PLATONIC LOVE; OR, THE MARRIAGE OF SOULS.

IN the further consideration of these genial attachments of women

with persons not of their own sex, we come to those whose relation is

that of a wholly free and elective friendship, a friendship with no

intermixture either of hereditary connections or of family

obligations. This brings us directly to an examination of that

species of affection celebrated through the world as Platonic love;

on which so many false judgments, inadequate judgments, coarse

judgments, have been pronounced by partial observers and critics. If,

in this discussion of the relations of affection between men and

women, delicate topics are handled, and some things said from which a

squeamish reader may shrink, the vital importance of the matter and

the motive of the treatment furnish the only needful apology. Prudery

is the parsimony of a shrivelled heart, and is scarcely worthy of

respect. The subject of the relations of sentiment and passion

between the sexes has paramount claims on our attention. It actually

occupies a foremost place in the thoughts of most persons. It is

constantly handled in the most unrestrained banter on the stage and

in all the provinces of fictitious literature. Almost every

sensational tale reeks with vulgar portrayals of it. In the mean

time, the reign of vice is thought daily to grow more common and more

shameless; the demoralization of our great cities, in the flaunting

openness of their profligacy, seems to be annually bringing them

nearer to an equality with the debauched cities of pagan antiquity.

The depravity of an abandoned life is supposed to gather constantly

an enlarging class of victims, and to diffuse its undermining evils

more widely around us. Shall the pulpit, the academic chair, the high

court of the finer literature, alone be dumb? It is the duty of those

clothed with the authority of wisdom and purity to speak in plain

accents of warning and guidance. They are guilty of a wrong, if they

let a mock modesty keep them silent on a matter so deeply imperilling

the most sacred interests of the community.

Yet a word of protest is called for against those exaggerated

sensational statements on this subject, so persistently forced on

public attention by well-meaning but mistaken persons. A tendency has

shown itself of late, in many quarters, to attribute that increase of

sensual vices imagined to mark the age, not to temporary outward

causes, provisional phases of our civilization, but to a growth of

depravity in character, an intrinsic lowering of moral sanctions and

heightening of foul passions in the people. Such a belief I hold to

be both false in its basis and pernicious in its influence. To every

competent student of human nature, history demonstrates a progressive

diminution in the intensity of the physical passions, and a

corresponding increase of moral sensibility and the power of

conscience. The extension of sensual vice at the present time, if it

be a fact, is owing to accidental conditions which will not be

permanent, and is itself very far from being so common or so fearful

as some alarmists think. Those alarmists are doing more hurt than

good by their overdrawn descriptions and excited declamation. They

are fastening a morbid attention on a morbid subject. There is an

innocent ignorance, which, if dangerous in some cases, is, in many

cases, the highest safety. There is a wholesome unconsciousness, a

noble preoccupation with good and pure things, which is a far more

promising protective from evil and its temptations than a keen scent

and an eager notice of every tainted thing in the wind. If you choose

the crow for your guide, you must expect your goal to be carrion. The

travellers, who, after making the tour of the United States, write

books taken up with the frequency of divorce among us, or devoted to

such limited and exceptional aspects as that presented by the Mormon

settlement at Utah, are not to be accepted as sound expositors of our

social and moral condition. A De Tocqueville is a truer and more

adequate teacher. Many recent writers on the relation of the sexes in

the present age, writers belonging to the medical, priestly, and

literary professions, appear to be infested with the suspicion that

certain wicked and disgusting customs are almost universal. They seem

occupied in looking everywhere to trace the signs of those customs.

Their writings are less adapted to prevent or cure the deprecated

evil than they are to fix a diseased gaze on it, and thus to

aggravate its mischief. Their readers must get more harm than benefit

from them. The belief in the exceptionality and the loneliness of

vice is a restraint from it; the belief in its commonness is a

demoralizing provocative to it. There are well-meant books now having

a wide circulation in consequence of the efforts made to push them,

which I cannot help believing do more injury than many books which

are universally condemned. They give their readers the suspicion that

the vilest forms of sensuality are universally prevalent, and induce

in them the habit of looking for their signals in every direction. To

every pure and lofty soul, such a suspicion and habit are enough to

turn the sunshine into a stench and make the very landscape

loathsome. The crowding of population in manufacturing and commercial

centres, our thronged and exposed hotel-life, the expensive habits of

fashion, the excessive luxury of wealth and vanity, are, undoubtedly,

causes of much personal vice. But, notwithstanding all this, the vile

and degraded men and women are the marked exception in every

community among us. The vile and degraded are more segregated into a

class by themselves, and are therefore more conspicuous and obtrusive

than ever before. Licentiousness may have been more prevalent

formerly than now, as I believe it was; but less prominent and less

noticed, because of its greater diffusion. It was not so concentrated

into relief. The unstainedly honorable and virtuous are the vast

majority, and will, when a few evil conditions of society are

outgrown, rapidly become an ever larger majority. Especially do I

believe it to be a truth, which none but the ignorant or the vicious

can question, that every city and village in America, outside of

Mormondom, abounds with matrons and maidens, the face of any one of

whom Purity herself might take for her escutcheon.

But, after we allow every just abatement from the overcharged

representations of the extent of sensual vice in our time, there

remains cause enough to make every lover of virtue anxious to employ

all available means to lessen the force of social temptation and to

increase the firmness Of individual resistance. And there cannot be a

reasonable doubt that high-toned friendships of earnest men and women

would be a holy and powerful restraint from illicit habits. To

represent such attachments and intercourse as dangerous lures to

evil, or, as a popular novelist of the day has called them,

"delusions and snares," is an inversion of their true influence.

Consider the following picture drawn by a young Frenchman from his

own experience amid the exposures of Paris:

"The house of Julius Fontaine is another home for me; he and his wife

are a family for me. When I am gay, I go to them to pour out my

gayety; if I am sad, I go to them to have my grief consoled; they

receive kindly both my joy and my sorrow. No fixed day nor hour of

admission, no ceremony and grand toilet; they receive me when I

arrive; they welcome rue in whatever costume I present myself. I

enjoy to the utmost, with these good friends, the pleasure of being

spoiled; I give myself up to it with delight. As soon as I enter,

they install me in a comfortable arm-chair, in a choice situation in

the corner of the fireplace. They speak to me of every thing that is

interesting to Ime; they listen to all my nonsense; they give me

advice, if I ask for it; they consult me about all they intend doing.

I am initiated, by a lively conversation, into the most minute

details of the household; they relate to me the little triumphs and

misdeeds of the children, whom they caress or scold before me. If the

hour arrives for the meal, my place is set; and, invited or not,

there are sure to be on the table some dishes for which they know my

preference. In playing with the children, in dreaming aloud, in

talking seriously, sometimes in a little discussion or backbiting, in

laughing, and exchanging those nothings which charm, we know not why,

the hours glide away. I leave as late as possible; we give cordial

grasps of the hand, which express our regret at parting. The next

day, or a few days after, I find myself there with renewed pleasure.

It seems as if each evening we become more necessary to one another.

They almost make me forget that they are two, and that I am one."

Such a friendship must be a guardian guidance of virtue and

happiness. The cultivation of such relations cannot be too strongly

recommended. The odious vices of sensuality would die out before

them. Profligacy either rots or petrifies the heart; but a pure

friendship inspires, cleanses, expands, and strengthens the soul. It

is the nutriment of genius and of every form of philanthropic virtue.

"How can one who hates men love a woman without blushing?" is one of

Richter's incisive questions.

In now taking up the subject before us, the meaning of the thing in

debate should first be perceived; for, while the ignorant are always

the least competent, they are often the most forward, to give

decisions. Truly understood, the Platonic sentiment does not denote

love, in the distinctive significance of that word, but a pure and

fervent friendship. Ideal love is ordinary love taken up, out of

material organs and relations, into pure mentality, with the

preserved correspondence of all it had on that lower plane where it

naturally lives. Platonic love is a high personal passion, like the

former, with the exception that no physical influence of sex enters

into it; imagination exalting the soul, instead of inflaming the

senses. Actual love is the marriage of total persons for mutual

happiness, and for the transmission of themselves in new beings.

Ideal love is either the memory of actual love, or the notion of it

prevented from becoming actual by some impediment. Platonic love is

the marriage of souls for the production of spiritual offspring,

ideas, feelings, and volitions. The first looks ultimately to the

perpetuation of life by providing new receptacles for it; the last

looks ultimately to the enhancement of life by a sympathetic

reflection of it. The children of actual love are organic

reproductions of the being of the parents; the children of Platonic

love are spiritual reflections of the being of the parents. The

perfected offspring of love are boys and girls; the perfected

offspring of friendship are states of consciousness.

Love, in its high and pure forms, is confined to one object.

Friendship has this advantage, that it may be given to all, however

numerous, whose conduct and qualities of character are fitted to

command it. It is, therefore, less perilous, less exposed to fatal

wreck, more capable of consolations and replacements. Love and

friendship are properly not antagonists, but coadjutors. They

naturally go together where there is adaptedness for them, mutually

quickening and increasing each other. The former should never exist

without the ennobling companionship and clarifying mixture of the

latter. But there are numberless instances in which, while the former

is impossible, or would be wrong, the latter is abundantly capable of

nurture, and would prove a boon of unspeakable solace.

Six immortal names will serve to set in relief the distinction

between that impassioned friendship of man and woman which

constitutes Platonic love, and those forms of ideal love which are

often erroneously confounded with it.

The affection of Petrarch for Laura, after her death, was ideal love.

The love which, in her life, had pervaded his system, then rose,

strained of its carnal elements, and re-appeared in his mind alone,

with the ideal equivalents of all it had before. She became a

heavenly idea exciting emotions in him, instead of an earthly object

productive of sensations; yet a correspondence of all that had been

in the sensations was still seen, purged and eternized, in the

emotions.

The affection for Beatrice which consecrated the soul of Dante was

Platonic love, or a divine friendship. It was free from sensual

ingredients from the first. It was his spirit, ruled by an intense

sympathy, mentally confronting hers, as a live mirror before a live

mirror; creating in his own, in correspondent states of

consciousness, all the entrancing shapes of truth, beauty, and

goodness he saw passing in hers, revealed from God, revealing God,

and clothed with power to redeem the gazer from every thing corrupt.

Dante promised to immortalize Beatrice by dedicating to her such a

strain of love as had never before celebrated a woman. He kept his

promise wonderfully. But the essence of his love was not a new

creation; it was simply an ardent, sexless, worshipping friendship,

that Platonic passion which, wholly cleansed from sense, adored a

beautiful soul as a type of the Divine Beauty, a medium of celestial

realities, which shone through it in half-veiled reminiscences. The

originality of the Dantean love consists, first, in the unique

personality of the poet, and the equally peerless personality which

his genius has given to his lady; secondly, in associating and

blending with the Platonic substance of that love the constituents

and scenery of the Christian doctrines of God and the future life.

Abelard and Heloise began with ordinary friendship, in the relation

of teacher and pupil. The extreme beauty, genius, and graces of the

parties soon poured into their intercourse an intoxicating potion,

which swept the senses into the mental whirl; and friendship

fermented into love. After their misfortunes and separation, the

love, refined from passion to memory, rose out of the senses into the

thoughts, and circulated in idea, instead of detaching itself in act.

