraordinary capacity for ascending through the various degrees of perception, feeling, and transfusion; and, at the same time, with a power of rational poise which kept her experience of piety from the two extremes of mawkishness and delirium. Such balancing good sense and sobriety, such freedom from every thing morbid, combined with so much thoroughness of faith and so much fervor, we know not where else to find. Some hearts open downward, and send their exciting drench through the body; hers opened upward, and sent its pure vapor aloft into the mind to wear celestial colors. Her head was a higher heart, playing off intelligence and affection, transmuted into each other.

In the charming treatise on “Old Age,” from the pen of Madame Swetchine, a piece of serene poetry and impassioned wisdom, a critic complains that she rather transfigures the subject than shows it. But, however much she may have transfigured it in description, in person and experience she has shown it in the most beautiful form of truth of which it is susceptible. Year by year, to the very end, she became ever wiser, calmer, more influential, more honored and beloved, more saintly and content. Her religious abnegation grew perfect; her peace deepened; her active benevolence broadened; her spirit, always genially tolerant, acquired a mellower ripeness. In relation to one of her acquaintances, she says, “The last time I saw him, I was struck by a kind of rigidity, of bitterness, a want of charity in his judgments which injured their justice; for the more I see, the more I am convinced that we must love in order to know.” The detestable Rochefoucauld said, “Old age is the hell of women.” For Madame Swetchine it had much more of paradise, as the rich ardor and impetuosity of her youth slowly moderated, and, by judicious oversight, she trained her powers into harmony among themselves and submission to God. Long before, she had said that the saddest of all sights was that of an aged woman, deprived of the consideration and respect belonging to a serious life. Now she could say of herself, “I have deserved most of the disappointments I have experienced; yet God has softened them, as if he meant them not for penalties, but trials. Benevolence surrounds me; my need of esteem is satisfied; I have known the most distinguished people; my heart has been fortunate in friendship. Self-detached, in a calm and sweet tranquillity, I need no more, to close my course with courage.” She was not one of those who never speak of themselves because they are always thinking of themselves. De Tocqueville, after receiving an epistle from her, wrote back, with grateful delight in her frank and honoring confidence, “Your letter is a full-length portrait of yourself.” In fact, she always spoke of herself with the utmost freedom, because she looked at herself from without as she would at any other object. Her last years were a fine illustration of her own thought, “Old age is the majestic and imposing dome of human life.”

The death of this memorable woman, touchingly described by Falloux in a letter to Montalembert written at the time, was worthy of what had gone before it, of the preparations she had made for it, and of the glorious destiny to which she believed it the entrance. That “we are to seek God, not deludedly wait for him to seek us,” was not more the maxim of her pen than of her practice. “I speak to others; but with whom do I converse, if it be not, O my God with thee?” To one of the group of tearful and venerating friends standing around her, she said, “Do not, my good friend, ask for me one day more, or one pang less.” Without any decay of her faculties or waning of her moral force, bearing her sufferings with invincible patience and sweetness, maintaining a dignity of thought and speech comparable with that of the last conversation of Socrates, but with the triumph of a perfect Christian faith, she dropped what was mortal, and passed immortally into the bosom of God. It was in September, 1857, and she was seventy-five years young. The great, dazzling, guilty Paris has loosed no purer or richer spirit for the skies. Her dust hallows the cemetery of Montmartre, where, in the coming days, many a pilgrim will go to look on her monument.

While Margaret Fuller was yet a little girl, in her father’s house, an elegant English lady came to pass a few weeks in Cambridge. Her beauty, with her repose and softness of manner, wrought like a strange spell on the idealizing spirit of the lonely and passionate girl. She found the first angel of her life: heaven was opened; and the image of the fair stranger, who soon vanished beyond the sea, was an intoxicating vision in her brain, full of light and perfume, for many a year. In her later life, Margaret formed impassioned connections with a great many superior girls, who were drawn to her by an affinity for her overflowing powers of intellect, feeling, and aspiration. The last on the list of her friendships was the noble Marchioness Arconati, in Italy. The entire intercourse of these two women forms a chapter of devoted warmth and frankness. Through all her life, Margaret felt the necessity for intense relations of affection with the worthiest persons she met. One of her biographers says, “Her friendships wore a look of such romantic exaggeration that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism. Yet, in fact, Truth at all cost was her ruling maxim. Her earnestness to read the hidden history of others was the gauge of her own emotion.”

This prayer was found among the papers written in her earlier life: “Father, I am weary. Re-assume me for a while, I pray thee. Oh, let me rest awhile in thee, thou only Love! In the depth of my prayer, I suffer much. Take me only awhile. No fellow-being will receive me. I cannot pause: they will not detain me by their love. Take me awhile, and again I will go forth on a renewed service. I sink from want of rest; and none will shelter me. Thou knowest it all. Bathe me in thy Love.” Emerson says of her, “Her friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman with women, were not unmingled with passion, and had passages of romantic sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have heard with the ear, but could not trust my profane pen to report.” At the close of her life, amidst the ruins of Rome, she wrote, “I have been the object of great love, from the noble and the humble: I have felt it towards both. Yet I am tired out, tired of thinking and hoping, tired of seeing men err and bleed. Coward and foot-sore, gladly would I creep into some green recess, where I might see a few not unfriendly faces, and where not more wretches should come than I could relieve. I am weary, and faith soars and sings no more. Nothing good of me is left, except, at the bottom of the heart, a melting tenderness.”

The Duchess of Orleans, that Helen of Mecklenburg who married the eldest son of Louis Philippe, was one of those women whose exalted charms of person, character, and manners glorify their sex, fascinate all beholders, and win the enthusiastic devotion of their associates. She was the worthy grand-daughter of that noble Duchess Louise of Saxe-Weimar, wife of Carl August, the friend of Goethe and Schiller, of whom Napoleon said, “Behold a woman whom all my cannon cannot frighten.” Through the checkered scenes of her brilliant and melancholy lot, her happy childhood; her dazzling nuptials; her enviable married life; the terrible shock of her sudden widowhood; the frightful scenes of the revolution, when, with her infant son by her side, she confronted the levelled muskets of the infuriated mob, and looked massacre in the face, without the ruffle of a feature; the dismal days of exile, decline, and death, she bore herself with that sweet dignity, that spotless purity, that ineffable and sublime grace of wisdom and goodness which sometimes appear to lift the perfection of womanhood so nearly to the prerogatives of an angel. She had many friends of her own sex, who cherished an idolatrous affection for her. One of these, the inseparable companion of her existence, has anonymously written a sketch of her life and character, a most charming and impressive tribute. This modest memoir instructively suggests far more than it betrays. The writer says of her adorable friend, “Life was interesting by her side. She captivated the imagination of every one. I know no other woman with whom I could converse for twelve hours together, without for an instant feeling void or weariness. I feel as if I had always something to say to her; for her interest never flags.” It is singular that, of all the multitude who desire to enchain their friends, so few ever learn to practise the deep secret contained in this italicized clause, the innocent secret of a self-abnegating heart of love.

Sarah Austin, one of the wisest and noblest women of England, formed a reverential and ardent friendship for this matchless lady, in her adversity. How profound, how sacred this attachment was, is proved by the notice which, on the day the duchess died, Mrs. Austin wrote, and sent to the press, blotted with tears; and also by the fuller sketch she afterwards prefixed to her English translation of the life of the duchess from its French original. “Her character was always presenting itself in new and harmonious lights; her manners were indescribably refined and winning; her conversation never flagged, was never trifling, never pedantic, never harsh; it always kept you at an elevation which at once soothed and invigorated the mind. There was not in her nature the slightest tinge of the cynical skepticism or sarcastic contempt which chill the soul, and annihilate hope and courage. These are the weapons which vulgar minds oppose to misfortune, the bitter and poisonous plants which wrongs and calamities produce in poor and barren hearts; but her tender and magnanimous nature could bring forth nothing which was not good and generous. It was most affecting to watch the working of her transparent mind through its faithful index, her countenance, during conversation.

“The interest her great qualities inspired was raised, by pity for her cruel misfortunes, to a height which might almost be called a passion. A veil of sadness overspread her sweet face; but behind this veil there was always such a beaming benignity, so lovely a concern for the welfare of mankind, such a high-hearted courage, that you left her cheered rather than depressed. It is to the extraordinary power she had of giving a high tone to the minds of others, joined to the unalterable sweetness of her daily intercourse, that I attribute the discouraged feeling common to those who mourn her loss. If her misfortunes were august, solemn, and terrible as a Greek tragedy, her heart was large, high, and strong enough to meet them. With all her gentleness, Christian and womanly patience, the most striking feature in her character was its moral grandeur.

“Greatness of mind and nobleness
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed.”

Such a woman is the highest exemplar and benefactor of her sex. A religious quality is evoked in the soul that contemplates her. Every impure feeling is struck dead with awe before her. The angelic serenity of her face is as if the smiles which others wear outwardly, with her had retreated inward, and hovered in perpetual play about the heart. By spiritual contact with her, other persons become angelic also. She teaches, by example, what a divine exaltation is sometimes reached through adversity and pain. The head, discrowned of earthly glory, is crowned with celestial beauty. When sufferings stimulate virtues, the thorn-wreath blossoms on our brow: when sacrifices feed faith, the cross which we clasp puts on wings and lifts us heavenward.

I have reserved, to close this chapter, a singularly romantic example of a pair of female friends, set forth by old Thomas Heywoode, in his “Nine Books of Various History concerning Women,” published at London in 1624. A certain sinless maiden, called Bona, “who lived a retired life in a house of religious Nunnes, had a bedfellow, unto whom, above all others, she was tied, lying on her death-bed, and no help to be devised for her recovery.” This Bona, being herself in perfect health, besought the Almighty, that she might not survive her friend; but, as they had lived together in all sanctity and sisterly love, so their chaste bodies might not be separated in death. As she prayed, so it happened. Both died on the same day, and were buried in the same sepulchre, being fellows in one house, one bed, and one grave; and now, no question, joyful and joint inheritors of one kingdom.