true friendship," says Jeremy Taylor, "I mean the greatest love, and the
greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the noblest
suffering, and the most exemplary faithfulness, and the severest truth,
and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds of which brave
men and women are capable."

"Friendship is the perfection of love," says the Proverb, and a certain
James Colebrooke and Mary his wife, buried in Chilham churchyard, seem to
have been of this mind, for the climax of their long epitaph is, that they
"lived for forty-seven years in the greatest friendship."

Proverbs on this subject abound, and teach varied lessons: "A faithful
friend is the medicine of life;" but it would seem to act differently on
different constitutions, for, on the one hand, we are told, "a Father is a
Treasure, a Brother is a Comforter, a Friend is both;" on the other, we
hear the familiar exclamation, "Save me from my friends!" which is
justified by experience from the times of Aristides downwards, and is
endorsed by Solomon, when he said, "He that blesseth his friend with a
loud voice rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to
him;"--words of which the wisdom will be felt by all who know what it is
to feel unreasoning prejudice against some unoffending person, solely
because of the excessive praise of some injudicious friend. Yet none the
less are we bound to defend our friends behind their backs and to set them
in a fair light. If we cannot aspire generally to St. Theresa's title of
"Advocate of the Absent," honour demands that we should at least earn it
with regard to our friends: though it requires infinite tact to avoid
making your friend fatiguing, if not distasteful, to your listener in so
doing. For Tact, as well as Honour, is a necessary condition of
friendship, in speaking both of, and to, your friend. In this matter of
tact, Courtesy covers a large part of the ground.

"We have careful thought for the stranger,
And smiles for the some time guest,
But we grieve our own
With look and tone,
Though we love our own the best."

This applies most to brothers and sisters, but also to friends; it takes
the delicate edge from friendship if we think ourselves absolved from the
minor courtesies of manner and speech.

We often say pretty things to an acquaintance, and omit them to a friend,
"because she knows us, and we need not be ceremonious." But ceremony i