man wants, are scarcely anywhere more clearly shown
than in her person and story. The pronounced character, the uncommon
talents, the rare combination of extreme candor and tact, the broad,
intellectual culture, and impulsive demonstrativeness of the youthful
Jewess, very soon gave her a prominent position in society, and made
her fascination felt and talked about. Her first advent and sway
prophesied her future renown as the most celebrated woman in Germany
who has kept an open drawing-room for the practice of conversation
and the joy of intellectual society. It was said of her, at that
early period, "She was full of an obliging good temper, that made her
anticipate wishes, divine annoyances in order to relieve them, and
forget herself in seeking to make others happy."

Her thirtieth year she spent in France, where she had the finest
opportunities for studying the famous salon-life of Paris. Without
being captivated or at all overborne by it, she no doubt drew many
lessons and profited much from it, on carrying her German soul back
to her German home. Returning to Berlin, she bewitched all the choice
spirits of that city. Married to Varnhagen von Ense, her house was,
for a quarter of a century, the rendezvous of whatever was noblest,
purest, strongest, most distinguished in Germany. She moved among
them as a queen, looked up to by all. She had glowing and sustained
friendships, emphatically rich and faithful friendships, of the
highest moral order, with Marwitz, Gentz, Prince Louis Ferdinand,
Brinckmann, and Veit; besides relations of earnest affection and
communion with many other honored contemporaries, such as
Schleiermacher, Schlegel, and Jean Paul.

In addition to sketches of her by different hands, we possess five
volumes, drawn chiefly from her own pen and edited by her husband,
containing records of her thoughts, portraits of her closest friends,
and full accounts of her intercourse and correspondence with them. In
all this literary transcript, as in the course of experience which it
copies, the most conspicuous element is friendship, the reception,
reciprocation, culture, and expression of friendship. The king among
her friends was her lover and husband, Varnhagen von Ense; her union
with whom was not more a marriage of persons, than it was a marriage
of minds, souls, interior lives, and social interests and ends. It is
principally through him, next after her own writings, that welearn
the characteristics of