did a son more thoroughly idolize a
beautiful and good mother, than was realized between Madame Recamier
and Ampere. Solely to please her, this most entertaining and most
courted man in Paris devoted himself not merely to her, which would
have been easy; but to Chateaubriand, which was difficult. Nothing
can better illustrate her irresistible charm. And nothing can better
illustrate the coarseness and ignorance of many of our critics, than
the presumption with which one of them, in 1864, speaking of Ampere's
funeral, says, "He was one of Madame Recamier's many lovers, and was
bitterly disappointed at her refusal to marry him after the death of
Chateaubriand!"

Such were the few principal men who penetrated to the centre of that
select circle, in whose outer ranges of general benevolence the right
of citizenship was granted to so many choice figures. Among the more
distinguished of these latter may be named Benjamin Constant, the
Duke de Doudeauville, De Gerando, Prosper de Barante, Delacroix,
Gerard, Thierry, Ville-main, Lamartine, Guizot, De Tocqueville,
Sainte Beuve. Surrounded by such persons as these, in the humble
chamber to which, on the loss of her fortune, she had betaken
herself, she presided like a priestess in the temple of friendship,
ever pre-occupied with them, their glory her dominant passion, never
herself seeking to shine, but intent only to elicit and display their
gifts. Was it not natural, that they should, in the humorous phrase
of Ballanche, "gravitate towards the centre of the Abbaye-aux-Bois"?

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett allows us a few glimpses into two
friendships, which, to a nature like hers, we cannot but think must
have been nobly precious. One, celebrated in her poem of "Cyprus
Wine," was with Hugh Stuart Boyd, who amused himself during some
weary periods in his blindness with the grateful occupation of
teaching her to read Greek. The other was with her cousin, John
Kenyon, author of "A Rhymed Plea for Tolerance," to whom she so
expressively inscribes the most elaborate work of her life, "Aurora
Leigh."

It is difficult to find any more remarkable example of the
inspiration, the balm, and the joy a great man may derive from the
pure friendship of an appreciative woman than that which is furnished
in the relation between Auguste Comte and Madame Clotilde de Vaux. In
his "Catechism of Positive Religion," and in the preface and
dedication of the first volume of his "System of Positive Poli