ith double
guards of discreet reserve and watchfullness. Love and friendship,
with them, are two electrical regions, insulated by a thin line of
non-conduction. The more highly charged region tends, at the touch of
any stimulative sign, to break through the barrier, and to flood the
whole being with its own kind. For those of inflammable temperament
and weak conscience, it is obvious enough what jeopardy must attend
their playing about the conscious edges of relations on which such
thunders of soul and fate hang, ready to be unleashed at a look. But
there is another class of persons, with whom the fire of affection is
harmless. Like those weird heat-lightnings that play in the firmament
on summer evenings, it retains the lambent warmth and luminous
loveliness, without the blasting violence. Of the intellectual and
sensual regions, only the former is surcharged; the latter is either
exhausted, or separated by an insulation so sure that it cannot
possibly flash into the other. The unclean electricity of lust cannot
find its way through the non-conductors of esteem, reverence, duty,
and honor. Those are safe, who, shielded by such holy barriers, pay
their worship, in the mental holy of holies, to the supernal charms
of truth and virtue, to the dazzling sanctity of the principle of
good. It is only the gross and weak who are discharged to their ruin
by the lures of vice and pleasure. A profound reverence for a person
at the same time inflames the soul and refrigerates the senses.

The common apprehension of danger from friendship between men and
women is exaggerated. Those who fear such a danger should study the
moral exaltation and the unspeakable usefullness and comfort of the
friendship between Gunther, the court physician, and Matilda, the
queen, depicted by Auerbach, with such careful truth, in his great
novel, "On the Height." Friendship is more likely to spring from love
than love from friendship, in all but degraded characters. Desire is
unprincipled. Love rests on a basis of desire, and naturally fights
against the obstacles that oppose its gratification. It is,
therefore, taken by itself, essentially dangerous. But friendship
rests on a basis of esteem. Esteem is the very voice and face of
moral and religious principle, the essential enemy of low
temptations. It is the clear cold signet with which the soul stamps a
commanding veto against every vicious act. Whenever there is danger
that friendship will become ano