We imagine Petrarch offering enamored tribute to Laura, who warmly

persuades his homage, but coldly repels his ardor. We think of

Abelard and Heloise in pensive converse, hand in hand, eye to eye,

living over the past with tender regrets. But we see Dante kneeling

before Beatrice, in profound humility and intellectual entrancement,

touching the hem of her robe, while she points upward to the supernal

Glory, whose light is falling on her face.

What distinguishes this Platonic affection from ordinary friendship

is, that the magic of imagination, with a religious emphasis, is in

it. What distinguishes it from love is, that the consciousness of sex

has nothing to do with it, while that element is essential in the

latter. If woman is generally the object to whom this affection

attaches, it is not because she is woman, but because she is purer,

lovelier, more self-abnegating, a clearer mirror of divinity.

Precisely the same affection exists, when favorable conditions meet,

between man and man; as is abundantly shown in the sonnets of

Shakespeare, in the writings of Plato himself, and in many other

places.

The type of affection now defined, many people consider a mere

theory, spun by a finical fancy, incapable of reduction to practice

in the substantial relations of life. But such critics criticise

themselves. They identify their own limitations with the diagram of

human nature. This is the procedure ever characteristic of arrogant

folly, to make its actual experience the measure of possible

experience. All beauty that is sufficiently marked, does, in its very

nature, awaken a blessed ravishment in every soul that is

sufficiently harmonious and sensitive. The charm operates to this

result through the imagination. Now, if the imagination distribute

the spell through the body, as well as through the soul, ordinary

love is the consequence; but, if imagination be confined within the

intellect, Platonic love is the consequence. Some persons, no doubt,

are incapable of the latter; the instant any form of beauty strikes

their perceptions, it is deflected downward, and dips into the

senses. Every esthetic impression, even the loveliness of painting,

music, or a soft landscape, affects them voluptuously. But it is an

outrage for them to attribute this peculiarity of constitutional

structure, or temperamental key, to everybody else. There are persons

built after a nobler pattern, keyed to a loftier music, susceptible

of a more undefiled and eternal stir of the atoms of consciousness.

They look on a beautiful woman, with a delight circling purely in the

mind, with a serene melodious joy, like that given them by an

exquisite picture, statue, or landscape. Dante tells us, in his Vita

Nuova, that he carried about with him a list of the loveliest ladies

in Florence. To attach any prurient association to the act, would be

blasphemy; it can only be understood by reference to that sweet,

poetic, religious worship of lovely forms, which seems to rise

through contemplation of beauty to adoration of God. One man, brought

into intimate relation with an attractive and gifted woman, feels as

if he were a vase of fiery quicksilver; another feels as if he were a

mirror of divine ideas. The latter is capable of a friendship with

her as fervent as love, but without its alloy; the former is not. St.

Beuve says of Maurice de Guérin, "The sympathetic friendship of a

beautiful woman appeased instead of inflaming him."

The exalted friendship of man and woman, known as Platonic love, is

not, then, an empty mirage of sentimentality. But is it not too

dangerous to be cultivated? Is it not liable to go too far, and to

work fatal mischiefs? Many, judging from unworthy instances, With an

inadequate knowledge of the data, answer these questions with a

sweeping affirmative. But justice requires a careful discrimination.

Unquestionably there are some who are unfit for this relation, in

danger of perversion and betrayal at every step of its progress. Such

should either shun the connection, or keep themselves with double

guards of discreet reserve and watchfullness. Love and friendship,

with them, are two electrical regions, insulated by a thin line of

non-conduction. The more highly charged region tends, at the touch of

any stimulative sign, to break through the barrier, and to flood the

whole being with its own kind. For those of inflammable temperament

and weak conscience, it is obvious enough what jeopardy must attend

their playing about the conscious edges of relations on which such

thunders of soul and fate hang, ready to be unleashed at a look. But

there is another class of persons, with whom the fire of affection is

harmless. Like those weird heat-lightnings that play in the firmament

on summer evenings, it retains the lambent warmth and luminous

loveliness, without the blasting violence. Of the intellectual and

sensual regions, only the former is surcharged; the latter is either

exhausted, or separated by an insulation so sure that it cannot

possibly flash into the other. The unclean electricity of lust cannot

find its way through the non-conductors of esteem, reverence, duty,

and honor. Those are safe, who, shielded by such holy barriers, pay

their worship, in the mental holy of holies, to the supernal charms

of truth and virtue, to the dazzling sanctity of the principle of

good. It is only the gross and weak who are discharged to their ruin

by the lures of vice and pleasure. A profound reverence for a person

at the same time inflames the soul and refrigerates the senses.

The common apprehension of danger from friendship between men and

women is exaggerated. Those who fear such a danger should study the

moral exaltation and the unspeakable usefullness and comfort of the

friendship between Gunther, the court physician, and Matilda, the

queen, depicted by Auerbach, with such careful truth, in his great

novel, "On the Height." Friendship is more likely to spring from love

than love from friendship, in all but degraded characters. Desire is

unprincipled. Love rests on a basis of desire, and naturally fights

against the obstacles that oppose its gratification. It is,

therefore, taken by itself, essentially dangerous. But friendship

rests on a basis of esteem. Esteem is the very voice and face of

moral and religious principle, the essential enemy of low

temptations. It is the clear cold signet with which the soul stamps a

commanding veto against every vicious act. Whenever there is danger

that friendship will become another passion, where there are legal or

moral duties forbidding it, the true course is not to dismiss and

denounce the friendship, but to preserve it in its undegenerate

integrity, by strengthening the sanctions, restraints, and

obligations that should properly guide and guard it. The element of

sense and sex sometimes breaks out with horrible fury in the closest

relations. The cruel crime of Hebrew Amnon, the dark tale of Italian

Cenci, numerous Greek tragedies, many of the terrible English

tragedies of Massinger, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Beddoes,

furnish harrowing examples. The amours of the unworthy yield no

better argument against profound and earnest friendships between men

and women than the morbid cases referred to yield against the proper

affection of parent and child, brother and sister. One does not

refuse to exercise his mind for fear it will lead to insanity; but he

takes care to exercise it healthily. So he should not repudiate the

friendship of a woman, because it may lead to harm; he should cherish

the friendship, and beware of the harm. It is a profanation to judge

of the natural effect of intimacy with the innocent or the wise and

virtuous from the effects of intimacy with the depraved and guileful.

Poor, sinful Tannhauser, long enslaved in the Venusberg, yearned to

be free from the degrading bonds of sensuality. Utterly vain were his

agonizing prayers to Venus to release him. But when, with a sudden

ardor of faith and resolve, he cried to the Virgin Mary, the grotto

in which he was confined instantly faded away, with all its

unhallowed seductions.

The degree of danger in these connections will always depend on the

characters of the parties. We cannot lay down, as tests, general

rules which have much value irrespective of particular persons. Jean

Paul, at twenty-six, wrote a prize-essay on "How far Friendship may

proceed with the other sex without Love, and the Difference between

it and Love." The essay won the prize; but, if ever published, it is

not contained in his collected writings. Probably the author's

maturer judgment pronounced it of but little value. In one of the

volumes of the "Southern Literary Messenger" there is a very pleasing

tale, entitled "How far Friendship may go with a Woman;" arguing that

it is sure to end in love. The same conclusion is also advocated with

much spirit in "A Debate on Friendship," in the thirty-fourth volume

of "Knickerbocker." The opposite and better view is gracefully and

effectively maintained in an article entitled "De l'Amitie," in the

fifteenth volume of "Harper's Magazine." Such special pleadings,

however, will have slight weight with a sincere inquirer after the

truth.

The most important principle for the guidance of such an inquirer is

this: Friendship can be carried, without adulteration or peril, to a

degree proportioned to the nobleness and consecration of the parties.

It is shocking for those drawn together by a common pursuit of

pleasures, to judge, by the standard applicable to themselves, those

attracted towards each other by a common service of authorities. As a

general rule, sensuality is in inverse ratio to intellectuality, but

sensibility in direct ratio.

Accordingly, there is a select class of men and women, of the

loftiest genius and character, the native haunt of whose souls is in

the purest regions of nature and experience, who are made for

friendship; and who, destitute of this, are deprived of their truest

and fullest happiness. The movement of imagination which beauty

starts in them keeps to the chariot-paths of celestial ideas, and is

never switched into the burning tracks of sense. Friendship then

reigns in sovereign distinction from love, sometimes by an

unfittedness for the latter, sometimes by the interposition of moral

principles and sentiments which lift their insulating behests as an

impenetrable wall between the different regions.

One of the most striking of the testimonies borne to the value of the

friendship of a woman is that of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton:

"It is a wonderful advantage to a man, in every pursuit or avocation,

to secure an adviser in a sensible woman. In woman there is at once a

subtile delicacy of tact, and a plain soundness of judgment, which

ire rarely combined to an equal degree in man. A woman, if she be

really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character,

honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing; for

a woman Triend always desires to be proud of you. At the same time,

her constitutional timidity makes her more cautious than your male

friend. She, therefore, seldom counsels you to do an imprudent thing.

By friendships I mean pure friendships, those in which there s no

admixture of the passion of love, except in the married state. A

man's best female friend is a wife of good sense and good heart, whom

he loves, and who loves him. If he have that, he need not seek

elsewhere. But supposing the man to be without such a helpmate,

female friendship he must have, or his intellect will be without a

garden, and there will be many an unheeded gap even in its strongest

fence.

"Better and safer, of course, are such friendships, where disparities

of years or circumstances put the idea of love out of the question.

Middle life has rarely the advantage youth and age have. Moliere's

old housekeeper was a great help to his genius; and Monaigne's

philosophy takes both a gentler and loftier character of wisdom from

the date in which he finds, in Marie de Gournay, an adopted daughter,

'certainly beloved by me,' says the Horace of essayists, with more

than paternal love, and involved in my solitude of retirement, as one

of the best parts of my being. Female friendship, indeed, is to a man

the bulwark, sweetener, ornament, of his existence. To his mental

culture it is invaluable; without it, all his knowledge of books will

never give him knowledge of the world."

Mrs. Jameson quotes the opinion of Auguste Comte, that "the only true

and firm friendship is that between man and woman, because it is the

only one free from all possible competition." And she adds, "In this

I am inclined to agree with him, and to regret that our conventional

morality, or immorality, places men and women in such a relation

socially as to render such friendships difficult and rare." Sydney

Smith said, and the remark applies as forcibly to America as to

England, "It is a great happiness to form a sincere friendship with a

woman; but a friendship among persons of different sexes rarely or

never takes place in this country." The strong jealousy felt in these

countries for any intimate relations of affection between men and

women other than fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers

and sisters, husbands and wives; the readiness to cast coarse

insinuations on them, is more discreditable to our hearts than it is

creditable to our morals. It implies the belief that they cannot be

attached as spirits without becoming entangled as animals. It is

absurd to pretend that the multiplication of virtuous friendships

between the sexes would foster licentiousness. Their flourishes best

in their absence. Their lifeelement, esteem, is death to

licentiousness. A holy thought, with its train of vestal emotions,

like Diana and her nymphs, hunts impure desire out of the blood. One

of the most known and remarkable friendships of woman and man was

that of the Pope Hildebrand and the Countess Matilda of Tuscany.

