And, again, in "Friendship's Mystery, To my dearest Lucasia,"

Our hearts are mutual victims laid,

While they, such power in friendship lies,

Are altars, priests, and offerings made;

And each heart which thus kindly dies,

Grows deathless by the sacrifice.

For a good while this attachment kept its keen flavor, and was only

heightened by sympathy in misfortunes and distress. Cowley celebrated

it in the following lines:

The fame of friendship which so long had told

Of three or four illustrious names of old,

Till hoarse and weary of the tale she grew,

Rejoices now to have got a new,

A new and more surprising story,

Of fair Lucasia and Orinda's glory.

Mr. Owen, Lucasia's husband, died. Mrs. Phillips went from a distance

to visit her bereaved friend, and they fell into each other's arms

with copious tears. In a poem, Orinda describes this meeting under

the beautiful image of two sister rivulets, which, creeping from

their separate springs, in secret currents under ground, burst

together at last, swollen by their own embraces to a flood. Lucasia

marries again, and becomes Lady Dungannon. This marriage, by the new

scenes, ties, and pleasures it introduces, proves the undoing of poor

Orinda's happiness. Lucasia cools towards her, allows her less space

in her heart than she craves; and finally we have a reluctant

farewell poem, bearing the ominous title, "Orinda to Lucasia.

Parting, October, 1661, at London:

"Adieu, dear object of my love's excess,

And with thee all my hopes of happiness.

I to resign thy dear converse submit,

Since I can neither keep nor merit it:

I ask no inconvenient kindness now,

To move thy passion or to cloud thy brow;

And thou wilt satisfy my boldest plea

By some few soft remembrances of me.

The lines may remind one of the pathetic sentiment expressed almost

two hundred years later by a kindred heart. Eugénie de Guérin says,

"In the moment of union, the seed of separation is sown. Cruel

illusion, the belief in friendships that are eternal. The knowledge

is bitter, but let me learn the lesson." Yes: learn the lesson

indeed, so far as it is true; but do not exaggerate it, nor let it

cast too wide and dense a shadow over the rest of life.

Elizabeth Rowe seems to have had a heart peculiarly alive to tender

attachments. And she was happy in winning and retaining many friends.

Her superiors, her equals, her servants, all loved her as one of the

best of women. Her "Friendship in Death, in Twenty Letters from the

Dead to the Living," enjoyed great celebrity in its day. The

beautiful Countess Hertford was her enthusiastic friend. She

exchanged many visits with her, again and again leaving her own

stately mansion to abide in the humble house of her admired friend;

and she sacredly cherished her memory after death had parted them.

Thomson, in the original form of his "Hymn to Solitude," celebrated

these friends as "Philomela and the gentle-looking Hertford." Lady

Hertford had so affectionate a heart, so rich a mind, so gracious a

mien, and was so tenacious in her fondnesses, that she captivated the

souls of many of her contemporaries. She was the patron of Thomson,

who, in some exquisite lines, dedicated his "Spring" to her. She

rewarded the young Elizabeth Carter for a poem in honor of Mrs. Rowe,

with her steadfast love and her correspondence. But her most

important friendship was that with the Countess of Pomfret. This ran

through the largest part of her life, was a source of the greatest

comfort and edification to them both, and has left a monument of its

unwavering sincerity and fullness in the long series of their

published letters.

Mrs. Montague's passion for friendships led her to form intimacies

with many of the most distinguished persons of her time, both men and

women. When she was Elizabeth Robinson, at the age of twelve she

exchanged her doll for a living friend, in the person of Lady

Margaret Harley, who became the celebrated Duchess of Portland. This

intimacy was kept up to the end of their lives, by constant letters,

visits, and other endearments. The admirable Mrs. Barbauld, Hannah

More, and Elizabeth Carter, were also her cherished friends. She was

the founder of the far-famed "Blue-Stocking Club." Few friendships,

it is certain, have ever existed between women more thoroughly sound

and comforting than that of Hannah More and Mrs. Garrick. After the

death of the great tragedian, Hannah spent a large part of her time

with his widow. Mrs. Garrick fondly called Miss More her chaplain. As

friends of Elizabeth Carter, besides those already named, Pulteney,

Earl of Bath, Mr. Montague, Dr. Johnson, Sir George Lyttleton,

Archbishop Seeker, Miss Sutton, Mrs. Vesey, and, above all, Miss

Catherine Talbot, deserve to be especially Mentioned. Miss Carter and

Miss Talbot corresponded regularly for thirty years, and shared

almost every secret. Not a single misunderstanding occurred to mar

the placidity of their solid confidence and good will. It is a

pleasure, even at this day, to look through their voluminous, rather

stiff and prosy, but entirely sensible and affectionate

correspondence.

There was an ardent friendship, of which the details have perished,

between the once famous novelist and poet, Charlotte Smith, and the

lovely, unhappy, romantic Henrietta, Lady O'Niel.

Twelve times the moon, that rises red

O'er yon tall wood of shadowy pine,

Has filled her orb, since low was laid,

My Harriet, that sweet form of thine!

No more thy friendship soothes to rest

This wearied spirit, tempest-tossed:

The cares that weigh upon my breast

Are doubly felt since thou art lost.

But, ere that wood of shadowy pine

Twelve times shall yon full orb behold,

This sickening heart, that bleeds for thine,

My Harriet, may like thine be cold!

Anna Seward, considerably admired in her own generation, as a beauty

and as a writer, though the great faults of her judgment and style

are fast bringing oblivion over her pages, was a devoted friend of

that beautiful Honora Sneyd of whom Major Andre was the rejected

lover. It was a profound sympathy with both the parties which

prompted the composition of her once famous "Monody on Major Andre."

One is sorry to learn, that, on the marriage of Honora with Mr.

Edgeworth, and her removal to Ireland, her friendship for Anna, as

often happens in such cases, died of a slow consumption. But, on the

other side, the early affection never ceased to glow. Miss Seward

writes to one of her lady friends, "When my attachment to Cornet sunk

in the snow-drifts of his altered conduct, Honora Sneyd, educated in

our family from five years old, was commencing woman, and only eight

years younger than myself; more lovely, more amiable, more

interesting than any thing I ever saw in the female form. Death had

deprived me of my beloved and only sister, who had shared with me in

the delightful task of instructing our angelic pupil; and, when

disappointed love threw all the energies of my soul into the channel

of friendship, Honora was its chief object. The charms of her

society, when her advancing youth gave equality to our connection,

made Lichfield an Edenic scene to me. Ah, how deeply was I a fellow

sufferer with Major Andre on her marriage! We both lost her for

ever."

The following verses, written by Anna to Honora, from the seaside,

are pleasing in the picture they present and in the sentiment they

enshrine. The prophecy they make has also been fulfilled:

I write Honora on the sparkling sand!

The envious waves forbid the trace to stay:

Honora's name again adorns the strand,

Again the waters bear their prize away!

So Nature wrote her charms upon thy face,

The cheek's bright bloom, the lip's envermeilled dye,

And every gay and every witching grace

That youth's warm hours and beauty's stores supply.

But Time's stern tide, with cold Oblivion's wave,

Shall soon dissolve each fair, each fading charm;

E'en Nature's self, so powerful, cannot save

Her own rich gifts from this o'erwhelming harm.

Love and the Muse can boast superior power;

Indelible the letters they shall frame:

They yield to no inevitable hour,

But on enduring tablets write thy name.

Romney, in his fancy-picture of Serena reading by candle-light,

accidentally produced an accurate likeness of this lost friend of

Miss Seward's heart. "Drawing his abstract idea of perfect

loveliness, the form and the face of Honora Sneyd rose beneath his

pencil." This beauteous resemblance Anna hung in her room, and made

her constant companion. "It contributes to endear, as the bright

reality endeared, in times long past, this pleasant mansion to my

affections. Thus are those dear lineaments ever present to my sight,

retouching the traits of memory, over which indistinctness is apt to

steal." Again she says, "The luxury of mournful delight with which I

continually gaze upon that form, is one of the most precious comforts

of my life." Years after, in giving to Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss

Ponsonby an account of a recent journey she had made, Miss Seward

writes, "The stars glimmered in the lake of Weston, as we travelled

by its side: but their light did not enable me to distinguish the

church, beneath the floor of whose porch rests the mouldered form of

my heart, dear Honora. Yet of our approach to that consecrated spot

my spirit felt all the mournful consciousness." In her poem on the

death of her intimate friend. Andre, Miss Seward had written,

O Washington! I thought thee great and good,

Nor knew thy Nero-thirst for guiltless blood,

Severe to use the power that Fortune gave,

Thou cool, determined Murderer of the Brave!

It is interesting to read in a letter, written by her long afterwards

to the Ladies of Llangollen, "A few years after peace was signed

between this country and America, an officer introduced himself,

commissioned by Washington to call upon me, and to assure me from the

general himself, that no circumstance of his life had been so

mortifying as to be censured in the "Monody on Andre" as the pitiless

author of his ignominions fate; that he had labored to save him; that

he requested my attention to papers on the subject, which he had sent

by this officer for my perusal. On examining them, I found they

entirely acquitted the general. They filled me with contrition for

the rash injustice of my censure."

An extraordinary instance of feminine friendship, of the courage and

sacrifice the affections will prompt in woman, was afforded in the

relation of Anna Seward to the Countess of Northesk. The countess,

afflicted by a malady which had baffled the most skilful physicians

in London, was drawn to Lichfield by the fame of Dr. Darwin. She

staid for some time at his house, and awakened the deepest interest

in his family and friends. Miss Seward was especially attracted by

her engaging manners and disposition, as well as by sympathy for her

peril, and for the distress of her husband and children. She was

unwearied in efforts to alleviate the sufferings and the weary hours

of the countess, whose fervent gratitude re-acted to enhance to

enthusiasm the interest of the fair ministrant. One day, Dr. Darwin

suggested the possibility of effecting a cure of his patient by

transfusing into her veins a supply of vital blood, freshly taken

from some healthy person. Anna, then in the full bloom of youth,

instantly offered her own veins. The project was abandoned from want

of sufficiently delicate instruments. But the countess was deeply

affected by the generous offer of her friend, and repaid it with the

most affectionate attachment. She was restored to health; and, on

returning home, sent Miss Seward the gift of a set of jewels, in

token of her love. They continued to correspond with each other until

the tragic death of the countess by the accidental burning of her

dress.

The most remarkable instance in history, perhaps, of a pair of female

friends is the romantic example of the Ladies of Llangollen, whose

story, widely renowned two generations ago, is now obliterated from

popular knowledge, save in meagre literary allusions.

A little after the middle of the eighteenth century, Lady Eleanor

Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, two young women of wealth and high

station, formed an extreme mutual attachment, and were possessed with

an ardent desire to forsake the world, and devote their lives to each

other. Taking measures accordingly, they departed to an obscure

retreat in the country. Their relatives frowned on this eccentricity,

traced them out in their hiding-place, and, despite their

protestations, separated them, and brought them back. But they soon

effected a second elopement, which proved a successful and permanent

one. Confiding the place of their flight only to a single faithful

servant, they sacrificed, in the prime of their lives, the prizes and

the glare of the fashionable world, and settled down in a secret nook

of beauty and peace. In the romantic Valley of Llangollen, in Wales,

one of the sweetest and quietest spots on earth, they bought a

charming cottage, fitted it up with every comfort, and adorned it

with exquisite taste. Here, in this remote and lovely haunt, amply

provided with books, pictures, and other means of culture, giving

themselves up to the enjoyment of their own society, they lived

together in uninterrupted contentment for nearly threescore years.

For a long period, their neighbors, ignorant of their names, knew

them only as the "Ladies of the Vale." For a quarter of a century, it

is said, they never spent twenty-four hours at a time out of their

happy valley.

They seem never to have fallen out, never to have wearied of each

other, never to have repented of their repudiation of public life. By

books and correspondence, they kept up a close connection with the

brilliant world they had deserted. The romance of their action,

penetrating far and wide, through cultivated circles, brought many

distinguished visitors to their hospitality, literary and titular

celebrities from all parts of Great Britain, likewise from the

continent. Many of these became fast friends to them; and, in letters

to other persons, speak of their fine qualities of sentiment and

taste, their engaging traits of character and manners. Madame Geniis

writes rapturously of her tarry with them, the charms of their

residence, and especially of the Aeolian harp, which she there heard

for the first time, amid the befitting associations of the mystic

legends and natural minstrelsy of Welsh landscape. Mrs. Tighe also,

the winsome but unfortunate authoress of the "Loves of Psyche and

Cupid," on departing from their cottage after a delighted stay, left

upon her table a beautiful sonnet addressed to them.

