from some healthy person. Anna, then in the full bloom of youth,
instantly offered her own veins. The project was abandoned from want
of sufficiently delicate instruments. But the countess was deeply
affected by the generous offer of her friend, and repaid it with the
most affectionate attachment. She was restored to health; and, on
returning home, sent Miss Seward the gift of a set of jewels, in
token of her love. They continued to correspond with each other until
the tragic death of the countess by the accidental burning of her
dress.

The most remarkable instance in history, perhaps, of a pair of female
friends is the romantic example of the Ladies of Llangollen, whose
story, widely renowned two generations ago, is now obliterated from
popular knowledge, save in meagre literary allusions.

A little after the middle of the eighteenth century, Lady Eleanor
Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, two young women of wealth and high
station, formed an extreme mutual attachment, and were possessed with
an ardent desire to forsake the world, and devote their lives to each
other. Taking measures accordingly, they departed to an obscure
retreat in the country. Their relatives frowned on this eccentricity,
traced them out in their hiding-place, and, despite their
protestations, separated them, and brought them back. But they soon
effected a second elopement, which proved a successful and permanent
one. Confiding the place of their flight only to a single faithful
servant, they sacrificed, in the prime of their lives, the prizes and
the glare of the fashionable world, and settled down in a secret nook
of beauty and peace. In the romantic Valley of Llangollen, in Wales,
one of the sweetest and quietest spots on earth, they bought a
charming cottage, fitted it up with every comfort, and adorned it
with exquisite taste. Here, in this remote and lovely haunt, amply
provided with books, pictures, and other means of culture, giving
themselves up to the enjoyment of their own society, they lived
together in uninterrupted contentment for nearly threescore years.
For a long period, their neighbors, ignorant of their names, knew
them only as the "Ladies of the Vale." For a quarter of a century, it
is said, they never spent twenty-four hours at a time out of their
happy valley.

They seem never to have fallen out, never to have wearied of each
other, never to have repented of their repudiation of public life. By
books and correspondence, th