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 literature inspires, is often that of the most romantic friendship.  The delirium of love, and even its lighter caprices, are incompatible with the pursuits of the student; but to feel friendship like a passion is necessary to the mind of genius alternately elated and depressed, ever prodigal of feeling and excursive in knowledge.

The qualities which constitute literary friendship, compared with those of men of the world, must render it a sentiment as rare as love itself, which it resembles in that intellectual tenderness in which both so deeply participate.