Their relation was based on veneration for each other's commanding

and austerely virtuous characters, ardent sympathy in convictions,

plans, dangers, labors, and sufferings. They were both supremely

devoted to the Church, to the support of its creed, and to the

extension of its power. An enthusiastic community in so much

experience made them enthusiastic friends. The vile charges of

impurity brought against them by their vulgar foes then, and repeated

since by prejudiced historians, are a matter of indignation and

disgust to every impartial judge.

The most persuasive recommendation of these friendships is seen in

the class of persons who are their most distinguished cultivators and

exemplars. Men overflowing with the tenderest sensibility, devoted to

the loftiest ends, bravest to dare, firmest to suffer, quickest to

renounce, studious, afflicted, holy, unconquerable souls, are the

ones who put the highest estimate on the friendships of women; who

instinctively seek to win the confidence and interest of the best

women they meet; who are surest to surround themselves with a group

of pure and noble women, from whose sympathy, through conversation

and correspondence, they draw unfailing supplies of comfort, strength

and hope. Find a person to whom a tender friendship is an absolute

necessity, as it was to the classic De Tocqueville, who said, "I

cannot be happy, or even calm, unless I meet with the encouragement

and sympathy of some of my fellow-creatures," and you will never find

him sneering at Platonic love. Klopstock, soul of ethereal softness

and sanctity; Jean Paul, who added the finest heart of womanhood to

the athletic soul of manhood; Richardson, so blameless in his life,

so pathetic in his writings, so pleasing in his half naïve, half

grandiose, personality; William Humboldt, the loving son and brother,

the irreproachable statesman, the majestic scholar, the model of a

Christian gentleman; Matthieu de Montmorency, hero and saint;

Schleiermacher, the unflinching thinker and prophet, devout rouser,

yearning comrade, encircled by Rahel Levin, Charlotte Von Kathen,

Dorothea Veit, Henrietta Herz, and the rest; Charming, brave seeker

and servant of truth, spotless patriot, lofty friend of humanity,

burning aspirant to God, finest and grandest American character,

these, and such as these, are the men who have most valued

friendships with choice and unspotted women. On the other hand, the

contemners of such a sentiment will be found most fitly represented

by Thersites, who continued to ridicule Achilles for the tender-

heartedness he showed towards the dead queen of the Amazons, until

the hero killed the rancorous scoffer with one blow of his fist.

But, of all the class of men we have been speaking of, no one has

more thoroughly tasted the contents of this relation in personal

experience, or more completely mastered and displayed its secrets by

psychological criticism, than Jacobi. Jacobi sat, for half his life,

in the centre of a sort of Platonic academy of noble women, such as

his own sisters, and the Princess Galitzin, Sophia Delaroche, and

Cornelia Goethe, revolving, both in native feeling and critical

thought, all the treasures of pure affection. Bettine, after a visit

to him, said, "Jacobi is tender as a Psyche awakened too early." In

his two works, "Allwill's Correspondence" and "Woldemar," he unfolds

the true philosophy of Platonic love, in its psychological

foundations and workings, and in all its subtilest ramifications,

more fully than anybody else has ever done it. Jacobi held the glass

before his own bosom, dipped the pen in his own heart, and drew the

noble though fevered Woldemar after the life. The chief characters in

this romance of philosophy and sentiment are Woldemar; his brother

Biderthal, to whom he is passionately attached; Dorenburg; the three

sisters, Caroline, Luise, and Henriette Hornich; and their dear

neighbor and associate, Allwina Clarenau. Caroline and Luise marry

Biderthal and Dorenburg; Allwina becomes Woldemar's wife; but

Henriette becomes his friend. This friendship becomes so

comprehensive and intense in its vitality, that life would be nothing

to them without it. After a while, an element of strange perturbation

and suspicion enters into it; they fear it is becoming love, and are

most wretched. But at length, after much perplexity and distress, all

comes clear; and they are again blessed with a perfect spiritual

sympathy, as serene and pure as that between two seraphs.

The story and many of its separate incidents have been greatly

censured and ridiculed; but Jacobi had an insight, a knowledge, a

mastery, in these delicate matters, far superior to that of his

critics. Whoso really fathoms his exposition must justify and admire

it. The characters of Woldemar and Henriette are extraordinary and

exceptional; they are nevertheless true; and their experience is

accurately depicted, and offers an invaluable lesson for those who

can read it. "I had, from a child," Woldemar writes, "a sweet

lovingness for every thing which came in beauty towards my senses or

my soul. I was full of pleasure, courage, and sadness. I bore

something in my heart which divided me from all things; yea, from

myself, I strove so earnestly to embrace and unite myself with all.

But what made my heart so loving, so foolish, so warm and good, that

I never found in any one. Before the rising and before the setting

sun, under the moon and the stars, full of love and full of despair,

I have wept as Pygmalion before the image of his goddess." After

many vain trials to win a sufficing friendship, after long

observation of others and study of himself, Woldemar concluded it

unattainable, and laid the hope aside. "I found," he says, "that,

collectively and singly, we nourish too many and too eager desires,

are too deeply harassed by the pursuits, cares, joys, and pains of

life, are too much tortured, excited, distracted, for two men

anywhere, in these times, to become and remain so completely one as

my loving enthusiasm had made me dream." But Henriette revived this

long-forgotten dream in Woldemar, and made it real; and in his

friendship we see carried out the idea of a man in whom a foreign

personality has so overlaid and taken up his own, absorbing his will

and determining his re-actions, that, in his relation to her, the

element of sex is excluded, as it is in his relation to himself; and

marriage with her would seem to him worse than incest.

The Duchess de Duras, in a letter to Madame Swetchine, expresses

herself as being "indignant with the refinements of Woldemar,"

"The mixture of true and false, the combination of just reasoning

with perverted sentiment. This love which is not friendship! and this

friendship which is not love! Well, in the name of God, to love, is

it not to love? Ah, Madame la Duchesse! do you think, then, that all

the infinitely complicated minglings and windings of human feeling

are so lucid and simple? Is Jacobi, the German Plato, so stupid a

metaphysician and so low a moralist that you can so easily teach him

acumen and ethics? Scorn or mirth is misdirected against him." Had

Madame Swetchine read "Woldemar," we may be sure her verdict would

have been different.

France has stood for a long time in advance of every other nation, in

regard to the friendships of its men and women, pure as well as

impure; it is a slander to limit them to the latter class. The reason

of this is to be traced in historic causes, going back to the birth

and dispersed influence of chivalry. Chivalry burst into its most

gorgeous flower in Provence; Toulouse was the capital whence its

light and perfume radiated through France. It spread thence into

Spain, Italy, Germany, England, and other places; but nowhere reached

the height and copiousness of power it had in the land of its origin.

Its most fervent manifestation, at the summit of its state, was seen

in the worship of woman, the chaste and enthusiastic homage paid by

the knight to the lady of his choice. This ideal idolatry of woman,

which played so dazzling a part in the poems of the minstrels and in

the inner life and historic feats of the knights, subsided, in the

gradual change of times, into delight in the society and conversation

of woman. The peculiar combination of influences that presided over

this process may be briefly indicated.

Few women at the present time appreciate the debt of honor and

gratitude they owe to the troubadour or wandering minstrel of the

early Middle Age. Moncaut has well revealed it in his "History of

Modern Love." Feudal tyranny then held the whole sex in the sternest

slavery. One day, the wife, or the young daughter, confined in the

upper story of the walled fortress, sees, passing by the castle, a

poor youth with a guitar suspended from his neck, humming a

languishing air. She gazes on him; she hearkens to his song; she

thanks him with a gesture and a smile. He has brought a momentary

relief to the weariness of her sad captivity. Cast a glance on this

roaming singer, this houseless rhymer; the last representative of

that noble poesy born before Homer. This gentle son of poverty,

seeking his bread with the strings of his viol, this Bohemian of the

eleventh century, goes to regenerate barbarian society. The influence

of music and poesy, which nothing mortal can resist, will win him

permission in all places to sing what no one would dare to say. He

will publish the sighs of woman for liberty, at a time when her life

is an imprisonment; the prerogatives of love, its independence, when

the father disposes of his daughter without deigning to consult her

wishes or her vows. Before the ladies of the castles, he will

celebrate the splendid deeds of the knights; before the knights, he

will compassionate the tears and hardships of the ladies shut up in

the castles; and thence will arise a double current of attraction and

of sympathy between the oppressed women who suffer, and the generous

men who long to deliver them.

But causes far deeper and wider than that of minstrelsy wrought in

the favorable influence of chivalry on the condition of women, causes

psychological, physiological, and social. The exalting effect of love

is well known; its inciting and glorifying power is seen even in

birds and beasts at the pairing-time, in a new brilliancy of plumage,

and a wonderful increase of courage. Love produces a greater

secretion of force in the brain and other nervous centres. This

exuberance of spirit, or exaltation of function, is usually a

transient phenomenon, the gratification of its impulses bringing its

cause to a termination. It may, however, be made permanent by such an

appropriation of the product as will re-act to keep the cause alive.

That is to say, materialize a passion, and you destroy its power, its

flame dies in the damps of indulgence; but spiritualize a passion,

and you perpetuate its power, its flame becomes a spur, pricking the

sides of intent.

The love of woman has in all ages given birth in man to passionate

desires, poetic dreams, deferential attentions, persuasive forms of

politeness; but only once in the whole of history has this softening,

quickening, exalting power restrained from a destructive outlet, and

stimulated to an unparalleled richness of manifestation, stamped with

chastity by the dominant conscience and imagination of the time

broken out in one great swell as an inspiration to glorious deeds,

illuminating the world, and making an immortal epoch. Such, in one of

its aspects, is the significance of chivalry, whose crest-wave broke

into bloom in the Provencal literature; whose consummate flower,

lifted far aloft, was Dante's homage to Beatrice. The inspiration of

chivalry was the love of woman; but that love was spiritual. It aimed

not at a personal union, to die away in marriage, but at a deathless

fruition in heroic achievements. This ideal appropriation of love, to

engender self-abnegating valor and beneficent deeds, originated from

the meeting of the two currents of martial history and the Christian

religion in a prepared people and period.

