She said, "It is a great suffering to have done all in your power for

a person, and to find only ingratitude in return. There is no anger

in this suffering, nor does it necessarily destroy affection; but the

wound is buried deep in the heart; and if it has been inflicted by

one very dearly loved, no human consolation can heal it. The most

profitable education persons receive is the one they give themselves,

through the love of God and labors of charity. I was a great deal

alone in my youth, and I am sure it was good for me."

Wordsworth's affection for persons, not less than for nature, was

remarkable for its tenacity, the perseverance with which his

attention returned to it, and for the deep, clear consciousness with

which he cherished it. The most beloved of his lady friends was

Isabel Fenwick, who was a frequent visitor at Rydal Mount during the

last twenty years of his life. She wrote, to his dictation, the

autobiographical notes used in the memoir of him. Her admiring and

devoted friendship was evidently a strong inspiration and precious

solace to him. It was for her sake that he built the Level Terrace,

on which he paced to and fro for many an hour, in sight of the valley

of the Rothay and the banks of Lake Windermere. Not many finer

expressions of sentiment are to be found in our tongue than

Wordsworth has given in his sonnet on a portrait of his dear friend

Isabel:

We gaze, nor grieve to think that we must die.

But that the precious love this friend hath sown

Within our hearts, the love whose flower hath blown

Bright as if heaven were ever in its eye,

Will pass so soon from human memory;

And not by strangers to our blood alone,

But by our best descendants be unknown,

Unthought of this may surely claim a sigh.

Yet, blessed Art, we yield not to dejection,

Thou against time so feelingly dost strive:

Where'er, preserved in this most true reflection,

An image of her soul is kept alive,

Some lingering fragrance of the pure affection,

Whose flower with us will vanish, must survive.

Charming had many qualities especially fitting him for friendships

with women. His sensitive delicacy of refinement, disinterested

justice, tender magnanimity, earnest culture of every thing beautiful

and true, immaculate purity of soul, and burning ideal enthusiasm,

made him feel most joyfully at home with women of enlarged

sympathies, well-trained minds, and noble aspirations. He was too

shrinking, fastidious, devout, to enjoy intercourse with the rough,

hard average of society.

His diffidence, depression, and loneliness, were soothed and

alleviated, his noblest powers inspired, by affectionate communion

with several of the choicest women of his time. "To them," his

biographer says, "he could freely unveil his native enthusiasm, his

fine perceptions of fitness, his love of beauty in nature and art,

his romantic longings for a pure-toned society, his glorious hopes of

humanity. And his profound reverence for the nature and duty of women

gave that charm of unaffected courtesy to his manner, look, and tone,

which won them freely to exchange their cherished thoughts as with an

equal." The following extract from one of his letters to a woman,

whose solemn depth of soul and mind, and wondrous range of

acquirements and experience rank her with the very greatest of her

sex, Harriet Martineau, is an exceedingly interesting revelation:

"MY DEAR FRIEND, I thought I had spoken my last word to you on this

side the Atlantic; but I have this moment received your letter, and

must write a line of acknowledgment. I know, from my own experience,

that there are those who need the encouragement of praise. There are

more than is thought who feel the burden of human imperfection too

sorely, and who receive strength from approbation. Happy they who

from just confidence in right action, and from the habit of carrying

out their convictions, need little foreign support. I thank you for

this expression of your heart. Without the least tendency to

distrust, without the least dejection at the idea of neglect, with

entire gratitude for my lot, I still feel that I have not the power,

which so many others have, of awakening love, except in a very narrow

circle. I knew that I enjoyed your esteem; but I expected to fade

with my native land, not from your thoughts, but from your heart.

Your letter satisfies me that I shall have one more friend in

England. I shall not feel far from you, for what a nearness is there

in the consciousness of working in the same spirit!" The friendship

between Channing and Lucy Aikin, as seen in the rich series of her

letters to him, extending over a period of sixteen years, must have

been a valued resource, enjoyment, and stimulus to them both. An

extract or two will make the reader regret that relations charged

with such priceless blessings are not more cultivated. "To converse

with my guide, philosopher, and friend, has now become with me not a

mere indulgence, but a want. I daily discover more and more how much

I have come under the influence of your mind, and what great things

it has done, and I trust is still doing, for mine. I was never duly

sensible, till your writings made me so, of the transcendent beauty

and sublimity of Christian morals; nor did I submit my heart and

temper to their chastening and meliorating influences. In particular,

the spirit of unbounded benevolence, which they breathe, was a

stranger to my bosom: far indeed was I from looking upon all men as

my brethren. I shudder now to think how good a hater I was in the

days of my youth. Time and reflection, a wider range of acquaintance,

and a calmer state of the public mind, mitigated by degrees my

bigotry; but I really knew not what it was to open my heart to the

human race, until I had drunk deeply into the spirit of your

writings. You have given me a new being. May God reward you!" At

another time she writes, "O my dear friend, I was told yesterday that

you had been very, very ill; and though it was added that you were

now better, I have been able to think of little else since. What

would I give to know how you are at this moment! The distance which

separates us has something truly fearful in such circumstances."

"Never, my friend, are you forgotten, when my soul seeks communion

with our common Father; and when I strive most earnestly to overcome

some evil propensity, or to make some generous sacrifice, the thought

of you gives me strength not my own."

There is something especially attractive, solacing, and noble in such

a relation as the foregoing. It covers a large class of friendships

existing between Protestant clergymen and the women who, blessed by

their instructions and personal interest, have formed an attachment

to them of grateful reverence and sympathy. Such an attachment is

often a communication of profit and pleasure most precious to both

parties.

Several instances are recorded in the memoirs of Theodore Parker. His

friendship with Miss Frances Power Cobbe is particularly worthy of

notice. She wrote her gratitude to him for the benefits her mind had

derived from his writings. Gratefully appreciating her worth and high

aims, he continued to correspond with her by letter until his death.

How cordial their relation became; what kind deeds went across it;

what delights it yielded; what a deep and pure blessing of

encouragement, joy, and peace it was to them both--appears in the few

letters given to the public. When they first met, the titanic toiler,

outworn with his cares and battles, was at the edge of death. "Do

not," said the expiring athlete, "do not say what you feel for me; it

makes me too unhappy to leave you." During those lingering days of

transition from the earthly state to the heavenly, he dared not trust

himself to see her often. As he said, "it made his heart swell too

high." A class of friendships of extreme moral value, and often of

great attractiveness, results from the relations of noble and royal

women with the scholars and philosophers chosen to serve them as

tutors or advisers. The names of Zenobia and Longinus give us an

example of it in antiquity. If the annals of the crowned houses of

Europe, imperial and provincial, were searched with reference to this

point, a large number of admirable instances would be brought to

light. On the one side power, rank, grace, patronage, every courtly

charm; on the other side, learning, experience, gratitude, devoted

service, eminent personal worth--could not fail in many instances to

give birth to the most cordial esteem, and lead to a charming

intercourse. Such was the case with both Wieland and Herder, and

those queenly ladies, the Duchess Mother and the reigning Duchess of

the court of Weimar. The relation between Columbus and Queen

Isabella, after her chivalrous confidence and patronage--must have

drawn their souls towards each other with a romantic interest, only

needing better opportunities for personal intimacy to warm into a

fervent sympathy.

The Countess of Pembroke, wife of that Philip Herbert who was the

brother of Shakespeare's friend, showed how tenderly she remembered

her old instructor, Daniel, the poet-laureate, by erecting a handsome

monument to him in Beckington Church, bearing this inscription: "Here

lies, expecting the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus

Christ, the dead body of Samuel Daniel, Esq., who was tutor to the

Lady Anne Clifford in her youth. She was that daughter and heir to

George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, who, in gratitude to him,

erected this monument to his memory, a long time after, when she was

Countess Dowager of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery." One of the

most beautiful recorded friendships of this kind is that revealed in

the long correspondence of Descartes and his pupil, the Princess

Elizabeth of Bohemia. Her charming character and distinguished

attainments add largely to the gratification with which we trace her

ardent esteem and attachment for her instructor and friend, whose

brilliant genius and adventurous career are of themselves

fascinating. A pleasing little volume by M. de Caren was published at

Paris so lately as the year 1862, under the title, "Descartes and the

Princess Palatine, or the Influence of Cartesianism on the Women of

the Seventeenth Century." An example of a kindred friendship is also

given by Leibnitz and his pupil, Caroline of Brunswick. Soon after

the electoress became Queen of Prussia, she invited him to visit her,

saying, "Think not that I prefer this greatness and this crown, about

which they make such a bustle here, to the conversations on

philosophy we have had together in Lutzenburg." Frederick the Great

relates that the queen, in her last hours, mentioned the name of

Leibnitz. One of the ladies in waiting burst into tears, and the

queen said to her, "Weep not for me; for I am now going to satisfy my

curiosity respecting the origin of things, which Leibnitz has never

been able to explain to me, respecting space, existence and non-

existence, and the Infinite." Frederick adds, that, as "those persons

to whom Heaven vouchsafes gifted souls raise themselves to an

equality with monarchs, this queen esteemed Leibnitz well worthy of

her friendship." The philosopher was affected deeply and long by the

loss of her who had been his closest and best friend. He wrote, being

absent at the time, to one of her favorite maids, who was also a

friend of his own, "I infer your feelings from mine. I weep not; I

complain not; but I know not where to look for relief. The loss of

the queen appears to me like a dream; but when I awake from my

revery, I find it too true. Your misfortune is not greater than mine;

but your feelings are more lively, and you are nearer to the

calamity. This encourages me to write, begging you to moderate your

sorrow. It is not by excessive grief that we shall best honor the

memory of one of the most perfect princesses of the earth; but rather

by our admiration of her virtues. My letter is more philosophical

than my heart, and I am unable to follow my own counsel: it is,

notwithstanding, rational." Ascham relates, in his "Schoolmaster," a

conversation he once held with Lady Jane Grey. She said that the

sports of the gentlemen and ladies in the park were but a shadow of

pleasure compared with that which she found in reading Plato. And, in

explaining how she came to take such delight in learning, she said,

"One of the benefits that ever God gave me is that he sent so sharp

and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in

presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence,

sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing,

or dancing, or any thing else, I must do it, as it were, in such

weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the

world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened; yea,

presently sometimes, with pinches, nips, bobs, and other ways, which

I will not name, for the honor I bear them, so without measure

misordered that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go

to Mr. Elmer, who teaches me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair

allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing while I am

with him." Elizabeth Robinson, afterwards the famous Mrs. Montague,

the attracting centre of a noted and memorable association of

friends, both men and women, had an exemplary friendship, full of

good offices and pleasure, and undisturbed by any thing until death,

with her preceptor, the distinguished scholar and writer, Conyers

Middleton. Hester Lynch Salusbury, at thirteen, formed a most

affectionate attachment to Dr. Collier, a guest of her father, who

had volunteered to supervise her education. "He was just four times

my age; but the difference or agreement never crossed my mind. A

friendship more tender, or more unpolluted by interest or by vanity,

never existed. Love had no place at all in the connection, nor had he

any rival but my mother." The young Hester afterwards became the

famous Mrs. Thrale, to all the varied incidents of whose long and

close friendship with Dr. Johnson the world-Wide renown of that great

man has given a universal publicity. The relation of patroness,

sustained with such signal grace and generosity, and with such

soothing and inspiring effect, by many queenly ladies in former

times, is virtually obsolete now. But it has left memorials never to

die; and it is hard to imagine any office which at this day should be

more grateful and gracious, more full of happiness and good to a

woman of noble heart and mind, blessed with position, wealth, and

culture, than that of extending appreciative sympathy, aid, and

encouragement, to young men of genius, in their unbefriended, early

struggles. It has been strikingly said by that noble woman, Sarah

Austin, with reference to Madame Récamier, "All who were admitted to

her intimacy, hastened to her with their joys and their sorrows,

their projects and ideas; certain not only of secrecy and discretion,

but of the warmest and readiest sympathy. If a man had the rough

draught of a book, a speech, a picture, an enterprise, in his head,

it Was to her that he unfolded his half-formed plan, sure of an

attentive and sympathizing listener. This is one of the peculiar

functions of women. It is incalculable what comfort and encouragement

a kind and wise woman may give to timid merit, what support to

uncertain virtue, what wings to noble aspirations." Chaucer was thus

patronized by Philippa, queen of Edward III; by Anne of Bohemia, for

whom he composed his "Legend of Good Women;" and most of all by

Blanche of Lancaster, wife of John of Gaunt, whose courtship he

celebrated allegorically in the "Parliament of Birds," whose

epithalamium he sang in his "Dream," and whose death he lamented in

his "Book of the Duchess." The beautiful and kindly Lady Venetia

Digby patronized and befriended Ben Jonson. The attentions of so fair

and gentle a creature as she was, according to the description of her

in his two poems, called, "The Picture of the Body," and "The Picture

of the Mind,"--could not have been otherwise than most soothing,

grateful, and inspiring to him. She was found dead in her bed one

morning, her cheek resting on her hand.

She past away

So sweetly from the world, as if her clay

Laid only down to slumber.

Jonson dedicated to her memory the imperishable tribute of his heart

in a long poem made up of ten parts. The ninth part is inscribed,

"Elegy on my Muse, the truly honored Lady Venetia Digby, who, living,

gave me leave to call her so." These lines are from it:

There time that I died too, now she is dead,

Who was my Muse, and life of all I said,

The spirit that I wrote with and conceived

All that was good or great with me, she weaved,

And set it forth: the rest were cobwebs fine,

Spun out in name of some of the old Nine,

To hang a window or make dark the room

Till, swept away, they were cancelled with a broom.

Lucy, the Countess of Bedford, was likewise a great friend of Ben

Jonson. He has sung her worth in one of the most magnificent of his

shorter poems. She was also a kind and fast friend of Daniel and

Donne, both of whom wrote verses in her honor. But Jonson vastly

distanced them both. Exquisite and sublime as his praise was, it was

agreed, by those who knew her, that she fully deserved it. It is a

luxury to recall such a tribute:

This morning, timely rapt with holy fire,

I thought to form unto my zealous Muse

What kind of creature I could most desire

To honor, serve, and love; as poets use,

I meant to make her fair and free and wise,

Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great;

I meant the day-star should not brighter rise,

Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat.

I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,

Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride:

I meant each softest virtue there should meet,

Fit in that softer bosom to reside.

Only a learned and a manly soul

I purposed her, that should, with even powers,

The rock, the spindle, and the shears, control,

Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours.

Such when I meant to feign, and wished to see,

My Muse bade, BEDFORD write, and that was She.

Milton had many qualities and tastes fitting him to be the delight of

female society, and to delight in it. His natural bent for all the

delicacies of sentiment, for every fine and high range of character,

thought, and passion, has strewn many choice expressions of itself in

his writings, and sprinkles his poems with eulogistic allusions to

the virtues and charms of womanhood. These have too much escaped the

popular notice, which has fastened on the numerous stinging

utterantes wrung from certain bitter passages of his experience.

Scores of critics have dwelt on the terrible traits he has given to

Delilah in "Samson Agonistes," where one has called attention to the

breathing emotion, the celestial coloring, the ineffable sweetness

and grandeur he has lavished on the Lady in "Comus." For imperishable

monuments of his friendships with the selectest women of that age,

behold his Italian lines to Leonora Baroni, his sonnets "To a

Virtuous Young Lady," "To the Lady Margaret Ley," "To the Memory of

Mrs. Catharine Thomson," and the record of his long and unbroken

intimacy with the admirable and all-accomplished Countess Ranclagh,

of whom he said, "She was to me in the place of every want."

The Duchess of Queensbury was the unfailing friend and encourager of

Gay. When Gay died, she eloquently rebuked the vitriolic Swift, for

expressing the heartless sentiment, that a lost friend might be

replaced as well as spent money. Madame Rambouillet was the friend of

Voiture; Madame Sabliere of La Fontaine. Hundreds of similar examples

might easily be gathered. Few of the French literary men of the

seventeenth or the eighteenth century led those disorderly and

disreputable lives which were the calamity and the disgrace of most

of the professed writers of England at that time. Madame Mole justly

observes, "They owed their exemption from these miseries chiefly to

the women, who, from the earliest days of French literature, gave

them all the succor they could; bringing them into contact with the

rich and the great, showing them off with every kind of ingenuity and

tact, so as to make them understood and valued. If we examine the

private history of all their celebrated men, we find scarcely one to

whom some lady was not a ministering spirit. They helped them with

their wit, their influence, and their money. They did far more. They

helped them with their hearts, listened to their sorrows, admired

their genius before the world had become aware of it, advised them,

entered patiently into all their feelings, soothed their wounded

vanities and irritable fancies. What balm has been found in the

listening look, for the warm and vexed spirit how has it risen again

after repeated disappointment, comforted by encouragements gently

administered! If the Otways and the Chattertons had possessed one

such friend, their country might not have been disgraced by their

fate. Are the life and happiness of the poet, of the man of genius, a

trifle? What would human society be without them? Let all who hold a

pen think of the kind hearts who, by the excitement of social

intercourse and sympathy, have preserved a whole class from

degradation and vice."

The extent to which women have been the occasions, the suggesters,

and sustaining encouragers of artistic creations in literature,

painting, sculpture, and music, will astonish any one who will take

the trouble to look up the history of it. When Orpheus found that

Eurydice was gone, he threw his harp away. Women have delighted to

administer inspiration, praise, and comfort, to great poets, orators,

philosophers, because it gratifies their natural talent for admiring,

and because they are reverentially grateful to the genius which can

so clearly read their secrets, and so powerfully portray their souls

to themselves. Sophocles, the highest Greek poet, whose firm and

delicate portraitures of feminine character were not equalled in

antique literature, must have had many admirers and friends among the

choice women of Athens. And Virgil, we cannot imagine any high-

souled, refined woman knowing the tender Virgil without a respectful

and affectionate attachment. Octavia fainted away when he read before

her his undying description of the death of Marcellus. The kiss of

Aileen Margaret on the lips of the sleeping minstrel, Alain Chartier,

is a type of woman's homage to literary genius. The same thing was

shown, a little earlier in the same century, at the funeral of

Heinrich von Meissen, surnamed Frauenlob, from the infinite praises

he had lavished on the Virgin Mary, and on the female sex in general.

After his death in the outer quarters of the cathedral at Mayence,

which were set apart for hospitality to strangers and honored guests,

a great company of women, it is related, sighing and weeping, bore

his coffin to the burial, and poured into his sepulchre such an

abundance of wine as ran over the whole circumference of the church.

Five hundred years later, the women of Mayence celebrated his memory

by tributary eulogies, and by the erection of a beautiful new

monument, faced with a marble portrait of him.

Bernardin Saint Pierre says, "There is in woman an easy gayety, which

scatters the sadness of man." It may be said, on the other hand, that

there is in the man of literary genius a masterly insight, joined

with sympathetic tenderness and masculine strength, which administers

to woman that reflective and glorifying interpretation, and that

supporting guidance, whereof she continually stands in such need.

What woman would not be proud and grateful at receiving such a

tribute as that which Waller paid to the Countess of Carlisle, on

seeing her dressed in mourning?

When from black clouds no part of sky is clear,

But just so much as lets the sun appear,

Heaven then would seem thy image, and reflect

Those sable vestments and that bright aspect.

A spark of virtue by the deepest shade

Of sad adversity is fairer made:

No less advantage doth thy beauty get,

A Venus rising from a sea of jet!

What woman capable of appreciating the genius of Racine could read

the works in which his choice thoughts and effusive sentiments are

enshrined, purified and confirmed echoes of the finest sighs ever

breathed by the heart, and not be drawn to him honoring esteem and

love? It was this mastery of the interior life, this impassioned

voicing of its subtilest secrets, that made Rousseau so irresistibly

attractive to women. To the many who befriended him, or paid precious

tributes to him in his life, the name of Madame de Verdelin has

recently been added, by the publication of her correspondence. Sainte

Beuve has prefixed her recovered portrait in an essay marked by his

best touches. After quoting her final letter, he says, "From that

day, Madame de Verdelin wholly disappears. She is known only through

Rousseau. A ray of his glory fell on her; that ray--withdrawn, she

repasses into the shade, and every trace is lost." The gifted critic

says he feels a deep gratification in thus recalling the image of

this generous woman. "She is a conquest for us: we pay the debt of

Rousseau to her." He concludes what he has written with reference to

these friendships of mind to mind, these intimacies of intelligence

and feeling, these affections of women and authors, more tender than

those of men, and yet quite distinct from love, by saying, with

instructive emphasis, "Evidently, social morality has taken a step

forward: a new chapter, unknown to the ancients, too much forgotten

by the moderns, is henceforth to be added in all treatises of

friendship."

Perhaps no author has ever written more that must speak with

irresistible power to the inmost hearts of all women who have souls

sensitive enough, complex, cultivated, and forcible enough, for an

adequate reaction on the richness of his works, than Jean Paul

Richter. In all the heights and depths and subtilties of the natural

affections, and of imaginative or ideal emotion, as well as in

truthful and endlessly varied expressions of those mysteries, he has

no equal, scarcely a rival, in literature. In spite of his poverty

and confining toil, he made, in his day, a profound personal

sensation. And such is the personal spell of his ineffable

tenderness, nobleness, and grandeur, even as exerted on the reader

from his printed pages, that many a strong man, pilgriming thither

from remote lands, has been known to kneel with convulsive emotion on

his lowly grave at Bayreuth. His life was heroic in labor, and

spotless in purity. When his heart sank in death, it seems as though

the earth itself ought to have collapsed with the breaking of so

great a thing. His sensibility was a world-harp, responding to every

tremulous breath of air or flame. Sweet, pure, wise, mighty, modest,

no wonder he drew upon himself the affectionate interest of many

lofty ladies, and found treasures of inspiration and solace in their

conversation and letters. Reviewing his life in the circle of his

friends, he seems as a sun, with pale and burning moons and planets

revolving around him. Charlotte von Kalb; Caroline Herder; Emilie von

Berlepsch; Josephine von Sydow; the mother and the wife of Carl

August; the daughters of the Duke of Mecklenburg, to whom, as "The

Four Lovely and Noble Sisters on the Throne," he dedicated his

"Titan," such, with many others like them, were the gracious women

with whom Jean Paul, in his much-tried life, interchanged homage,

friendly counsels, and sacred joys. The intelligent and enthusiastic

praises they poured on him for his works must have been to him a

divine luxury. And ah I how much he needed such comforts, he who

could say, in one of his frequent moments of sadness, "Reckoning off

from the neighborhood of my heart, I find life cold and empty"! A

whole volume of his before unpublished "Correspondence with Renowned

Women" was given to the public in 1865, a glowing treasury of gems of

the heart.

