It is in cities where real solitude dwells,
since friends are scattered, "and crowds are not company, and faces are
only as a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where
there is no love."

The history of Jerome and Paula suggests another reflection,--that the
friendship which would have immortalized them, had they not other and
higher claims to the remembrance and gratitude of mankind, rarely exists
except with equals. There must be sympathy in the outward relations of
life, as we are constituted, in order for men and women to understand
each other. Friendship is not philanthropy: it is a refined and subtile
sentiment which binds hearts together in similar labors and experiences.
It must be confessed it is exclusive, esoteric,--a sort of moral
freemasonry. Jerome, and the great bishops, and the illustrious ladies
to whom I allude, all belonged to the same social ranks. They spent
their leisure hours together, read the same books, and kindled at the
same sentiments. In their charmed circle they unbent; indulged,
perchance, in ironical sallies on the follies they alike despised. They
freed their minds, as Cicero did to Atticus; they said things to each
other which they might have hesitated to say in public, or among fools
and dunces. I can conceive that those austere people were sometimes even
merry and jocose. The ignorant would not have understood their learned
allusions; the narrow-minded might have been shocked at the treatment of
their shibboleths; the vulgar would have repelled them by coarseness;
the sensual would have disgusted them by their lower tastes.

There can be no true harmony among friends when their sensibilities are
shocked, or their views are discrepant. How could Jerome or Paula have
discoursed with enthusiasm of the fascinations of Eastern travel to
those who had no desire to see the sacred places; or of the charms of
Grecian literature to those who could talk only in Latin; or of the
corrupting music of the poets to people of perverted taste; or of the
sublimity of the Hebrew prophets to those who despised the Jews; or of
the luxury of charity to those who had no superfluities; or of the
beatitudes of the passive virtues to soldiers; or of the mysteries of
faith to speculating rationalists; or of the greatness of the infinite
to those who lived in passing events? A Jewish prophet must have seemed
a rhapsodist to Athenian critics, and a Grecian philosopher a conceited
cynic to a con