ain
drawn towards home, and that by a magnet which attracted me strongly
at all times: it was my sister." Cornelia had superior endowments of
mind, great force and truth of character; but she keenly felt her
want of beauty, "a want richly compensated by the unbounded
confidence and love borne to her by all her female friends." And yet
Goethe says, "When my connection with Gretchen was torn asunder, my
sister consoled me the more warmly, because she felt the secret
satisfaction of having got rid of a rival; and I, too, could not but
feel a great pleasure when she did me the justice to assure me that I
was the only one who truly loved, understood, and esteemed her." At
twenty-three, Cornelia was married to one of Goethe's intimate
friends, Schlosser; and, in four years, she died. In one of her
brother's frequent allusions to her, this striking trait is recorded:
"Her eyes were not the finest I have ever seen, but the deepest,
behind which you expected the most meaning; and when they expressed
any affection, any love, their glance was without its equal." In his
autobiography, written long, long after her death, he says,

"As I lost this beloved, incomprehensible being but too early, I felt
inducement enough to picture her excellence to myself; and so there
arose within me the conception of a poetic whole, in which it might
have been possible to exhibit her individuality: no other form could
be thought of for it than that of the Richardsonian romance. But the
tumult of the world called me away from this beautiful and pious
design, as it has from so many others; and nothing now remains for me
but to call up, for a moment, that blessed spirit, as if by the aid
of a magic mirror."

A relation of a more absorbing character than the foregoing existed
between Jacobi and his sister Lena. "For a long series of years,"
Steffens writes, "she lived one life with her brother, even ennobling
and exalting him by her presence. She took part in all his studies,
all his controversies; and changed the still self-communion of the
lonely man into a long conversation." There are many accounts, given
by contemporaries, of her minute carefullness for him and unwearied
devotion to him. Some make the picture a little comical, from the
excess of coddling; but all agree as to the unfailing and
affectionate sincerity of their attachment.

There was an uncommon friendship between Chateaubriand and his
youngest sister, Lucile, a girl of extreme beau