But Miss Anna Seward; between whom and the pair of friends a warm

affection was cherished, has given the fullest description known to

us of the home and habits of the Ladies of Llangollen. She thought

that the compliment Hayley paid to Miers, the miniature painter,

"His magic pencil in its narrow space

Pours the full portion of uninjured grace"

might be transferred to the talents and exertion which converted a

cottage in two acres and a half of turnip ground to a fairy palace

amid the bowers of Calypso. It consisted of four small apartments;

the exquisite cleanliness of the kitchen, its utensils and auxiliary

offices, vying with the finished elegance of the light-some little

dining-room, as that contrasted with the gloomy grace of the library

into which it opened. This room was fitted up in the Gothic style,

the door and large sash windows of that form--the latter of painted

glass, shedding a dim religious light. Candles were seldom admitted

into this apartment. The ingenious friends had invented a kind of

prismatic lantern, which occupied the whole elliptic arch of the

Gothic door. This lantern was of cut glass, variously colored,

inclosing two lamps with their reflectors. The light it imparted

resembled that of a volcano--sanguine and solemn. It was assisted by

two glowworm lamps, that, in little marble reservoirs, stood on the

opposite chimney-piece. These supplied the place of the daylight,

when the dusk of evening sabled, or night wholly involved the

solitude. A large Aeolian harp was fixed in one of the windows; and,

when the weather permitted them to be open, it breathed its deep

tones to the gale, swelling and softening as that rose and fell.

Ah me! what hand can touch the strings so fine?

Who up the lofty diapason roll

Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine,

And let them down again into the soul?

This saloon of the two Minervas, Miss Seward says, contained the

finest editions, superbly bound, and arranged in neat wire cases, of

the best authors in prose and verse, which the English, French, and

Italian languages boast. Over them hung the portraits in miniature,

and some in larger ovals, of the favored friends of these celebrated

votaries to the sentiment which exalted the characters of Theseus and

Peirithous, of David and Jonathan.

The wavy and shaded gravel-walk which encircled this elysium was

enriched with curious shrubs and flowers. It was nothing in extent,

every thing in grace and beauty and in variety of foliage. In one

part of it you turned upon a small knoll, which overhung a deep,

hollow glen. At the tangled bottom of this glen, a frothing brook

leaped and clamored over the rough stones in its channel. A large

spreading beech canopied the knoll, and beneath its boughs a

semilunar seat admitted four persons. It had a fine effect to enter

the Gothic library at dusk, as Miss Seward says she first entered it.

The prismatic lantern diffused a light gloomily glaring, assisted by

the paler flames of the little lamps on the chimney-piece. Through

the open windows was shown a darkling view of the lawn, of the

concave shrubbery of tall cypresses, yews, laurels, and lilacs, of

the wooded amphitheatre on the opposite hill, and of the gray, barren

mountain which forms the background. The evening star had risen above

the mountain; and the airy harp rang loudly to the breeze, completing

the magic of the scene.

And what of the enchantresses themselves, beneath whose wand these

graces arose? Lady Eleanor was of middle height, and somewhat over-

plump, her face round and fair, with the glow of luxuriant health.

She had not fine features, but they were agreeable, enthusiasm in her

eye, hilarity and benevolence in her smile. She had uncommon strength

and fidelity of memory, an exhaustless fund of knowledge, and her

taste for works of imagination, particularly for poetry, was very

awakened; and she expressed all she felt with an ingenuous ardor, at

which cold-spirited beings stared. Both the ladies read and spoke

most of the modern languages, and were warm admirers of the Italian

poets, especially of Dante. Miss Ponsonby, somewhat taller than her

friend, was neither slender nor otherwise, but very graceful. Easy,

elegant, yet pensive, was her address; her voice, kind and low. A

face rather long than round, a complexion clear, but without bloom,

with a countenance whose soft melancholy lent it peculiar interest.

If her features were not beautiful, they were very attractive and

feminine. Though the pensive spirit within permitted not her dimples

to make her smile mirthful, they increased its sweetness, and,

consequently, her power of engaging the affections. We could see,

through the veil of shading reserve, that all the talents and

accomplishments which enriched the mind of Lady Eleanor, existed with

equal power in her charming friend. Such are the portraits drawn by

Miss Seward, of the two extraordinary women, who, in the bosom of

their deep retirement, were sought by the first characters of the

age, both as to rank and talents. To preserve that retirement from

too frequent invasion, they were obliged to be somewhat coy of

approach. Yet they were generous in a select hospitality; and when,

toward the end of their lives, they welcomed a coming guest, Miss

Martineau says it was a singular sight to see these ancient ladies,

in their riding habits, with their rolled and powdered hair, their

beaver hats, and their notions and manners of the last century.

When we consider their intellectual resources, their energy and

industry, their interludes of company and correspondence, we need not

be surprised at the assertion they made to one of their most intimate

visitors, that neither the long summer's day, nor winter's night, nor

weeks of imprisoning snows, had ever inspired one weary sensation,

one wish of returning to the world they had abandoned.

Anna Seward had so interested Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby in the

character of her dear friend, Honora Sneyd, by the sonnet addressed

to her, which she showed them, by impassioned descriptions of her

loveliness, as well as by the celebrated poem on the fate of Major

Andre, that the two ladies were desirous of possessing a portrait of

the deceased beauty.

With great pains, Anna succeeded in obtaining for them a copy of what

was a perfect image of her, Romney's ideal picture of Serena in the

"Triumphs of Temper." Writing on it, "Such was Honora Sneyd," she had

it framed and glazed, and sent it as a gift to the Ladies of

Llangollen. They received it with delight, and hung it in a prominent

position, where the fair giver afterward had the pleasure of gazing

on it with romantic emotion.

Miss Seward paid several happy tributes in verse to her admired

friends. One of these, written at the close of a prolonged visit,

began thus:

Oh, Cambrian Tempe! Oft with transport hailed,

I leave thee now, as I did ever leave

Thee and thy peerless mistresses, with heart

Where lively gratitude and fond regret For mastery strive.

She also published, in a little volume by itself, an enthusiastic

poem in praise of the Cambrian Arden, Llangollen Valley, adorned with

an engraving of the landscape as seen from the home of its Rosalind

and Celia. They fully appreciated her affection, and returned it.

They sent her the gift of a jewel consisting of the head and lyre of

Apollo, making a ring and seal in one. In acknowledgment of this, the

pleased and grateful poet wrote, "I have to thank you, dearest

ladies, for a beautiful but too costly present. It is a fine gem in

itself, and a rich and elegant circlet for the finger."

When Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby left their splendid family

residences in Ireland to seek in Wales a retirement where they might

spend their days in the culture of letters and friendship, a faithful

and affectionate servant who pined for them, after a few months of

their absence, set out to search for them in England. She had no clew

to direct her pursuit; since, to avoid solicitations to return, they

had kept their place of abode secret even from their nearest

relatives. Learning, however, of her attempt, they sent for her. She

went, and was their fond servitor until her death, thirty years

afterward. Miss Seward once writes to Lady Eleanor, "I was concerned

to hear that you had lately been distressed by the illness and

alarmed for the life of your good Euryclea. That she is recovering, I

rejoice. The loss of a domestic, faithful and affectionate as

Orlando's Adam, must have cast more than a transient gloom over the

Cambrian Arden: the Rosalind and Celia of real life give Llangollen

Valley a right to that title." When this endeared servant died, her

mourning mistresses buried her in the grave which they had prepared

for themselves, and inscribed above her a cordial tribute in verse.

Drawn by the pleasing sentiment that invests the story of these

ladies, the writer, being then in England, made a pilgrimage from

London to Llangollen in the early autumn of 1865.

It was Saturday afternoon when I arrived at the little Welsh inn. The

next morning I found my way to the classic cottage. The fingers of

Time had indeed been busy on it. The vestiges of its former glory

were still apparent, but the ornaments were crumbled and dim. The

prismatic lantern over the door was a mixture of garishness and dust.

The bowers were broken, the vines and plants dead, the walks draggled

and uneven, the gates rickety, the fences tottering or prostrate. The

numerous tokens of art and care in the past made the present

ruinousness and desolation more pathetic. I could not help recalling

the final couplet of Miss Seward's poem, prophesying the fame of this

place:

While all who honor virtue gently mourn Llangollen's vanished Pair,

and wreathe their sacred urn.

Threading the briery dell, and following the brook that prattled down

the steep slope, I climbed the hill which directly overhangs the

hamlet. It was church-time as I sat down on the top, and slowly drank

in the charms of that celebrated landscape. To such a scene, at such

an hour, the very heart-strings grow. The fields were clothed with a

dense velvety-green. Across the narrow glen, on the strange cone of

Dinas Bran, frowned threateningly, in dark mass, unsoftened by

distance, the huge, bare fragments of an old castle, the immemorial

type of an iron age when the hearts of men were iron. Beneath my

feet, the vapors of the morning floated here and there in the

sunshine, like torn folds of a satin gauze. A hundred smokes curled

from the village chimneys, and the tones of the sabbath bells were

wafted up to me with no mixture of profane toils. The very cattle

seemed to know the holy day, and to browse and gaze, or ruminate and

look around, with an unusual assurance of repose and satisfaction.

But the spell must be broken, however reluctantly.

Descending into the village, just as the religious service was ended,

I went into the churchyard, and copied from the triangular tomb in

which the Ladies of Llangollen sleep, with their favorite servant,

amid the magical loveliness of the pastoral scenery, these three

inscriptions. On the first side:

IN MEMORY OF MRS. MARY CARRYL,

Deceased 22 November, 1809,

This Monument is erected by Eleanor Butler

And Sarah Ponsonby, of Plas Newydd, in this Parish.

Released from earth and all its transient woes,

She, whose remains beneath this stone repose,

Steadfast in faith resigned her parting breath,

Looked up with Christian joy, and smiled in death.

Patient, industrious, faithful, generous, kind,

Her conduct left the proudest far behind.

Her virtues dignified her humble birth,

And raised her mind above this sordid earth.

Attachment (sacred bond of grateful breasts)

Extinguished but with life, this tomb attests;

Reared by two friends who will her loss bemoan,

Till with her ashes here shall rest their own.

On the second side:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

The Right Honorable

LADY ELEANOR CHARLOTTE BUTLER,

Late of Plas Newydd, in this parish,

Deceased 2d June, 1829,

Aged Ninety Years,

Daughter of the Sixteenth, Sister of the Seventeenth

Earls of Ormonde and Ossory,

Aunt to the late and to the present

Marquess of Ormonde.

Endeared to her many friends by an almost

Unequalled excellence of heart, and by manners

Worthy of her illustrious birth, the admiration

And delight of a very numerous acquaintance,

From a brilliant vivacity of mind, undiminished

To the latest period of a prolonged existence.

Her amiable condescension and benevolence

Secured the grateful attachment of those

By whom they had been so long and so

Extensively experienced: her various perfections,

Crowned by the most pious and cheerful

Submission to the Divine Will, can only be

Appreciated where, it is humbly believed, they are

Now enjoying their eternal reward; and by her.

Of whom for more than fifty years they constituted

That happiness which, through our blessed Redeemer,

She trusts will be renewed when this Tomb

Shall have closed over its Latest Tenant.

On the third side:

SARAH PONSONBY

departed this life

On the 9th of December, 1831, aged 76.

She did not long survive her beloved companion,

Lady Eleanor Butler, with whom she had lived in this

Valley for more than half a century of uninterrupted friendship

But they shall no more return to their house, neither

Shall their place know them any more.

In that sequestered valley, how quietly, with what blessed joy and

peace, their lives kept the even tenor of their way Standing

beside their grave, in the shadow of the old church, while the

little Welsh river ran whispering by, and thinking how the eyes

and hearts in which so long and happy a love had burned, were now

fallen to atoms, and literally mixed in the dust below, as once

they morally mixed in life above, I felt, What a pity that those

thus blessed cannot live forever! Then I thought, No, it is better

as it is. They were happy. They drained the best cup existence can

offer. When the world was becoming an infirmary, and the song of

the grasshopper a burden, it was meet that they should sleep.