Rahel Levin was such a fascinating queen of society, such a signal

and fortunate mistress of friendships with celebrated men, that her

character and career are on this account full both of interest and

instruction. The secrets of influence, the charms that attract

attention, awaken confidence, exert authority, dispense pleasure, and

minister to human wants, are scarcely anywhere more clearly shown

than in her person and story. The pronounced character, the uncommon

talents, the rare combination of extreme candor and tact, the broad,

intellectual culture, and impulsive demonstrativeness of the youthful

Jewess, very soon gave her a prominent position in society, and made

her fascination felt and talked about. Her first advent and sway

prophesied her future renown as the most celebrated woman in Germany

who has kept an open drawing-room for the practice of conversation

and the joy of intellectual society. It was said of her, at that

early period, "She was full of an obliging good temper, that made her

anticipate wishes, divine annoyances in order to relieve them, and

forget herself in seeking to make others happy."

Her thirtieth year she spent in France, where she had the finest

opportunities for studying the famous salon-life of Paris. Without

being captivated or at all overborne by it, she no doubt drew many

lessons and profited much from it, on carrying her German soul back

to her German home. Returning to Berlin, she bewitched all the choice

spirits of that city. Married to Varnhagen von Ense, her house was,

for a quarter of a century, the rendezvous of whatever was noblest,

purest, strongest, most distinguished in Germany. She moved among

them as a queen, looked up to by all. She had glowing and sustained

friendships, emphatically rich and faithful friendships, of the

highest moral order, with Marwitz, Gentz, Prince Louis Ferdinand,

Brinckmann, and Veit; besides relations of earnest affection and

communion with many other honored contemporaries, such as

Schleiermacher, Schlegel, and Jean Paul.

In addition to sketches of her by different hands, we possess five

volumes, drawn chiefly from her own pen and edited by her husband,

containing records of her thoughts, portraits of her closest friends,

and full accounts of her intercourse and correspondence with them. In

all this literary transcript, as in the course of experience which it

copies, the most conspicuous element is friendship, the reception,

reciprocation, culture, and expression of friendship. The king among

her friends was her lover and husband, Varnhagen von Ense; her union

with whom was not more a marriage of persons, than it was a marriage

of minds, souls, interior lives, and social interests and ends. It is

principally through him, next after her own writings, that welearn

the characteristics of Rahel, which made such deep impressions on

people, and held them so fast to her. He thus describes her, as she

first dawned on him amidst the highest society of Berlin: "There

appeared a light, graceful figure, of small stature, but strong make,

with delicate and full limbs, feet and hands remarkably small; the

countenance, encircled with rich, dark locks, spoke intellectual

superiority; the quick, and yet firm, deep glances left the observer

in doubt whether they gave or received more; an expression of

suffering lent a soft grace to the clear features. She moved in a

dark dress, light almost as a shadow, but also with freedom and

sureness; her greeting was as easy as it was kindly. But what struck

me most was the sonorous and mellow voice which seemed to swell from

the inmost depths of the soul, and a conversation the most

extraordinary that I had ever met with. She threw out, in the most

facile and unpretending fashion, thoughts full of originality and

humor, where wit was united with simplicity, and acuteness with

amiability; and into the whole a deep truth was cast, as it were out

of iron, giving to every sentence a completeness of impression which

rendered it hard for the strongest, in any way, to break or rend it.

In her presence, I had the conviction that a genuine human being

stood before me, in its most pure and perfect type; through her whole

frame, and in all her motions, nature and intellect in fresh, breezy

reciprocity; organic shape, elastic fibre, living connection with

every thing around; the greatest originality and simplicity in

perception and utterance; the combined imposingness of innocence and

wisdom; in word and deed, alertness, dexterity, precision; and all

imbosomed in an atmosphere of the purest goodness and benevolence;

all guided by an energetic sense of duty, and heightened by a noble

self-forgetfullness in the presence of the joys and griefs of

others."

Such is a glimpse of the Rahel, who, for thirty years, exemplified in

her drawing-room, amidst the joy and admiration of the most glorious

circle of her countrymen, that rich, strong, free, and noble ideal of

womanhood, which Herder, Schiller, Richter, and Goethe, illustrated

in so many of their works. So many contrasted qualities met and were

reconciled in her, that different friends and critics report her in

quite different likenesses. According to one, she never thought

pronouncedly, but gave forth the exquisite perfume of thought: her

life was made of tears, smiles, dreams, fantasies, flutterings of

wings, too celestial for the gross air of earth. According to

another, she was too recklessly thorough, and used too shattering an

emphasis. In fact, both these sides were true. Gentz, the celebrated

politician, called her "a great man," and confessed himself to be, in

comparison, a woman. Yet no one who knew her could deny that she

strikingly possessed the best traits of her sex, purity, tenderness,

modesty, patience, and self-sacrifice. In 1813, during the horrors of

disease in Berlin, and the horrors of war in Prague, she gave herself

up with joy to nursing the sick and the wounded. "The feast of doing

good," she called it. "Never have I seen elsewhere," said Varnhagen,

"such a mass of masculine breadth and penetration, alongside of

which, however, swelled, without remission, the warm flow of womanly

mildness and beauty. Never have I seen an eye and a mouth animated

with such loveliness, and yet, at times, giving vent to such

outbreaks of enthusiasm and indignation."

Her intellectual power and her tact formed, no doubt, one strong

element of the attraction which drew and kept so many artists,

philosophers, preachers, statesmen, and brilliant social leaders by

her side. But her heroic and unconquerable truthfullness was a still

more royal and authoritative trait. She sought for truth; she spoke

truth; she indignantly denounced all falsehoods and shams. Some of

her sentences on this point seem burned into the page, as by the

flame of a blowpipe. "The whole literary and fashionable world is

baked together of lies." To those who expressed their respect and

admiration of her she said, "Natural candor, absolute purity of soul,

and sincerity of heart are the only things worthy of homage: the rest

is conventionality." She wrote to a friend, "Never try to suppress a

generous impulse, or to crowd out a genuine feeling: despair or

discouragement is the only fruit of dry reasoning, unenlightened by

the heart." In the following sentence she betrays, by the law of

opposites, the deepest charm of such a nature as her own; namely, a

thoroughly sincere and fluent spontaneousness of character. "I have

just found out the thing that I most utterly hate: it is pedantry. To

see such a big nothing in full march is to me the most revolting and

the most unendurable of all sights."

Another fine and winning quality in Rahel was her profound interest

in exalted and original characters, and her ardent veneration for

them. This drew them gratefully to her in return. She had an almost

idolatrous admiration for Goethe. All aspirants for true interior

greatness naturally love and revere those who exemplify their ideal

to them. She once called Goethe and Fichte the first and second eyes

of Germany. A soul capable of such enthusiasm for great souls is

rare, and is most charming. Her maxim, like that of all the highest

and strongest of the guiding souls of our race, was, "Act only from

your inmost conscience, and only good will come to you." A vast,

tonic freedom and charity breathe in some of her sentences. "A

catholic sympathy with all possible systems; a resolute liberation

from the exclusive trammels of any; an entire surrender into the

hands of Him who wields all possibilities; and an honest dealing with

the depths of our own hearts, this seems to me more than all

philosophy, and a thing well pleasing to God."

It is no wonder that the favored friends of such a woman honored her

even to the verge of worship, as we find then doing in their letters.

Though not technically--or professedly a religious woman, she was

really one. She felt the mystery of things; she revered the

providential guides of the race; she owned the law of the whole; she

bowed in submissive adoration before God. "Since the decease of my

mother," she said, "I know death better. I see him everywhere. He has

assumed a new power over me." A fatal disease struck her at sixty-

two. Her husband scarcely left her bedside. Until the last, he

continued to read her favorite books to her. The young Heine, how

different then from the dreadful wreck he became! hearing that fresh

rose-leaves, applied to her inflamed eyes, were grateful, sent her

his first hook of poems, enveloped in a basket of roses. With what

fitter words can we take leave of Rahel and her friends than these of

her own: "I have thought an epitaph. It is this, Good men, when any

thing good happens to mankind, then think affectionately in your

peace also of mine."

The life of Madame Récamier is interesting, in a pre-eminent degree,

on account of the warmth, elevation, and fidelity of the friendships

which filled it. Her personal loveliness and social charm made her a

universal favorite, and gave her an unparalleled celebrity. But, full

as her career was of romantic adventures, rich as it was in brilliant

associations, its keynote throughout, its strongest interest at every

point, is friendship. Unlike those of so many of the famous women of

France, her friendships were as remarkable for their rational

soundness, purity, and tenacity, as for their fervor. They were free

from every thing morbid or affected. An adverse fate forbade the love

to which she seemed destined by her bewitching beauty and grace; and

a certain divine chill in the blood, a stamp from Diana in the

senses, turned all the warmth of affection upwards into the mind, to

radiate thence in her face and manners, and to make her a high

priestess of friendship. The pure and wise Ballanche, who idolized

her, said that she was originally an Antigone, of whom people vainly

wished by force to make an Armada.

Her nominal husband is supposed by some to have been in reality her

father; the marriage being merely a titular one, to secure his

fortune to her in case of his death by the guillotine, of which he

was then in daily dread. Deprived of the usual domestic vents of

affection, her rich heart naturally led her to crave the best

substitute, friendship. And her matchless personal gifts, together

with her truly charming traits of character, enabled her permanently

to win and experience this in a very exalted degree. Her three

principal friends were Montmorency, Ballanche, and Chateaubriand; all

three original and extraordinary characters, and all three worthy in

spite of some drawbacks on the part of the last of the extraordinary

devotion she gave them. The letters of these three possess extreme

interest. Especially, those of the first named are the unique

monument of an affection whose purity and delicacy equalled its

vivacity and depth.

Matthieu de Montmorency was one of the noblest of the nobility of

France, alike in birth and in spirit. In his youth a voluptuous

liver, he had afterwards undergone a genuine and solemn conversion.

While in Switzerland, the news of the guillotining of his brother

gave him such a shock, that it revolutionized his motives and his

life. The gay, impassioned, fascinating man of the world became an

austere and fervent Christian. The rich sensibility he had formerly

spent in amours and display, henceforward ennobled by wisdom and

sanctified by religion, lent a singular charm of tenderness and

loftiness to his friendships. The memory of his own errors gave a

gracious charitableness to his judgments; his sorrow imparted an

incomparable refinement to his air; his grave and devout demeanor

inspired veneration; his sweet magnanimity drew every unprejudiced

heart. He had long been a fervent friend of Madame de Staid, when the

youthful virgin-wife, the dazzling Julie Récamier, formed an

engrossing attachment to that gifted woman. Drawn mutually to this

common goal, the fore-ordained friends soon met. He was then fifty

years old; she, twenty-three. Her extraordinary charms of person and

spirit, her dangers, exposed, with such, bewildering beauty and such

peculiar domestic relations, to all the seductions of a most corrupt

society, awakened at once his admiration, his sympathy, and his pity.

