prefer the wit, wisdom, and earnestness of the more cultivated
members of the other sex to the too frequent ignorance and triviality
of their own. Undoubtedly, in most societies, women of unusual genius
and accomplishments can more easily find congenial companionship with
men than with women. But to infer from this any natural
incompatibility for friendships between women is to draw a monstrous
inference, wholly unwarranted by the premises. In the sensible
chapter of "A Woman's Thoughts about Women," which Miss Muloch
devotes to this subject, she says, "The friendships of women are much
more common than those of men; but rarely or never so firm, so just,
or so enduring." But then she proceeds, justly, though with a little
inconsistency, to say, "With women these relations may be
sentimental, foolish, and fickle; but they are honest, free from
secondary motives of interest, and infinitely more respectable than
the time-serving, place-hunting, dinner-seeking devotion which
Messrs. Tape and Tadpole choose to denominate friendship." That the
sharper and sincerer feelings of women make them more capable than
men of sacrificing their interests to their passions, less likely to
sacrifice their passions to their interests, and that they are more
absorbed by their sympathies and antipathies, admits of no question.

Eugenie de Guerin, a woman of the rarest heart and soul, wrote in her
journal, a few years ago, this passage, which has already grown
famous: "I have ever sought a friendship so strong and earnest that
only death could break it; a happiness and unhappiness which I had,
alas! in my brother Maurice. No woman has been, or will be, able to
replace him; not even the most distinguished has been able to give me
that bond of intelligence and of tastes, that broad, simple, and
lasting relation. There is nothing fixed, enduring, vital, in the
feelings of women; their attachments to each other are so many pretty
bows of ribbons. I notice these light affections in all female
friends. Can we not, then, love each other differently? I neither
know an example in history nor am acquainted with one in the present.
Orestes and Pylades have no sisters. It makes me impatient, when I
think of it, that you men have something in your hearts which is
wanting to us. In return we have devotedness." It is striking to
notice the identity of sentiment here with that in the maxim of La
Bruyere: "In love women exceed the generality of men, but in
f