Those only are to be pitied who die without the experience of

affection.

This attempt to revive the story and brighten the urn of the Ladies

of Llangollen may suggest that friendship lies within the province of

women as much as within the province of men; that there are pairs of

feminine friends as worthy of fame as any of the masculine couples

set by classic literature in the empyrean of humanity; that uncommon

love clothes the lives of its subjects with the interest of unfading

romance; that the true dignity, happiness, and peace of women and of

men, too--are to be found rather in the quiet region of personal

culture, and the affections, than in the arena of ambitious

publicity. Mrs. Thrale and Fanny Burney were every thing to each

other for a long time. But, on the marriage of the former with Mr.

Piozzi, a breach occurred, which was never repaired. Four years after

this coldness, Fanny writes in her diary, "Oh, little does she know

how tenderly, at this moment, I could run into her arms, so often

opened to receive me with a cordiality I believed inalienable." Two

years after that, Mrs. Piozzi writes in her diary, "I met Miss Burney

at an assembly last night. She appeared most fondly rejoiced in good

time I answered with ease and coldness, but in exceeding good humor;

and all ended, as it should do, with perfect indifference." Thirty-

one years later still, Fanny enters in her diary this brief record:

"I have just lost my once most dear, intimate, and admired friend,

Mrs. Thrale Piozzi."

The young Bettine Brentano, several years before her acquaintance

with Goethe, was placed temporarily in the house of a female

religious order to pursue her studies. There she soon made the

acquaintance of a canoness named Günderode, considerably older than

herself, though still young, with rare mental endowments and romantic

affections. The cultivated intellect, spirituality, and mystic

melancholy of Günderode, under her singularly attractive features and

calm demeanor, drew the impassioned and redundant Bettine to her by

an irresistible bond. Their companionship ripened into romantic

friendship. Their letters, collected and published by the survivor,

compose one of the most original and stimulative delineations of the

inner life of girlhood to be met with in literature. To cold and

shallow readers, this correspondence will prove an unknown tongue;

but those who can appreciate the reflection of wonderful

personalities, and the workings of intense sentiment, will prize it

as a unique treasure.

Bettine was electrical, magical, seeming ever to be overcharged with

the spirit of nature; Günderode, cloudy, opalescent, suggesting a

spirit native of some realm above nature. The interplaying of the two

was strangely delightful to them both; and they made day after day

rich by hoarding and sharing what life brought, the wealth of their

souls. The fresh vitality of Bettine, her rushing inspiration, her

dithyrambic love of wild nature, breathed a balsamic breath over her

drooping friend, who yet had a more than counterbalancing depth of

consciousness to impart in return.

Günderode, keyed too high for common companionship, too deep and

tenacious in her moods, of a delicacy preternaturally lofty and far-

reaching in its sensitiveness, was solitary, sad, thoughtful,

yearning, prescient of an early death; yet, by the whole impression

of her being, she gave birth, in those who lovingly looked on her, to

the surmise that she was mysteriously self-sufficing and happy.

Bettine writes to her, "I begin to believe thy feelings are enthroned

beyond clouds which cast their shadows on the earth; while thou,

borne on them, art revelling in celestial light." The best way to

indicate briefly what this friendship was, will be to quote a

selection of the characteristic expressions of it, though such a

compilation of fragments does great wrong to a correspondence so

compacted of the sparks of love and genius. Let those who find in

this relation only the expression of a fantastic sentimentality,

weigh what Sarah Austin says, a woman who speaks with the utmost

weight of authority which learning, experience, and wisdom can give:

"We, in England and France," Mrs. Austin says, "have no measure for

the character of a German girl, brought up in comparative solitude,

nurtured on poetry and religion, knowing little of the actual world,

but holding close converse with the ideal in its grandest forms. She

is capable of an enthusiasm we know not of."

At different times, Günderode writes thus: "I have bad many thoughts

of thee, dear Bettine. Some nights ago I dreamed thou wast dead: I

wept bitterly at it; and the dream left, for a whole day, a mournful

echo in my heart." "My mood is often very sad, and I have not power

over it." "Thou art my bit of a sun that warms me, while everywhere

else frost falls on me." "Thy letter, dear Bettine, I have sipped as

wine from the goblet of Lyus." "I am studying the distinguished

Spartan women. If I cannot be heroic, and am always ill from

hesitation and timidity, I will at least fill my soul with that

heroism, and feed it with that vital power, in which I am so sadly

deficient." "Thou seemest to me the clay which a god is moulding with

his feet; and what I perceive in thee is the fermenting fire, that,

by his transcendent contact, he is strongly kneading into thee."

"When I read what I have written some time ago, I think I see myself

lying in my coffin, staring at my other self in astonishment."

"Clemens's letters make me think and consider, while over thine I

only feel; and they are grateful as a breath of air from the Holy

Land." "If two are to understand each other, it requires the

inspiring influence of a third divine one. And so I accept our mutual

existence as a gift of the gods, in which they themselves play the

happiest part."

And thus, on the other side, Bettine at various times writes to

Günderode: "I wrote down, To-day I saw Günderode: it was a gift of

God. To-day, as I read it again, I would gladly do every thing for

the love of thee. How much do I think of thee and of thy words, of

the black lashes that shaded thy blue eyes as I saw thee for the

first time; of thy kindly mien, and thy hand that stroked my hair!"

"Thy letter today has drawn a charmed ring around me." "On the castle

of the hill, in the night-dew, it was fair to be with thee. Those

were the dearest hours of all my life; and, when I return, we will

again dwell together there. We will have our beds close together, and

talk all night." "Thou and I think in harmony: we have as yet found

no third who can think with us, or to whom we have confided what we

think." "Thou art the sweet cadence by which my soul is rocked."

"What will become of me, if ever I pass out of the light which beams

on me from thine eyes? for thou seemest to me an ever-living look,

and as if on that my life hung." "I feel a deep longing to be with

thee again; for, beautiful as it is here on the Rhine, it is sad to

be without an echo in a living breast. Man is nothing but the desire

to feel himself in another." "When I dare look up to thee from my

childish pursuits, I think I see a bride whose priestly robes do not

betray, nor her face express, whether she is sad or joyous in her

ecstasy." "Thou lookest deeper into my breast, knowest more of my

spiritual fate, than I, because I need only read in thy soul to find

myself." "I would possess every thing, wealth and power of beautiful

ideas, art and science, only to give it to thee, to gratify my love

to thee, and my pride in thy love." "Formerly, I often thought, Why

was I born? but, after thou wert with me, I never asked again." "I

see thee wandering past the grove where I am at home, just as a

sparrow, concealed by dense foliage, watches a solitary swan swimming

on the quiet waters, and, hidden, sees how it bends its neck to dip

into the flood, drawing circles around it; sacred signs of its

isolation from the impure, the reckless, the unspiritual!" "I have

been made happy to-day: some one secretly placed in my room a rose-

tree with twenty-seven buds; these are just thy years."

Many plaintive presentiments of unknown woe, parting, death, gave a

mysterious undertone of sadness to much of the correspondence of

these two friends. The forebodings were destined to be more than

fulfilled in the tragic reality. Poor Günderode, wrought to madness

by a disappointment in love, committed suicide. She drowned herself

in a river, where her body was found entangled in the long sedge.

Years afterwards, Bettine relates the story in a letter to Goethe,

the perusal of which has made many a gentle heart ache. The substance

of the tragedy may be briefly told:

"One day," Bettine writes, "Günderode met me with a joyful air, and

said, "Yesterday I spoke with a surgeon, who told me it was very easy

to make away with one's self. She hastily opened her gown, and

pointed to the spot beneath her beautiful breast. Her eyes sparkled

with delight. I gazed at her, and felt uneasy. And what shall I do

when thou art dead?' I asked. Oh! ere then,' said she, thou wilt not

care for me any more; we shall not remain so intimate till then: I

will first quarrel with thee.' I turned to the window to hide my

tears and my anger. She had gone to the other window, and was silent.

I glanced secretly at her: her eye was lifted to heaven; but its ray

was broken, as though its whole fire were turned within. After I had

observed her awhile, I could no longer control myself: I broke into

loud crying, I fell on her neck, I dragged her down to a seat, and

sat upon her knee, and wept, and kissed her on her mouth, and tore

open her dress, and kissed her on the spot where she had learned to

reach the heart. I implored her, with tears of anguish, to have mercy

upon me; and fell again on her neck, and kissed her cold and

trembling hands. Her lips were convulsed; and she was quite cold,

stiff, and deadly pale. Speaking with difficulty, she said slowly,

Bettine, do not break my heart.' I wanted to recover myself, and not

give her pain. But as, amidst my smiles and tears and sobs, she grew

more anxious, and laid herself on the sofa, I jestingly tried to make

her believe I had taken all as a joke.

"A few days after, she showed me a dagger with a silver hilt, which

she had bought at the mart. She was delighted with the beauty and

sharpness of the steel. I took the blade, and pressed on her with it,

exclaiming, Rather than suffer thee to kill thyself, I myself will do

it.' She retreated in alarm, and I flung the dagger away. I took her

by the hand, and led her to the garden, into the vine-bower, and

said, Thou mayest depend on me: there is no hour when, if thou wert

to utter a wish, I would hesitate for a moment. Come to my window at

midnight and whistle, and I will, without preparation, go round the

world with thee. What right hast thou to cast me off? How canst thou

betray such devotion? Promise me now.' She hung her head and was

pale. 'Günderode,' said I, if thou art in earnest, give me a sign.

She nodded.

"Two months passed away, when I again came to Frankfort. I ran to the

chapter-house of the canonesses, opened the gate, and lo! there she

stood, and looked coldly at me. 'Günderode,' I cried, may I come in?'

She was silent, and turned away. 'Günderode, say but one word, and my

heart beats against thine.' 'No,' she said, 'come no nearer, turn

back, we must separate.' 'What does this mean?' I asked. 'Thus much,

that we have been deceived, and do not belong to one another.' Ah! I

turned away. First despair; first cruel blow, so dreadful to a young

heart! I, who knew nothing but entire abandonment to my love, must be

thus rejected."

A short period elapsed, when news was brought to Bettine that a young

and beautiful lady, who was seen walking a long time at evening

beside the Rhine, had been found the next morning, on the bank, among

the willows. She had filled her handkerchief with stones, and tied it

about her neck, probably intending to sink in the river; but, as she

stabbed herself to the heart, she fell backward; and they found her

thus lying under the willows by the Rhine, in a spot where the water

was deepest. It was the poor, unhappy Günderode.

The next day, Bettine, who was then with her brother and a small

party of friends, sailing on the Rhine, landed at Rudesheim. "The

story was in every one's mouth. I ran past all with the speed of

wind, and up to the summit of Mount Ostein, a mile in height, without

stopping. When I had come to the top, I had far outstripped the rest;

my breath was gone, and my head burned. There lay the splendid Rhine,

with his emerald island gems. I saw the streams descending to him

from every side, the rich, peaceful towns on both banks, and the

slopes of vines on either side. I asked myself if time would not wear

out my loss. And then I resolved to raise myself above grief; for it

seemed to me unworthy to utter sorrow which the future would enable

me to subdue."

The dithyrambic exuberances in this relation, the romantic

extravagances of sentiment, illustrate both the strength and the

weakness of a genius bordering close on disease. They show how much

such a genius needs to apply to itself the balancing and rectifying

criticisms of a sober wisdom. They may also contribute something to

awaken and enrich more cold and sluggish natures, which are yet

aspiring and docile.

Lucy Aikin has left record of the warm and faithful friendships with

which she was blessed by some of the most gifted and amiable women of

her time. She was a person of strong character, of highly cultivated

talents, and quite remarkable for her powers of conversation, an

accomplishment which seems hastening to join the lost arts. The

parties which modern fashion gathers, are not so much groups of

friends, drawn together for rational and affectionate communion, as

they are jabbering herds, among whom all individuality and docile

earnestness are lost in the general buzz and clack of simultaneous

speech.

