TO ANNA CABOT LODGE, A TRUE AND GENEROUS FRIEND, THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED WITH THE DEEPEST SENTIMENTS OF ESTEEM AND GRATITUDE (continued 5)

Alexander testified his respect and regret, when Madame Swetchine departed to reside in Paris, by asking her to be his correspondent. The correspondence was continued until his death, ten years afterwards. The Emperor Nicholas, on his accession, restored to Madame Swetchine all her letters; and she allowed an eminent statesman, in 1845, to read the whole collection. After her death, no trace of it was to be found among her papers. It must possess an intense interest; and it is to be hoped that it still exists, and may yet one day see the light.

Perhaps the most intimate and truly devoted of all the friends of Madame Swetchine was that accomplished member of the French Academy whose biographic and editorial labors have erected such an attractive and perdurable monument to her memory, the Count Alfred de Falloux. The soul of reverence, gratitude, and love exhales in his sentences when he writes of her. After describing what "she was to all who had the inexpressible happiness of knowing her," he acids, "and this she will now be to all who shall read her; and death will but give to her words one consecration more." But the modesty of M. de Falloux has not given the public her letters to him, and has kept his personal relations with her much in the background. We are left to guess the measure and the activity of their friendship, from indirect indications.

On the whole, possibly because of the editor's reticence as to himself, we are left to believe, that the friend who held the pre-eminent place in the heart of Madame Swetchine, during the last twenty-five years of her life, was Father Lacordaire, the illustrious Catholic preacher. A complete picture of this ardent and unfaltering friendship is shown in the letters of the two parties, gathered in an octavo volume of nearly six hundred pages. We know not where, in the annals of human affection, to find the account of a friendship more spotless or more morally satisfying than this. The volume which preserves and exhibits it will be found by all who are duly interested in the psychology and experience of persons so extraordinary, both for their genius in society, and for the quantity and quality of their private experience full of solid instruction and romantic interest. The inner life of Madame Swetchine was a sacred epic: the outer career of Lacordaire, an electrifying drama. This double interest of a private, spiritual ascent, and of a chivalrous gallantry in the thick of battle, is clearly unfolded in the book before us.

The chivalrous young Count de Montalembert was one of the dearest friends of Madame Swetchine. She said that his soul seemed formed under the inspiration of the fine thought of Plato: "The beautiful as a means of reaching the true." Behold, in the following extract from one of the many letters in which she strove to pacify his perturbed spirit, by recalling him from the war of politics, and reconciling his passionate reformatory sentiments with the ruling principles and authorities of the Catholic Church, the tender wisdom and affection with which she speaks: "You seize only on the disinterested and poetic side of these questions, but all the same you are in the battle, giving and taking blows. And thus, with a mind perfectly high-toned and honorable, a crystal which is almost a diamond, with faultless habits, and all the believing and pious sentiments they involve, you have neither the heart's sweet joy nor its sweet peace. The reason why you are so ill at ease, is, that your conscience lies so near your heart that their voices and their troubles are confounded. My dear Charles, will you not reward me by being all that my wishes and my prayers would fain make you? I will not say whether you have the power to rejoice or afflict my heart; but, when you woke in me a mother's emotions, I cannot believe that you condemned me to the sorrow of Rachel."

One day this beloved young man led to the drawing-room of his maternal friend his heart's brother, the eloquent Lacordaire, then in the early renown of his wonderful career of ecclesiastical oratory. Madame Swetchine had already been deeply moved by his preaching, and was desirous of knowing him. She quickly won his confidence, and became, what she ever continued to be, a ministering angel to his spirit. She was much older than he, much more profoundly versed in human nature, much more soberly balanced and calm in soul. With a vigilance, a wisdom, and a tenderness that were unwearied and inexhaustible, she watched his course, studied the wants of his mind and heart, and labored, as need was, alternately to confirm his sinking courage and to soothe his excited imagination. Without being ostensibly such, she was really his spiritual director. "Her subtile and tender spirit," as Dora Greenwell has remarked, "seems to move across his heart, to woo and to caress it to peace and goodness, to call out its deepest concords, as the hand of the skilled musician moves across his instrument, knowing well each fret and chord of the sweet viol he doth love."

It was the greatness, not the weakness, of Lacordaire, that, before loving God, he had loved glory. Few men have spirit enough truly to seek fame: it is notice which they wish. The heart of Lacordaire was a pure fire, encased in a cold intellect. It reminds us of an intense flame clothed in transparent ice. Sometimes, he said, he hardly knew whether his voice was moved from within by the spirit, or from without by renown. In regard to every such scruple Madame Swetchine was an infallible counsellor. Her advice was as the speech of incarnate reason and love in their most purified and exalted form. The heavy perfume that drenched his oratoric atmosphere would have intoxicated most men with self-adulation; but he offset every such allurement by constantly withdrawing from trifles, excitements, and seductions, and spending long hours in the unbroken solitude of thought and the awful neighborhood of God. If both these extremes brilliant public triumphs, and severe seclusion and asceticism had their special dangers, Madame Swetchine was his resistless guardian against them both. No one who has not read their correspondence, reaching richly through a whole generation, can easily imagine the services rendered by this gifted and saintly woman to this holy and powerful man. Community of faith, of loyalty, of nobleness, joined them. It was in looking to heaven together that their souls grew united. Drawn by the same attractions, and held by one sovereign allegiance, such souls need no vows, nor lean on any foreign support. The divinity of truth and good is their bond.

No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, Their noble meanings are their pawns: And so thoroughly is known Each other's counsel by his own, They can parley without meeting.

