This remark, expressed too tersely and intelligibly to be considered “poetry” now-a-days, must apply to the nobler sex. Few observant persons will allege against ours, that even in its lowest form our friendship is deceitful. Fickle it may be, weak, exaggerated, sentimental—the mere lath-and-plaster imitation of a palace great enough for a demigod to dwell in—but it is rarely false, parasitical, or diplomatic. The countless secondary motives which many men are mean enough to have—nay, to own—are all but impossible to us; impossible from the very faults of our nature—our frivolity, irrationality, and incapacity to seize on more than one idea at the same time. In truth, a sad proportion of us are too empty-headed to be double-minded, too shallow to be insincere. Nay, even the worst of us being more direct and simple of character than men are, our lightest friendship—the merest passing liking that we decorate with that name—is, while it lasts, more true than the generality of the so-called “friendships” of mankind.

But—and this “but” will, I am aware, raise a whole nest of hornets—from our very peculiarities of temperament, women's friendships are rarely or never so firm, so just, or so enduring, as those of men—when you can find them.