One of these friends was Miss Benger, an estimable literary lady, who

had considerable celebrity a quarter of a century ago. Miss Aikin has

written a brief memoir of her. The following extract sufficiently

shows the cordiality and comfort of their union: "To those who knew

and enjoyed the friendship of Miss Benger, her writings, pleasing and

beautiful as they are, were the smallest part of her merit and her

attraction. Endowed with the warmest and most grateful of human

hearts, she united to the utmost delicacy and nobleness of sentiment,

active benevolence, which knew no limit but the furthest extent of

her ability, and a boundless enthusiasm for the good and fair,

wherever she discovered them. Her lively imagination, and the flow of

eloquence which it inspired, aided by one of the most melodious of

voices, lent an inexpressible charm to her conversation; which was

heightened by an intuitive discernment of character, rare in itself,

and still more so in combination with such fertility of fancy and

ardency of feeling. As a companion, whether for the graver or the

gayer hour, she had, indeed, few equals; and her constant

forgetfullness of self, and unfailing sympathy for others, rendered

her the general friend, favorite, and confidante of persons of both

sexes, all classes, and all ages. Many would have concurred in

judgment with Madame de Staël, when she pronounced Miss Benger the

most interesting woman she had seen during her visit to England. Of

envy and jealousy there was not a trace in her composition; her

probity, veracity, and honor were perfect. Though as free from pride

as from vanity, her sense of independence was such, that no one could

fix upon her the slightest obligation capable of lowering her in any

eyes. She had a generous propensity to seek those most, who needed

her offices of friendship. No one was more scrupulously just to the

characters and performances of others, no one more candid, no one

more deserving of every kind of reliance. It is gratifying to reflect

to how many hearts her unassisted merit found its way. Few persons

have been more widely or deeply deplored in their sphere of

acquaintance; but even those who loved her best could not but confess

that their regrets were purely selfish. To her the pains of

sensibility seemed to be dealt in even fuller measure than its joys:

her childhood and early youth were consumed in a solitude of mind,

and under a sense of contrariety between her genius and her fate,

which had rendered them sad and full of bitterness; her maturer years

were tried by cares, privations, and disappointments, and not seldom

by unfeeling slights or thankless neglect. The irritability of her

constitution, aggravated by inquietude of mind, had rendered her life

one long disease. Old age, which she neither wished nor expected to

attain, might have found her solitary and ill-provided: now she has

taken the wings of the dove to flee away and be at rest."

Miss Aikin also held a constant intercourse, through a large part of

her life, with Joanna Baillie, whom she always regarded with profound

honor and love. She had a personal acquaintance with almost every

literary woman of celebrity in England, from the last decade of the

eighteenth, to the middle of the nineteenth, century. And of all

these, with the sole exception of Mrs. Barbauld, she says, Joanna

Baillie made by far the deepest impression on her. "Her genius,"

writes this admiring friend, "was surpassing; her character, the most

endearing and exalted." No one had suspected the great genius of

Joanna Baillie, so thick a veil of modest reserve had covered it.

Soon after the publication of her "Plays on the Passions," Miss Aikin

says, "She and her sister I well remember the scene arrived on a

morning call at Mrs. Barbauld's. My aunt immediately introduced the

topic of the anonymous tragedies, and gave utterance to her

admiration with that generous delight in the manifestation of kindred

genius which distinguished her. But not even the sudden delight of

such praise, so given, could seduce our Scottish damsel into self-

betrayal. The faithful sister rushed forward to bear the brunt, while

the unsuspected author lay snug in the asylum of her taciturnity. She

had been taught to repress all emotions, even the gentlest. Her

sister once told me that their father was an excellent parent; when

she had once been bitten by a dog thought to be mad, he had sucked

the wound, at the hazard, as was supposed, of his own life; but that

he had never given her a kiss. Joanna spoke to me once of her

yearning to be caressed, when a child. She would sometimes venture to

clasp her little arms about her mother's knees, who would seem to

chide her; but I know she liked it. Be that as it may, the first

thing which drew upon Joanna the admiring notice of society was the

devoted assiduity of her attention to her mother, then blind as well

as aged, whom she waited on day and night.

"An innocent and maiden grace still hovered over Miss Baillie to the

end of her old age. It was one of her peculiar charms, and often

brought to my mind the line addressed to the vowed Isabella, in

Measure for Measure: I hold you for a thing enskyed and saintly. If

there were ever human creature pure in the last recesses of the soul,

it was surely this meek, this pious, this noble-minded, and nobly-gifted

woman, who, after attaining her ninetieth year, carried with her to the

grave the love, the reverence, the regrets, of all who had ever enjoyed

the privilege of her society." The graves of these friends are side by

side in the old churchyard at Hampstead.

The exquisite delicacy and wealth of Mrs. Hemans's nature, her

winning beauty, modesty, and sweetness, drew a circle of dear friends

around her wherever she tarried. In her poems and letters and

memoirs, they numerously appear, in becoming lights, men and women,

lofty and lowly in rank, from Wordsworth and Scott, to whom she paid

visits, giving and receiving the choicest delight, to her own

dependants, who worshipped her. She tells one of her correspondents,

"I wish I could give you the least idea of what kindness is to me,

how much more, how far dearer, than fame." The most interesting of

her many prized friendships is that which she formed with Miss

Jewsbury, who, having long admired her with the whole ardor of her

powerful nature, passed a summer in Wales, near Mrs. Hemans, for the

express purpose of making her acquaintance. The enthusiastic

admiration on one side, the grateful appreciation of it on the other,

the spiritual purity and earnestness and high literary and personal

aspirations on both sides, quickly produced an attachment between

these two gifted women, which yielded them full measures of

encouragement, comfort, and bliss. They had just those resemblances

and those contrasts of person and mind, together with community of

moral aims, which made them delightfully stimulative to each other.

Miss Jewsbury dedicated to her friend her "Lays of Leisure Hours,"

addressed her in the poem "To an Absent One," and described her in

the first of the "Poetical Portraits" contained in the same book.

Also, in her "Three Histories," Mrs. Hemans is the original of

Egeria. "Egeria was totally different from any other woman I had ever

seen, either in Italy or England. She did not dazzle, she subdued,

me. I never saw another woman so exquisitely feminine. Her movements

were features. Her strength and her weakness alike lay in her

affections. Her gladness was like a burst of sunlight; and if, in her

depression, she resembled night, it was night wearing her stars. She

was a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy

of human beings." Miss Jewsbury married, and went to India, where she

soon died. Mrs. Hemans paid a heartfelt tribute to her memory, in the

course of which she says, "There was a strong chain of interest

between us, that spell of mind on mind, which, once formed, can never

be broken. I felt, too, that my whole nature was understood and

appreciated by her; and this is a sort of happiness which I consider

the most rare in earthly affection."

Mary Mitford and Mrs. Browning were blessed with a friendship

enviably full and satisfying. It has recorded itself in a

correspondence, which, if published, would add fresh honor to them

both in the hearts of their admirers. It was likewise celebrated with

happy heartiness by Miss Barrett, in her maiden days, in her fine

poem, "To Flush, my Dog;" the dog, Flush, being a valued gift from

Miss Mitford.

Margaret Fuller, after seeing an engraving of Madame Récamier, writes

in her journal,

"I have so often thought over the intimacy between her and Madame de

Staël. It is so true, that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a

man with a man. I like to be sure of it; for it is the same love

which angels feel, where Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib."

Of the friendships of women, perhaps none is more historic than this.

A large selection from the correspondence was published, in 1862, by

Madame Lenormant, in connection with a volume called "Madame de Staël

and the Grand Duchess Louise." It is impossible to read these

letters, without being struck by the rare grace that reigned in the

union of which they are the witnesses, and being affected by the

sight of a friendship so faithful, a confidence so entire.

The first meeting of these celebrated women took place when Madame de

Staël was thirty-two years old; Madame Récamier, twenty-one. Among

the few existing papers from the pen of the latter is a description

of this interview:

"She came to speak with me for her father, about the purchase of a

house. Her toilet was odd. She wore a morning gown, and a little

dress bonnet, adorned with flowers. I took her for a stranger in

Paris. I was struck with the beauty of her eyes and her look. She

said, with a vivid and impressive grace, that she was delighted to

know me; that her father, M. Necker at these words I recognized

Madame de Staël. I heard not the rest of her sentence. I blushed, my

embarrassment was extreme. I had just come from reading her 'Letters

on Rousseau,' and was full of the excitement. I expressed what I felt

more by my looks than by my words. She at the same time awed and drew

me. She fixed her wonderful eyes on me, with a curiosity full of

kindness, and complimented me on my figure, in terms which would have

seemed exaggerated and too direct if they had not been marked by an

obvious sincerity, which made the praise very seductive. She

perceived my embarrassment, and expresssd a desire to see me often,

on her return to Paris; for she was going to Coppet. It was then a

mere apparition in my life; but the impression was intense. I thought

only of Madame de Staël, so strongly did I return the action of this

ardent and forceful nature."

Madame de Staël was a plain, energetic embodiment of the most

impassioned genius. Madame Récamier was a dazzling personification of

physical loveliness, united with the perfection of mental harmony.

She had an enthusiastic admiration for her friend, who, in return,

found an unspeakable luxury in her society. Her angelic candor of

soul, and the frosty purity which enveloped her as a shield, inspired

the tenderest respect; while her happy equipoise calmed and refreshed

the restless and expensive imagination of the renowned author. There

could be no rivalry between them. Both had lofty and thoroughly

sincere characters. They were partly the reflection, partly the

complement, of each other; and their relation was a blessed one,

charming and memorable among such records. "Are you not happy,"

writes Madame de Staël, "in your magical power of inspiring

affection? To be sure always of being loved by those you love, seems

to me the highest terrestrial happiness, the greatest conceivable

privilege." Again, acknowledging the gift from her friend of a

bracelet containing her portrait, she says, "It has this

inconvenience: I find myself kissing it too often." In 1800, Madame

Récamier had a brilliant social triumph in England: "Ah, well,

beautiful Juliette! do you miss us? Have your successes in London

made you forget your friends in Paris?" Madame Récamier was the

original of the picture of the shawl-dance in "Corinne;" and her

friend says of her, in the "Ten Years of Exile," that "her beauty

expressed her character." The following passages, taken from letters

written in 1804, show how the intimacy had deepened:

"For four clays, faithless beauty, I have not heard the noise of the

wind without thinking it was your carriage. Come quickly. My mind and

my heart have need of you more than of any other friend." "I have

just seen Madame Henri Belmont. People say that all beautiful persons

remind them of you. It is not so with me. I have never found any one

who looks like you; and the eyes of this Madame Henri seem to me

blind by the side of yours." "Dear and beautiful Juliette, they give

me the hope of seeing you when I return from Italy; then only shall I

no longer feel myself an exile. I will receive you in the chateau

where I lost what of all the world I most loved; and you will bring

the feeling of happiness which no more exists there. I love you more

than any other woman in France. Alas! when shall I see you again?"

The friends passed the autumn of 1807 together at Coppet, with

Matthieu de Montmorency, Benjamin Constant, and a brilliant group of

associates, amidst all the romance in which the scenery and

atmosphere of that enchanted spot are steeped. One day they made a

party for an excursion on Mont Blanc. Weary, scorched by the sun, De

Staël and Récamier protested that they would go no farther. In vain

the guide boasted, both in French and German, of the spectacle

presented by the Mer de Glace. "Should you persuade me in all the

languages of Europe," replied Madame de Staël, "I would not go

another step." During the long and cruel banishment inflicted by

Napoleon on this eloquent woman, the bold champion of liberty, her

friend often paid her visits, and constantly wrote her letters:

"Dear Juliette, your letters are at present the only interest of my

life." "How much, dear friend, I am touched by your precious letter,

in which you so kindly send me all the news! My household rush from

one room to another, crying, A letter from Madame Récamier!' and then

all assemble to hear her" "Every one speaks of my beautiful friend

with admiration.. You have an ethereal reputation which nothing

vulgar can approach." "Adieu, dear angel. My God, how I envy all

those who are near you!"

When an envious slanderer had greatly vexed and grieved Madame

Récamier, Madame de Staël wrote to her, "You are as famous in your

kind as I am in mine, and are not banished from France. I tell you

there is nothing to be feared but truth and material persecution.

Beyond these two things, enemies can do absolutely nothing; and your

enemy is but a contemptible woman, jealous of your beauty and

purity." "Write to me. I know you address me by your deeds; but I

still need your words."