War was the chief institution and experience of man down to the

Middle Age; Christianity had then become sovereign of the common

beliefs and fears. The priests, who governed thought and conscience

almost without check, were vowed to perpetual chastity; that was held

up as the highest virtue. But gallantry has always marked the

soldier. This element of military life, inoculated with the fire of

imagination and the sanctity of the gospel, as happened in the poetic

atmosphere of priestly and feudal Provence, was transformed into that

pure, intense worship of woman which was sung by the Christian

troubadours, and admired and emulated alike by lords, minstrels, and

squires. For when the priesthood adopted the sons of war, and sent

them forth under Christian sanctions, they naturally imparted to

them, as far as possible, their own duties and sentiments. The result

was the knight, with his lyre, cross, and sword, mixture of poet,

warrior and saint; impersonating, in strange but beautiful union, the

military, the literary, and the ecclesiastic ideal, in which the

sensual flame fostered in the atmosphere of battle was blended with

the mental purity nourished by the exercises of the cloister, and

tempered with the rich fancy evoked under the stimulus of the

academy. Chivalry was the child of martial adventure and religious

faith, married by the culture of the Church. The gallant worship of

woman native to the camp, the poetic worship of woman created in the

court of minstrelsy, and the religious worship of woman set forth by

the Church in the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary, blent in chivalry,

produced that stainless and ardent devotion of the knight to his

lady, which was appropriated as at once the incitement and the reward

of brave and disinterested actions. Dipped in that pure pool of

sentiment which the Angel of Christianity stirred, the darts of Cupid

were cleansed from aphrodisiacs. The thought of a pure and lovely

woman was then naturally allied with the thought of Divinity; the

association of garter and star was not difficult.

The enthusiasm thus copiously generated, forbidden by the reigning

spirit and circumstances of the age to escape, either through the

vent of sensual indulgence, or through that of mere dreaming

sentimentalism, was forced to flow forth in the only remaining

channel, that of self-consecration to perilous adventures, glorious

services, feats of toil and penance. When arms and knight-errantry

fell out of fashion, in a more settled age, this force of enthusiasm,

no longer flashing forth in warlike emprise, illumined the saloon;

the current of feeling, instead of being directed upon the field,

circled in the breast, and sparkled out in genial talk and graceful

forms. The idolatrous devotion to woman, which had nerved the arm of

the knight, and upheld chivalry, now subsided into a respectful

sympathy with woman, and, animating the heart of the gentleman,

became the ornament and sweetener of society, the inspiring basis of

intercourse. In consequence of the stimulus and position resulting

from the extreme honor paid to the great feudal dames and their

beautiful sisters, in that palmy era, the higher class of women in

France obtained a social development whose advantages they have never

since lost.

France also had another period quite unique for the varied and

wonderful development it gave to the genius and character of woman.

An anonymous writer, in the English "National Review," has described

this epoch in a passage of marked wisdom and brilliancy. "The court

of France," he says, "in the reign of Louis XIII, the regency of Anne

of Austria, and the early part of the reign of Louis XIV, produced a

company of ladies, in whose presence all the remaining tract of

history looks dim. Cousin has nobly drawn the portraits of their

leaders. The wars of the League had left the great nobles of France

in the enjoyment of an amount of personal freedom, importance, and

dignity, greater than was ever before or since the lot of any

aristocracy. Chivalrous traditions; the custom of appeal to arms for

the settlement of personal quarrels, a custom which is said to have

cost the country some nine hundred of its best gentlemen in about as

many years; the worship of womanhood, carried to a pharisaical

strictness of observance, were conditions, which, though socially

disastrous in various ways, exalted the individual worth, power, and

majesty of men to the most imposing height, and rendered a

corresponding exaltation imperative upon the women, in order to

secure that personal predominance which it is their instinct to seek.

The political state of France was one which afforded the members of

its court extraordinary occasions for the display of character. That

state was one of a vast transition. Feudal privileges had to be

either moderated, defined, and constitutionalized, or else destroyed.

The revolution which was about to operate in England, and to end in

liberty, was already working in France with a manifestly opposite

destiny. Richelieu and Mazarin were slowly and surely bringing about

an absolute despotism, as the only solution of the political

difficulties of the State consistent with its greatness, and,

probably, even with its unity. The opposition of the nobles to the

diminution of their power was carried on with far greater boldness

and grandeur of personal effect, inasmuch as it was done without

directly affronting the monarchical authority in the persons of its

weak representatives, Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria. The two great

ministers were the objects against which the whole wrath of the

nobility was directed. Hence the war against encroaching monarchy was

in great part waged in the court itself; and the king and the queen-

regent were themselves found from time to time in the ranks of the

indignant aristocracy. Here, then, was a wonderful field for

individual effect; and that field was open to women no less, or even

more, than to men; for the struggle on the part of the latter was,

upon the whole, a selfish and ignoble one. No national idea inspired

it; every one was for himself and his house; and the women were

perfectly able to sympathize and assist in quarrels of this personal

and intelligible interest. In these days, too, rose Port-Royal, with

its female reformers, saints, and theologians, offering an asylum to

weary and repentant worldliness and passion, or a fresh field for

vanity which had exhausted its ordinary irritants. On every side lay

great temptations and great opportunities; and the women of the

period seem to have been endowed with singular qualifications for the

illustration of both."

The historic tradition of her great, lovely, brilliant, accomplished

women is one chief reason why friendships of women with men are more

common and important in France than in most other countries. Besides,

the French are a more ideal people than others; live more from the

brain, less from the spinal axis; take a deeper delight in the mere

social reflection and echoing of life. And in this, on account of

their instinctive swiftness of susceptibility, perception, and

adroitness, refined women can have no rivals in the other sex. The

luxury of the British is taciturnity; but to this day the favorite

excitement of the French is conversation; and conversation is the

food of friendship.

The inner history of the Catholic Church, so wealthy in many

departments of experience, is especially rich in an original class of

profound friendships of men and women, friendships between devout

ladies and their spiritual directors. Without referring to the abuses

which would sometimes occur in the instances of weak or sinister

characters, these religious friendships have often been surprisingly

permeating and transparent. This follows from the nature of the case.

For the most ardent healthy devotees of religion are persons of the

most exalted ideas and affections, most deeply endowed with the

sensibility of genius. Every coarse passion both alien to their souls

and awed away by the infinite realities they adore in common, the

historic abyss of the Church scintillating around them with the

memories and presences of saints, martyrs, angels, it is natural that

all the purer sympathies of their being, enkindled and consecrated,

should yearn together. The woman also confides every secret, unveils

the inmost states of her spirit, to her confessor; takes counsel of

him; holds with him the most confidential communion known outside of

marriage. And the priest, in turn, shut out from the chief personal

ties and vents of family, spontaneously bestows, so far as is

blameless, his best human affections, turned back elsewhere, on the

sister, daughter, mother, friend, fellow-worshipper, who looks up to

him with such affecting trust, opening her heart to him, telling him

her hopes and griefs, her errors, prayers, and fears. Madame de

Sévigné, speaking of the attachment of women for their confessors,

says, "They would rather talk ill of themselves than not talk of

themselves." When pure and beautiful women, wonderfully dowered with

spiritual charms, and noble priests, eminently possessed of every

virtue and authority of character, so often meet, amid such inspiring

circumstances, beneath the august sanctions of the church, drawn

forward by the sublime mysteries of religion, and blending the

potential perfections of heaven with the actual experiences of earth,

it would be no less than a miracle if many friendships of singular

sincerity and power did not spring up. They have sprung up in every

part and period of Christendom; more in the Catholic Church than

anywhere else, because its ritual and doctrine, its organized

religious life and its practice of direction, furnish for them

unequalled facilities and provocatives.

The friendship all divine which Jesus showed for many women, of whom

Mary and Martha, the sisters of his friend Lazarus, are examples--the

friendship which drew such matchless devotion from them, has been

perpetuated in the Church in a relation of peculiar tenderness

between the priest and the devotee.

"Many women followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him." With

what godlike benignity he spoke to the Samaritan woman, to the

Syrophenician woman, and to the poor adulteress! With what

indescribable compassion he turned to the women who accompanied him

towards Calvary, bewailing and lamenting him, and said, "Daughters of

Jerusalem, weep not for me". And what words shall be set beside those

which fell from his lips when, as he hung on the cross, he saw his

mother, and the disciple standing by whom he loved, and he saith unto

his mother, "Woman, behold thy son!" then he saith to the disciple,

"Behold thy mother!" Verily, from that hour, the Church has taken

woman to itself, as the recipient of a ministration full of respect

and purity. In any enumeration of renowned ecclesiastical

friendships, Saint Chrysostom and Saint Olympias, the gold-mouthed

bishop of Constantinople and the rich and noble widow, deserve to

head the list. Under the guidance of the eloquent preacher, she

labored to perfect herself in the religious life, and gave her time

and wealth to all kinds of charity and good works. From her Christian

affection he drew precious strength and comfort. When he was carried

from his church and driven into exile, the weeping Olympias fell at

his feet, and clasped them so closely that the officers had to use

force in tearing him from her. Sixteen letters addressed to her by

Chrysostom during his banishment are still extant, silently

pronouncing her eulogy throughout the Christian world. A friendship

like the foregoing, only still more complete, was that of Saint

Jerome and Saint Paula. The talents, scholarship, services, and

enthusiasm of Jerome are universally known; and the chief personal

attachment of his life is scarcely less familiar to the public.

Paula, immortalized not less in literary history as his friend than

in the ecclesiastical calendar for her virtues, was one of the most

distinguished women of the age. She had great riches and high rank,

as well as pronounced talents and worth. The blood of the Scipios, of

the Gracchi, and of Paulus Emilius, met in her veins. Jerome was her

spiritual director at Rome for two years and a half-her other soul

while life remained. She built and supported at her own expense an

extensive monastery for Jerome and his monks at Bethlehem. When she

died, Jerome wrote to her daughter the long and celebrated letter

called "Epitaph of Paula," in which he exhausts the hyperboles of

praise. The features of a rare character and the proofs of an

extraordinary affection may be discerned within the extravagances of

this eloquent panegyric. The tombs of Jerome and Paula are still to

be seen side by side in the monastery at Bethlehem. Saint Clara of

Assisi, on account of her high rank, great wealth, and extreme

loveliness, had many offers of marriage, many temptations to enter

into the gayeties and luxuries of the world. But she preferred the

thorny path of mortification and the crown of celestial beatitude.

The melting pathos of the preaching of Saint Francis, with the

penetrative charm of his spirit, drew her to throw herself at his

feet and supplicate his guidance. He approved her desire to devote

herself wholly to the religious life in seclusion; and, when she had

made her escape by night from the proud castle, clad in her festal

garments, and with a palm-branch in her hand, he and his poor

brotherhood met her at the chapel-door, with lighted tapers and hymns

of praise, and led her to the altar. Francis cut off her long golden

hair, and threw his own penitential habit over her. She became his

disciple, daughter, and friend, never wavering, though exposed to

dangers and trials of the severest character. Under his direction,

she formed the famous order of Franciscan nuns, afterwards named from

her the Poor Clares.

