Robert Hall by his plebeian parishioners; and had not Mrs. Unwin been as
refined as she was sympathetic, she would never have soothed the morbid
melancholy of Cowper, while the attentions of a fussy, fidgety,
talkative, busy wife of a London shopkeeper would have driven him
absolutely mad, even if her disposition had been as kind as that of
Dorcas, and her piety as warm as that of Phoebe. Paula was to Jerome
what Arbella Johnson was to John Winthrop, because their tastes, their
habits, their associations, and their studies were the same,--they were
equals in rank, in culture, and perhaps in intellect.

But I would not give the impression that congenial tastes and habits and
associations formed the basis of the holy friendship between Paula and
Jerome. The fountain and life of it was that love which radiated from
the Cross,--an absorbing desire to extend the religion which saves the
world. Without this foundation, their friendship might have been
transient, subject to caprice and circumstances,--like the gay
intercourse between the wits who assembled at the Hôtel de Rambouillet,
or the sentimental affinities which bind together young men at college
or young girls at school, when their vows of undying attachment are so
often forgotten in the hard struggles or empty vanities of subsequent
life. Circumstances and affinities produced those friendships, and
circumstances or time dissolved them,--like the merry meetings of Prince
Hal and Falstaff; like the companionship of curious or _ennuied_
travellers on the heights of Righi or in the galleries of Florence. The
cord which binds together the selfish and the worldly in the quest for
pleasure, in the search for gain, in the toil for honors, at a
bacchanalian feast, in a Presidential canvass, on a journey to
Niagara,--is a rope of sand; a truth which the experienced know, yet
which is so bitter to learn. It is profound philosophy, as well as
religious experience, which confirms this solemn truth. The soul can