on, to form a sound judgment and a pure taste from
your own observations: your mind, while yet young and flexible, may
receive whatever impressions you wish. Be careful that your abilities do
not inspire in you too much confidence, lest it should happen to you as it
has to many others, that they have never possessed any greater merit than
that of having good abilities."

One more extract, to preserve an incident which may touch the heart of
genius. This extraordinary woman, whose characteristic is that of strong
sense combined with delicacy of feeling, would check her German
sentimentality at the moment she was betraying those emotions in which the
imagination is so powerfully mixed up with the associated feelings.
Arriving at their cottage at Sihlwald, she proceeds--"On entering the
parlour three small pictures, painted by you, met my eyes. I passed some
time in contemplating them. It is now a year, I thought, since I saw him
trace these pleasing forms; he whistled and sang, and I saw them grow
under his pencil; now he is far, far from us. In short, I had the weakness
to press my lips on one of these pictures. You well know, my dear son,
that I am not much addicted to scenes of a sentimental turn; but to-day,
while I considered your works, I could not restrain this little impulse of
maternal feelings. Do not, however, be apprehensive that the tender
affection of a mother will ever lead me too far, or that I shall suffer my
mind to be too powerfully impressed with the painful sensations to which
your absence gives birth. My reason convinces me that it is for your
welfare that you are now in a place where your abilities will have
opportunities of unfolding, and where you can become great in your art."

Such was the incomparable wife and mother of the GESNERS! Will it now be a
question whether matrimony be incompatible with the cultivation of the
arts? A wife who reanimates the drooping genius of her husband, and a
mother who is inspired by the ambition of beholding her sons eminent, is
she not the real being which the ancients personified in their Muse?

CHAPTER XIX.

Literary friendships.--In early life.--Different from those of men of the
world.--They suffer an unrestrained communication of their ideas, and bear
reprimands and exhortations.--Unity of feelings.--A sympathy not of
manners but of feelings.--Admit of dissimilar characters.--Their peculiar
glory.--Their sorrow.

Among the virtues which literatur