In 1811, Madame de Staël resolved to flee to Sweden. Montmorency,

paying her a parting visit, received from Napoleon a decree of

instant exile. Madame Récamier determined, at any risk, to embrace

her friend before this great distance should separate them. The

generous fugitive wrote, imploring her not to come: "I am torn

between the desire of seeing you, and the fear of injuring you." No

dissuasion could avail; but no sooner did she arrive at Coppet than

the mean soul of Napoleon sought revenge by exiling her also. The

distress of Madame de Staël knew no bounds. On learning the fatal

news, she wrote,

"I cannot speak to you; I fling myself at your feet; I implore you

not to hate me." "What your noble generosity has cost you! If you

could read my soul, you would pity me." "The only service I can do my

friends is to make them avoid me. In all my distraction, I adore you.

Farewell, farewell! When shall I see you again? Never in this world."

Throughout the period of their banishment, the friends kept up an

incessant correspondence, and often interchanged presents.

"Dear friend," writes Madame de Staël, "how this dress has touched

me! I shall wear it on Tuesday, in taking leave of the court. I shall

tell everybody that it is a gift from you, and shall make all the men

sigh that it is not you who are wearing it."

In return, some time later, she sends a pair of bracelets, and a copy

of a new work from her pen, adding, "In your prayers, dear angel, ask

God to give peace to my soul." In another letter she says, "Adieu,

dear angel: promise to preserve that friendship which has given me

such sweet days." And again,

"Angel of goodness, would that my eternal tenderness could recompense

you a little for the penalties your generous friendship has brought

on you!" "You cannot form an idea, my angel, of the emotion your

letter has caused me. It is at the extremity of Moravia that these

celestial words have reached me. I have shed tears of sorrow and

tenderness in hearkening to the voice which comes to me in the

desert, as the angel came to Hagar."

What a rare and high compliment is contained in the following

passage! "You are the most amiable person in the world, dear

Juliette; but you do not speak enough of yourself. You put your mind,

your enchantment, in your letters, but not that which concerns

yourself. Give me all the details pertaining to yourself." "The

hundred fine things Madame de Boigne and Madame de Belle-garde say of

you and me, prove to me that I live a double life: one in you, one in

myself."

When Napoleon fell, in 1814, Madame de Staël hurried home from her

long exile. The great news found Madame Récamier at Rome. In a few

days, she embraced her illustrious friend in Paris. Close was their

union, great their joy. It was engrossing admiration and devotion on

one side; absorbing sympathy, respect, and gratitude, on the other.

The power and charm of Madame Récamier were not merely in her

ravishing beauty, imperturbable good nature, and all-subduing

graciousness, but also in her mind and character. Madame de Staël,

who was a great critic, and no flatterer, says to her,

"What a charm there is in your manner of writing! I wish you would

compose a romance, put in it some celestial being, and give her your

own natural expressions, without altering a word. You have a

character of astonishing nobleness; and the contrast of your delicate

and gracious features, with your grand firmness of soul, produces an

incomparable effect."

The last letter written by the dying author to her friend concluded

with the words, "All that is left of me embraces you." The survivor

paid the pious rites of affection to the departed, with the devotion

which had marked their whole relation. And when, years afterward, on

the loss of her property, Madame Récamier betook herself to the

Abbaye-aux-Bois, in her humble chamber, where she was more sought and

admired than ever in her proudest prosperity, the chief articles to

be seen, in addition to the indispensable furniture, were, as

Chateaubriand has described the scene, a library, a harp, a piano, a

magnificent portrait of Madame de Staël by Gerard, and a moonlight

view of Coppet. Madame de Staël had once written to her, "Your

friendship is like the spring in the desert, that never fails; and it

is this which makes it impossible not to love you." Death caused no

decay of that sentiment, but raised and sanctified it. Her translated

friend now became an object of worship; and she devoted her whole

energies to extend and preserve the memory of the illustrious writer.

The self-forgetting sympathy of Madame Récamier, and the magical

atmosphere of loveliness she carried around her, obtained for her

many warm friendships with women. Foremost, by far, among these was

that with Madame de Staël. But others also were very dear. The widow

of Matthieu de Montmorency was extremely attached to her, wrote her

touching letters, and took every opportunity to see her. Madame de

Boigne, too, was joined with Madame Récamier in a relation of respect

and affection truly profound and vivid. This lady was greatly

distinguished for her beauty as well as for her voice, which was

compared with that of Catalani. She was much impressed by the noble

behavior of Madame Récamier at the time of her husband's bankruptcy;

and, by her delicate attentions, secured the most grateful love in

return. Their earnest and faithful affection lasted until death. A

novel, entitled "Une Passion dans le Grande Monde," in which Madame

de Staël and Madame Reeamier are the two chief characters, was left

for publication by Madame de Boigne at her death. It was published in

1866.

One of Madame Récamier's sweetest friendships was with the

accomplished and charming Elizabeth Foster, Duchess of Devonshire,

the fame of whose exquisite loveliness traversed the earth. The

duchess said of her friend, "At first she is good, then she is

intellectual, and after this she is very beautiful," a striking

compliment, when spoken, in relation to an admired rival, by one who

was herself so dazzlingly gifted. The order of precedence in her

charms, however, was differently recognized by men. They were subdued

successively by her beauty, her goodness, her judgment, her

character. The Duchess of Devonshire had known all the romance and

all the sorrow of life. Her experience had left upon her a melancholy

which attracted the heart almost as quickly as it did the eye, and

lent to her something pensive and caressing. Although a Protestant,

she had formed, during her long residence in Rome, an entire

friendship with the Cardinal Consalvi, who was the prime-minister and

favorite of Pope Pius VII through his whole pontificate. These two

beautiful women, as soon as they met, felt, by all the laws of

elective affinity, that they belonged to each other. The death of the

Pope was followed, in a few months, by that of his minister and

friend. During the illness of Consalvi, Madame Récamier shared all

the hopes, fears, and distresses of the duchess. And when the fatal

event had befallen, and the cardinal was laid in state, and the

romantic and despairing woman would go to look on her dead friend,

she accompanied her, deeply veiled, through the crowd, and knelt with

her, amidst the solemn pomp, in tears and prayer, beside the

unanswering clay. The duchess was struck to the heart by this

irreparable loss. All that a devoted sympathy could yield to soothe

and sustain, she received from Madame Récamier. And when, soon after,

unable to speak, she lay dying, she silently pressed the hand of this

faithful friend, as the final act of her existence.

Madame Récamier retained to the last her enviable power of inspiring

affection. Madame Lenormant says that the Countess Caffarelli found

her, in her age and blindness, watching by the death-bed of

Chateaubriand. Drawn by her singular goodness, she sought to share

with her in these holy cares. She thus became the loving and beloved

associate of the final hour. This admirable person worthily closes

the list the rich and bright list of the friends of Madame Récamier.

In her youth, the first wish of Madame Récamier was the wish to

please; and she was, no doubt, a little too coquettish, not enough

considerate of the masculine hearts she damaged, and the feminine

hearts she pained. The Duke de Laval said, "The gift of involuntary

and powerful fascination was her talisman." Not, sometimes, to make a

voluntary use of that talisman, she must have been more than human.

As years and trials deepened her nature, she sought rather to make

happy than merely to please. She always cared more to be respected

than to be flattered, to be loved than to be admired. Admiration and

sympathy were stronger in her than vanity and love of pleasure:

reason and justice were strongest of all. Her judgment was as clear,

her conscience as commanding, her sincerity, courage, and firmness as

admirable, as her heart was rich and good. When Fouche said to her,

in her misfortunes and exile, "The weak ought to be amiable," she

instantly replied, "And the strong ought to be just." Her exquisite

symmetry of form, her dazzling purity of complexion, her graciousness

of disposition, her perfect health, her desire to please, and

generous delight in pleasing, composed an all-potent philter, which

the sympathy of every spectator drank with intoxicating effect. She

discriminated, with perfect truthfullness, the various degrees of

acquaintance and friendship. She made all feel self-complacent, by

her unaffected attention causing them to perceive that she wished

their happiness and valued their good opinion. Ballanche tells her,

"You feel yourself the impression you make on others, and are

enveloped in the incense they burn at your feet." Wherever she went,

as if a celestial magnet passed, all faces drifted towards her with

admiring love and pleasure. By her lofty integrity and her matchless

sweetness and skill, as by a rare alchemy, she transmuted her

fugitive lovers into permanent friends. Her talents were as

attractive as her features: little by little her conversation made

the listener forget even her loveliness. Saint-Beuve says, "As her

beauty slowly retreated, the mind it had eclipsed gradually shone

forth, as on certain days, towards twilight, the evening star appears

in the quarter of the heaven opposite to the setting sun." Her voice

was remarkably fresh, soft, and melodious. Her politeness never

forsook her: with an extreme ease of manner, she had a horror of

familiarity, as well as of all excess and violence. Her moderation of

thought, serenity of soul, and velvet manner, were as unwearying as

reason and harmony. Without pretence of any sort, she hid, under the

full bloom of her beauty and her fame, like humble violets, modesty

and disinterestedness. At the time of her death, Guizot, when a

distinguished American lady asked him what was the marvel of her

fascination, replied, with great emotion, "Sympathy, sympathy,

sympathy." She had none of that aridity of heart which regular

coquetry either presupposes or produces. Deprived by destiny of those

relations which usually fill the heart of woman, she carried into the

only sentiment allowed her, an ardor, a faithfullness, and a

delicacy, which were unequalled; and the veracity of her soul, joined

with her singular discretion, gave her friends a most enjoyable sense

of security. Ballanche called her "the genius of devotedness;" and

Montalembert, "the genius of confidence."

From the most dangerous and deteriorating influences of her position

she found a safeguard in active works of charity. Her pecuniary

generosity, in her days of opulence, was boundless. She seemed to

feel that every unfortunate had a right to her interest and her

assistance. "Disgrace and misfortune had for her," avowed one who

knew her entirely, "the same sort of attraction that favor and

success have for vulgar souls; and under no circumstances was she

ever false to this characteristic." The fine taste she had for

literature and art, the great pleasure she took in their beauties,

the natural grace and good-will with which she expressed her

admiration, furnished precisely that kind of incense which authors

and artists love to breathe. Old Laharpe, who, in her young days, had

derived the deepest delight from her attention and praise, wrote to

her, "I love you as one loves an angel." The readiness with which the

word "angel" rises to the lips of her friends is striking. Almost

every one of them applies the word to her on nearly every occasion.

Madame de Krudener writes to her, "I shall have the happiness, I

hope, dear angel, of embracing you to-morrow, and talking with you."

All seemed instantly to recognize something angelic in her

expression. It was in her disposition as much as in her appearance,

apparently in the latter because in the former, as Ballanche said to

her, "In your thought, taste, and grace will ever be united in one

harmonious whole. I am fascinated at the idea of so perfect a

harmony, and want the whole world to know what I so easily divine. It

will be your mission to make the intrinsic character of beauty fully

understood; to show that it is an entirely moral thing. Had Plato

known you, he need not have resorted to so subtile an argument. You

would have made him alive to a truth that was always a mystery to

him; and that rare genius would thus have had one more title to the

admiration of the world."

There was something celestial in her motions, that suggested the

undulations of a spirit rather than joints and muscles, and made her

soul and flesh one melody. As to her heavenly temper of goodness,

there is but one voice from all who knew her. She accorded to the

sufferings of self-love a pity and kindness seldom shown to them. She

had the sweetest faculty for dressing the wounds of envy and

jealousy, soothing the lacerations of rivalry and hate, assuaging the

bitterness of neglected and revengeful souls. For all those moral

pains, or griefs of imagination, which burn in some natures with a

cruel intensity, she was a true sister of charity. To the rest of her

winsome gifts she added according to the unanimous testimony of the

witnesses this rare and resistless quality, the power of listening

to, and occupying herself with, others, the secret both of social

success, and of happiness without that success. "She said little," De

Tocqueville avers, "but knew what each man's forte was, and led him

to it. If any thing was said particularly well, her face brightened.

You saw that her attention was always active, always intelligent."

Lamartine said, "As radiant as Aspasia, but a pure and Christian

Aspasia, it was not her features only that were beautiful: she was

beautiful herself." Sarah Austin affirmed, "It was the atmosphere of

benignity which seemed to exhale like a delicate perfume from her

whole person, that prolonged the fascination of her beauty." And

Lemoine declared, in his eloquent obituary notice, "In the hearts of

those who had the honor and the happiness of living in constant

intercourse with her, Madame Récamier will for ever remain the object

of a sort of adoration which we should find it impossible to

express." The only fault her friends would confess in her was the

generous fault of too great toleration and indulgence. And to dwell

unkindly on this is as ungracious a task as to try to fix a stain on

a star.