As an increasing intimacy revealed her irresistible sweetness of

disposition, her many gifts and virtues, Montmorency found himself

ever more and more drawn to her by the united bonds of reason,

conscience, and affection. He undertook not merely to be her friend

in the ordinary pleasures of sympathy, but, as a Christian, under the

eye of God, sincerely and profoundly to befriend her. From that

moment until his death, his devotion, though once severely tried,

never faltered nor slumbered. He was to her more than a father and a

brother; he was her guardian angel, as pure in feeling, as watchful

to warn, to restrain, to encourage, to support, and console. For many

years, through trying reverses of fortune, he visited her every

evening. For many years each had a vital share in all that concerned

the other; and, when he died, it was as if a large part of her being

had been suddenly torn out of her soul, and transferred to heaven.

The letters that passed between them form one of the most delightful

and impressive records ever made of Christian friendship, a record in

which wisdom and duty are as prominent as affection.

Pierre Simon Ballanche, one of the most delicate and philosophical of

French authors, most disinterested and affectionate of men, the

perfect model of a friend, was born at Lyons in 1776. He was first

introduced to Madame Récamier, in 1812, by their common friend, the

generous and eloquent Camille Jordan. Ballanche, in an enthusiastic

attachment to a noble, portionless young girl, had suffered a

disappointment so deep, that it caused him to dismiss all thoughts of

marriage for ever. He sought to ease the burden of rejected love, by

letting the sadness it had engendered exhale in a literary work. This

exquisite work, called "Fragments," Jordan induced Madame Récamier to

read: he also described to her the refined and magnanimous character

of the author. Thus prepared, and aided by her own keen discernment,

she immediately detected his choice talents, his rare vein of

sentiment, his abiding hunger for affection. Ballanche was a

philosopher of solitude, a poet and priest of humanity, spending his

days far from the crowd and uproar of the world, his proper haunt the

summits of the loftiest minds, the mysterious cradle of the destinies

of society. His soul was an "AEolian harp," through which the music of

the pre-historic ages played. Chastity and sorrow were two geniuses,

who unveiled to him the destiny of man. His philosophy, so redolent

of the heart and the imagination, amidst the material struggles and

selfishness of the time, has been compared to a chant of Orpheus in

the school of Hobbes. The friendship which Madame Récamier gave this

lonesome, sad, expansive, and lofty spirit, was as if a goddess had

come down from heaven on purpose to minister to him. She brought him

the attention he needed, the sympathy he pined for, the position and

praise which were so grateful to his sensitive nature. She strove to

win for him from others the recognition he deserved, to call out his

powers, and to show off his gift to the best advantage. Ballanche was

timid, awkward, ugly, with no wealth, with no rank; but, in the sight

of Madame Récamier, the treasures and graces of his soul were an

intrinsic recommendation far superior to these outward advantages,

and she was ready to honor it to the full.

Never was kindness more worthily bestowed; never was it more

gratefully received. "I often," he says, "find myself astonished at

your goodness to me. The silent, weary, sad man, whom others neglect,

you notice, and seek with infinite tact to draw him out. You are

indulgence and pity personified, and you compassionately see in me a

kind of exile. Together with the feeling of a brother for a sister, I

offer you the homage of my soul." From that time, he belonged to her,

and could not bear to live separate from her. Under her appreciation

and encouragement, he expanded, like a plant moved from a chill shade

into the sunshine. His devotion was entire, and sought no equal

return. It was simply the natural expression of his gratitude to her,

his admiration of her, his delight in seeing her and in being with

her. His love for her, like that of Dante for Beatrice, was a

religious worship, a celestial exhalation of his soul, utterly free

from every alloy of earth and sense. For thirty-four years, he was

almost inseparable from her. He removed to Paris, that he might look

on her every day. Wherever she travelled, abroad or at home, he was

one of her companions. At her receptions of company, the fame of

which has gone through the world, he was invariably an honored and

active assistant. And, despite his deformed face, and uncouth

appearance and bearing, he was a great favorite with all the chosen

guests at the Abbaye-aux-Bois. To those who really knew him, his

large, beaming eyes and noble forehead, his disinterested goodness,

his literary and philosophical accomplishments, his modest

unworldliness and attentive sympathy, redeemed his physical

blemishes, and covered them with a radiance superior to that of mere

beauty. The letters of Ballanche to Madame Récamier are charming in

their originality. His praise of her is marked by an inimitable grace

of sincerity and refinement:

"Your presence, so full of magic, the sweet reflection of your soul,

will be to me a powerful inspiration. You are a perfect poem; you are

poesy itself. It is your destiny to inspire, mine to be inspired. An

occupation would do you good; your disturbed and dreamy imagination

has need of aliment. Take care of your health, spare your nerves: you

are an angel who has gone a little astray in coming into a world of

agitation and falsehood."

What a reading of her inmost heart through her envied position, what

matchless felicity of representation, in this picture of herself sent

to her in one of his letters "The phoenix, marvellous but solitary

bird, is said often to weary of himself. He feeds on perfumes, and

lives in the purest region of the air; and his brilliant existence

ends on a pyre of odoriferous woods, kindled by the sun. More than

once, without doubt, he envies the lot of the white dove, because she

has a companion like herself."

In his high estimate of her talent, he tried to persuade her to

undertake a literary work, the translation and illustration of

Petrarch, which she actually began, but left unfinished.

"Your province, like my own," he writes, "is the interior of the

sentiments; but, believe me, you have at command the genius of music,

of flowers, of brooding meditation, and of elegance. Privileged

creature, assume a little confidence, lift your charming head, and

fear not to try your hand on the golden lyre of the poets. It is my

mission to see that some trace of your noble existence remains on

this earth. Help me to fulfil my mission. I regard it as a blessing

that you will be loved and appreciated when you are no more. It would

be a real misfortune if so excellent a being should pass merely as a

charming shadow. Of what use is memory, if it does not perpetuate the

beautiful and good?"

This league of lofty friendship, of endearing intercourse and

service, held good while a whole generation of mortals came upon the

stage and disappeared; and it throve with growing validity in the

latest old age of the fortunate parties. Ballanche believed, after

the death of his mother, that he saw her, several successive

mornings, enter his room, and ask him how he had passed the night.

This ocular illusion affords us an affecting glimpse of his heart. He

wrote to his friend, "Antiquity confides its weariness and grief to

us, without doubt, to beguile us from our own." "Had Orpheus never

met Eurydice, his existence would have remained incomplete; and, in

place of the cruel grief of her loss, he would have known another

grief not less intense, solitude of soul." "I am alone, and the

solitude weighs heavily upon me. Permit me to solace myself by

talking a moment with you." "I protest to you in all sincerity, that

my one absorbing thought is my warm feeling of friendship for you. I

have need to be assured by you, and that as often as possible, that

this sentiment shall not end in unhappiness for me. The thought of

that is an agony which terrifies me. You are so kind, you have so

much sympathy for all unhappy persons, that I fear it is through pity

and condescension that you show kindness to me." This expression was

in the year 1816; but all such uneasiness soon vanished, and he

learned to rely on her sincere cordiality with a serene assurance,

which was the richest luxury of his life.

In 1830, Ballanche, publishing his chief work, the "Palingénésie

Sociale," dedicated it to Madame Récamier, in a form whose delicacy

and fervor made it one of the most exquisite pieces of praise ever

paid in letters. Alluding to Canova's portrait of Madame Récamier, in

the character of the celestial guide of Dante, he says, "An artist

enveloped in a grand renown, a sculptor who has just shed so much

glory on the illustrious land of Dante, and whose graceful

imagination the masterpieces of antiquity have so often exalted, one

day, for the first time, saw a woman who seemed to him a living

apparition of Beatrice. Full of that religious emotion which is the

gift of genius, he immediately commanded the marble, always obedient

to his chisel, to express the sudden inspiration of the moment; and

the Beatrice of Dante passed from the vague region of poetry into the

domain of substantial art. The sentiment which dwells in this

harmonious countenance, now become a new type of pure and virgin

beauty, in its turn inspires artists and poets. This woman, whose

name I would here conceal, whom I would veil even as Dante does, is

endowed with all the generous sympathies of our age. She has visited,

with the select few, the haunts of lofty minds. Here, in this seat of

imperturbable peace, of unalterable security, she has formed noble

friendships, those friendships which have filled her life, which,

born under immortal auspices, are sheltered alike from time, from

death, and from all human vicissitudes. I address myself, then, to

her who has been seen as a living apparition of Beatrice. Can she

encourage me with her smile, with that serious smile of love and of

grace, which expresses at once confidence and pity for the pains of

probation, for the burdens of an exile that should end, sweet and

calm augury, wherein is revealed, even in the present, the certainty

of our infinite hopes, the grandeur of our definitive destinies?"

When the good Ballanche was taken dangerously ill, Madame Récamier

had just undergone an operation for cataract, and was under strict

orders from the physician not to leave her couch. But, on the

announcement of the condition of Ballanche, she immediately rose, and

went to his bedside, and watched by him until his last breath. In the

anxiety and tears of this experience, she lost all hope of recovering

her sight. Her incomparable friend received the supreme hospitality

at her hands, and was buried in her family tomb, leaving, in his

works, a delightful picture of his mind; in his life, a perfect model

of devotion. The removal of this soul, echo of her own; this heart,

wholly filled by her; this mind, so gladly submissive to her

influence, could not but leave a mighty void behind. For,

notwithstanding the wondrous array of gifts, attractions, and

attentions lavished on her, her deep sensibility and interior

loneliness made her often unhappy. She would sit by herself, in the

twilight, playing from memory choice pieces of the great masters of

music, the tears rolling down her cheeks. Friendship was more than a

delight: it was a necessity to her.

De Tocqueville pronounced an exquisite eulogy by the grave of

Ballanche, in the name of the Academy. La Prade, in the funeral

address he delivered at Lyons, the birthplace of the deceased, said,

"There was in his mind, in its serenity, its charming simplicity, its

tenderness, something more than is found in the wisest and the best.

His virtue was of a divine nature: it was at once a prolonged

innocence and an acquired wisdom. Serene and radiant as his soul may

now be in the mansions of peace, we can hardly conceive of it as more

loving and more pure than we beheld it on this earth of infirmity and

of strife." What a delight it is to contemplate the relation that

bound two such spirits together, the measureless treasures of

inspiration, solace, joy, it must have yielded to them both I Sarah

Austin, who was in Paris at the time Ballanche died, and an intimate

of the illustrious circle of friends, says, "I shall never forget the

sort of consternation, mingled with sorrow, which this death caused.

