parental love. "The men," La Bruyere says, "are the
occasion that women do not love each other." With the one-sided
exaggeration incident to most aphorisms, this is true. Husband and
children occupy the wife and mother; and marriage is often the grave
of feminine friendships. According to the maxim of Saint Paul, "The
head of the woman is the man:" the attraction of another woman must
generally be weaker. The lives of men are the sighs of nature: the
lives of women are their echoes. The sharp-eyed Richter says, "A
woman, unlike Narcissus, seeks not her own image and a second I: she
much prefers a not-I." This profound remark exactly touches the
difference between friendship and love, and between the respective
relations of man and woman to the two sentiments. Friendship is the
simple reflection of souls by each other. Love is the mutual
reflection of their entire being by two persons, each supplementing
the defects of the other. Love, therefore, is friendship, with a
differential addition. True love includes friendship, as the greater
includes the smaller. Now, the self-sufficient character of man makes
him seek a second I; that is, wish to see himself reflected in
another. But the sympathetic character of woman makes her seek a not-
I; that is, wish to see another reflected in herself. It is incorrect
to say, that woman has less capacity than man for friendship: it is
correct only to say, that man is more easily satisfied with
friendship than woman is. She demands that, and something more; and
every page of history teems with the records of that something more,
the heavenly records of the sufferings, sacrifices, and triumphs of
woman's love. When this imperial sentiment is baffled, and yet the
soul remains mistress of herself, it is impossible that the next
strongest sentiment should not, in all available instances, be
cultivated as a solace and vicegerent. One of the renowned apothegms
of that sinister moralist, Rochefoucauld, is, "Women feel friendship
insipid after love." But he should have limited his remark to vicious
women. It will not apply to virtuous women. Jane Austin, who in
knowledge of the feminine heart has few equals, says, "Friendship is
certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."

Women are more sensitive and acute than men, more delicate
electrometers for all the imponderable agencies of sympathy; and this
greater penetration makes them more fastidious, gives them better
ability in