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Female Friendship.

I have often admired, with enthusiasm, the strong energetic character which friendship assumes in man, and the sublime instances of its effects which we meet with in history: yet I have always been far from thinking, with some self-conceited beings of my own sex, that females are among themselves incapable of this noble passion. What female friendship wants in energy and romantic ardour, it more than supplies in tenderness and feeling.

I have been astonished when I have seen men by no means destitute of talents or understanding, assert that the duration of female friendship is momentary, and the basis unstable on which it is erected. For my own part, as far as I have been enabled to make a comparative estimate of the male and female character, I have not found less instability in man than in woman.

The force of female friendship is little known, and the reality of its existence is doubted, because it is inobtrusive, and less exposed to observation than that of the other sex.

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Shakespeare, who was acquainted with most of the windings of the human heart, has drawn a beautiful picture of female friendship in his Rosalind and Celia. Celia, the daughter of the reigning Duke, prefers to accompany her friend into exile than to live without her amidst the splendours of her father's court. Part of Celia's speech, in reply to the Duke, who charges Rosalind with treason, is very fine.

If she be a traitor,

Why so am I: we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together,
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.

Shakespeare has also in his "Midsummer Night's Dream" made Helena address Hermia in the following beautiful speech on the apparent loss of her friendship, which had originated in the mistake of Puck, the fairy employed by Oberon. Female friendship is here described, and the disappointment of that friendship is expressed with incomparable beauty.

Is all the counsel that we two have shar'd,

The sister-vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time

For parting us-oh! and is all forgot?

All school-days friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Created with our needles both one flower,

* As you like it.

Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion;
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hand, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet a union in partition;

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem ;
So with two seeming bodies, but one heart:
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,

Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.

Women have feelings more acute and tender than men; and the former, therefore, feel the pain of separating from their friends more strongly than the latter. The friendships of men have more force and energy; while those of women are more intimate, and cemented by more sensible and tender ties than theirs; and there are instances wherein women have offered sacrifices as great to friendship as

men,

The arms of Voldimer IV. king of the warlike Iceni, had ever been victorious against his enemies; till one fatal day his army was routed and himself severely wounded in an action with his neighbours the Trinobantes.

The Arch-Druid, on being consulted, demanded some exalted and spotless victim to appease the anger of the incensed Deity. The king assented: and the choice of the Druid fell on the beauteous Woldrema, the only daughter of Dredwald, one of the most eminent chiefs in Voldimer's court.

In cases like this, the parents or relatives of the victim have no power to oppose their veto to the intended sacrifice.

Una was daughter to one of the princes of the royal blood. Her form possessed every feminine attraction, and her mind was endued with every mental grace. She was attached to the daughter of Dredwald by the tenderest ties of friendship: and she had no sooner learnt that her friend was the selected victim than she hastened to the sacred grove and thew herself at the feet of the Arch-Druid.

"Princess!" sternly exclaimed the Priest "how darest thou thus intrude, with unholy footsteps, into our sacred retreats? Arise, daughter of Other, and speak thy wants."

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Spare, venerable Father, O spare my Woldrema !"

"Dost thou so little know our laws? Knowest thou not, O Princess, that we have no power to recall an election once made, unless one of higher rank, and equally pure, shall offer herself as a voluntary substitute?"

"Father, I know it well. Let the daughter of Other die for her Woldrema?"

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Surely Woldrema will not consent to this ?" "Ah no! she need not know aught of it till Una lives no longer."

"Princess, it grieveth me to say that our laws

allow me not to refuse thy request. Be it as thou wouldest."

Una thanked him with rapture and departed.

The night before the sacrifice, three superior Druids came to the habitat on of Other and escorted his daughter to the sacred grove.

The next day at noon, she was conducted in procession, and crowned with garlands to the high altar, where a tear stole down the cheek of even the Arch-Druid, as, after the usual ceremonies, he pierced, with the consecrated knife, the heart of Una, the victim of friendship.

The above was written at the request of a lady
for her scrap-book.

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