f the superior party in these
exemplars of friendship among the ancients. Of the unpretending,
unassuming party Homer, the great master of the affections and emotions
in remoter ages, has given us the fullest portrait in the character of
Patroclus. The distinguishing feature of his disposition is a melting
and affectionate spirit, the concentred essence of tenderness and
humanity. When Patroclus comes from witnessing the disasters of the
Greeks, to collect a report of which he had been sent by Achilles, he
is "overwhelmed with floods of tears, like a spring which pours down
its waters from the steep edge of a precipice." It is thus that Jupiter
characterises him when he lies dead in the field of battle:

Thou (addressing himself in his thoughts to Hector) hast slain the
friend of Achilles, not less memorable for the blandness of his temper,
than the bravery of his deeds.

It is thus that Menelaus undertakes to excite the Grecian chiefs to
rescue his body:

Let each man recollect the sweetness of his disposition for, as long as
he lived, he was unremitted in kindness to all. When Achilles proposes
the games at the funeral, he says, "On any other occasion my horses
should have started for the prize, but now it cannot be. They have lost
their incomparable groom, who was accustomed to refresh their limbs
with water, and anoint their flowing manes; and they are inconsolable."
Briseis also makes her appearance among the mourners, avowing that,
"when her husband had been slain in battle, and her native city laid in
ashes, this generous man prevented her tears, averring to her, that she
should be the wife of her conqueror, and that he would himself spread
the nuptial banquet for her in the hero's native kingdom of Phthia."

The reciprocity which belongs to a friendship between unequals may
well be expected to give a higher zest to their union. Each party is
necessary to the other. The superior considers him towards whom he pours
out his affection, as a part of himself.

The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth.

He cannot separate himself from him, but at the cost of a fearful maim.
When the world is shut out by him, when he retires into solitude, and
falls back upon himself, then his unpretending friend is most of all
necessary to him. He is his consolation and his pleasure, the safe
coffer in which he reposits all his anxieties and sorrows. If the
principal, instead of