no instance is it more affecting than in the address of Euryalus to Nisus before they set out on their desperate expedition by night; and, I believe, few will deny that the pious concern which he expresses for his aged parent in that moment of approaching peril accords perfectly with the gallantry of his spirit, and interests us more than any thing else in his fortunes.

*

"Contra quem talia fatur
Euryalus: me nulla dies tam fortibus ausis
Dissimilem arguerit; tantùm fortuna secunda,
Haud adversa cadat: sed te super omnia dona,
Unum oro: genetrix Priami de gente vetustâ
Est mihi, quam miseram tenuit non Ilia tellus,
Mecum excedentem, non monia regis Acestæ :
Hanc ego nunc ignaram hujus quodcumque pericli est
Inque salutatam linquo nox, et tua testis

Dextera, quòd nequeam lacrymas perferre parentis.
At tu, oro, solare inopem, et succurre relictæ.
Hanc sine me spem ferre tui; audentior ibo
In casus omnes. Percussa mente dederunt
Dardanidæ lacrymas: ante omnes pulcher Iulus,
Atque animum patriæ strinxit pietatis imago.'

I shall conclude this section in the words of Lord Ba

Eneid, Lib. IX. 280.

“All of my life,' replies the youth, ‘shall aim, Like this one hour, at everlasting fame.

Though fortune only our attempt can bless,
Yet still my courage shall deserve success.
But one reward I ask, before I go,
The greatest I can ask, or you bestow.
My mother, tender, pious, fond, and good,
Sprung, like thy own, from Priam's royal blood,-
Such was her love, she left her native Troy,
And fair Trinacria, for her darling boy;
And such is mine, that I must keep unknown
From her the danger of so dear a son:
To spare her anguish, lo! I quit the place
Without one parting kiss, one last embrace!
By night, and that respected hand, I swear,
Her melting tears are more than I can bear!
For her, good prince, your pity I implore;
Support her, childless, and relieve her, poor;
O, let her, let her find, (when I am gone,)
In you, a friend, a guardian, and a son!
With that dear hope, emboldened shall I go,
Brave every danger, and defy the foe.'

"Charmed with his virtue all the Trojan peers,

But, more than all, Ascanius melts in tears,
To see the sorrows of a duteous son

And filial love, a love so like his own."

con :

"Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants, but not always best subjects, for they are light to run away, and almost all fugitives are of that condition. For soldiers, I find that the generals in their hortatives commonly put men in mind of their wives and children; and I think the despising of marriage among the Turks maketh the vulgar soldiers the more base. Certainly, wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust; yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hard-hearted, because their tenderness is not so often called upon.” *

I. Pleasures of Friendship.] Friendship, like all the other benevolent affections, includes two things, an agreeable feeling, and a desire of happiness to its object.

Besides, however, the agreeable feeling common to all the exertions of benevolence, there are some peculiar to friendship. I before took notice of the pleasure we derive from communicating our thoughts and our feelings to others; but this communication prudence and propriety restrain us from making to strangers; and hence the satisfaction we enjoy in the society of one to whom we can communicate every circumstance in our situation, and can trust every secret of our heart.

There is also a wonderful pleasure arising from the sympathy of our fellow-creatures with our joys and with our sorrows, nay, even with our tastes and our humors ; but, in the ordinary commerce of the world, we are often disappointed in our expectations of this enjoyment; a disappointment which is peculiarly incident to men of genius and sensibility superior to the common, who frequently feel themselves "alone in the midst of a crowd," and reduced to the necessity of accommodating their own temper, and their own feelings, to a standard borrowed from

* Bacon's Essays. Of Marriage and Single Life.

those whom they cannot help thinking undeserving of such a sacrifice.

