the divine
goodness, a reliance which no adversity can shake, and which supports
him that entertains it under every calamity, that sees the finger of God
in every thing that comes to pass, that says, "It is good for me to be
afflicted," believes, that "all things work together for blessings"
to the pious and the just, and is intimately persuaded that "our light
affliction, which is but for a moment, is the means and the earnest of a
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

If we descend from these great archetypes, the love between parent and
child, and between the creator and his creature, we shall still find the
same inequality the inseparable attendant upon the most perfect ties
of affection. The ancients seem to have conceived the truest and most
exalted ideas on the subject of friendship. Among the most celebrated
instances are the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes
and Pylades, Aeneas and Achates, Cyrus and Araspes, Alexander and
Hephaestion, Scipio and Laelius. In each of these the parties are, the
true hero, the man of lofty ambition, the magnificent personage in whom
is concentred every thing that the historian or the poet was able to
realise of excellence, and the modest and unpretending individual in
whom his confidence was reposed. The grand secret of the connection is
unfolded in the saying of the Macedonian conqueror, "Craterus loves the
king, but Hephaestion loves Alexander." Friendship is to the loftier
mind the repose, the unbending of the soul. The great man (whatever may
be the department in which his excellence consists) has enough of his
greatness, when he stands before the world, and receives the homage that
is paid to his merits. Ever and anon he is anxious to throw aside this
incumbrance, and be as a man merely to a man. He wishes to forget the
"pride, pomp, and circumstance" of greatness, and to be that only which
he is himself. He desires at length to be sure, that he receives
no adulation, that he is accosted with no insincerity, and that the
individual to whose society he has thought proper to withdraw, has no
by-ends, no sinister purposes in all his thoughts. What he seeks for, is
a true friend, a being who sincerely loves, one who is attached to
him, not for the accidents that attend him, but for what most strictly
belongs to him, and of which he cannot be divested. In this friend there
is neither interested intention nor rivalry.

Such are the characteristic features o