ch other with the sympathy of a total esteem, based on a common
devotion to the supreme prizes of the universe, whose reflected
lustre already transfigures their spirits and sanctifies their
persons in each other's eyes.

Many a husband and wife are also made friends, above all their mere
love, by sharing in some earnest and condign social ambition. How
many a man of genius has been chiefly indebted for his achievements
to the wife who has sedulously identified herself with his success,
ever at his side, unseen perhaps by the world, studying his art,
lightening his tasks, soothing his pride, healing his hurts,
stimulating his confidence, baffling his enemies, gaining him patrons
or allies, assuaging his falls, refreshing his energy for new trials,
and, when he has triumphed, and is applauded on his eminence,
silently drinking in, as her reward, the popular admiration bestowed
on him.

This intense co operation and struggle towards an outer goal, when
unneutralized, produces that wondrous identification which is the
type of complete friendship. A crowd of the most brilliant artists,
authors, statesmen, might each point to his wife, and say, "To that
bosom friend, to that guardian angel, to her quick intelligence,
unfailing consolation, steady stimulus, I principally owe, under
Heaven, what I am and what I have done." Many beautiful delineations
of this fact have been given in fiction. The picture of Lord and Lady
Davenant, in Miss Edgeworth's "Helen," is worthy of particular
mention as a picture drawn to the life.

Nothing in fiction, however, is finer or more commanding, as an
example of the true relation of the sexes, than is afforded in real
life by the biography of Lord William and Lady Russell. Every such
historic instance has a benign lesson for our time, in which, it is
to be feared, many bad influences are working with fatal effect,
temporarily at least, to lessen the attractions and undermine the
sanctity of marriage, Guizot ends his beautiful and noble essay on
the married life of Lord and Lady Russell with this impressive
paragraph:

"I have felt profound pleasure in relating the history of this lady,
so pure in her passion, always great and always humble in her
greatness, devoted with equal ardor to her feelings and her duties in
grief and joy, in triumph and adversity. Our times are attacked with
a deplorable malady: men believe only in the passion which is
attended with moral derangement. All ardent,