Arrayed in her divine charms; armed with irresistible goodness and

archness; enriched with equal wisdom and uprightness, every movement

a mixture of grace and dignity; protected by an aureole of purity

which always surrounded her; walking among common mortals, "like a

goddess on a cloud," she made it the business of her life to soften

the asperities, listen to the' plans, sympathize with the

disappointments, stimulate the powers, encourage the efforts, praise

the achievements, and enjoy the triumphs, of her friends. No wonder

they loved her, and thronged around her alike in prosperity and in

adversity. To appreciate her character is a joy; to portray her

example, a duty. She was a kind of saint of the world.

The single fault which Saint-Beuve finds with the spirit of the

society she formed, and governed so long with her irresistible

sceptre, is that there was too much of complaisance and charity in

it. Stern truth suffered, and character was enervated, while courtesy

and taste flourished: "The personality or self-love of all who came

into the charmed circle was too much caressed." One can scarcely help

lamenting that so gracious a fault is not oftener to be met in the

selfish and satirical world. For the opposite fault of a harsh

carelessness is so much more frequent as to make this seem almost a

virtue. Cast in an angel's mould, and animated with an angel's

spirit, her consciousness vacant of self, vacant also of an absorbing

aim, ever ready to install the aim of any worthy person who came

before her, she was such a woman as Dante would have adored. It seems

impossible not to recognize how much fitter a type of womanhood she

is for her sex to admire than those specimens who spend their days in

publicly ventilating their vanity, feverishly courting notoriety and

power; or those who, without cultivation, without expansion, without

devotion, without aspiration, lead a life of monotonous drudgery,

with not a single interest beyond their own homes.

A certain Madame Ancelot has written a book, in which, doubtless

under the pain of some galling memory--she attacks Madame Récamier

as a selfish coquette, enamored only of admiration, fame, and power.

Her chief weapon, as this woman asserts, was a skilful application of

deliberate unprincipled flattery to the pride and vanity of everybody

she met. The conduct attributed to Madame Récamier in the odious

examples fabricated by this slanderer, would have been insufferably

repulsive even to average persons. To persons of such insight,

refinement, and elevation as marked all her most intimate associates,

it would have been unutterably disgusting. The whole representation,

while awakening the indignation of the reader, shows what a degrading

caricature noble souls undergo when reflected in the minds of base

observers. Contrast with the view of this Madame Ancelot what is said

with unquestionable authority, after the intimacy of a lifetime, by

the gifted and illustrious Countess de Boigne. "Amidst the

overwhelming reverses of her husband's fortunes, I found Madame

Récamier so calm, so noble, so simple, lifted so far above all the

vain shows of her former life, that I was extremely struck; and I

date from that moment the vivid affection which subsequent events

have served only to confirm. No portrait does her justice. All praise

her incomparable beauty, her active beneficence, her sweet urbanity.

Many declare her great talents; but few have discerned, through the

habitual ease of her intercourse, the loftiness of her heart, the

independence of her character, the impartiality of her judgment, and

the fairness of her soul!" These are the words of one absolutely

competent to judge, intrinsically incapable of falsifying; and also

when death had removed every motive for flattery.

All who have written on this most admired and beloved woman have had

much to say of the secret and the lesson of her sway. One ascribes

her dominion to a subtile blandishment; another to a marvellous tact,

another to an indescribable magic. But really the secret was simple.

It was the refined suavity and Womanliness of her nature, the

ineffable charm of a temper of unconquerable sweetness and

kindliness, a ruling "desire to give pleasure, avert pain, avoid

offence, render her society agreeable to all its members, and enable

every one to present himself in the most favorable light." Let the

fair creatures made to adorn and reign over society add to their

beauty, as Sarah Austin observes, the proper virtues of true-born and

Christian women, gentleness, love, anxiety to please, fearfullness to

offend, meekness, pity, an overflowing good-will manifested in kind

words and deeds, and they may see in the example before us how high

and lasting its empire is. This is the true secret revealed, this the

genuine lesson taught, by the rare career which we have been

reviewing.

After this glorious example of the moral mission of woman, glorious

despite its acknowledged imperfections, it is not necessary to deny

the common assertion, that men have a monopoly of the sentiment of

friendship. Neither is it necessary to expatiate on the great

happiness this sentiment is capable of yielding in the comparatively

narrow and quiet lives of women, or to insist on the larger space

which ought to be assigned to the cultivation of it in those lives.

The moral of the whole subject may be put into one short sentence,

namely this: The chief recipe for giving richness and peace to the

soul is, less of vague passion, less of ambitious activity, anti more

of dedicated sentiment in the private personal relations of the inner

life.

How little matter unto us the great!

What the heart touches, that controls our fate.

From the full galaxy we turn to one,

Dim to all else, but to ourselves the sun;

And still, to each, some poor, obscurest life

Breathes all the bliss, or kindles all the strife.

Wake up the countless dead; ask every ghost,

Whose influence tortured or consoled the most?

How each pale spectre of the host would turn

From the fresh laurel and the glorious urn,

To point where rots, beneath a nameless stone,

Some heart in which had ebbed and flowed its own!

The salon which Madame Swetchine opened in the Rue Saint-Dominique

was one of the powers of Paris for over forty years. Here she drew

around her all that was most select, most distinguished, most

exalted, in Catholic France; and subdued all by the holy dignity of

her character, the authority of her wisdom, the sweetness of her

spirit, and the charm of her manners. In the homage she inspired, the

favors she distributed, and the tributes she received, she was truly

a queen. Her days were divided into parts, observed with strict

uniformity. She reserved the morning to herself, hearing mass and

visiting the poor until eight o'clock; then returning home, and

closing her door until three. From three to six she received company;

secluded herself from six to nine; and welcomed her friends again

from nine until midnight. Her drawing-room, if not so famous, was as

influential and fascinating to its frequenters as that of Madame

Récamier. Unlike as they were, they have often been compared. The

Récamier salon, with its slightly intoxicating perfume of elegance,

was infinitely more easy, more agreeable; the Swetchine salon, with

its bracing atmosphere of sanctity, was more earnest, more religious.

Though personal nobleness was honored in both, polished fashion

predominated in one, devout principle in the other. The presiding

genius of the former was the perfection of the best spirit of the

world; the presiding genius of the latter was the perfection of the

best spirit of the Catholic Church. The guests of Madame Récamier

went to the Abbaye-aux-Bois to please and to be pleased, to exchange

eloquent thoughts, to breathe chivalrous sentiments, and to enjoy an

exquisite grace of politeness never surpassed. The guests of Madame

Swetchine went to the Rue Saint-Dominique to take counsel on the

affairs of the higher politics, the interests of the nation, and the

welfare of the Church; to enjoy a community of faith and aspiration,

to refresh their best purposes, and to learn how more effectively to

serve the great ends to which they were pledged. There, liberty of

opinion and speech was unlimited, and a refined complacency aimed at;

here, loyalty to certain foregone principles and institutions was

expected, and a tacit spiritual direction maintained: but in both

were found the same delightful moderation, repose, and gracious

forbearance; the same reconciling skill; the same indescribable art

of ruling and leading while appearing to obey and follow.

These illustrious women were perhaps equal in the interest they

awakened, and the sway they exercised over their friends; but there

was a great difference in the secret of the charm which they

severally possessed. There is nothing more disagreeable in a

companion than pre-occupation, if it be pre-occupation with self;

nothing more fascinating, if it be pre-occupation with you, or with

something of universal authority and attraction. The spell of Madame

Récamier lay in her irresistible personal beauty, grace, and

graciousness; that of Madame Swetchine, in her unquestionable

greatness and goodness and simplicity. Each was marvellously self-

detached and kind to everybody. But Madame Récamier was an unoccupied

mirror, ready to reflect upon you what you brought before it; Madame

Swetchine, a mirror pre-occupied with the lovely and authoritative

forms of virtue, wisdom, and piety. The former personally enchanted

and captivated all; the latter caused all to bow, with herself,

before a common sovereignty. The one was the fairest model of nature;

the other, a representative of supernatural realities, a holy symbol

of God.

It is extremely interesting to trace the effect of these remarkable

personalities on each other. When Madame Swetchine visited Rome, at

the age of forty-two, her mind was somewhat imbued with prejudices

against Madame Récamier, whom she had never seen, and who was then

tarrying there. Madame Récamier was forty-seven years old, with a

reputation unsullied by a breath, and a beauty which was remarkable

even twenty years afterwards. The manner in which Madame Swetchine

speaks of her, in a letter to Madame de Montcalm, forms the least

satisfactory passage we remember in all her correspondence:

"Madame Récamier seems sincerely to prefer a secluded life. It is

fortunate, her beauty and celebrity being on the decline: ruins make

little sensation in a country of ruins. It seems that to be drawn to

her one must know her more; and, after such brilliant successes,

certainly nothing can be more flattering than to reckon almost as

many friends as formerly lovers. Perhaps, however, not that I would

detract from her merit, had she but once loved--the number would

have been sensibly diminished."

It is charming to see, in the rich, eloquent letter which Madame

Swetchine wrote to Madame Récamier, soon after their first interview,

how quickly these prejudices were dispelled on personal contact, and

replaced by an earnest attachment:

"I have yielded to the penetrating, indefinable charm with which you

enthrall even those for whom you do not yourself care. It seems as if

we had passed a long time together, and had many memories in common.

This would be inexplicable, did not certain sentiments have a little

of eternity in them. One should say, that, when souls touch, they put

off all the poor conditions of earth; and, happier and freer, already

obey the laws of a better world."

The reciprocation of this interest is shown by the fact, that Madame

Récamier urgently besought Madame Swetchine to make her residence in

the same house with her, the Abbaye-aux-Bois; which she would

probably have done, had it not been for the objections of General

Swetchine.

The open secret of the wonderful influence which Madame Swetchine

exerted on all who came in contact with her, of the extreme reverence

and love with which they regarded her, was, therefore, the

incomparable power, sincerity, generosity, and gentleness of her

character. But to appreciate this truth, and learn the lesson it

conveys, we must analyze the case more in detail. The distinguished

friend who has written her life says,

"The most remarkable peculiarity of the character of Madame Swetchine

was, that all the qualities, all the virtues, and all the powers were

distributed in perfect harmony. She was in the same degree

enthusiastic and sensible, because her reason was equal to her

imagination: she thought as deeply as she felt. However often a man

in mind, she always remained a woman in heart; and her personal

abnegation was neither feigned nor studied. As exempt from envy as

from ambition, she lived first in others, then in public works; only

thought of herself after being occupied with everybody else; and

great as was her dislike of egotism, never needed to rebuke it

because she found such a rich joy in the opposite sentiment. Her

disinterestedness reconciled others to her superiority."

Her faith stood so firm in the whirlwind of opinions, that she needed

not to bolster it by bigotry. To the friends, who once murmured

against her too great tolerance, she replied, "Of what use is it to

live, if one is never to hear any thing but his own voice?" Her

compassion and her patience were unconquerable. Nothing could draw

from her the slightest sign of vexation or weariness. One of her

constant visitors, for fifteen years, was a woman universally

detested for her outrageous temper and her bad manners. The

announcement of her name was the signal of dismay and dispersion. But

the saintly hostess invariably gave her an affectionate reception;

and to all the attempts made to induce her to cast off the obnoxious

guest, she said, with a smile, "What do you wish? All the world

avoids her; she is unhappy, and she has only me." This woman died of

old age; and, during her last days, Madame Swetchine went often to

see her, and passed long hours beside her death-bed.

The face of Madame Swetchine, without being handsome, was remarkably

expressive; and the inflections of her singularly rich and strong

voice were exactly modulated to every thought and feeling of her

soul. Destitute of egotism herself, she showed an invariable

tolerance for the egotisms of others, and her management of them was

a marvel of magnanimous considerateness and soothing skill. The

unrestrained frankness of her affection, the intimate confidences she

imparted, the noble grounds she assumed to be common to them and her,

the tender compliments she was ever paying them with all the skill of

a sincere heart, were irresistible. She writes to the Duchess de la

Rochefoucauld, "Reply to all my inquiries; especially speak to me of

yourself. I long to be relieved from the punishment of your reserve."

