nd activity mixed with
her alliances, as to breathe a certain dignity and myrrh through them
all. She and her friends are fellow-students with noblest moral aims.
She is there for help and for counsel. 'Be to the best thou knowest
ever true!' is her language to one. And that was the effect of her
presence. Whoever conversed with her felt challenged by the strongest
personal influence to a bold and generous life. To one she wrote,--

'Could a word from me avail you, I would say, that I have firm
faith that nature cannot be false to her child, who has shown
such an unalterable faith in her piety towards her.'

* * * * *

'These tones of my dear ----'s lyre are of the noblest. Will
they sound purely through her experiences? Will the variations
be faithful to the theme? Not always do those who most
devoutly long for the Infinite, know best how to modulate
their finite into a fair passage of the eternal Harmony.

'How many years was it the cry of my spirit,--

"Give, give, ye mighty Gods!
Why do ye thus hold back?"--

and, I suppose, all noble young persons think for the time
that they would have been more generous than the Olympians.
But when we have learned the high lesson _to deserve_,--that
boon of manhood,--we see they esteemed us too much, to give
what we had not earned.'

The following passages from her journal and her letters are
sufficiently descriptive, each in its way, of her strong affections.

'At Mr. G.'s we looked over prints, the whole evening, in
peace. Nothing fixed my attention so much as a large engraving
of Madame Recamier in her boudoir. I have so often thought
over the intimacy between her and Madame De Stael.

'It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and
a man with a man. I like to be sure of it, for it is the same
love which angels feel, where--

'"Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib."

'It is regulated by the same law as that of love between
persons of different sexes; only it is purely intellectual and
spiritual. Its law is the desire of the spirit to realize a
whole, which makes it seek in another being what it finds not
in itself. Thus the beautiful seek the strong, and the strong
the beautiful; the mute seeks the eloquent, &c.; the butterfly
settles always on the dark flower. Why did Socrates love
Alcibiades? W