Everybody felt regret for so pure and excellent a man, but yet more

of grief and pity for Madame Récamier, whose loss was felt to be

overwhelming, and entirely irreparable." Ampere says, in his cordial

and glowing memoir of Ballanche, "While he was composing his

'Antigone,' Poetry appeared to him under an enchanting form. He

became acquainted with her, of whom he said that the charm of her

presence laid his sorrows to sleep; who, after being the soul of his

most elevated and delicate inspirations, became in later years the

providence of every moment of his life." Ballanche himself often

assured Madame Récamier, that the ideal of the "Antigone" of his

dreams was revealed to him by her, and that, in drawing this perfect

portrait, he had copied largely from her. "It was only through

Eurydice," he writes, "that Orpheus had any mission for his brother-

men. If my name survives me, as appears more and more probable, I

shall be called the Philosopher of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, and my

philosophy will be considered as inspired by you. This thought is my

joy. I am now entering on the last stage of my life: however

prolonged this stage may be, I know well what is at the end of it. I

shall fall asleep in the bosom of a great hope, full of confidence

that your memory and mine will live the same life." Fortunate

friends! happy in their living union immaculate as heaven, happy in

the grateful admiration and love of all fit souls who shall ever read

of them!

And if he grieved because his words, his name,

The breath of after-ages will not stir,

'Tis but because he would impart his fame,

And share an immortality with her;

So might there, from the brightest, holiest flame

That ere did martyrdom of heart confer,

Two shadowy forms of Truth and Friendship rise,

To seek their home together in the skies.

Pervading and earnest, however, as were these attachments of Madame

Récamier to Montmorency and Ballanche, the crowning passion of her

life was her friendship for Chateaubriand. This grand writer and

imposing person has described his first meeting with her:

"I was one morning with Madame de Staël, who, at toilet in the hands

of her maid, twirled a green twig in her fingers while she talked.

Suddenly Madame Récamier entered, clothed in white. She sits down on

a blue-silk sofa. Madame de Staël, standing, continues her eloquent

conversation. I scarcely reply, my eyes riveted on Madame Récamier. I

had never seen any one equal to her, and was more than ever

depressed. My admiration of her changed into dissatisfaction with

myself. She went out, and I saw her no more for twelve years. Twelve

years! What hostile power squanders thus our days, ironically

lavishing them on the indifferences called attachments, on the

wretchednesses named felicities!"

But it was in 1817, at a private dinner in the chamber of the dying

Madame de Staël, that their real acquaintance began. The literary

fame of Chateaubriand was then greater than that of any living man.

He was a lofty, romantic, melancholy person, with a superb head and

face, polished manners, and a grand vein of eloquence. Nothing was so

deeply characteristic of Madame Récamier as her enthusiasm for

brilliant minds, noble sentiment and conduct. It was this that had so

fascinated her with Madame de Staël. The sure proof of the ideal

nature of her attachments, their freedom from sensual ingredients, is

this ruling stamp of reverence and loyalty. Those whom she admired

the most enthusiastically she loved the most passionately. It was

inevitable that her imagination would be captivated with the

chivalrous and imposing Chateaubriand, especially at such an

affecting time. "He seemed the natural heir to Madame de Staël's

place in her heart." Speaking of this overwhelming sentiment, thirty

years later, she said, "It is impossible for a head to be more

completely turned than mine was: I used to cry all day." Montmorency

and Ballanche were greatly distressed, and not a little mortified and

jealous. It was not that they had fallen into a lower and narrower

place in her affection, but that they saw Chateaubriand installed in

a higher and larger place. They feared that her peace would be

wrecked in wretchedness by an intimate connection with one so

discontented and capricious, a sort of spoilt idol, a hero of ennui,

filled with causeless melancholy, voracious of praise, querulous,

exacting, his own imperious and inevitable personality ever

uppermost. In vain they sought to warn and dissuade her from the new

attachment. Montmorency seems to have fancied that the passion was

not friendship, but love; and faithfully, with solemn energy, he

adjured her, by all the sanctions of religion, to guard herself. He

soon learned his error, and gracefully apologized: "When I read your

perfect letter, lovely friend, remorse seized me, and now fills my

soul. I am deeply touched by the proofs of your friendship, and by

the triumphs of your reason. I am, for friendship's sake, proud of

the exclusive privilege you accord to me of admission and

consolation, and impatiently long to go and exercise the sweet right.

Pardon me my letter of this morning. Adieu. Persist in your generous

resolutions, and turn to Him who alone can strengthen them and reward

them."

The friendship of Madame Récamier and Chateaubriand became more

absorbing and complete, and was destined to endure with their lives.

"It was," Madame Lenormant says, "the one aim of her life to appease

the irritability, soothe the susceptibilities, and remove the

annoyances of this noble, generous, but selfish nature, spoiled by

too much adulation." Her steady moderation, moral wisdom, beautiful

repose, and sweet oblivion of self, were an admirable antidote to his

extreme moods, uneasy vanity, and morbid depression. Communion with

her serene equity, her matchless beauty, her inexhaustible

tenderness, the experience of her constant homage, soothed his

haughty and mordant, but magnanimous and affectionate, nature, and

were an infinite luxury to him. An admiring recognition is almost a

necessity for those highly endowed with genius. And Madame Récamier's

intense faculty of admiration, with her self-forgetting devotedness,

exactly fitted her for this ministry. Chateaubriand became the first

object of her life. Modifying her habits to suit his tastes, she made

him, instead of herself, the centre around which every thing was to

revolve. She devised endless means of lending an interest to his

existence. She listened to every thing he wrote. She drew into her

parlor, to meet him, all those persons who could interest or amuse

him, or in any way give him pleasure. She diverted attentions from

herself to him with exhaustless skill and generosity. In a poem which

he addressed to her, he called her the "soft star that guided his

path."

Such jealousy as can find a place in natures so noble is easily to be

traced in the letters of Ballanche and Montmorency. Chateaubriand

calls Ballanche "the hierophant" or "the mysterious initiator," "the

man the most advanced at the Abbaye-aux-Bois." Ballanche, in turn,

calls Chateaubriand "the king of intelligence." But Madame Récamier's

wonderful sweetness and discretion invariably restored the

interrupted harmony. Nor, indeed, did she allow the superior

attraction to cast her old friends in the shade. Several years after

the death of Montmorency, which happened in church on a Good Friday,

Chateaubriand wrote to her thus: "Yesterday I believed myself dying,

as your best friend did. Then you would have found one resemblance at

least between us, and perhaps you would have joined us in your

heart." Five years after their first meeting, Chateaubriand, then

ambassador at Berlin, writes to her, "That I shall see you in a

month, seems a kind of dream to me." Twenty-five years later, two

years before his death, he writes to her at a watering-place whither

she had gone for her health, "Do not hasten back. I pass my time here

in Notre Dame. It is well occupied; for I think only of you and of

God." The persistence of an affection so profound and so pure as that

of Madame Récamier bore its proper fruit, and ended by subduing

Chateaubriand. Gratitude, respect, veneration, struck their roots to

the very bottom of his heart. Little by little, his self-occupied

personality yields, and at last he writes to her, "You have

transformed my nature." When she was alarmingly ill, in the winter of

1837, he, together with Ballanche, might be seen, in the cold

mornings, "his beautiful white hair blown about by the wind, his

physiognomy the image of despair," in the court of the Abbaye-aux-

Bois, waiting for the doctor to come out. He then writes, "I bring

this note to your door. I was so terrified yesterday at not being

admitted, that I believed you were going from me. Ah! remember it is

I who am to go before you. Never speak of what I shall do without

you. I have not done any thing so evil that I should be left behind

you." She recovered, and devoted herself more than ever, if possible,

through the years of his mental decay, to alleviate and disguise the

sad changes that came over him. Blindness began their separation

before death came. Nothing can more emphatically bespeak her divine

self-abnegation than the fact, that, for a long time after she had

become perfectly blind, a dislike to trouble others with her

infirmities led her to conceal the misfortune from her general

acquaintance. Her eyes kept their brightness, and her hearing was

most acute: she recognized, by the first inflection of the voice,

those who drew near. The furniture was carefully arranged, always in

the same way, so that she could move about confidently; and many

persons, when she spoke of her "poor eyes," never dreamed that she

had actually lost her sight.

After the decease of his wife, Chateaubriand besought Madame Récamier

to marry him. She refused, on the ground, that, if she resided with

him, the variety and pleasure his daily visits brought into the

tedium of his existence would be destroyed. "Were we younger," she

said, "I would gladly accept the right to consecrate my life to you.

Age and blindness give me this right. I know the world will do

justice to the purity of our relation. Let us change nothing." During

his last sickness, he was as unable to speak as she was to see. She

had the fortitude to undergo two operations on her eyes in the hope

of looking on him once more; but in vain. By his bedside when he

expired, she felt the sources of her life struck. She came from the

room with no outward sign of distress, but clothed with a deadly

paleness, which from that hour never left her. Her niece wrote, at

the time, to a friend in England, "Those who, during the last two

years, have seen Madame Récamier, blind, though the sweetness and

brilliancy of her eyes remained uninjured, surrounding the

illustrious friend, whose age had extinguished his memory, with cares

so delicate, so tender, so watchful; who have seen her joy when she

helped him to snatch a momentary distraction from the conversation

around him, by leading it to subjects connected with that past which

still lingered in his memory, those persons will never forget the

scene. They could not help being deeply affected with pity and

respect at the sight of that noble beauty, brilliancy, and genius

bending beneath the weight of age, and sheltered, with such ingenious

tenderness, by the sacred friendship of a woman who forgot her own

infirmities, in the endeavor to lighten his."

History scarcely affords a finer instance of the ministrations of

womanhood to soothe the woes and supply the wants of man than is

exhibited in the relation of Madame Récamier and Chateaubriand. His

egotistic and restless mental activity; his exaggerated, perturbed,

and gnawing self-consciousness; his despairing view of men; his

alienation from the spirit of his age, made him most lonely and

unhappy. Meanwhile his ardent poetic susceptibility, his soaring

imagination, his impassioned tenderness, his knightly sentiments, his

religious feeling, pre-eminently fitted him to enjoy the moral

homage, the delicate, sympathetic attentions, of a woman crowned with

every exalting attribute of her sex. He appreciated the prize at its

full worth. When nothing else could any longer interest him, her

charm retained its pristine power. When beyond his threescore and

ten, he writes to her thus, at different times:

"Other things are old stories: you are all that I love to see." "I am

going to walk out with the lark. She shall sing to me of you: then

she will be silent for ever in the furrow into which she drops." "I

have only one hope graven on my heart, and that is, to see you

again." "Cherish faithfully your attachment to me: it is all my life.

You see how my poor hand trembles; but my heart is firm." "I have but

one thought, fidelity to you: all the rest is gone."

For many years, even after his noble faculties were broken, and he

had lost the use of his limbs, so that he was forced to be carried

into her room, he passed the hours of every day, from three to six,

with her. Amidst the ordinary hatreds, miseries, and indifferences of

society, is it not indeed instructive and refreshing to see this

example of a spotless friendship still yielding, in extreme old age,

the interest, the solace, the happiness, which every thing else had

ceased to yield?

Chateaubriand devotes to Madame Récamier the eighth volume of his

"Memoires d'Outre Tombe." He recognizes, in her serious friendship, a

support for the weariness of his life, a remuneration for all his

sufferings.

"It seems, in nearing the close of my existence, as if every thing

that has been dear to me has been dear to me in Madame Récamier, and

that she was the concealed source of my affections. All my memories,

both of my dreams and of my realities, have been kneaded into a

mixture of charms and sweet pains, of which she has become the

visible form. In the midst of these Memoirs,' the temple I am eagerly

building, she will meet the chapel which I dedicate to her. Perhaps

it will please her to repose there. There I have placed her image."

