Perhaps no author has ever written more that must speak with irresistible power to the inmost hearts of all women who have souls sensitive enough, complex, cultivated, and forcible enough, for an adequate reaction on the richness of his works, than Jean Paul Richter. In all the heights and depths and subtilties of the natural affections, and of imaginative or ideal emotion, as well as in truthful and endlessly varied expressions of those mysteries, he has no equal, scarcely a rival, in literature. In spite of his poverty and confining toil, he made, in his day, a profound personal sensation. And such is the personal spell of his ineffable tenderness, nobleness, and grandeur, even as exerted on the reader from his printed pages, that many a strong man, pilgriming thither from remote lands, has been known to kneel with convulsive emotion on his lowly grave at Bayreuth. His life was heroic in labor, and spotless in purity. When his heart sank in death, it seems as though the earth itself ought to have collapsed with the breaking of so great a thing. His sensibility was a world-harp, responding to every tremulous breath of air or flame. Sweet, pure, wise, mighty, modest, no wonder he drew upon himself the affectionate interest of many lofty ladies, and found treasures of inspiration and solace in their conversation and letters. Reviewing his life in the circle of his friends, he seems as a sun, with pale and burning moons and planets revolving around him. Charlotte von Kalb; Caroline Herder; Emilie von Berlepsch; Josephine von Sydow; the mother and the wife of Carl August; the daughters of the Duke of Mecklenburg, to whom, as "The Four Lovely and Noble Sisters on the Throne," he dedicated his "Titan," such, with many others like them, were the gracious women with whom Jean Paul, in his much-tried life, interchanged homage, friendly counsels, and sacred joys. The intelligent and enthusiastic praises they poured on him for his works must have been to him a divine luxury. And ah I how much he needed such comforts, he who could say, in one of his frequent moments of sadness, "Reckoning off from the neighborhood of my heart, I find life cold and empty"! A whole volume of his before unpublished "Correspondence with Renowned Women" was given to the public in 1865, a glowing treasury of gems of the heart.