a friendship between Chesterfield and Dr. Johnson, even had the latter
stooped to all the arts of sycophancy! The world can only inspire its
votaries with its own idolatries. Whatever is born of vanity will end in
vanity. "Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that
mirth is heaviness." But when we seek in friends that which can
perpetually refresh and never satiate,--the counsel which maketh wise,
the voice of truth and not the voice of flattery; that which will
instruct and never degrade, the influences which banish envy and
mistrust,--then there is a precious life in it which survives all
change. In the atmosphere of admiration, respect, and sympathy suspicion
dies, and base desires pass away for lack of their accustomed
nourishment; we see defects through the glass of our own charity, with
eyes of love and pity, while all that is beautiful is rendered radiant;
a halo surrounds the mortal form, like the glory which mediaeval
artists aspired to paint in the faces of Madonnas; and adoration
succeeds to sympathy, since the excellences we admire are akin to the
perfections we adore. "The occult elements" and "latent affinities," of
which material pursuits never take cognizance, are "influences as potent
in adding a charm to labor or repose as dew or air, in the natural
world, in giving a tint to flowers or sap to vegetation."

In that charmed circle, in which it would be difficult to say whether
Jerome or Paula presided, the aesthetic mission of woman was seen
fully,--perhaps for the first time,--which is never recognized when love
of admiration, or intellectual hardihood, or frivolous employments, or
usurped prerogatives blunt original sensibilities and sap the elements
of inward life. Sentiment proved its superiority over all the claims of
intellect,--as when Flora Macdonald effected the escape of Charles
Stuart after the fatal battle of Culloden, or when Mary poured the
spikenard on Jesus' head, and wiped his feet with the hairs of her head.