At first Madame Swetchine shrank from the excessive agitation she underwent in listening to the great sermons of Lacordaire in Notre Dame. "I go through all his perils," she said: "I tremble at every rock; I feel every stroke. His way of speaking acts upon the human soul in the same way as sanctity: it wounds; but it enraptures." At length her attendance on his sermons became so constant, and her pleasure and admiration so obvious, that many of the congregation supposed her to be literally, as she was morally, his mother. One day, as she was leaning against a pillar in the crowded church, her face upturned towards the pulpit, two persons were heard whispering to each other: "Would you like to see the preacher's mother?" "Why, she died ten years ago." "No, there she is: look at her."

The genius of Madame Swetchine was sweeter, serener, more tolerant, than that of her friend. Her influence on him in these respects was benignant. He thought more of the strict doctrine: she, more of the broad and charitable spirit. She once said, concerning dogmas, that she could consent to see the ocean filtered to a thread of water, if it but remained pure. He wrote to her, "My dear friend, you have proved yourself deficient in holy anger; otherwise you would not have been able to tolerate M." His electric, vehement soul needed exactly the check her reflective subtilty and prudent consideration gave. So she tells him once, "I acted as your ballast, or rather I held you by the skirts of your garment, to retard your too impetuous movements. Perhaps these are the very attributes with which you would have done well to invest some one at Rome, who might have united the two conditions which I fulfilled so perfectly: first, that of not being you, either in natural disposition, antecedents, or age; second, and more essential, that of loving you better than you could possibly love yourself."

With the lapse of years, their attachment grew closer and deeper. Lacordaire writes from Rome, "I have been bitterly disappointed in not hearing from you. You know what a need one has of friendly words when one is alone and so far away." And when the epistle comes, he writes to her, "I had no sooner opened your letter than my soul was inundated with joy." Again he says, "I found in your last letter the expression of an affection so tender, and a watchfullness so fixed, that I was melted by it, even to tears." "Your letters are always to me a balm and a force." In excuse of his own reserve, he strikingly writes, "Women have this admirable quality, that they can talk as much as they wish, as they wish, with what expression they wish: their heart is a fountain that flows naturally. The heart of man, especially mine, is like those volcanoes whose lava leaps forth only at intervals after a convulsion." We find Madame Swetchine saying, in one of her letters to Lacordaire, "I protest against long silences: they are to me that vacuum of which nature has a horror." The exceeding care which this discreet woman took always to administer her advice, her praise, or rebuke, in such a way as not to offend or injure the most sensitive recipient of it, is a rare lesson for others. Lacordaire once wrote to her, although he knew very well how guileless was the motive of her managements, "You say, dear friend, that you fear to displease me in speaking your thought about me. I assure you my sole reproach is, that you are too circumspect and delicate in your style of expression. I appreciate all the more that flattery which is the guardian escort of truth, because it is wholly wanting to me. I speak things out too bluntly; and it is true that almost always men need an extreme sweetness in the language of those who would benefit them. The heart is like the eyes: it cannot bear too glaring a light. However, I find you excessive in the art of shades." Soon afterwards he says, "Excuse my franknesses; with you, as with God. I can say every thing." Scarcely ever did a man owe more to a woman than this eloquent and heroic priest to the heavenly- minded friend who said she loved him as father, brother, and son, all at once. He deeply felt his debt, and faithfully paid it. He paid it in loving words and attentions, while she lived, and in a tribute of immortal eloquence when she was dead. "You appeared to me," he tells her, "between two distinct parts of my life, as the angel of the Lord might appear to a soul wavering between life and death, between earth and heaven." To a common friend he wrote of her, "Her soul was to mine what the shore is to the plank shattered by the waves; and I still remember, after the lapse of twenty-five years, all the light and strength she afforded to me when I was young and unknown." He dedicated to her his "Life of Saint Dominic," saying, "I wish that some one of your descendants may one day know that his ancestress was a woman whom Saint Jerome would have loved as he loved Paula and Marcella, one who needed only a pen illustrious and saintly enough to do her justice." Hearing of her last illness, he made a journey of six hundred miles, to be with her, and lavished on her every winning word and act that filial love and reverence could suggest; and, after all was over, he pronounced on her a funeral address, which will always rank with the highest trophies of his genius. No other words can be so fitting as his own to close this sketch:

"She belongs to the nation of the great minds of our age. In a time of intellectual dependence, when parties bore every thing in their train, she made no engagement, and submitted to no attraction: she isolated every question from the noise around her, and placed it in the silence of eternity. A constant simplicity and an equal elevation gave to her ideas a personal influence. This double charm might be resisted; but she could not fail to be loved herself, and to inspire the desire to become better. Happy mouth, which for forty years made not an enemy to God, but which poured into a multitude of wounded or languishing hearts the germ of the resurrection and the rapture of life! Alas! dear and illustrious lady. I cannot attach to your name the glory of those Roman women whom Saint Jerome has immortalized; and yet you were of their race. Conquered for God through the language of France, you wished to live under the French speech; and, quitting a country you alwaysloved, you came among us with the modesty of a disciple and of an exile. But you brought us more than we gave you. The light of your soul illumined the land which received you, and for forty years you were for us the sweetest echo of the gospel and the surest road to honor."

FRIENDSHIPS OF MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PAIRS OF FEMALE FRIENDS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lines may remind one of the pathetic sentiment expressed almost two hundred years later by a kindred heart. Eugenie de Guerin 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 Guenderode, considerably older than herself, though still young, with rare mental endowments and romantic affections. The cultivated intellect, spirituality, and mystic melancholy of Guenderode, 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; Guenderode, 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.

Guenderode, 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, Guenderode 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 Guenderode: "I wrote down, To-day I saw Guenderode: 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 Guenderode, 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, "Guenderode 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. 'Guenderode,' said I, if thou art in earnest, give me a sign. She nodded.