During the few months that she survived their loss, Madame Récamier

often spoke of Chateaubriand and Ballanche together. Repeatedly, if

the door chanced to open at the hour when these two friends had been

accustomed to enter, she started; and, on being asked the reason,

replied that at certain moments her thought of them was so vivid,

that it amounted to an apparition. Only three days previous to her

death, she received M. de Saint Priest, and took great interest in

hearing him read the eulogy on Ballanche which he was about to

pronounce before the Academy.

Besides these three chief friends, Madame Récamier had many others

well deserving of separate mention. Paul David, nephew of her

husband, was a most devoted and inseparable companion of her whole

life. When she lost her sight, he used to read to her every evening.

He was a poor reader; and, perceiving that she was sensitive to this

defect, he secretly took lessons, at the age of sixty-four, to

improve his elocution. Junot and Bernadotte were her ardent, lasting

friends, and always delighted to serve her. Her rare graces, and her

generous goodness to Madame Desbordes-Valmore, disarmed the

prejudices and won the heart of the gifted but misanthropic Latouche.

The Duke de Noailles, who, under the envelope of a chill manner,

concealed a conscientiousness of judgment, a constancy and delicacy

of feeling, in strong sympathy with her own nature, was admitted to

the rank and title of friend, "a serious thing," says her biographer,

"for her who, more than any one in the world, inspired and practised

friendship in the most perfect sense of the word." He held a place in

her esteem like that held by Matthieu de Montmorency. One of the

latest and warmest of her friends was the brilliant and high-souled

Ampere, introduced to her by Ballanche, who had been an intimate

friend of his father, and who now loved the son with double fervor, a

debt which the grateful young man repaid with interest in a noble

tribute to his memory. Never did a mother feel a deeper solicitude in

the prospects of a darling son, or exert herself more devotedly to

further his success; never did a son more thoroughly idolize a

beautiful and good mother, than was realized between Madame Récamier

and Ampere. Solely to please her, this most entertaining and most

courted man in Paris devoted himself not merely to her, which would

have been easy; but to Chateaubriand, which was difficult. Nothing

can better illustrate her irresistible charm. And nothing can better

illustrate the coarseness and ignorance of many of our critics, than

the presumption with which one of them, in 1864, speaking of Ampere's

funeral, says, "He was one of Madame Récamier's many lovers, and was

bitterly disappointed at her refusal to marry him after the death of

Chateaubriand!"

Such were the few principal men who penetrated to the centre of that

select circle, in whose outer ranges of general benevolence the right

of citizenship was granted to so many choice figures. Among the more

distinguished of these latter may be named Benjamin Constant, the

Duke de Doudeauville, De Gerando, Prosper de Barante, Delacroix,

Gerard, Thierry, Ville-main, Lamartine, Guizot, De Tocqueville,

Sainte Beuve. Surrounded by such persons as these, in the humble

chamber to which, on the loss of her fortune, she had betaken

herself, she presided like a priestess in the temple of friendship,

ever pre-occupied with them, their glory her dominant passion, never

herself seeking to shine, but intent only to elicit and display their

gifts. Was it not natural, that they should, in the humorous phrase

of Ballanche, "gravitate towards the centre of the Abbaye-aux-Bois"?

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett allows us a few glimpses into two

friendships, which, to a nature like hers, we cannot but think must

have been nobly precious. One, celebrated in her poem of "Cyprus

Wine," was with Hugh Stuart Boyd, who amused himself during some

weary periods in his blindness with the grateful occupation of

teaching her to read Greek. The other was with her cousin, John

Kenyon, author of "A Rhymed Plea for Tolerance," to whom she so

expressively inscribes the most elaborate work of her life, "Aurora

Leigh."

It is difficult to find any more remarkable example of the

inspiration, the balm, and the joy a great man may derive from the

pure friendship of an appreciative woman than that which is furnished

in the relation between Auguste Comte and Madame Clotilde de Vaux. In

his "Catechism of Positive Religion," and in the preface and

dedication of the first volume of his "System of Positive Politics,"

he has given quite a full account of this friendship, of its

circumstances and its effects. Comte was a man of an extraordinary

original genius; of profound effusiveness; but excessively proud, and

sensitive to affronts. Full of noble thoughts and sentiments,

heroically devoted to the pursuit of truth and the good of his race,

his outward life was unfortunate. He was poor and lonely. He had many

severe quarrels, disappointments, and vexations. No one appreciated

him with admiring love. His wife was utterly unsuited to his tastes,

and finally deserted him. Meantime he toiled, with a martyr-like

pertinacity, at his great task of philosophical construction.

Believing his work destined to be of incalculable service to mankind,

he rewarded himself, for his vast achievements and his unmerited

sufferings, with an exceptional valuation and esteem of himself.

Just at this time, sad, weary, solitary, and teeming with suppressed

tenderness, he met with Madame Clotilde de Vaux, a young woman of a

fine feminine genius and character, made virtually a widow by the

crime and imprisonment of her unworthy husband. She seems at once to

have fully appreciated the best side of the genius of Comte, entered

into his disinterested sentiments, pitied his misfortunes, and

ministered to his highest wants like an angel. As his disciple and

friend, she lavished on him an enthusiastic admiration and affection.

She reflected him, in her esteem and treatment, at a height, and in a

glory, harmonizing with his own estimation of his mission. It was a

celestial luxury; and it wrought miracles in him. He was transformed

into apparently another person. His scientific and philosophical

career became a poetic and religious one. He reproduced the most

glowing and delicate emotions of Dante and Petrarch and Thomas a

Kempis. The relation between Comte and Madame de Vaux was one of

absolute blamelessness and purity. For one year only was he allowed

to enjoy this divine delight. He was about to adopt her legally as

his daughter, when she died, leaving him inconsolable, save for the

melancholy satisfaction of beatifying her memory with his pen, and of

worshipping her in his heart.

"An unalterable purity," he says, "confirmed her tenderness, and was

the cause of a moral resurrection to me during the incomparable year

of our external union. My present adoration of her is more assiduous

and profound, but less vivid, than when she was alive. It daily makes

me feel the truth of a sentence which once dropped from her pen:

There is nothing in life irrevocable, except death.'"

The deep and stern solitude of Comte, the wearisome toils he

underwent, the austere pre-occupations of his mind, the harassments

and lacerations he had known, seemed to make him doubly susceptible

to the action of the sympathetic instincts, to those pleasures of

praise and tenderness which aggrandize and sweeten our existence, and

constitute our keenest happiness. No one was purer than he in his

life; no one severer in his condemnation of every form of corrupt

indulgence. Therefore, no one has had a higher idea of the value of

feminine friendship, and no one been more loyal to it in his own

experience. It is truly touching to read, in the light of his life

and character, what he has written on this topic. The three guardian

angels, for devout and effusive communion with whom he set apart a

sacred period every day, were, Rosalie Boyer, Clotilde de Vaux, and

Sophie Eliot, his mother, his friend, and his servant. By prayer and

meditation on these three beloved memories, he cultivated the three

chief sympathies, veneration for superiors, attachment to equals,

goodness to inferiors. He expresses the deepest gratitude for the

privilege of that friendship, "the tardy felicity reserved for a

solitary life, devoted, from the first, to the fundamental service of

humanity." Even its removal by death, he said, did not restore his

former isolation; for the inward treasure of affection it had

bestowed, constantly contemplated afresh in memory, remained the

permanent and principal resource of his life. "She has, now for more

than six years since her death, been associated with all my thoughts,

and with all my feelings."

The injustice of the popular view of Comte's character, in its

deepest truth, as hard, coarse, despotic, is shown by his favorite

aphorisms. "Live for others." "Disinterested love is the supreme good

of man." "Love cannot be deep, unless it is also pure." "The one

thing essential to happiness is, that the heart shall be always nobly

occupied." It is probable that Comte exaggerated the worth of his

friend, when he ascribed to her "a marvellous combination of

tenderness and nobleness, never, perhaps, realized in another heart

in an equal degree;" but he did not exaggerate the blessed comfort

which her friendship was to him, or the power with which it wrought

in his soul. That she was a very superior nature, appears clearly

from the few expressions of her mind which are preserved to us. For

example, she says, "No one knows better than myself how weak our

nature is, unless it has some lofty aim beyond the reach of passion."

And again she says, "Our race is one which must have duties, in order

to form its feelings."

In speaking thus of Auguste Comte, I am not ignorant of his foibles

of character, the morbid side of his ill-balanced mind and heart. But

the unquestionable greatness and nobleness of the man are so much

superior to his weaknesses, and are so much less appreciated by the

public, that I can treat his memory only with reverence, willingly

leaving to others the ungrateful task of ridiculing or scorning him.

He had, no doubt, an exaggerated pride and vanity. But he labored for

truth and his fellow-men with transcendent fidelity. His irascible

egotism made him suffer its own punishment. His lot was lonely and

was painful. The solace of the stainless friendship which Madame

Clotilde de Vaux brought him appeals to my most respectful sympathy.

And it has a lesson which many of those who sneer would be benefited

by appropriating. Let us leave the history with the breathing words

of Comte himself:

"Adieu, my unchangeable companion! Adieu, my holy Clotilde, who art

to me at once wife, sister, and daughter! Adieu, my dear pupil, and

my fit colleague. Thy celestial inspiration will dominate the

remainder of my life, public as well as private, and preside over my

progress towards perfection, purifying my sentiments, ennobling my

thoughts, and elevating my conduct. Perhaps, as the principal reward

of the grand tasks yet left for me to complete under thy powerful

invocation, I shall inseparably write thy name with my own, in the

latest remembrances of a grateful humanity."

When Paul, the Czar of Russia, espoused the Princess Marie de

Wurtemburg, Sophie Soymonof, then in her sixteenth year, and

distinguished for her accomplishments, was chosen maid of honor to

the new empress. Marie was endowed with rare beauty, and surrounded

by seductions and difficulties; but she set such an example of

amiable and solid virtue in her lofty place, that calumny never

assailed her.

A strong affection, based on mutual esteem and tenderness, sprang up

between the empress and her maid. This affection was never

interrupted nor chilled. The fury and puerility, the monstrous pride

and jealousy, of Paul, made him constantly quarrel with those who

were brought into close relations with him. The empress alone

triumphed over his outbursts, by dint of unfailing sweetness,

modesty, and patience. She smilingly submitted to the capricious

exactions, distasteful exercises, and excessive fatigues he imposed.

However bitter her sufferings, the serenity of her soul was never

visibly altered. But, in sympathizing with the hardships of her kind

mistress, Sophie early learned to penetrate the secret of noisy pomp

and hidden woes, glittering prosperity and silent tears.

Secretary Soymonof, aware of the precarious tenure by which the

dependents of the court held their prosperity, was anxious to secure

for his daughter a trustworthy protector, and a handsome position in

the future. He cast his eyes on his personal friend, General

Swetchine, a man of an imposing aspect, a firm character, a just and

calm spirit, who had had an honorable career, and was held in high

consideration. Sophie accepted, with her usual deference to her

father's wishes, the husband thus chosen, although he was twenty-five

years older than herself. It cost her many a secret pang; for she was

already in love with a young man of noble birth and fortune, with

rare qualities of mind and a brilliant destiny. She knew that her

affection was reciprocated. But, from a sense of filial duty, she

silently renounced him; and, when he in turn resigned himself to

another marriage, she became the warm and steadfast friend of his

wife. This painful renunciation, in the introspective reflection, and

the dissolution of romantic dreams to which it led, was the first of

those earthly disenchantments, which, shattering and darkening the

empire of social ambition, transferred her interest from material

pleasures and hopes to the imperturbable satisfactions of religion.