These nuns, clad in gowns of gray wool, knotted girdles, white coifs

and black veils, engaged in touching works of humility and charity,

have been seen in many nations now for seven centuries, keeping alive

the example of their foundress. When the body of Saint Francis, on

its way to burial, was borne by the church of San Damiano, where

Clara and her nuns dwelt, she came forth with them weeping, saluted

the remains of her friend, and kissed his hands and his garments. The

memory of the relation of these sainted friends is perpetuated in

many pictures of the Madonna, wherein Clara is portrayed on one side

of the throne of the Virgin, and Francis on the other, both

barefooted, and wearing the gray tunic and knotted cord emblematic of

poverty. Perhaps the most fervent and interesting of all the

friendships between director and devotee, of which the documents have

been published, is that of Saint Francis of Sales and Madame de

Chantal. Full materials for studying this relation are furnished in

the letters that passed between the parties, both of whom were of a

temperament strung to the most exquisite tones of consciousness, with

minds both wise and strong, and with characters under the control of

austere principles of duty and piety. Michelet, in his work on the

Confessional, gives a skilful and forcible picture of this rapt

friendship; but his own pervading sensuousness, not to say

sensuality, does the sentiment gross injustice by mixing in it so

much of flesh and earth. The union of these two mystics in spirit and

deed was as taintless as that of two angels in heaven.

If throbs of agonizing passion sometimes mounted up, the invariable

heroism with which they were veiled and suppressed simply adds the

martyr merit to the saintly one. Saint Francis had an irresistible

attractiveness of figure and face, a temper and bearing of singular

sweetness. Childlike, and so fair in appearance that it was difficult

to withdraw the eyes from him, he united the greatest social insight

and skill with the greatest sincerity and simplicity. Madame de

Chantal, early left a widow, with several children and an aged and

infirm father, administered the business of her household with

systematic prudence, and filled her leisure hours with fervent

religious exercises. Saint Francis and Madame de Chantal seem to have

been predestined for friends. Their biographers relate, that, long

before they had seen each other, they met in mystical visions and

ecstasies. Archbishop Fremiot, brother of Madame de Chantal, and an

intimate acquaintance of Saint Francis, invited him to preach at

Dijon. During his sermon, the preacher noticed one lady particularly

above the rest; and, as he came down from the desk, asked, "Who is

that young widow who listened so attentively to the word?" The

archbishop replied, "That is my sister, the Baroness de Chantal." An

inspired understanding appears to have at once united their minds.

"It is enchantment," Michelet says, "to read the vivacious and

delightful letters which open the correspondence of Saint Francis

with his dear sister and dear daughter. Nothing can be more pure,

nothing can be more ardent." He says the sentiment she awakened

powerfully assisted his spiritual progress. He thought of her at the

moment of partaking of the sacrament. "I have given you and your

widowed heart and your children daily to the Lord, in offering up his

Son." She dispensed with her former confessor, and confided her

spirit to Saint Francis. She desired to take the conventual vows; but

he restrained her a long time. In the name of his mother, he gave her

his young sister to educate.

This occupation tranquillized her mind; but the beloved child soon

died at her house, in her arms. She prayed God "to take her own life,

or one of her children, in place of her dear pupil." Saint Francis

now consented that she should withdraw from the world. Her household

presented a piteous scene-her old father and father-in-law in tears;

her son, afterwards the father of Madame de Sévigné, prostrating

himself on the threshold to prevent her departure. But the passionate

response in her to the supposed call of Heaven broke all lower ties;

and she passed over the body of her son, and said farewell for ever

to her home. Saint Francis intrusted her with the formation of a new

religious order--the celebrated Order of the Visitation. In nurturing

this order, writing, travelling, praying in its interests, with

intervals of silent retreat, she spent the rest of her days. Her

intense temperament, her absolute faith and submission, her

systematic attention to business, her mystical ecstasies, her heroic

sacrifice, form a most original combination. Her life seems an

alternation of sober processes, stormy raptures, and stifling calms.

Her restless sensibility, girdled by fixed principle, gives us the

picture of a sea of fire breaking on a shore of frost. Her essay on

"Desire and the Agony of Disappointment" is a gush forced from the

bottom of a heart full of baffled feeling, under the pressure of a

mountain of pain. The constancy and power of her attachment to Saint

Francis, through all, are marvellous. On the day of his mother's

death, he writes, "I have given you the place of my mother in my

memorial at the mass: now you hold in my heart both her place and

your own." She writes to him, "Pray that I may not survive you."

Twenty years did she outlive him; finding, to the last, her greatest

pleasure in remembering him, carrying out his wishes, and

corresponding about him with his friends. Ten years after the death

of Saint Francis, Madame de Chantal had his tomb opened in the

presence of her community, and made an address before the embalmed

body. A testimony to the deep impression their friendship had made is

found in the myth, that, when on this occasion she reverently lifted

to her head the dead hand of the saint, it acknowledged her devotion

by an answering caress. The winning qualities of Madame Guion

awakened an enthusiastic interest in many of those whom her

remarkable religious experience brought into close relations with

her. Especially they produced in her confessor, Father Lacombe, such

a ruling admiration, reverence, and tenderness, that he was subdued

into a caricature of her. He followed her everywhere, could not dine

without her, made her directions his law. When her peculiar doctrines

of the Quietist life, and her fame, had caused a disturbance in the

Church, her enemies circulated scandals about the friends. The

spotless and heavenly-minded woman smiled, and paid no heed to the

wrong. But Father Lacombe, under the combined power of his Quietistic

fanaticism, poor health, bitter persecutions, and relentless

imprisonment, lost the balance of his mind altogether, and died.

Fenelon also, interested in Madame Guion by her genuine piety, and by

sympathy with many of her views, and finding this interest greatly

deepened on personal acquaintance, formed a strong attachment for

her. Convinced of her innocence, and knowing her rare worth, the

misfortunes and sufferings brought on her by her persecutors served

but to redouble his kindness. Her enemies then became his; and they

made him pay dearly for his fidelity, by robbing him of waiting

honors, and throwing him into disgrace at court.

His friendship for Madame Guion was like that of a guardian angel. It

never failed. One can imagine what her feelings towards him must have

been. Many noble women had a strong friendship for Fenelon. He could

not come into the confiding relations of his office with them without

that result. His face was all intelligence and all harmony; his

voice, music; his manner, fascination; his character, heaven. His

unconscious suavity, his abnegated personality, formed a mighty

magnet; and every soul, with any steel of nobleness in it, fondly

swayed to him. Madame Maintenon gave him, for years, all the

reverence and affection of which her commonplace nature was capable;

and then, at the command of her selfish bigotry, became chilled. The

impassioned and unhappy La Maisonfort, so talented and so beautiful,

whose pathetic story is charged with every element of romance, adored

him. And the Duchess de Chevreuse and the Duchess de Beauvilliers

always paid him an homage whose grace and sweetness the happiest man

that ever lived might well sigh for. To the latter of these queenly

women, then a sorrowing widow, he wrote, in the last letter he

penned, "We shall soon find again that which we have not lost: every

day we approach it with swift strides; yet a little while, and there

will be no more cause for tears." Among the penitents of Bossuet,

there was one--a widow, named Cornuau, to whom the great prelate gave

more of his heart than to any of the rest. In submitting her

spiritual life to his oversight, they were often brought together,

both by letters and by personal interviews. The affectionate docility

and loyalty of the novice won his kind esteem, and the condescending

benignity and greatness of the noble genius kindled her enthusiasm.

And so the opposite ends of the chain of their attachment were

fastened. After displaying exemplary zeal, for fifteen years, in all

the works of duty assigned her, she was permitted to become a nun,

taking the name of Bossuet in addition to the title of Sister Saint

Benigne. Despite her humble origin and the mediocrity of her

intellect, Bossuet preferred her above all the high-born and

brilliant ladies who constantly knelt for his benedictions. It was

only natural, that, notwithstanding the work of grace, she should

sometimes feel jealous. But once, after she had expressed herself

"ready to burst with jealousy" of a certain great lady, whom she

falsely supposed esteemed more than herself by the lofty director,

when the object of her jealousy was smitten with a frightful disease,

Sister Benigne, with sublime self-sacrifice, went to Paris, and

became her nurse; "shut herself up with her, watched over and loved

her." When Bossuet died, La Cornuau, "happily guided by her

friendship, forgetting her own vanity, and mindful only of the fame

of her spiritual father, did more for him, perhaps, than any

panegyrist." She published the two hundred letters he had written to

her, "noble letters, written in profound secrecy, never intended to

see the light, but worthy of exposure to the perusal of the whole

world."

A friendship, such as we might suppose would be characteristic of

such ecstatic natures, was cherished between the two celebrated

Spanish mystics, Saint Theresa and Saint John of the Cross. The

fullest expressions of it may be found in their respective writings,

now translated into many languages, and easy of access almost

anywhere. Unquestionably there have been very numerous Friendships,

worthy of notice, between clergymen and devout women, in the

Protestant sects. But they are different from those in the Catholic

communion, which has, in this respect, great advantages. In the

Protestant establishment, all are on a free equality; and the

religion is an element fused into the life. With the Catholics, the

overwhelming authority of the Church invests the priests with godlike

attributes; while celibacy detaches their hearts from the home and

family, leaving them ready for other calls. The laity are placed in a

passive attitude, except as to faith and affection, which are more

active for the restrictions applied elsewhere; and religion is

pursued and practised as an art by itself. The church ritual, by its

dramatic contents and movement, peerless in its pathetic, imaginative

power, intensifies and cleanses the passions of those who

appreciatively celebrate or witness it, and who are naturally

attracted together, as, in blended devotional emotions and aims, they

cultivate that supernatural art whose infinite interests make all

earthly concerns appear dwarfed and pale.

The instances already cited of the friendships thus originating

suffice to indicate the wealth in this kind of experience which must

remain for ever unknown to the public. But one example which has just

been brought to light, and is worthy to rank with the best of earlier

times, should be mentioned here. It is the relation of Madame

Swetchine and the most renowned preacher of our century, Lacordaire.

This friendship has been beautifully portrayed by Montalembert. A

full account of it will be found farther on in these pages. The

friendship that joined the souls, and still links the names, of

Vittoria Colonna and Michael Angelo, is one of the most celebrated in

history. Her married life with the chivalrous and magnificent Marquis

of Pescara, in his palace on the bewitching isle of Ischia, was one

of the most romantically happy unions ever known; and nothing could

be more noble than her impassioned fidelity to his memory. It was in

the twelfth year of her widowhood that she first met with Michael

Angelo, then sixty-three years old. Such were their respective

attributes of personal worth and majesty, rank and fame, exaltation

of character and genius, stainless purity, dignity, earnestness, and

devotion, that they could not fail to regard each other with ardent

esteem. For ten years, till death separated them, this esteem, with a

consequent sympathy and happiness, steadily grew. To her he dedicated

many works of his chisel and his pencil, and addressed several

exquisite poems.

Their example affords a fine illustration of the sentiment of

Platonic love; and his verses repeatedly give it a rhetorical

expression equally fine. He says,

Better plea

Love cannot have, than that, in loving thee,

Glory to that eternal Peace is paid,

Who such divinity to thee imparts

As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts.

His hope is treacherous only whose love dies

With beauty, which is varying every hour.

But in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power

Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower,

That breathes on earth the air of Paradise.

