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FRIENDSHIP ' 



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Emerson 



^.M. Caldwell Co. 
New York^<^ Boston. 



Library of Congre«« 

Two Copifs Received 
SEP 6 1900 

Copyright entry 

sceoNi) COPY. 

Defiv^rod \% 

O^Olrl OIVtSION, 

SEP 18 1900 






Copyright, igoo 
By H. M. Caldwell Co. 

60938 



Friendship 



X It TE have a great deal more kindness 
than is ever spoken. Barring 
all the selfishness that chills like east 
winds the world, the whole human 
family is bathed with an element of 
love like a fine ether. How many 
persons we meet in houses, whom we 
scarcely speak to, whom yet we honour, 
and who honour us ! How many we 
see in the street, or sit with in church, 
whom, though silently, we warmly re- 
joice to be with ! Read the language 
of these wandering eyebeams. The 
heart knoweth. 



^ Friendship 

The effect of the indulgence of this 
human affection is a certain cordial 
exhilaration. In poetry, and in com- 
mon speech, the emotions of benevo- 
lence and complacency which are felt 
toward others are likened to the ma- 
terial effects of fire ; so swift, or much 
more swift, more active, more cheer- 
ing are these fine inward irradiations. 
From the highest degree of passionate 
love, to the lowest degree of good-will, 
they make the sweetness of life. 

Our intellectual and active powers in- 
crease with our affection. The scholar 
sits down to write, and all his years of 
meditation do not furnish him with one 
good thought or happy expression ; but 
it is necessary to write a letter to a 
friend, and, forthwith, troops of gentle 
thoughts invest themselves, on every 



Friendship ^ 

hand, with chosen words. See in any 
house, where virtue and self-respect 
abide, the palpitation which the ap- 
proach of a stranger causes. A com- 
mended stranger is expected and an- 
nounced, and an uneasiness between 
pleasure and pain invades all the hearts 
of a household. His arrival almost 
brings fear to the good hearts that would 
welcome him. The house is dusted, all 
things fly into their places, the old coat 
is exchanged for the new, and they must 
get up a dinner if they can. Of a com- 
mended stranger, only the good report 
is told by others, only the good and 
new is heard by us. He stands to us 
for humanity. He is, what we wish. 
Having imagined and invested him, 
we ask how we should stand re- 
lated in conversation and action with 
3 



^ Friendship 

such a man, and are uneasy with fear. 
The same idea exalts conversation with 
him. We talk better than we are wont. 
We have the nimblest fancy, a richer 
memory, and our dumb devil has taken 
leave for the time. For long hours we 
can continue a series of sincere, grace- 
ful, rich communications, drawn from 
the oldest, secretest experience, so that 
they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk 
and acquaintance, shall feel a lively 
surprise at our unusual powers. But 
as soon as the stranger begins to in- 
trude his partialities, his definitions, 
his defects, into the conversation, it is 
all over. He has heard the first, the 
last and best, he will ever hear from us. 
He is no stranger now. Vulgarity, igno- 
rance, misapprehension, are old acquaint- 
ances. Now, when he comes, he may 
4 



Friendship ^ 

get the order, the dress, and the dinner, 
but the throbbing of the heart, and the 
communications of the soul, no more. 
Pleasant are these jets of affection 
which resume a young world for me 
again. Delicious is a just and firm 
encounter of two, in a thought, in a 
feeling. How beautiful, on their ap- 
proach to this beating heart, the steps 
and forms of the gifted and the true ! 
The moment we indulge our affections 
the earth is metamorphosed : there is 
no winter, and no night : all tragedies, 
all ennuis vanish ; all duties even ; noth- 
ing fills the proceeding eternity but the 
forms all radiant of beloved persons. 
Let the soul be assured that somewhere 
in the universe it should rejoin its friend, 
and it would be content and cheerful 
alone for a thousand years. 
5 



^ Friendship 

I awoke this morning with devout 
thanksgiving for my friends, the old 
and the new. Shall I not call God, 
the Beautiful, who daily showeth him- 
self so to me in his gifts ? I chide 
society, I embrace solitude, and yet I 
am not so ungrateful as not to see the 
wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, 
as from time to time they pass my gate. 
Who hears me, who understands me, 
becomes mine — a possession for all 
time. Nor is nature so poor, but she 
gives me this joy several times, and 
thus we weave social threads of our 
own, a new web of relations ; and, as 
many thoughts in succession substan- 
tiate themselves, we shall by and by 
stand in a new world of our own 
creation, and no longer strangers and 
pilgrims in a traditionary globe. My 
6 