It is only in the society of a friend that this sympathy is at all times to be found; and the pleasing reflection, that we have it in our power to command so exquisite a gratification, constitutes, perhaps, the principal charm of this connection. "What we call affection," says Mr. Smith, "is nothing but an habitual sympathy." I will not go quite so far as to adopt this proposition in all its latitude, but I perfectly agree with this profound and amiable moralist in thinking, that the experience of this sympathy is the chief foundation of friendship, and one of the principal sources of the pleasures which it yields. Nor is it at all inconsistent with this observation to remark, that, where the groundwork of two characters in point of moral worth is the same, there is sometimes a contrast in the secondary qualities, of taste, of intellectual accomplishments, and even of animal spirits, which, instead of presenting obstacles to friendship, has a tendency to bind more strongly the knot of mutual attachment between the parties. Two very interesting and memorable examples of this may be found in Cuvier's account of the friendship between Buffon and Daubenton,* and in Playfair's account of the friendship ship between Black and Hutton.†

I do not mean here to enter into the consideration of the various topics relating to friendship which are commonly discussed by writers on that subject. Most of these, indeed I may say all of them, are beautifully illustrated by Cicero in the treatise De Amicitia, in which he has presented us with a summary of all that was most valuable on this article of ethics in the writings of preceding philosophers; and so comprehensive is the view of it which he has taken, that the modern authors who have treated of it have done little more than to repeat his observations.

II. Can Friendship subsist between more than Two Persons?] One question concerning friendship much agi

* Recueil des Eloges Historiques. M. Daubenton.

Biographical Account of the late Dr. James Hutton. Works, Vol. IV.

tated in the ancient schools was, whether this connection can subsist in its full perfection between more than two persons; and I believe it was the common decision of antiquity that it cannot. For my own part I can see no foundation for this limitation, and I own it seems to me to have been suggested more by the dreams of romance, or the fables of ancient mythology, than by good sense or an accurate knowledge of mankind. The passion of love between the sexes is indeed of an exclusive nature; and the jealousy of the one party is roused the moment a suspicion arises that the attachment of the other is in any degree divided; (and, by the way, this circumstance, which I think is strongly characteristical of that connection, deserves to be added to the various other considerations which show that monogamy has a foundation in human nature.) But the feelings of friendship are perfectly of a different sort. If our friend is a man of discernment, we rejoice at every new acquisition he makes, as it affords us an opportunity of adding to our own list of worthy and amiable individuals, and we eagerly concur with him in promoting the interests of those who are dear to his heart. When we ourselves, on the other hand, have made a new discovery of worth and genius, how do we long to impart the same satisfaction to a friend, and to be instrumental in bringing together the various respectable and worthy men whom the accidents of life have thrown in our way!

I acknowledge, at the same time, that the number of our attached and confidential friends cannot be great, otherwise our attention would be too much distracted by the multiplicity of its objects, and the views for which this affection of the mind was probably implanted would be frustrated by its engaging us in exertions beyond the extent of our limited abilities; and, accordingly, nature has made a provision for preventing this inconvenience, by rendering friendship the fruit only of long and intimate acquaintance. It is strengthened not only by the acquaintance which the parties have with each other's personal qualities, but with their histories, situations, and connections from infancy, and every particular of this sort which falls under their mutual knowledge forms to the fancy an addi

tional relation by which they are united. Men who have a very wide circle of friends, without much discrimination or preference, are justly suspected of being incapable of genuine friendship, and indeed are generally men of cold and selfish characters, who are influenced chiefly by a cool and systematical regard to their own comfort, and who value the social intercourse of life only as it is subservient to their accommodation and amusement.

III. How we are affected by the Distresses of our Friends.] That the affection of friendship includes a desire of happiness to the beloved object it is unnecessary to observe. There is, however, a certain limitation of the remark, which occurs among the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld, and which has been often repeated since by misanthropical moralists, "That, in the distresses of our best friends, there is always something which does not displease us." It may be proper to consider in what sense this is to be understood, and how far it has a foundation in truth. It is expressed in somewhat equivocal terms; and, I suspect, owes much of its plausibility to this very cir

cumstance.

From the triumphant air with which the maxim in question has been generally quoted by the calumniators of human nature, it has evidently been supposed by them to imply that the misfortunes of our best friends give us more pleasure than pain.* But this La Rochefoucauld has not said, nor indeed could a proposition so obviously false and extravagant have escaped the pen of so acute a writer. What La Rochefoucauld has said amounts only to this, that, in the distresses of our best friends, the pain we feel is not altogether unmixed; - a proposition unquestionably true, wherever we have an opportunity of soothing their sorrows by the consolations of sympathy, or of evincing, by more substantial services, the sincerity and strength of

* It was plainly in this sense that Swift understood it when he prefixed it as a motto to the verses on his own death.

"As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew

From nature, I believe them true.

If what he says be not a joke,
We mortals are strange kind of folk."