Some persons would deal with souls as carelessly as if they were

pieces of mechanism; handle hearts as they would handle groceries.

Madame Swetchine was unable to contemplate without awe, or treat

without scrupulous delicacy, a human spirit seeking to open and show

itself to her as it was in the eyes of God.

In addition to all this, she had an amazing knowledge of the

mysteries of human nature and the experience of human life. She said

she had traversed the whole circle of passions and affections, and

was a true doctor of that law. "Reading in my own heart, I have

learned to understand the hearts of others: the single knowledge of

myself has given me the key of those innumerable enigmas called men."

She avowed herself an instinctive disciple of Lavater, and said, "The

expression of the face is the accent of the figure." Her biographer

says that her insight amounted almost to divination. A word, a

gesture, a look, a silence, hardly noticed by others, was to her a

complete revelation. She had the science of souls, as physicists have

the science of bodies. While the ordinary man sees in a plant merely

its color or its outline, the botanist discerns, at first sight, all

its specific attributes. Such was the power of Madame Swetchine: one

lineament, one trait, enabled her to recognize and reconstruct a

whole character. There is no luxury greater than that of unveiling

our inmost souls where we are sure of meeting a superior

intelligence, invincible charity, generous sympathy, and needed

support and guidance. All this was certain to be found in Madame

Swetchine. She had no rivalry, no envy, no desire to eclipse any one,

no bigotry or asperity; and the aged, the mature, and the youthful,

alike came with grateful pleasure under her empire. Women, usually

little accessible to the influence of another woman, were full of

trust and docility towards her. Loving solitude, plunging into

metaphysics as into a bath, she yet took great delight in the beauty,

freshness; playfullness, and hopes of girls just entering society.

Her taste in every thing belonging to the toilet was known to be fine

and sure: they loved, when in full dress for company, to pass under

her eyes; and she deeply enjoyed admiring and praising them, at the

same time pointing out any thing ill-judged or excessive. Not

unfrequently, the same ones, who, in the evening, in their glittering

array, had paused on their way to the ball, would return in the

morning, and sit with her, face to face, in communion on far other

and graver matters. Sick and erring hearts showed themselves to her

in utter sincerity, while, with unwearied sympathy and adroit wisdom,

she poured on them, drop by drop, the light, the truth, the life,

they needed. No one can tell to how many she was a spiritual mother,

her direction all the more welcome and efficacious that she was not a

director by profession, but by instinctive fitness.

Madame Swetchine enjoyed friendships of extraordinary strewth and

preciousness with the Countess de Nesselrode, the Princess Galitzin,

Madame de Saint Aulaire, the Duchess de Duras, the Marchioness de

Lillers, Madame Craven, the Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, and many

other women of noble natures and rich interior lives. The record of

their intercourse is an imperial banquet for the mind and heart of

the reader. The study of it must make ordinary women sigh for envy

and shame over their own cold relations, outward ambition, sterile

experience, and suspicious caution. Madame Swetchine writes, "I have

long made over all my invested capital to the account of those I

love: their welfare, their hopes, are the income on which I live."

The Duchess de Duras writes to her, "I love you more than I should

have believed it ever would be possible for me to love, after what I

have experienced. I believe in you, I who have become so suspicious.

I rely on you with entire security, whatever happens." Again she

writes, when her friend is absent in Russia, "I miss you every

moment. Return, return. Your chamber is ready, and that of Nadine.

Come, come, dear friend: life is so short, why lose it thus?" Madame

Swetchine held such a high place in the esteem of her friends,

because she was so serene, so wise, so steadfast, so kind, so pure,

that she soothed and strengthened all who came near her. One of her

friends expresses this in saying to her, "No society pleases and

agrees with me like yours." She always acted on her own aphorism, "To

bear faults, to manage egotisms, is an aim perhaps best accomplished

by a skilful dissimulation; but the true ideal is to correct faults

and to cure self-love."

The best example, in a relation with one of her own sex, of that

sentiment of friendship which was such a pervasive need of Madame

Swetchine's nature, and which she experienced so profusely, was her

connection with Roxandra Stourdza, a Greek maiden of great beauty and

genius, born at Constantinople. Originally brought together at court,

when the latter was maid of honor to the Empress Elizabeth, they

formed an enthusiastic attachment, which, for half a century, largely

constituted the richness, consolation, and joy of their lives. The

monument of it preserved in their correspondence possesses extreme

interest and value, and must secure for it a prominent place among

the few historic friendships of women. The oriental Roxandra was the

object of an admiration truly romantic from her friend, who seemed

always to see her seated on an ideal throne, and to address her as

some queen of Trebizond. Saint-Beuve says, the refined and exalted

affection between these two young persons, living in the artificial

world of the Russian court, and each throwing back, in her own way,

the mystic influences derived from the sky of Alexandria, affected

him as the exciting perfume exhaled by two rare plants nourished in a

hot-house. It is unimaginable what lofty, exquisite, and mysterious

sentiments they exchange. Their naked souls and minds, with all their

workings, are visible in these ingenuous and crowded letters, as in a

glass hive we can study the industry of bees. Saint-Beuve affirms,

that the later difference in their religion, the Countess Edling

always remaining in the Greek communion, Madame Swetchine becoming a

zealous Catholic, finally made ice between them; and that, when the

countess came to Paris to visit her old friend, she complained of

finding coldness and reserve. Probably there was something in this,

but not much. The friendship will be best revealed by citing, from

the parties themselves, some of its characteristic expressions.

The letters of Roxandra have not been published; but, in those of

Sophie, both souls are clearly reflected. For, as M. de Falloux says,

Madame Swetchine never Ised hackneyed language, never repeated for

one what he had first thought for another. She placed herself, with a

skill, or rather a condescension, truly marvelous, at the point of

view of those with whom she conversed; and she would never have so

easily ended by bringing them to herself, had she not always begun

by going to them. This habit was so familiar, this movement so

natural to her, that, at the close of every correspondence, we have

before our eyes the physiognomy of the correspondent as distinctly

outlined as the physiognomy of the writer:

"Did you believe me, my dear Roxandra, when I mechanically said, on

leaving you, that I should write to you only after five or six clays?

I knew not what I said at the time. If you begin to know me a little,

you have seen that I could never hear so long a silence. La Bruyere

has said, How difficult it is to be satisfied with any one! Ah! well,

my friend, I am satisfied with you; and, were it not for my extreme

self-distrust, which nourishes so many inquietudes, I should be

almost tranquil, almost happy, almost reasonable. My friend, this

moment I receive your letter: how can I thank you? Ah! read my

grateful heart; and sometimes tell me, that you wish to keep it, in

order that it may become worthy of you." "I feel so deeply the

happiness of being loved by you, that you can never cease to love

me." "I need to know all your thoughts, to follow all your motions,

and can find no other occupation so sweet and so dear." "My heart is

so full of you, that, since we parted, I have thought of nothing but

writing to you." "I see in your soul as if it were my own." "Dear

Roxandra, you are every way a privileged being: you unite the

advantages of the most opposed characters without any of their

inconveniences." "My attachment for you will, without doubt, be a

consolation; but that word, when not unmeaning, is so sad that I

desire my friendship to fulfil higher offices. I often envy

characters whose impressions are slight and transient. The sponge

passes across the slate, and nothing is left. Perhaps such a nature

best agrees with man, whose pleasures are for a moment, whose pains

for a life. Adieu, my friend! How many times already that word has

filled my heart with grief! Take good care of yourself; hasten to

God; and, when the struggle is too severe, beseech grace instead of

combating." "It seems to me that souls seek each other in the chaos

of this world, like elements of the same nature tending to re-unite.

They touch, they feel themselves tallied; confidence is established

without an assignable cause. Reason and reflection following, and

fixing the seal of their approval on the union, think they have done

it all, as subaltern ministers regard the transactions of their

masters nothing until they have been permitted to sign their names at

the bottom. I fear no misunderstanding with you; and my gratitude

alone can equal the perfect security with which you inspire me." "I

must show myself to you absolutely as I am." "I know of no pleasure

more alluring than a sweet and confidential converse which begins

with an interchange of ideas, and ends with one of sentiments. This I

have found in our intercourse." "It seems to me that your good angel

is very busy about you, and is covering your thorns with some few

flowers. How I should like to be charged with the visible execution

of this charming mission!" "When near you, I breathe the atmosphere

of calmness and depth, which agrees with me: although I have not the

rages of King Saul, there is in the sound of your voice something, I

know not what, that reminds me of the effect of the harp of David."

"Never was there a goodness more compassionate and penetrating than

yours. Yours are the words that seek pain at the bottom of the soul

in order to soothe it. How well you possess that divine dexterity

which applies balm to wounds almost without touching them!" "My

friend, I have met nothing sweeter, more consoling to love, than you.

The admirable simplicity of your character, its steadiness, its

frankness, have a charm which more than attracts: it fixes." "We must

carry, untouched, to the gates of eternity the deposit each has

confided to the other."

The above extracts give some idea of the warmth and preciousness of

the surpassing friendship, but no idea of the high and varied range

of intellectual and religious interests that entered into it. "I

always," Madame Swetchine writes, "have your little ring on my

finger. This symbol, fragile as all symbols, will outlive me; but I

grieve not for that, since I am sure that the sentiment which makes

me prize it so highly will survive it in turn." Dora Greenwell says,

"The letters of Madame Swetchine are full of an intimate sweetness

that has something in it, piercing even to pain, like the scent of

the sweet-brier." We are reminded of this when she writes, "If life

were perfectly beautiful, yet death would be perfectly desirable."

Also again, when she writes to her Roxandra, "What is the pen, sad

signal of our long separation, after the pleasure of flinging myself

on your neck, and pouring my soul into yours through a deluge of

words?" The two friends often indulged the sweet dream of passing

their last years together, preparing; each other for the passage

equally dreaded and desired, advancing arm in arm and heart in heart

towards the unknown. The dream was not destined for fulfilment. But

Madame Swetchine had the great joy of seeing her favorite nephew one

of the Gargarin boys whom she loved so fondly in their childhood

married to Marie Stourdza, the niece and sole heiress of her friend.

The only words we have seen from Roxandra herself are worthy of the

eulogies paid her, and would seem to justify the highest estimate of

her character. She says, "May we all contribute, by our life and our

death, to the great thought of God, the re-establishment of order and

of truth among men!" And again, amid the alarming revolutions that

were shaking all Europe, she says, "We are witnessing the grand

judgment of human pride."

Among the wretched children of misfortune, loved and aided by the

saintly charity of Madame Swetchine, she was especially drawn to the

solacement of deaf mutes. She keenly felt the sadness and danger

consequent on this cruel infirmity. She took, as her own maid, a poor

deaf mute, named Parisse, whose temper was so bad that she was

scarcely tolerated by any one. She found a charm in taking her walks

with this still companion, to whom it was not necessary to speak, and

who was not humiliated in keeping silence. "With Parisse," she said,

"I can believe myself alone, and have a needed arm to support me, and

an aid which does not encroach on my liberty." Thus she loved to

appear the obliged party rather than the benefactress. The haughty

and quarrelsome Parisse often put on the grand airs of an outraged

queen. When the other servants were battling with her, Madame

Swetchine would go among them, and say, "I love you all, but know

that every one shall go before Parisse: she is the most unfortunate,

and much should be excused in her." After enduring almost every

thing, she succeeded, by her imperturbable good-nature and firmness,

in winning the poor girl to a more amiable behavior. Parisse

worshipped her mistress, and had the joy one day of being represented

behind her in the likeness engraved by a celebrated artist. They

became really attached friends. Is it not touchingly instructive thus

to trace the religious ascent of the soul of this noble woman in her

friendships, as they successively stoop from the Czarina Marie to the

deaf mute Parisse? In his funeral sermon on Madame Swetchine,

Lacordaire thus alludes to Parisse: "As we watched the sad setting of

that beauteous star, I saw her beloved mute following her with her

eyes from an adjoining chamber, the vigilant sentinel of a life which

had been so lavish of itself, and whose light went out with faithful

friendship on the one side, and grateful poverty on the other."