The second blow quickly followed. Only a few days after that marriage

which her father thought promised so much security and consolation to

his old age, the Emperor Paul, in a cruel whim, suddenly banished him

from Petersburg. Retiring to Moscow, the galling sense of his

disgrace, the separation from his darling daughter, together with a

frigid reception by a friend on whom he had especially relied,

plunged him into the deepest grief. A terrible attack of apoplexy

swept him away. At the dire announcement, Madame Swetchine sunk on

her knees; and, in the spiritual solitude, unable any more to lean on

her father, turned with irrepressible need and effusion to God.

General Swetchine was made military commandant and governor of St.

Petersburg. At the head of a splendid establishment, his young wife

found herself in the highest circle of the most brilliant society in

Europe; for at that time the Revolution had banished the noblest

families of France, and their headquarters were in the Russian

capital. Madame Swetchine always possessed, in remarkable union, an

earnest desire for action and companionship, and a strong taste for

solitude and meditation. She managed her life so skilfully, that both

these inclinations were largely gratified. With many of the most

high-toned and accomplished persons whom she met, both of the Russian

nobility and the French emigrants, she formed earnest and lasting

relations of mind and heart. The most refined, pronounced, and

impressive characters in St. Petersburg, between the years 1800 and

1815, were embraced in her friendships. Her leisure hours were

scrupulously and eagerly devoted to self-improvement. She engaged in

a wide range of literary, historic, and philosophical studies; making

copious extracts from the books she read, patiently reflecting on the

subjects, and setting down independent comments. The progress she

made was rapid, and soon rendered her a notable woman.

Paul, full of lugubrious visions and suspicions, one day disgraced

General Swetchine by removing him from office. But this official

dismission did not entail banishment, and was followed by no loss of

social caste. The general and his exemplary wife continued to live

amidst their numerous friends as happily as before. The interchange

of literary and philosophic ideas shared the hours in their

attractive parlor with the revolutionary and reactionary politics of

the time. The profound attachments, stamped with reverence and the

rarest truthfullness, which in those years united many admirable

persons with Madame Swetchine, were frequently reporting themselves,

under far other circumstances, in a distant land, half a century

later.

In 1833, the celebrated Count Joseph de Maistre was accredited from

France to the Russian court. He was then about fifty, a man of pure

life, rare genius, and fervent enthusiasm; familiar with the world,

with the human heart, and with the loftiest ranges of sentiment and

learning. His zeal for the Catholic Church was extreme. Madame

Swetchine, at this time, without being at all a devotee, was a

sincere member of the Greek Church. She was already familiar with the

great minds of all ages and lands; and, at this particular period,

was earnestly studying modern philosophical controversies, comparing

the ideas of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel with those of Descartes, Pascal,

and Leibnitz. Despite the difference in their points of view, and the

many other contrasts between them, these two remarkable persons the

thoroughly trained master, in whom the gifts of knowledge, eloquence,

faith, and finesse, were accumulated; and the meditative, earnest,

consecrated young woman of twenty-one had no sooner met than they

felt the parity and harmony of their souls. They formed an exalted

friendship, full of solace and happiness to them both, a friendship

charged with the most important results on the destiny of the woman,

since it led to her conversion from the Greek Church to the Catholic,

and gave a deep religious inspiration and stamp to her entire

subsequent life. Such minds have a thousand lofty topics of common

interest to talk of; and they frequently visited each other,

exchanging thoughts with ever-deepening confidence and esteem. "The

cold countenance of the Count de Maistre," Madame Swetchine writes to

her dearest female friend, "conceals a soul of profound sensibility.

Without praising me, he often says pleasing things to me." At another

time, she humorously writes to the same friend: "The Princess Alexis

and I have been to spend an evening at the house of the Count de

Maistre. From deference to the duties of hospitality, he would not

suffer himself a single moment of sleep. He rose with the palm of

victory out of this terrible struggle of nature and politeness; but

who can tell at what a cost?" She said that great griefs had purified

his ambition, and lent a strange interest to him, elevating and

aggrandizing his character. He set an extreme value on her

friendship; and wrote to her, that he should never spare any pains to

preserve in its integrity what he felt was an infinite honor to him.

He wrote to his friend, the Viscount de Bonald, that he had never

seen so much moral strength, talent, and culture, joined with so much

sweetness of disposition, as in Madame Swetchine. On their

separation, by a residence in different countries, De Maistre gave

her a magnificent portrait of himself, on the frame of which he had

written four verses, adjuring the happy image, in answer to the call

of awaiting friendship, to fly, and take its place where the original

would so gladly be. This portrait she kept prominently hung in her

parlor as long as she lived. In one of his letters to her, he writes:

"My thought will always go out to seek you: my heart will always feel

the worth of yours." The memory of this first great friend continued

to hover over her life to the end. In her last days, generously

offended by what she thought the unjust strokes in the portraiture of

De Maistre, presented by Lamartine in his "Confidences," she took up

her pen in refutation, and wielded it with telling effect. This

eloquent vindication of her old friend, when he had been dead nearly

forty years, was one of her latest acts, and truly characteristic of

her tenacious fidelity of affection.

The enthusiasm shown by the Count de Maistre for the Roman Catholic

Church awakened a deep interest in Madame Swetchine. This interest

was greatly enhanced by the admirable examples of piety and charity

set before her in the lives of several of the French exiles in St.

Petersburg, with whom she had contracted friendships. Especially was

she impressed and attracted by the amiable virtues of the Princess de

Tarente, the devout elevation of her character, and the triumphant

sanctity of her death. Madame Swetchine at length resolved to make a

deliberate examination of the claims of the Roman Church, and to come

to a settled conclusion. Providing herself with an appropriate

library, acompanied only by her adopted daughter Nadine, in the

summer of 1815, she withdrew to a lonely and picturesque estate,

situated on the borders of the Gulf of Finland. Here, through the

days and nights of six months, she plunged into the most laborious

researches, historical and argumentative. The result was, that she

became convinced of the apostolic authority of the Roman primacy, and

avowed herself a Catholic. Soon after this conversion, the Jesuits

were ordered to leave Russia. Indignant at an order which she

regarded as unjust, she openly identified herself with the cause of

these proscribed missionaries. The machinations of the political

enemies of General Swetchine had made his situation disagreeable to

him; and, when he saw those enemies gaining credit, his pride took

offence, and he determined to leave the country. Madame Swetchine's

passion for travel and observation combined with her new religious

faith to make this removal less unwelcome than it would otherwise

have been.

The close of the year 1816 found her established in Paris, where,

with the exceptions of a year in Russia, and a couple of years in

Italy, she was to reside until her death. The Bourbon nobility, now

recalled to France, and reinstated in power, repaid the generous

kindness she had shown them in St. Petersburg, by giving her a hearty

welcome, and lavishing attentions and affection on her. Her deep

interest in charitable institutions soon brought her into intimate

and most cordial relations with De Gerando. Baron Humboldt and the

Count Pozzo di Borgo, among the earliest to become her friends, were

assiduous visitors at her house; and, in the salon of the brilliant

Duchess de Duras, where she was quickly appreciated and made to feel

at home, she became acquainted with the most interesting and

commanding minds of France at that time, such as Chateaubriand,

Remusat, Cuvier, Montmorency, Villemain, Barante. These persons have

all testified, in turn, to the great impression her character made on

them.

Madame Swetchine formed with a large number of men of rare excellence

and accomplishments ardent and lasting attachments, which were the

greatest comfort to herself, and administered invaluable inspiration

and happiness to them. Among these, particular mention should be made

of her confessor, the pious and venerable Abbé Desjardins; her

brother-in-law, Father Gargarin; Moreau; Turquety; Montalembert; and,

at a later date, De Tocqueville, who writes to her, "The friendship

of such as you are, imposes obligations." Another expression of De

Tocqueville must not be omitted here: "Let me thank you for your last

letter. It contained, as all your letters do, proofs of an affection

which consoles and strengthens me. I never received a line of your

writing without being sensible of this twofold impression. The reason

is, I think, that one finds in you a heart easily moved, in

connection with a mind firmly fixed upon abiding principles. Here is

the secret of your charm and your sway. I want to profit more than do

by your precious friendship. It distresses me that I succeed so ill."

She was one of those few natures able to forget themselves, take an

enthusiastic interest in others, and devote unwearied pains to

further their interests, sympathize and aid in their pursuits, calm,

refine, enrich, and bless their souls. She sustained the ideal

standards, and raised the self-respect, of every one who enjoyed the

honor of her regard. Accordingly, no noble man could be intimate with

her without grateful and affectionate veneration. M. de Maistre said

of her, "More loyalty, intellect, and learning were never seen joined

to so much goodness." The Viscount de Bonald said, "She is a friend

worthy of you; and one of the best heads I have ever met, effect or

cause of the most excellent qualities of the heart with which a

mortal can be endowed." The poet Turquety sent her an exquisite poem,

descriptive of herself and of his feelings towards her. She wrote in

reply, "Before thanking you, I have thanked God for giving your heart

such an impression of me, unworthy of it as I am. The illusion which

arises from affection is another grace, I had almost said another

virtue. Your accent has a persuasive sincerity; and faith, when it is

vivid, believes in miracles." And then she thus delicately indicates

her objection to the publication of the verses: "I condemn this

charming flower to enchant only my solitude; but this is the better

to gather its fragrance, and it will survive me."

An invaluable friendship also existed between Madame Swetchine and

Alexander the Emperor of Russia, one of the most interesting and

romantic characters of modern time, of whom she said to Roxandra

Stourdza, "Already above other men, by his glory; by the influence of

religion, he will be above himself." When the famous mystical Madame

de Kriidener appealed to him, in the name of virtue and of religion,

to be true to his own better nature, he burst into tears, and hid his

face in his hands. As she paused apologetically, he exclaimed, "Speak

on, speak on: your voice is music to my soul." She obtained a great

influence over him. He had likewise an enthusiastic attachment for

Napoleon; and Madame de Kriidener called them respectively the white

angel and the black angel. His sensibility to all generous

sentiments, all thoughts of poetic height and richness, was

extraordinarily tender and expansive. He was often known, in the

overwhelming re-action of his emotions, convulsed with tears, to leap

into his carriage alone, and drive out into the solitary country or

forest. Such were the exalted traits of his character, and his many

beautiful deeds, that Madame Swetchine felt her natural relations of

duty and submission transmuted into those of vivid admiration and

devotion. "I fully sympathize," she writes to her earliest bosom-

friend, "with the vivacity of your admiration for our dear Emperor.

What a happiness to be able to eulogize with truth! Let us hope we

are in the aurora of a most beautiful day for Russia. How pleased I

am at having always seen in his soul that which this day shows itself

with a glory so fair and so pure! He is a true hero of humanity. He

seems in his conduct to realize all my dreams of moral dignity; and I

find, at last, in this union of religious sentiments and liberal

ideas, the long-sought resemblance of the type I carry in my mind,

and which has hitherto been qualified as fantastic, the creation of a

too sanguine imagination. In him we see, that, even on the throne, in

the wild tumult of all interests, of all passions, one can remain

man, Christian, philosopher; pursue the wisest and most generous

plans; and carry into his actions every thing that is beautiful, from

the highest justice to the most touching modesty."

