, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is
a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me
entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend
therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see
nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my
own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety,
and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well
be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The other element of friendship is tenderness. We are holden to men by
every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre,
by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and
trifle,--but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in
another as to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed and we so pure
that we can offer him tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me I have
touched the goal of fortune. I find very little written directly to the
heart of this matter in books. And yet I have one text which I cannot
choose but remember. My author says,--"I offer myself faintly and
bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and tender myself least to him
to whom I am the most devoted." I wish that friendship should have
feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground,
before it vaults over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen,
before it is quite a cherub. We chide the citizen because he makes love
a commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good
neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall at the
funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the
relation. But though we cannot find the god under this disguise of a
sutler, yet on the other hand we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his
thread too fine and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal
virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity and pity. I hate the
prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly
alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to
the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter
by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle and dinners at the best
taverns. The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and homely
that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have experience.
It is for aid and comfort through all the relations a