e she
was sibyl and seer,--a prophetess, revealing the future, pointing the
path, opening their eyes to the great aims only worthy of pursuit
in life. To those older than herself she was like the Euphorion
in Goethe's drama, child of Faust and Helen,--a wonderful union
of exuberance and judgment, born of romantic fulness and classic
limitation. They saw with surprise her clear good-sense balancing her
now of sentiment and ardent courage. They saw her comprehension of
both sides of every question, and gave her their confidence, as to one
of equal age, because of so ripe a judgment.

But it was curious to see with what care and conscience she kept her
friendships distinct. Her fine practical understanding, teaching
her always the value of limits, enabled her to hold apart all her
intimacies, nor did one ever encroach on the province of the other.
Like a moral Paganini, she played always on a single string, drawing
from each its peculiar music,--bringing wild beauty from the slender
wire, no less than from the deep-sounding harp string. Some of her
friends had little to give her when compared with others; but I never
noticed that she sacrificed in any respect the smaller faculty to the
greater. She fully realized that the Divine Being makes each part
of this creation divine, and that He dwells in the blade of grass as
really if not as fully as in the majestic oak which has braved the
storm for a hundred years. She felt in full the thought of a poem
which she once copied for me from Barry Cornwall, which begins thus:--

"She was not fair, nor full of grace,
Nor crowned with thought, nor aught beside
No wealth had she of mind or face,
To win our love, or gain our pride,--
No lover's thought her heart could touch,--
No poet's dream was round her thrown;
And yet we miss her--ah, so much!
Now--she has flown."

I will close this section of Cambridge Friendship with the two
following passages, the second of which was written to some one
unknown to me:

'Your letter was of cordial sweetness to me, as is ever the
thought of our friendship,--that sober-suited friendship, of
which the web was so deliberately and well woven, and which
wears so well.

* * * * *

'I want words to express the singularity of all my past
relations; yet let me try.

'From a very early age I have felt that I was not born to the
common womanly lot. I knew I should neve