Alexander testified his respect and regret, when Madame Swetchine

departed to reside in Paris, by asking her to be his correspondent.

The correspondence was continued until his death, ten years

afterwards. The Emperor Nicholas, on his accession, restored to

Madame Swetchine all her letters; and she allowed an eminent

statesman, in 1845, to read the whole collection. After her death, no

trace of it was to be found among her papers. It must possess an

intense interest; and it is to be hoped that it still exists, and may

yet one day see the light.

Perhaps the most intimate and truly devoted of all the friends of

Madame Swetchine was that accomplished member of the French Academy

whose biographic and editorial labors have erected such an attractive

and perdurable monument to her memory, the Count Alfred de Falloux.

The soul of reverence, gratitude, and love exhales in his sentences

when he writes of her. After describing what "she was to all who had

the inexpressible happiness of knowing her," he acids, "and this she

will now be to all who shall read her; and death will but give to her

words one consecration more." But the modesty of M. de Falloux has

not given the public her letters to him, and has kept his personal

relations with her much in the background. We are left to guess the

measure and the activity of their friendship, from indirect

indications.

On the whole, possibly because of the editor's reticence as to

himself, we are left to believe, that the friend who held the

pre-eminent place in the heart of Madame Swetchine, during the last

twenty-five years of her life, was Father Lacordaire, the illustrious

Catholic preacher. A complete picture of this ardent and unfaltering

friendship is shown in the letters of the two parties, gathered in an

octavo volume of nearly six hundred pages. We know not where, in the

annals of human affection, to find the account of a friendship more

spotless or more morally satisfying than this. The volume which

preserves and exhibits it will be found by all who are duly

interested in the psychology and experience of persons so

extraordinary, both for their genius in society, and for the quantity

and quality of their private experience full of solid instruction and

romantic interest. The inner life of Madame Swetchine was a sacred

epic: the outer career of Lacordaire, an electrifying drama. This

double interest of a private, spiritual ascent, and of a chivalrous

gallantry in the thick of battle, is clearly unfolded in the book

before us.

The chivalrous young Count de Montalembert was one of the dearest

friends of Madame Swetchine. She said that his soul seemed formed

under the inspiration of the fine thought of Plato: "The beautiful as

a means of reaching the true." Behold, in the following extract from

one of the many letters in which she strove to pacify his perturbed

spirit, by recalling him from the war of politics, and reconciling

his passionate reformatory sentiments with the ruling principles and

authorities of the Catholic Church, the tender wisdom and affection

with which she speaks: "You seize only on the disinterested and

poetic side of these questions, but all the same you are in the

battle, giving and taking blows. And thus, with a mind perfectly

high-toned and honorable, a crystal which is almost a diamond, with

faultless habits, and all the believing and pious sentiments they

involve, you have neither the heart's sweet joy nor its sweet peace.

The reason why you are so ill at ease, is, that your conscience lies

so near your heart that their voices and their troubles are

confounded. My dear Charles, will you not reward me by being all that

my wishes and my prayers would fain make you? I will not say whether

you have the power to rejoice or afflict my heart; but, when you woke

in me a mother's emotions, I cannot believe that you condemned me to

the sorrow of Rachel."

One day this beloved young man led to the drawing-room of his

maternal friend his heart's brother, the eloquent Lacordaire, then in

the early renown of his wonderful career of ecclesiastical oratory.

Madame Swetchine had already been deeply moved by his preaching, and

was desirous of knowing him. She quickly won his confidence, and

became, what she ever continued to be, a ministering angel to his

spirit. She was much older than he, much more profoundly versed in

human nature, much more soberly balanced and calm in soul. With a

vigilance, a wisdom, and a tenderness that were unwearied and

inexhaustible, she watched his course, studied the wants of his mind

and heart, and labored, as need was, alternately to confirm his

sinking courage and to soothe his excited imagination. Without being

ostensibly such, she was really his spiritual director. "Her subtile

and tender spirit," as Dora Greenwell has remarked, "seems to move

across his heart, to woo and to caress it to peace and goodness, to

call out its deepest concords, as the hand of the skilled musician

moves across his instrument, knowing well each fret and chord of the

sweet viol he doth love."

It was the greatness, not the weakness, of Lacordaire, that, before

loving God, he had loved glory. Few men have spirit enough truly to

seek fame: it is notice which they wish. The heart of Lacordaire was

a pure fire, encased in a cold intellect. It reminds us of an intense

flame clothed in transparent ice. Sometimes, he said, he hardly knew

whether his voice was moved from within by the spirit, or from

without by renown. In regard to every such scruple Madame Swetchine

was an infallible counsellor. Her advice was as the speech of

incarnate reason and love in their most purified and exalted form.

The heavy perfume that drenched his oratoric atmosphere would have

intoxicated most men with self-adulation; but he offset every such

allurement by constantly withdrawing from trifles, excitements, and

seductions, and spending long hours in the unbroken solitude of

thought and the awful neighborhood of God. If both these extremes

brilliant public triumphs, and severe seclusion and asceticism had

their special dangers, Madame Swetchine was his resistless guardian

against them both. No one who has not read their correspondence,

reaching richly through a whole generation, can easily imagine the

services rendered by this gifted and saintly woman to this holy and

powerful man. Community of faith, of loyalty, of nobleness, joined

them. It was in looking to heaven together that their souls grew

united. Drawn by the same attractions, and held by one sovereign

allegiance, such souls need no vows, nor lean on any foreign support.

The divinity of truth and good is their bond.

No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns,

Their noble meanings are their pawns:

And so thoroughly is known

Each other's counsel by his own,

They can parley without meeting.

At first Madame Swetchine shrank from the excessive agitation she

underwent in listening to the great sermons of Lacordaire in Notre

Dame. "I go through all his perils," she said: "I tremble at every

rock; I feel every stroke. His way of speaking acts upon the human

soul in the same way as sanctity: it wounds; but it enraptures." At

length her attendance on his sermons became so constant, and her

pleasure and admiration so obvious, that many of the congregation

supposed her to be literally, as she was morally, his mother. One

day, as she was leaning against a pillar in the crowded church, her

face upturned towards the pulpit, two persons were heard whispering

to each other: "Would you like to see the preacher's mother?" "Why,

she died ten years ago." "No, there she is: look at her."

The genius of Madame Swetchine was sweeter, serener, more tolerant,

than that of her friend. Her influence on him in these respects was

benignant. He thought more of the strict doctrine: she, more of the

broad and charitable spirit. She once said, concerning dogmas, that

she could consent to see the ocean filtered to a thread of water, if

it but remained pure. He wrote to her, "My dear friend, you have

proved yourself deficient in holy anger; otherwise you would not have

been able to tolerate M." His electric, vehement soul needed exactly

the check her reflective subtilty and prudent consideration gave. So

she tells him once, "I acted as your ballast, or rather I held you by

the skirts of your garment, to retard your too impetuous movements.

Perhaps these are the very attributes with which you would have done

well to invest some one at Rome, who might have united the two

conditions which I fulfilled so perfectly: first, that of not being

you, either in natural disposition, antecedents, or age; second, and

more essential, that of loving you better than you could possibly

love yourself."

With the lapse of years, their attachment grew closer and deeper.

Lacordaire writes from Rome, "I have been bitterly disappointed in

not hearing from you. You know what a need one has of friendly words

when one is alone and so far away." And when the epistle comes, he

writes to her, "I had no sooner opened your letter than my soul was

inundated with joy." Again he says, "I found in your last letter the

expression of an affection so tender, and a watchfullness so fixed,

that I was melted by it, even to tears." "Your letters are always to

me a balm and a force." In excuse of his own reserve, he strikingly

writes, "Women have this admirable quality, that they can talk as

much as they wish, as they wish, with what expression they wish:

their heart is a fountain that flows naturally. The heart of man,

especially mine, is like those volcanoes whose lava leaps forth only

at intervals after a convulsion." We find Madame Swetchine saying, in

one of her letters to Lacordaire, "I protest against long silences:

they are to me that vacuum of which nature has a horror." The

exceeding care which this discreet woman took always to administer

her advice, her praise, or rebuke, in such a way as not to offend or

injure the most sensitive recipient of it, is a rare lesson for

others. Lacordaire once wrote to her, although he knew very well how

guileless was the motive of her managements, "You say, dear friend,

that you fear to displease me in speaking your thought about me. I

assure you my sole reproach is, that you are too circumspect and

delicate in your style of expression. I appreciate all the more that

flattery which is the guardian escort of truth, because it is wholly

wanting to me. I speak things out too bluntly; and it is true that

almost always men need an extreme sweetness in the language of those

who would benefit them. The heart is like the eyes: it cannot bear

too glaring a light. However, I find you excessive in the art of

shades." Soon afterwards he says, "Excuse my franknesses; with you,

as with God. I can say every thing." Scarcely ever did a man owe more

to a woman than this eloquent and heroic priest to the heavenly-

minded friend who said she loved him as father, brother, and son, all

at once. He deeply felt his debt, and faithfully paid it. He paid it

in loving words and attentions, while she lived, and in a tribute of

immortal eloquence when she was dead. "You appeared to me," he tells

her, "between two distinct parts of my life, as the angel of the Lord

might appear to a soul wavering between life and death, between earth

and heaven." To a common friend he wrote of her, "Her soul was to

mine what the shore is to the plank shattered by the waves; and I

still remember, after the lapse of twenty-five years, all the light

and strength she afforded to me when I was young and unknown." He

dedicated to her his "Life of Saint Dominic," saying, "I wish that

some one of your descendants may one day know that his ancestress was

a woman whom Saint Jerome would have loved as he loved Paula and

Marcella, one who needed only a pen illustrious and saintly enough to

do her justice." Hearing of her last illness, he made a journey of

six hundred miles, to be with her, and lavished on her every winning

word and act that filial love and reverence could suggest; and, after

all was over, he pronounced on her a funeral address, which will

always rank with the highest trophies of his genius. No other words

can be so fitting as his own to close this sketch:

"She belongs to the nation of the great minds of our age. In a time

of intellectual dependence, when parties bore every thing in their

train, she made no engagement, and submitted to no attraction: she

isolated every question from the noise around her, and placed it in

the silence of eternity. A constant simplicity and an equal elevation

gave to her ideas a personal influence. This double charm might be

resisted; but she could not fail to be loved herself, and to inspire

the desire to become better. Happy mouth, which for forty years made

not an enemy to God, but which poured into a multitude of wounded or

languishing hearts the germ of the resurrection and the rapture of

life! Alas! dear and illustrious lady. I cannot attach to your name

the glory of those Roman women whom Saint Jerome has immortalized;

and yet you were of their race. Conquered for God through the

language of France, you wished to live under the French speech; and,

quitting a country you alwaysloved, you came among us with the

modesty of a disciple and of an exile. But you brought us more than

we gave you. The light of your soul illumined the land which received

you, and for forty years you were for us the sweetest echo of the

gospel and the surest road to honor."