Vittoria said, "He who admires only the works of Michael Angelo

values the smallest part in him." One of the only two portraits he

ever painted was hers. The aged Angelo stood by the couch of Vittoria

at her death. When the last breath had gone, "he raised her hand, and

kissed it with a sacred respect." It is touching to know, that the

sublime old man, years afterwards, recalling that scene to a friend,

lamented, that, in the awe of the moment, he had refrained from

pressing his lips on those of the sainted Colonna. Hermann Grimm

says, "How great the loss was which he sustained can be realized only

by him who has himself felt the void which the removal of a superior

intellect irretrievably leaves behind it. It must have been to him as

if a long-used, magnificent book, in which he found words suiting

every mood, had been suddenly closed, never to be re-opened. Nothing

can compensate for the loss of a friend who has journeyed with us for

many years, sharing our experiences. Vittoria was the only one who

had ever fully opened her soul to him. What profit could he draw from

the reverence of those who would have ceased to understand him, had

he shown himself as he was in truth? His only consolation was the

thought, that his own career was near its close."

Among the celebrated French women, who have had a genius and a

passion for friendships, Mademoiselle de Scudéry deserves prominent

mention. Her great talents, virtuous character, and affectionate

disposition, made her a favorite in the distinguished society she

frequented. The great Conde, Madame de Longueville, and the other

famous visitors of the Hotel Rambouillet, honored her, and took

delight in her companionship. Her ardent devotion to her friends, her

beautiful and heroic fidelity to them, her chivalrous vein of

sentiment and character, Cousin has illustrated with his minute

learning and generous eloquence. Why Madame de Longueville was in

disgrace with the court party, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, with a

fearless and noble constancy, dedicated a book to her, and, in

consequence, lost her pension, and had to write for her bread. For

this her aristocratic friends, instead of forsaking her, admired and

clung to her the more. Her famous work, the "Grand Cyrus," in ten

thick volumes, to which Cousin has brought to light a complete key,

is filled with disguised portraits of her friends and associates, and

with descriptions of the times.

She draws her own likeness under the name of Sappho. In this work,

the pictures, incidents, and conversations reflect a state of

society, in which "the degrees and shades of friendship, from deep

Platonic love to the slight impression one person makes on another at

first meeting, are the real pre-occupations of existence; the

smallest grace of mind or manner is observed, and of importance;

there is an intense epicurism in companionship; it is both the first

occupation and the greatest pleasure of life." The second edition of

an English translation of the whole ten volumes of the "Grand Cyrus"

was published in London in 1691. The translator, F. G., Esq.,

erroneously attributes the authorship to "that famous wit of France,

Monsieur de Scudéry, Governour of Nostre-Dame." He confounds the

sister with the brother. It is dedicated to Queen Mary, wife of

William of Orange, in a style of sonorous pomp, worthy of the court

of Nadir Shah. In his preface, F. G. says, "If you ask what the

subject is; 'Tis the Height of Prowess, intermixed with Virtuous and

Heroick Love; consequently the language lofty, and becoming the

Grandeur of the Illustrious Personages that speak; so far from the

least Sully of what may be thought Vain or Fulsom, that there is not

anything to provoke a Blush from the most modest Virgin; while Love

and Honour are in a seeming Contention which shall best instruct the

willing ear with most Delight." In describing the deep and rare

friendships with which the "Grand Cyrus" abounds, Mademoiselle de

Scudéry had but to look into her own heart, and make copies from her

experience. Especially might the union of Sappho and Phaon stand for

the picture of her own connection with Pélisson." The exchange of

their thoughts was so sincere that all those in Sappho's mind passed

into Phaon's, and all those in Phaon's came into Sappho's. They told

each other every particular of their lives; and so perfect was their

union, that nothing was ever seen equal to it. Never did love join so

much purity to so much ardor. He wished for nothing beyond the

possession of her heart. They understood each other without words,

and saw their whole hearts in each other's eyes." Pélisson was

twenty-nine, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry forty-five, when they first

met. Their instant mutual interest deepened, on more thorough

acquaintance, into the warmest esteem and affection, and remained

unshaken for over forty years. The perfection of their intimacy was

known to every one; and every one believed in its entire purity.

Cousin says it is touching to see these two noble persons made so

happy by their friendship, a friendship which even the coarse and

slanderous Tallement respected so much that he refrained from casting

a single sneer at it. The story of Pélisson's imprisonment in the

Bastile is known to the whole world by the anecdote of the spider.

His only companion, during those wretched years, was a large spider,

which he had tamed, and was accustomed to feed and play with. One

day, the brute of a jailer trod on him, and killed him; and Passon

wept. His friend employed all her ingenuity, during his confinement,

in inventing means of communication with him. "At times, when he was

ready to fall into despair, a few lines would reach him, and bring

him comfort." At length his prison was opened, and fortune smiled

again. At his death, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, though eighty-six years

old, wrote and published a simple and affecting memoir of him, paying

a deserved tribute to his character, in which, she said, there

reigned a singular and most charming combination of tenderness,

delicacy, and generosity. The most constant among the large circle of

admiring friends drawn around Madame de Sévigné by her merits and

charms was a cultivated Italian gentleman named Corbinelli, who lived

in Paris, on a moderate income, asking only leisure, and the

gratification of his high tastes. He was "one of those rare

exceptions who seem created by nature to be the benevolent spectators

of human events, without taking any part in them beyond that of

observation and interest for the actors." He had talents equal to the

greatest achievements, but was indolent and unambitious.

He was one of the earliest to discern and to proclaim Madame de

Sévigné's exquisite superiority of mind, disposition, and manners,

and to pay reverential court to her. Lamartine gives this account of

the friendship that ensued--an account not less instructive than

interesting: "His admiration, his worship, which sought no return,

gained him admittance to her house, where he was regarded as one of

the family, and became a necessary appendage. Madame de Sévigné, at

first charmed by his wit, afterward touched by his disinterested

attachment, concluded by making him the confidant of her most secret

emotions. Every heart that beats warmly beneath its own bosom seeks

to hear itself repeated in that of another. Corbinelli became the

echo of Madame de Sévigné's mind, soul, and existence. He

participated in her adoration of her daughter. At Paris, he visited

her every day: he sometimes followed her to Livry; and, when absent,

corresponded with her frequently.

"The dominion which his friend exercised over him was so gentle, that

he experienced no feeling of slavery while submitting 'implicitly to

the rule of her tastes. So absolute was her empire, that, when she

became a devotee, he became a mystic: he followed her, as the

satellite accompanies the planet, from the worldly gayeties of her

youth, even to the foot of the altar, and the ascetic self-denial of

Port-Royal. He survived her, as though he had survived himself, and

lived to the extraordinary age of one hundred and four years,

animated to unusual life by his gentle and amiable feelings. Such was

Madame de Sévigné's principal friend. If his name were erased from

her letters, the monument would be mutilated." La Rochefoucauld,

whose reputation the indignant eloquence of Cousin has so damaged,

was the object of an admiring friendship, of which he was not worthy,

from Madame de Sévigné and Madame de la Fayette. But of all the

friends to whom the ardent, imaginative, faithful heart of Madame de

Sévigné attached itself, no one, after her husband and her daughter,

held so commanding a place as Fouquet, the unfortunate minister of

Louis XIV. Fouquet must have had rare traits, besides his

acknowledged greatness of mind, to have won such a pure and

unconquerable affection. Cast down from power, disgraced, closely

imprisoned for fifteen years in the fortress of Pignerol, scoffed at

by those who had fawned on him in his prosperity, and forgotten by

nearly all whom he had befriended, never did Madame de Sévigné forget

him, or cease, for one day, her efforts to alleviate his condition--

cheering him with letters, and toiling to secure his liberation.

D'Alembert had a long and sedulously improved friendship with Madame

du Deffand, of whom Henault said, "Friendship was a passion with her;

and no woman ever had more friends, or better deserved them."

There was a basis for this eulogy; but it needs much qualification.

She and D'Alembert prized each other's society highly, and passed

much time together. But jealousy and exaction are tenacious

occupants, easily recalled to the heart even of an aged and friendly

woman. When D'Alembert formed a closer friendship with Mademoiselle

Lespinasse, the young and charming companion of Madame du Deffand,

the latter imperiously dictated the renunciation of the new friend as

the condition of retaining the old. The superiority of temper,

genius, and worth in Mademoiselle Lespinasse did not permit

D'Alembert to hesitate; and she repaid him with memorable fidelity.

The affectionate and dependent girl was harshly driven out. In her

anguish, she took laudanum, but not with a fatal result. D'Alembert

then called Du Deffand an old viper; but his friend checked him, and

would never allow any abuse of her former mistress, much less herself

indulge in vituperation of her. When D'Alembert was attacked by a

malignant fever, she went to his bedside, and nursed him day and

night till he was convalescent. Marmontel says, "Malice itself never

assailed their pure and innocent intimacy." She afterwards formed an

attachment, of the most romantic character, to the young Spanish

Marquis de Mora, who reciprocated her affection with impassioned

ardor. He died while on the road to join her; and she was not long in

following him into the grave, though, in the mean time, a still

stronger passion for Guibert had weaned her from D'Alembert. The

fervent tenderness of the latter for her remained unaltered, and he

was inconsolable at her departure. On hearing of her death, Madame du

Deffand said, "Had she only died fifteen years earlier, I should not

have lost D'Alembert." Her letters are famous in the literature of

love. Sir James Mackintosh says, "They are, in my opinion, the truest

picture of deep passion ever traced by a human being." Margaret

Fuller writes, "I am swallowing by gasps that cauldrony beverage of

selfish passion and morbid taste, the letters of Lespinasse. It is

good for me. The picture, so minute in its touches, is true as

death." Madame de Staël had many devoted friendships, as would

naturally be expected from the overwhelming wealth and ardor of her

nature. Affinity of genius and a common love of liberty drew Benjamin

Constant and her into intimate relations; and she maintained for

years still closer relations with the all-knowing, all-cultured

August Schlegel, whose devouring egotism and ever-sensitive vanity

put all her patience and generosity to the proof.

The current opinion concerning Madame de Staël, that she was an

exacting and disagreeable woman, is unjust. Schiller, who shrank from

her impetuous eloquence, and Heine, whose reckless satire depicts her

as going through Europe, a whirlwind in petticoats, both do her

wrong. William von Humboldt, who knew her well, pronounces a glowing

eulogy on her exalted traits, and says that Goethe, from prejudice

and ignorance, was very unjust to her. Madame Mole says, "Women are

not half grateful enough to Madame de Staël for the honor she

conferred upon her sex by taking up the noble side of every question,

armed with her pen and her eloquence, and never once calculating what

the consequences might be. As time goes on, and details sink into

insignificance, she will rise as the grand figure who withstood

Bonaparte at the head of six hundred thousand men, with Europe at his

back. His vanity was such that he could not bear one woman should

refuse to praise him; for that was her only guilt." She was capable

of the utmost magnanimity and disinterestedness. Every exalted

sentiment struck a powerful chord in her heart. She lived in justice,

freedom, beneficence, love, aspiration. The friendship of Matthieu de

Montmorency, the most intimate and devoted of all her friends, is

enough to prove her exalted worth, making every abatement for her

acknowledged foibles. This chivalrous nobleman came, in his youth, to

America with Lafayette, and fought for the new Republic. Although one

of the foremost members of the aristocracy, it was on his motion in

the Constituent Assembly that the privileges of the nobility were

abolished. Sympathy in opinions and in the generous strain of their

characters was the basis of a connection between him and Madame de

Staël, that constantly grew in strength with the trials to which it

was subjected, and was not severed even by death. When his brother,

ardently loved, fell under the axe of the Revolution, it was her

delicate sympathy, her ingenious and indefatigable goodness, that

first soothed his anguish, assuaged the horror that threatened his

reason, and prepared the way for religion and peace. And in turn,

when she was exiled by Napoleon, Montmorency journeyed to Switzerland

to visit her, at the risk of being banished himself, as he

immediately was. "Matthieu, the friend of twenty years, is the most

faultless being I have ever known." "How could he think I should

tarry in Germany, when, by leaving it, I had a chance of seeing him?

