Lady
Ida Villiers and Florence Leslie we have a picture of a pair of noble
friends, proof against every trial. The black-hearted falsehood and
hate of Flora Rivers form an effective foil; and, incidentally, there
are many telling strokes and sidelights on the relations of women to
each other. "It is the fashion to deride female friendship," Grace
Aguilar says: "to look with scorn on those who profess it. There is
always to me a doubt of the warmth, the strength, and purity of her
feelings, when a girl merges into womanhood, looking down on female
friendship as romance and folly." The subtile and masterly knowledge
of the characters of women, their weaknesses and their strengths, is
not the least of the charms of that consummate work of art, "The
Princess" of Tennyson. Blanche, Melissa, Ida, Psyche, in their
unions, Two women faster welded in one love Than pairs of wedlock, in
their jealousies, quarrels, aspirations, sorrows, are psychological
studies full of delicate truth. Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"
discusses many of the same topics, in a manner characteristically
contrasting with Tennyson's, but marked by all her own
conscientiousness, power, and care. Lady Waldemar, Marian Erle,
Aurora Leigh, with the unsparing censures, magnanimous thoughts, and
burning aspirations strewn through this profound and massive work,
are lasting lessons for all womankind. It seems to have been much
easier for most of the critics of this great work to feel its
artistic faults, its jarring metre, and cumbrous forms, than to
appreciate the transcendent nobleness and wisdom wrought into it from
the soul of its creator.

School-girl friendships are a proverb in all mouths. They form one of
the largest classes of those human attachments whose idealizing power
and sympathetic interfusions glorify the world and sweeten existence.
With what quick trust and ardor, what eager relish, these susceptible
creatures, before whom heavenly illusions float, surrender themselves
to each other, taste all the raptures of confidential conversation,
lift veil after veil till every secret is bare, and, hand in hand,
with glowing feet, tread the paths of paradise Perhaps a more
impassioned portrayal of this kind of union is not to be found in
literature than the picture in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," which
Shakespeare makes Helena hold before Hermia, when the death of their
love was threatened by the appearance of Lysander and Demetrius:

Is all the counse