y common between friends, or
persons calling themselves such, to say, "Do not ask my advice in a
certain crisis of your life; I will not give it; hereafter, if the
thing turns out wrong, you will reflect on me, and say that it was at
my suggestion that you were involved in calamity." This is a dastardly
excuse, and shews a pitiful selfishness in the man that urges it.

It is true, that we ought ever to be on the alert, that we may not
induce our friend into evil. We should be upon our guard, that we may
not from overweening arrogance and self-conceit dictate to another,
overpower his more sober judgment, and assume a rashness for him, in
which perhaps we would not dare to indulge for ourselves. We should
be modest in our suggestions, and rather supply him with materials for
decision, than with a decision absolutely made. There may however be
cases where an opposite proceeding is necessary. We must arrest our
friend, nay, even him who is merely our fellow-creature, with a strong
arm, when we see him hovering on the brink of a precipice, or the danger
is so obvious, that nothing but absolute blindness could conceal it from
an impartial bystander.

But in all cases our best judgment should always be at the service of
our brethren of mankind. "Give to him that asketh thee; and from him
that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

This may not always be practicable or just, when applied to the goods of
fortune: but the case of advice, information, and laws of conduct, comes
within that of Ennius, to suffer our neighbour to light his candle at
our lamp. To do so will enrich him, without making us a jot the poorer.
We should indeed respect the right of private judgment, and scarcely
in any case allow our will to supersede his will in his own proper
province. But we should on no account suffer any cowardly fears for
ourselves, to induce us to withhold from him any assistance that our
wider information or our sounder judgment might supply to him.

The next consideration by which we should be directed in the exercise
of the faculty of speech, is that we should employ it so as should best
conduce to the pleasure of our neighbour. Man is a different creature in
the savage and the civilised state. It has been affirmed, and it may be
true, that the savage man is a stranger to that disagreeable frame of
mind, known by the name of ennui. He can pore upon the babbling stream,
or stretch himself upon a sunny bank, from the rising t