All Germany could not pay me for the loss of two days of his

society." No unkindness, suspicion, or ignobleness of any sort, ever

interrupted or mixed in the affection of these high friends. When

Montmorency died, suddenly, in church, years after the death of

Madame de Staël, the daughter of the latter, the Duchess de Broglie,

instinctively exclaimed, on hearing of the event, "Ah, my God! I seem

to see the grief of my poor mother." The prejudice in England and

America against friendships between men and women has operated

considerably to lessen their frequency, still more to keep them from

public attention when they do exist. Undoubtedly, many a charming

English woman, many a charming American woman, in her time the centre

of the social circles of fashion, letters, and politics, has been

surrounded by a company of friends as devoted at heart as those who

have gathered with more public homage about the famous dames of

France and Germany. Such groups will be called to mind by the English

names of Mrs. Montagu, Lady Melbourne, Lady Holland; the American

names of Mrs. Madison, Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Seaton, Mrs. Schuyler, and

many others. But, since, with the most of these latter, the details

have not been taken from the category of private property, by

publications of memoirs and journals, it would be impertinent to

single them out for personal mention, even where it is possible.

Magdalen Herbert, mother of George Herbert, befriended Dr. Donne in

his distresses, ministering to the wants of his family with generous

delicacy, and comforting him by her society. His discernment of her

wit and piety, her gracious and noble disposition, combined with his

gratitude to make him her fast and fervent friend. His conversation,

together with that of Bishop Andrews, whose renown Clarendon and

Milton unite to swell, appears to have given Lady Herbert great

delight. Lasting evidence of the impression her character and

kindness made on him is found in his verses and letters addressed to

her, and in the funeral sermon which, with many tears, he preached

for her. He says in verse, in her advancing age,

No spring nor summer beauty has such grace

As I have seen on an autumnal face.

And he gratefully writes to her in his quaint prose, "Your favors to

me are everywhere. I use them and have them. I enjoy them at London

and leave them there, and yet find them at Mitcham. Such riddles as

these become things inexpressible; and such is your goodness." There

was a choice, ever-comforting, and sacred friendship between the

great John Locke and the excellent Lady Damaris Masham, the only

daughter of that ornament of the English Church, the learned and

benignant Cudworth.

She was one of the most gifted, cultivated, and elegant women of her

time. The genius and moral worth of Locke are well known to all.

Domesticated in the family of Lady Masham for many years before his

death, giving her all the advantage of his talents, acquirements, and

sympathy, "she returned the obligation with singular benevolence and

gratitude, always treating him with the utmost generosity and

respect; for she had an inviolable friendship for him." She watched

by him in his last illness. He asked her to read a psalm to him. As

death approached, he desired her to break off reading, and in a few

minutes breathed his closing breath. She wrote the fine sketch of his

character published in the "Historical Dictionary." She says his

manners made him very agreeable to all sorts of people, and nobody

was better received than he among those of the highest rank. "His

greatest amusement was to talk with sensible people, and he courted

their conversation." The amiable, unfortunate Cowper, the most

shrinking and melancholy of men, too gentle and too unworldly for

common companionship, was especially fitted for the soothing

ministrations and the healing sympathy of women. He was dependent on

these friendships, and found his chief happiness in them. But for

them, his career would have been as brief as it was wretched; and his

name, now haloed with such sadly pleasing attractions, would have had

no place in English literature, except in the dark list of madmen and

suicides. Who that has read his matchless lines on his mother's

picture will not bless the good women who shed so many rays of peace

and bliss on his unhappy lot. His cousin, the angelic Lady Hesketh,

whose disinterested tenderness lavished grateful attentions on him,

with a sweet skill that failed neither in his youth nor in his age,

was as a light from heaven on his path through the whole journey.

Some touching verses, and innumerable references in his letters,

attest his appreciation of her. Mrs. Throckmorton and her husband, in

whose grounds he loved to walk, and in whose kindly and refined

society he spent so many delightful hours, furnished a healthy relief

from the gloom of his austere religion, in the atmosphere of their

genial catholicity; and were an invaluable comfort and benefit to

him. Lady Austen also, a sprightly and accomplished woman, of

intellectual tastes, quick sympathies, and charming manners, whose

appearance at Olney "added fresh plumes to the wings of time," was at

one period an inexpressible blessing to him. "Lady Austen's

conversation acted on Cowper's mind as the harp of David on the

troubled spirit of Saul." He christened her "Sister Ann," and wrote

cordial verses to her. Constant communications with her withdrew his

attention from depressing superstitions, and enlivened his spirits.

At her suggestion it was, and under her sustaining encouragement,

that he composed the immortal ballad of "John Gilpin," the "Dirge for

the Royal George," and his greatest work, "The Task." Love being

proscribed by his repeated subjection to insanity, friendship was the

resource in which he was thrice fortunate.

Far above all others in the number of his female friends, in

importance, must be ranked Mary Unwin, whose name is indissolubly

joined with his in the memories of all who are familiar with his

plaintive story. Mrs. Unwin, wife of a clergyman, religious after the

most scrupulous evangelical type, was first drawn to Cowper by a

sectarian interest. They were fated to be friends, as by the striking

of a die. "That woman," he soon wrote to Lady Hesketh, "is a blessing

to me; and I never see her without being the better for her company."

This is the secret of the charm of all true friendship--that it

soothes the heart, clarifies the mind, heightens the soul. One feels

so much the better for it. Almost penniless as he was, a shiftless

manager, assailed by terrible depression and even madness, the Unwins

took him under their roof, and gave him a home on the most generous

terms. From this time until her death, the friendship of Mary was a

necessity to Cowper, the greatest support and enjoyment the hapless

poet knew, combining with his native humor and gentleness to combat

his melancholy malady with frequent and long victories. In his fits

of insanity, she watched and waited on him day and night, defying

alike personal hardships and the slanderous remarks of the vile. The

only drawback on Cowper's indebtedness to Mrs. Unwin was her jealous

wish to restrict him to the society of her own sect of religionists,

that harrowing type of piety represented by John Newton. Otherwise,

he might have enjoyed much more frequent and prolonged periods of

what he cheerily characterized as "absences of Mr. Blue-devil." Lady

Hesketh said of her, "She seems in truth to have no will left on

earth but for his good. How she has supported the constant attendance

she has gone through with the last thirteen years is to me, I

confess, wonderful." Cowper himself said, "It is to her, under

Providence, I owe it that I am alive at all." With a devotion in

which self appeared to be lost, "there she sat, on the hardest and

smallest chair, leaving the best to him, knitting, with the finest

possible needles, stockings of the nicest texture. He wore no others

than of her knitting." After nearly a generation of her fond and

sedulous ministering, repeatedly stricken with paralysis, her mind

decayed, mute, almost blind, as she sat by his side, a pathetic

memento of what she had been, Cowper composed for her that

unsurpassed tribute, his exquisite and imperishable lines, "To Mary":

The twentieth year has well-nigh past,

Since first our sky was overcast:

Ah! would that this might be our last,

My Mary!

Thy spirits have a fainter flow:

I see thee daily weaker grow;

'Tis my distress that brought thee low,

My Mary!

Thy needles, once a shining store,

For my sake restless heretofore,

Now rust, disused, and shine no more,

My Mary!

Thy indistinct expressions seem

Like language uttered in a dream;

Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme,

My Mary!

Thy silver locks, once auburn bright,

Are still more lovely in my sight

Than golden beams of orient light,

My Mary!

Partakers of my sad decline,

Thy hands their little force resign;

Yet, gently prest, press gently mine,

My Mary!

Yet ah! by constant heed, I know

How oft the sadness that I show

Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe,

My Mary!

And should my future lot be cast

With much resemblance of the past,

Thy worn-out heart will break at last,

My Mary!

Lady Hesketh, ever a true angel, came and dwelt with the afflicted

pair. And when Cowper, after four wretched years of separation,

plunged, as he expressed it, in deeps unvisited by any human soul

save his, followed his faithful sister-spirit to a better world, Lady

Hesketh, that model of a third friend, built, in St. Edmund's Chapel,

where he was buried, a monument displaying two tablets, both bearing

poetical inscriptions; one dedicated to William Cowper, the other to

Mary Unwin. The friendship of Garrick and Mrs. Clive is memorable for

its sprightliness, sincerity, unbroken harmony-saving a few momentary

quarrels for relish--long duration, and the large measure of happiness

it yielded. Their correspondence is very entertaining, and reflects

honor on them both. Their talents and virtues contributed in a high

degree to adorn and elevate the profession to which they belonged. It

is an interesting fact, equally creditable to all the parties, that

"Pivy," as they affectionately called Kittie Clive, was as dear to

the excellent Mrs. Garrick as to her brilliant husband. The

friendship of David Garrick was also one of the most delightful

features in the life of the admirable Hannah More. A letter written

by Hannah on seeing him play Lear, greatly pleased him, and led to

their acquaintance. Acquaintance soon ripened into a warm esteem, and

produced a friendship of the most cordial--and intimate character,

which lasted until death. He declared that the nine muses had taken

up their residence in her mind; and both in his conversation and his

letters he constantly called her "Nine." One day when she and

Johnson, and a few others, were at table with the Garricks, David

read to the company her Sir Eldred, with such inimitable feeling that

the happy authoress burst into tears. Friendship filled a large space

in the life of Hannah More, administering incalculable strength in

her labors, joy in her successes, comfort in her afflictions. It has

left its memorials in the records of a host of visits, gifts,

letters, poems, dedications. Her correspondence with Sir William

Pepys shows what an invaluable resource a wise, pure, comprehensive

friendship is in the life of a thoughtful woman. Bishop Porteus

bequeathed her a legacy of a hundred pounds. She consecrated an urn

to him near her house with an inscription in memory of his long and

faithful friendship. Mr. Turner, of Belmont, to whom she was for six

years betrothed, but broke off the engagement after he had three

times postponed the appointed wedding-day, always retained the

highest esteem for her, and left her a thousand pounds at his death.

She also maintained a most friendly relation, as long as his

increasing habit of intemperance allowed it, with her early tutor,

Langhorne, the translator of Plutarch. On occasion of an anticipated

visit from her, Langhorne wrote a very pretty poem, beginning,

Blow, blow, my sweetest rose!

For Hannah More will soon be here;

And all that crowns the ripening year

Should triumph where she goes.

