John Austin, under crushing burdens and amidst freezing neglect, wrought out the profoundest exposition of jurisprudence which exists in the English language. His wife, Sarah Austin, distinguished for her early importation and unveiling of German literature to the English mind, was every thing to him that a tender, wise, and strong friend could be. In the prefaces to her publications of his posthumous works, the discerning reader may trace, through the modest concealment, something of one of the purest, deepest, most steadfast of those friendships which adorn while they enrich the annals of human nature.
One shrinks from the indelicacy of alluding to persons still living, and yet can hardly help suggesting what a friendship there must have been in the union of such scholars, thinkers, poets, aspirants, as Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But space would fail for a list of the royal friendships of this class revealed in literary records. And, for every example published, there must obviously be a multitude, quite as sweet and grand, which are hidden in purely private life.
Leopold Schefer, the serene and lofty author of the "Layman's Breviary," that charming work just published in our country in the fine translation of Charles T. Brooks, lost his wife in the twenty fifth year of their marriage. What a friend he had in her appears from the simple words, surcharged with feeling, in which he speaks of her. He writes, "Only a single unconquerable sorrow has smitten me in all my life, the death of the still soul with whom life, for the first time, was to me a life. Nor have I had any other troubles. People who make trouble for themselves, and in an unappeased spirit find an everlasting misery, may properly call me still a fortunate man. But, though outwardly as much grass should grow over her grave as ever can grow in long desolated days and nights, inwardly no grass grows over a real life annihilating grief. One gets re adjusted with the world; but, after all, he goes at last with an open wound into the grave. Believe me in this."
An example yet more recent has obtained such a monumental recognition, that mention of it is not here to be avoided. John Stuart Mill dedicates his imperishable "Essay on Liberty" to his deceased wife in these terms:
"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings, the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward, I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work, as it stands, has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from any thing that I can write unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom."
The conditions favoring the formation of a consummate friendship between husband and wife meet in fortunate combination in two classes of instances.
In the first, the sovereignty is the bond of a common nobleness; in the second, the bond of a common ambition. The united worship of truth, beauty, goodness, make, it is to be hoped, the most absolute friends of unnumbered wedded pairs. One adoring pursuit of excellence, one devout trust in God, one happy aiming at perfection, draws their noblest activities into unison, free from the impediments of selfishness and suspicion. Under the over arching sanctions of Divinity, knowing each other to be worthy and true, they confide in each other with the sympathy of a total esteem, based on a common devotion to the supreme prizes of the universe, whose reflected lustre already transfigures their spirits and sanctifies their persons in each other's eyes.
Many a husband and wife are also made friends, above all their mere love, by sharing in some earnest and condign social ambition. How many a man of genius has been chiefly indebted for his achievements to the wife who has sedulously identified herself with his success, ever at his side, unseen perhaps by the world, studying his art, lightening his tasks, soothing his pride, healing his hurts, stimulating his confidence, baffling his enemies, gaining him patrons or allies, assuaging his falls, refreshing his energy for new trials, and, when he has triumphed, and is applauded on his eminence, silently drinking in, as her reward, the popular admiration bestowed on him.
This intense co operation and struggle towards an outer goal, when unneutralized, produces that wondrous identification which is the type of complete friendship. A crowd of the most brilliant artists, authors, statesmen, might each point to his wife, and say, "To that bosom friend, to that guardian angel, to her quick intelligence, unfailing consolation, steady stimulus, I principally owe, under Heaven, what I am and what I have done." Many beautiful delineations of this fact have been given in fiction. The picture of Lord and Lady Davenant, in Miss Edgeworth's "Helen," is worthy of particular mention as a picture drawn to the life.
Nothing in fiction, however, is finer or more commanding, as an example of the true relation of the sexes, than is afforded in real life by the biography of Lord William and Lady Russell. Every such historic instance has a benign lesson for our time, in which, it is to be feared, many bad influences are working with fatal effect, temporarily at least, to lessen the attractions and undermine the sanctity of marriage, Guizot ends his beautiful and noble essay on the married life of Lord and Lady Russell with this impressive paragraph: