Nightingale
sweetening the memory of the Crimean war with philanthropic deeds.
What group of men indeed can be brought together, more distinct in
individuality, more contrasted in diversity of traits and destiny,
than such women as Eve in the Garden of Eden, Mary at the foot of the
cross, Rebecca by the well, Semiramis on her throne, Ruth among the
corn, Jezebel in her chariot, Lais at a banquet, Joan of Arc in
battle, Tomyris striding over the field with the head of Cyrus in a
bag of blood, Perpetua smiling on the lions in the amphitheatre,
Martha cumbered with much service, Pocahontas under the shadow of the
woods, Saint Theresa in the convent, Madame Roland on the scaffold,
Mother Agnes at Port Royal, exiled De Stael wielding her pen as a
sceptre, and Mrs. Fry lavishing her existence on outcasts!

In searching for the friendships of women, it is difficult at first
to find striking examples. Their lives are so private, their
dispositions are so modest, their experiences have been so little
noticed by history, that the annals of the feminine heart are for the
most part a secret chapter. But a sufficiently patient search will
cause a beautiful multitude of such instances to reveal themselves.
Nothing, perhaps, will strike the literary investigator of the
subject more forcibly than the frequency with which he meets the
expressed opinion, that women really have few or no friendships; that
with them it must be either love, hate, or nothing. A writer in one
of our popular periodicals has recently ventured this dogmatic
assertion: "If the female mind were not happily impervious to logic,
we might demonstrate, even to its satisfaction, that the history of
the sex presents no single instance of a famous friendship." Before
we get through our work, we shall meet with abundant confutations of
this rash and uncomplimentary statement.

Swift says, "To speak the truth, I never yet knew a tolerable woman
to be fond of her own sex." The statement, if taken with too wide a
meaning, might have been refuted by the sight, under his eyes, of the
cordial and life-long affection of Miss Johnson and Lady Gifford, the
sister of Sir William Temple. He could not expect a Stella and a
Vanessa to be friends: an exclusive love for a common object
inevitably made them deadly rivals. But the author of "Gulliver's
Travels" was a keen observer; his maxims have always a basis in fact;
and it is undoubtedly true that women of exceptional cleverness