Joanna Baillie and Sir Walter Scott were deeply attached friends.

United by a generous admiration for genius, by esteem for exalted

worth and by community of tastes, they were drawn still more closely

together by many mutual kindnesses, visits, and frequent

correspondence. A copy of Scott's "Marmion," fresh from the press,

was placed in Joanna's hands. She cut the leaves and began to read it

aloud to a small circle of friends, when she suddenly came upon the

following magnificent and electrifying tribute to herself:

Or, if to touch such chord be thine,

Restore the ancient tragic line,

And emulate the notes that rung

From the wild harp that silent hung

By silver Avon's holy shore

Till twice an hundred years rolled o'er;

When she, the bold enchantress, came

With fearless hand and heart in flame,

From the pale willow snatched the treasure,

And swept it with a kindred measure,

Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove

With Monfort's hate and Basil's love,

Awakening at the inspired strain,

Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again!

Joanna, though taken by surprise, read on in a firm voice, till she

observed the uncontrollable emotion of a friend by her side. Then she

too gave way. It is delightful to partake by sympathy in so generous

a gift of joy. What a pity it is that such a loving magnanimity as

that of glorious Sir Walter is not more frequent among authors! The

chief advantage of Fox over Pitt consisted in the fascinating

demonstrativeness of his heart and manners. This won him hosts of

idolizing friends, foremost among whom were many of the choicest

ladies of the kingdom.

Pre-eminent among these were the two dazzlingly lovely women, ardent

friends of each other too, Mrs. Catherine Crewe and Georgiana

Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. They were indefatigable in

canvassing for him. On one occasion, when the conflict for votes was

intense, a butcher offered to vote for Fox on condition that the

Duchess of Devonshire would allow him a kiss. The enthusiastic

canvasser, perhaps the most beautiful woman then living, granted it

amid deafening cheers. Nor was Mrs. Crewe less efficient. At a

private banquet in honor of Fox's triumph, the Prince of Wales gave

as a toast, "True Blue, and Mrs. Crewe." She gave in return, "True

Blue, and all of you." The Duchess of Devonshire exerted all her

powers, though in vain, to reconcile Burke with Fox, after their

quarrel. On the death of Fox, she wrote a poetic tribute to his

memory. Dr. Beattie, author of "The Minstrel," so many of whose

touching lines have rung through souls of sensibility and are

familiar to all lovers of poetry--such, for example, as,

Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar:

Ah, who can tell how many a soul sublime

Has felt the influence of malignant star,

And with inglorious fortune waged eternal war!

enjoyed a delightful friendship with the Duchess of Gordon. He spent

the happiest hours of his saddened life at her castle, in the

enjoyment of her unvarying kindness. He sent her books; they

exchanged letters; and in all the brilliant whirl of her life as a

reigning beauty, an ardent politician, and a leader of fashion, she

fully appreciated his worth, and reciprocated his attentions and

esteem until his death.

A friendship of an uncommon character, containing the elements of a

romance, has left a monument of itself in two volumes, called

"Letters of William Von Humboldt to a Female Friend." Humboldt, then

an undergraduate at Göttingen, during one of his vacations spent

three days at Pyrmont. Much of this time he passed in the society of

a lovely and very superior young lady who was staying there with her

father. Each was deeply interested in the other, without suspecting

that the feeling was mutual. On parting, Humboldt gave his fair

friend an album-leaf as a memento. The image of the fascinating

student was indelibly impressed on her imagination, a centre of ideal

activity and accumulation. So, it afterwards seemed, was her image

left in his imagination. Twenty-six years passed in absence and

silence. Humboldt had become famous and prominent, and was blessed

with a happy family. Charlotte had been married, and was now a

childless widow. Deprived of her parents, her husband, her property,

she was overwhelmed with misfortunes. Her large property having been

devoted to the State, it occurred to her that her old friend, of the

three youthful days at Pyrmont, now a minister of the king, might

assist her to recover, at least a portion of it, or at all events

give her valuable advice as to what to do. She gathered courage to

write him a letter, enclosing his old album-leaf, recalling their

early meeting, telling how sacredly the memory of him had been

enshrined in her soul, and begging him to counsel and console her in

her great distress. The character of the letter was such, revealing a

spirit so rich, high, and pure, that the generous nature of Humboldt

was much moved. He at once replied with great kindness and wisdom,

and with oars of practical aid. Thus began a correspondence which

lasted until his death, twenty years later, during the whole of which

period they only met twice for a brief time. Charlotte's portion of

the correspondence, which is clot published--so affectionately

reverential, so transparently sincere and trustful, evidently gave

the great scholar and statesman extreme pleasure, a most varied

stimulus. His letters reveal the fragrant warmth of his heart, the

rare virtues and treasures of his soul, his saintly wisdom, in a most

attractive manner. They were prized by Charlotte as the religion and

sanctuary of her existence, and left to be given to the world as a

holy bequest after her death. An interesting fact in the character of

Charlotte, often noticed in these letters, and full of fruits in her

life, is that she always had an intense desire to have a friend in

the fullest sense of the word--a desire which was early heightened by

the repeated enthusiastic perusal of Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe."

This dream had many partial realizations--the most complete and

lasting in Humboldt. Rarely has any relation of individuals been so

original, and awakened so much interest, as that between Goethe and

his child-friend Bettine. In publishing their correspondence, many

years after its close, Bettine prefaces it with the remark: "This

book is for the good, and not for the bad." She foresaw how the bad

would misinterpret it, yet felt that she could afford to defy their

incompetent construal. She loved Goethe to idolatry--her whole soul

vibrating beneath the power of the possession; but the ideality of

the passion, in her naïve and spontaneous nature, was a perfect

safeguard from evil. Under this spell, all her rich, unquestioning

ardors of reverence and fondness were as sacredly guided as the

movements of Mignon, dancing blindfold amidst the eggs, with never a

false step. Goethe's conduct towards the trustful and impassioned

girl was exceedingly discreet, in its mingled kindness and wisdom. He

felt the sweetness of her worship; he guarded her, as a father would,

from its dangers. But, above all, he was profoundly interested in the

spectacle of her young, original, unveiled soul. The electric soil of

her brain teemed with a miraculous efflorescence, on which he never

tired of gazing. It was to him like sitting apart in some still

place, and watching the secret forces and workings of nature,

reflected in a small mirror. Thus Bettine writes from the strange

fullness of her mind, in mystic language, to Goethe's mother: "Would

that I sat, a beggar-child, before his door, and took a piece of

bread from his hand, and that he knew, by my glance, of what spirit I

am the child. Then would he draw me nigh to him, and cover me with

his cloak, that I might be warm. I know he would never bid me go

again. I should wander in the house, and no one would know who I was

nor whence I came; and years would pass, and life would pass, and in

his features the whole world would be reflected to me, and I should

not need to learn any thing more." And Goethe replies, "Your dear

letters bestow on me so much that is delightful, that they may justly

precede all else: they give me a succession of holidays, whose return

always blesses me anew. Write to me all that passes in your mind.

Farewell. Be ever near me, and continue to refresh me." Mont Blanc

stoops, with all his snows, to kiss the rosy vale nestling at his

feet. Goethe, in the course of his life, stood in the most intimate

relations with a large number of the rarest women. Few men have ever

appreciated female character so well. No one has exhibited their

virtues, and pleaded their cause with a more impressive combination

of insight, sympathy, and veneration.

His many sins towards women deserve severe condemnation and rebuke;

but it is an outrageous wrong towards his noble genius to limit

attention, as so many critics do, to that aspect of the case. The

wondering love and study which Frederike, Lili, and others drew from

him; the religious admiration and awed curiosity evoked in him by the

spiritual Fraulein von Klettenburg, "over whom," as he said, "in her

invalid loneliness, the Holy Ghost brooded like a dove;" the

respectful affection, gratitude, and homage commanded by the

extraordinary merits of his lofty and endeared friends, the Duchess

Amelia, and the Grand Duchess Louise--all bore fruits in his

experience and his works. The revelations they made, the examples

they set, the lessons they taught, the noble suggestions they

kindled, re-appear in the series of enchanting, glorious, adorable

women--Gretchen, Natalia, Ottilia, Iphigenia, Makaria, and the rest--

who, with their artless affection, their self-renouncement, their

wisdom, their dignity, their holiness, their sufferings, appear in

his master-works, breathing presentments of life, for the edification

and delight of generations of readers. He has recognized, more

profoundly than any other author, the essentially feminine form of

that divine principle of disinterested love, that impulse of pure

self-abnegation, in which resides the redemptive power of humanity;

and has set it forth with incomparable clearness and constancy. At

the close of Faust, he has given it statement in a form which

associates his genius with that of Dante, and in a kindred height. It

is the womanly element, he would say, worshipful and self-denying

love, that draws us ever forward, redeeming and uplifting our grosser

souls:--

Das ewig weibliche

Zieht uns hinan.

Wieland and Sophia de la Roche were profoundly attached to each other

during the greater part of their lives. He and his beloved wife were

buried beside her; and a tasteful monument erected over them, according

to his orders. It bears the inscription, in German, composed by himself:--

Love and Friendship joined these kindred souls in life,

And their mortal part is covered by this common stone.

Hölderlin, whose soaring and fiery soul was caged in too exquisite

an organization, lived, for some time, when he first became sick,

in a peasant's hut, beside a brook, sleeping with open doors,

spending hours, every day, reciting Greek poems to the murmur of the

stream. The princess of Homburg, who greatly admired his genius,

and his deep, pure sentiment, had made him a present of a grand

piano. In the coming-on of his madness he cut most of the strings.

On the few keys that still sounded he continued to fantasy until

his insanity grew so engrossing, that it was necessary to remove

him to an asylum. Silvio Pellico, the story of whose sufferings in

the prison of Spielberg, has carried his plaintive memory into all

lands, and the Marchioness Giulia di Barolo were a pair of friends

brought together as by a special appointment of Heaven.

When the holy and gentle poet, patriot, and Christian came

out of his prison, with a broken constitution and a wounded heart,

into a bleak and prizeless world, the Marchioness--who had long been

a mother to the poor of her native city, an assiduous visitor of the

jails, a saintly benefactress to all the unhappy whom her charities

could reach--drawn to him by a strong interest of respect and pity,

gave him a home in her house, and supplied him with congenial

employment. Pellico gratefully appreciated her goodness to him, and

deeply reverenced her worth. In works of religion and beneficence

their lives moved on. He began to write a memoir of his friend; but

left it, a fragment, when his lingering consumption brought him to

the grave. The pious friendship of the Marchioness did not end with

his death. On his tomb, in the Campo Santo, at Turin, she placed a

column surmounted by a marble bust, and inscribed with this epitaph

from her own pen:

Under the weight of the cross

He learned the way to heaven.

Christians pray for him, And follow him.

The pathetic life, the gentle sweetness of spirit, the mournful end

of Silvio Pellico, are well known to all. The Marchioness di Barolo,

whose name is linked to his in the memory of so pure and benign a

union of friendship, lived the life, died the death, and bequeathed

the renown of a saint.