Madame Swetchine was endowed from birth with the material, the

physiological conditions, for a great and original character, force

competent to the finest and the grandest things, with an over-bias of

that force to the brain. For long periods, she was compelled to walk

in her chamber from seven to eight hours a day, to avoid intolerable

nervous pressures and pains. At sixty-six, she wrote to one of her

friends, "My interior life sterilizes itself by reason of

superabundance; the too great fullness causes an incessant

restlessness. I cannot give body to the multitude of confused ideas

which crowd each other, interweave, and suffocate me for want of

articulation." This profuse force, which continued throughout her

life, enabled her to achieve an amount of work, and acquire a wealth

of knowledge and wisdom, truly astonishing. Her youthful education,

with the many difficult accomplishments she mastered, was the first

resource for the occupation of her teeming energy. The second was the

discharge of her domestic and public duties, with as much discretion

and skill as if her sole ambition were to be a faultless housekeeper

and member of the social order. The third was friendship, to whose

genial duties of visiting and correspondence she devoted herself with

a fullness and an ardor as passionate as they were genuine. And yet

there remained a surplusage of unappropriated soul, whose vague and

constant action distressed her. She entered on an extensive study of

literature, history, psychology, and philosophy. Her biographer says,

that scarcely an important work on these subjects appeared in Europe

for fifty years with whose contents she did not familiarize herself,

pen in hand. She interspersed these arduous labors by a systematic

application to philanthropic works, personally visiting the sick and

the poor, and ministering to their wants. And still her force was

unexhausted she had more faculty and strength longing to be used, and

disturbing her with mysterious solicitations; a solitary activity,

without aliment; a wheel for ever revolving in a void; a burning

ardor, which, in the absence of sufficing affections below, turned

upward, and became a subtile mysticism. When practical duty,

friendship, literature, philosophy, and charitable deeds had failed

to absorb and satisfy her, plainly there was but one resource left,

religion. She entered on the path to God and his fellowship, the

sublime way of the life of perfection. She entered on it with an

extraordinary capacity for ascending through the various degrees of

perception, feeling, and transfusion; and, at the same time, with a

power of rational poise which kept her experience of piety from the

two extremes of mawkishness and delirium. Such balancing good sense

and sobriety, such freedom from every thing morbid, combined with so

much thoroughness of faith and so much fervor, we know not where else

to find. Some hearts open downward, and send their exciting drench

through the body; hers opened upward, and sent its pure vapor aloft

into the mind to wear celestial colors. Her head was a higher heart,

playing off intelligence and affection, transmuted into each other.

In the charming treatise on "Old Age," from the pen of Madame

Swetchine, a piece of serene poetry and impassioned wisdom, a critic

complains that she rather transfigures the subject than shows it.

But, however much she may have transfigured it in description, in

person and experience she has shown it in the most beautiful form of

truth of which it is susceptible. Year by year, to the very end, she

became ever wiser, calmer, more influential, more honored and

beloved, more saintly and content. Her religious abnegation grew

perfect; her peace deepened; her active benevolence broadened; her

spirit, always genially tolerant, acquired a mellower ripeness. In

relation to one of her acquaintances, she says, "The last time I saw

him, I was struck by a kind of rigidity, of bitterness, a want of

charity in his judgments which injured their justice; for the more I

see, the more I am convinced that we must love in order to know." The

detestable Rochefoucauld said, "Old age is the hell of women." For

Madame Swetchine it had much more of paradise, as the rich ardor and

impetuosity of her youth slowly moderated, and, by judicious

oversight, she trained her powers into harmony among themselves and

submission to God. Long before, she had said that the saddest of all

sights was that of an aged woman, deprived of the consideration and

respect belonging to a serious life. Now she could say of herself, "I

have deserved most of the disappointments I have experienced; yet God

has softened them, as if he meant them not for penalties, but trials.

Benevolence surrounds me; my need of esteem is satisfied; I have

known the most distinguished people; my heart has been fortunate in

friendship. Self-detached, in a calm and sweet tranquillity, I need

no more, to close my course with courage." She was not one of those

who never speak of themselves because they are always thinking of

themselves. De Tocqueville, after receiving an epistle from her,

wrote back, with grateful delight in her frank and honoring

confidence, "Your letter is a full-length portrait of yourself." In

fact, she always spoke of herself with the utmost freedom, because

she looked at herself from without as she would at any other object.

Her last years were a fine illustration of her own thought, "Old age

is the majestic and imposing dome of human life."

The death of this memorable woman, touchingly described by Falloux in

a letter to Montalembert written at the time, was worthy of what had

gone before it, of the preparations she had made for it, and of the

glorious destiny to which she believed it the entrance. That "we are

to seek God, not deludedly wait for him to seek us," was not more the

maxim of her pen than of her practice. "I speak to others; but with

whom do I converse, if it be not, O my God with thee?" To one of the

group of tearful and venerating friends standing around her, she

said, "Do not, my good friend, ask for me one day more, or one pang

less." Without any decay of her faculties or waning of her moral

force, bearing her sufferings with invincible patience and sweetness,

maintaining a dignity of thought and speech comparable with that of

the last conversation of Socrates, but with the triumph of a perfect

Christian faith, she dropped what was mortal, and passed immortally

into the bosom of God. It was in September, 1857, and she was

seventy-five years young. The great, dazzling, guilty Paris has

loosed no purer or richer spirit for the skies. Her dust hallows the

cemetery of Montmartre, where, in the coming days, many a pilgrim

will go to look on her monument.

While Margaret Fuller was yet a little girl, in her father's house,

an elegant English lady came to pass a few weeks in Cambridge. Her

beauty, with her repose and softness of manner, wrought like a

strange spell on the idealizing spirit of the lonely and passionate

girl. She found the first angel of her life: heaven was opened; and

the image of the fair stranger, who soon vanished beyond the sea, was

an intoxicating vision in her brain, full of light and perfume, for

many a year. In her later life, Margaret formed impassioned

connections with a great many superior girls, who were drawn to her

by an affinity for her overflowing powers of intellect, feeling, and

aspiration. The last on the list of her friendships was the noble

Marchioness Arconati, in Italy. The entire intercourse of these two

women forms a chapter of devoted warmth and frankness. Through all

her life, Margaret felt the necessity for intense relations of

affection with the worthiest persons she met. One of her biographers

says, "Her friendships wore a look of such romantic exaggeration that

she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism. Yet,

in fact, Truth at all cost was her ruling maxim. Her earnestness to

read the hidden history of others was the gauge of her own emotion."

This prayer was found among the papers written in her earlier life:

"Father, I am weary. Re-assume me for a while, I pray thee. Oh, let

me rest awhile in thee, thou only Love! In the depth of my prayer, I

suffer much. Take me only awhile. No fellow-being will receive me. I

cannot pause: they will not detain me by their love. Take me awhile,

and again I will go forth on a renewed service. I sink from want of

rest; and none will shelter me. Thou knowest it all. Bathe me in thy

Love." Emerson says of her, "Her friendships, as a girl with girls,

as a woman with women, were not unmingled with passion, and had

passages of romantic sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have

heard with the ear, but could not trust my profane pen to report." At

the close of her life, amidst the ruins of Rome, she wrote, "I have

been the object of great love, from the noble and the humble: I have

felt it towards both. Yet I am tired out, tired of thinking and

hoping, tired of seeing men err and bleed. Coward and foot-sore,

gladly would I creep into some green recess, where I might see a few

not unfriendly faces, and where not more wretches should come than I

could relieve. I am weary, and faith soars and sings no more. Nothing

good of me is left, except, at the bottom of the heart, a melting

tenderness."

The Duchess of Orleans, that Helen of Mecklenburg who married the

eldest son of Louis Philippe, was one of those women whose exalted

charms of person, character, and manners glorify their sex, fascinate

all beholders, and win the enthusiastic devotion of their associates.

She was the worthy grand-daughter of that noble Duchess Louise of

Saxe-Weimar, wife of Carl August, the friend of Goethe and Schiller,

of whom Napoleon said, "Behold a woman whom all my cannon cannot

frighten." Through the checkered scenes of her brilliant and

melancholy lot, her happy childhood; her dazzling nuptials; her

enviable married life; the terrible shock of her sudden widowhood;

the frightful scenes of the revolution, when, with her infant son by

her side, she confronted the levelled muskets of the infuriated mob,

and looked massacre in the face, without the ruffle of a feature; the

dismal days of exile, decline, and death, she bore herself with that

sweet dignity, that spotless purity, that ineffable and sublime grace

of wisdom and goodness which sometimes appear to lift the perfection

of womanhood so nearly to the prerogatives of an angel. She had many

friends of her own sex, who cherished an idolatrous affection for

her. One of these, the inseparable companion of her existence, has

anonymously written a sketch of her life and character, a most

charming and impressive tribute. This modest memoir instructively

suggests far more than it betrays. The writer says of her adorable

friend, "Life was interesting by her side. She captivated the

imagination of every one. I know no other woman with whom I could

converse for twelve hours together, without for an instant feeling

void or weariness. I feel as if I had always something to say to her;

for her interest never flags." It is singular that, of all the

multitude who desire to enchain their friends, so few ever learn to

practise the deep secret contained in this italicized clause, the

innocent secret of a self-abnegating heart of love.

Sarah Austin, one of the wisest and noblest women of England, formed

a reverential and ardent friendship for this matchless lady, in her

adversity. How profound, how sacred this attachment was, is proved by

the notice which, on the day the duchess died, Mrs. Austin wrote, and

sent to the press, blotted with tears; and also by the fuller sketch

she afterwards prefixed to her English translation of the life of the

duchess from its French original. "Her character was always

presenting itself in new and harmonious lights; her manners were

indescribably refined and winning; her conversation never flagged,

was never trifling, never pedantic, never harsh; it always kept you

at an elevation which at once soothed and invigorated the mind. There

was not in her nature the slightest tinge of the cynical skepticism

or sarcastic contempt which chill the soul, and annihilate hope and

courage. These are the weapons which vulgar minds oppose to

misfortune, the bitter and poisonous plants which wrongs and

calamities produce in poor and barren hearts; but her tender and

magnanimous nature could bring forth nothing which was not good and

generous. It was most affecting to watch the working of her

transparent mind through its faithful index, her countenance, during

conversation.

"The interest her great qualities inspired was raised, by pity for her

cruel misfortunes, to a height which might almost be called a

passion. A veil of sadness overspread her sweet face; but behind this

veil there was always such a beaming benignity, so lovely a concern

for the welfare of mankind, such a high-hearted courage, that you

left her cheered rather than depressed. It is to the extraordinary

power she had of giving a high tone to the minds of others, joined to

the unalterable sweetness of her daily intercourse, that I attribute

the discouraged feeling common to those who mourn her loss. If her

misfortunes were august, solemn, and terrible as a Greek tragedy, her

heart was large, high, and strong enough to meet them. With all her

gentleness, Christian and womanly patience, the most striking feature

in her character was its moral grandeur.

"Greatness of mind and nobleness

Build in her loveliest, and create an awe

About her, as a guard angelic placed."

Such a woman is the highest exemplar and benefactor of her sex. A

religious quality is evoked in the soul that contemplates her. Every

impure feeling is struck dead with awe before her. The angelic

serenity of her face is as if the smiles which others wear outwardly,

with her had retreated inward, and hovered in perpetual play about

the heart. By spiritual contact with her, other persons become

angelic also. She teaches, by example, what a divine exaltation is

sometimes reached through adversity and pain. The head, discrowned of

earthly glory, is crowned with celestial beauty. When sufferings

stimulate virtues, the thorn-wreath blossoms on our brow: when

sacrifices feed faith, the cross which we clasp puts on wings and

lifts us heavenward.

I have reserved, to close this chapter, a singularly romantic example

of a pair of female friends, set forth by old Thomas Heywoode, in his

"Nine Books of Various History concerning Women," published at London

in 1624. A certain sinless maiden, called Bona, "who lived a retired

life in a house of religious Nunnes, had a bedfellow, unto whom,

above all others, she was tied, lying on her death-bed, and no help

to be devised for her recovery." This Bona, being herself in perfect

health, besought the Almighty, that she might not survive her friend;

but, as they had lived together in all sanctity and sisterly love, so

their chaste bodies might not be separated in death. As she prayed,

so it happened. Both died on the same day, and were buried in the

same sepulchre, being fellows in one house, one bed, and one grave;

and now, no question, joyful and joint inheritors of one kingdom.