Friendship ^ 

friends have come to me unsought. 
The great God gave them to me. By 
oldest right, by the divine affinity of 
virtue with itself, I find them, or rather, 
not I, but the Deity in me and in them, 
both deride and cancel the thick walls 
of individual character, relation, age, 
sex, and circumstance, at which he 
usually connives, and now makes many 
one. High thanks I owe you, ex- 
cellent lovers, who carry out the world 
for me to new and noble depths, and 
enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. 
These are not stark and stiffened per- 
sons, but the newborn poetry of God — 
poetry without stop — hymn, ode and 
poetry still flowing, and not yet caked 
in dead books with annotation and 
grammar, but Apollo and the Muses 
chanting still. Will these two sepa- 
7 



^ Friendship 

rate themselves from me again, or 
some of them ? I know not, but I 
fear it not ; for my relation to them 
is so pure, that we hold by simple 
affinity, and the Genius of my life 
being thus social, the same affinity will 
exert its energy on whomsoever is as 
noble as these men and women, where- 
ever I may be. 

I confess to an extreme tenderness 
of nature on this point. It is almost 
dangerous to me to " crush the sweet 
poison of misused wine " of the affec- 
tions. A new person is to me always 
a great event, and hinders me from 
sleep. I have had such fine fancies 
lately about two or three persons, 
as have given me delicious hours ; but 
the joy ends in the dav : it yields no 
fruit. Thought is not born of it ; my 
8 



Friendship ^ 

action is very little modified. J must 
feel pride in my friend's accomplish- 
ments as if they were mine — wild, 
delicate, throbbing property in his 
virtues. I feel as warmly when he 
is praised as the lover when he hears 
applause of his engaged maiden. We 
overestimate the conscience of our 
triend. His goodness seems better 
than our goodness, his nature finer, 
his temptations less. Everything that 
is his, his name, his form, his dress, 
books, and instruments, fancy enhances. 
Our own thought sounds new and 
larger from his mouth. 

Yet the systole and diastole of the 
heart are not without their analogy in 
the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, 
like the immortality of the soul, is too 
good to be believed. The lover, be- 



^ Friendship 

holding his maiden, half knows that 
she is not verily that which he wor- 
ships, and in the golden hour of 
friendship, we are surprised with shades 
of suspicion and unbelief. We doubt 
that we bestow on our hero the vir- 
tues in which he shines, and afterward 
worship the form to which we have 
ascribed this divine inhabitation. In 
strictness, the soul does not respect 
men as it respects itself. In strict 
science, all persons underlie the same 
condition of an infinite remoteness. 
Shall we fear to cool our love by fac- 
ing the fact, by mining for the meta- 
physical foundation of this Elysian 
temple ? Shall I not be as real as the 
things I see ? If I am, I shall not fear 
to know them for what they are. 
Their essence is not less beautiful than 



Friendship ^ 

their appearance, though it needs finer 
organs for its apprehension. The root 
of the plant is not unsightly to science, 
though for chaplets and festoons we 
cut the stem short. And I must 
hazard the production of the bald fact 
amid these pleasing reveries, though 
it should prove an Egyptian skull at 
our banquet. A man who stands 
united with his thought, conceives 
magnificently to himself. He is con- 
scious of a universal success, even 
though bought by uniform particular 
failures. No advantages, no powers, 
no gold or force can be any match 
for him. I cannot choose but rely on 
my own poverty, more than on your 
wealth. I cannot make your con- 
sciousness tantamount to mine. Only 
the star dazzles j the planet has a faint, 



^ Friendship 

moon-like ray. I hear what you say of 
the admirable parts and tried temper 
of the party you praise, but I see well 
that for all his purple cloaks I shall not 
like him, unless he is at last a poor 
Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O 
friend, that the vast shadow of the 
phenomenal includes thee, also, in its 
pied and painted immensity — thee, 
also, compared with whom all else is 
shadow. Thou art not Being, as Truth 
is, as Justice is — thou art not my soul, 
but a picture and effigy of that. Thou 
hast come to me lately, and already 
thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. 
Is it not that the soul puts forth friends, 
as the tree puts forth leaves, and 
presently by the germination of new 
buds, extrudes the old leaf? The law 
of nature is alternation for evermore, 

12 



Friendship ^ 

Each electrical state superinduces the 
opposite. The soul environs itself 
with friends, that it may enter into 
a grander self-acquaintance or solitude ; 
and it goes alone, for a season, that it 
may ex?lt its conversation or society. 
This method betrays itself along the 
whole history of our personal relations. 
Ever the instinct of affection revives 
the hope of union with our mates, 
and ever the returning sense of in- 
sulation recalls us from the chase. 
Thus every man passes his life in 
the search after friendship, and if he 
should record his true sentiment, he 
might write a letter like this, to each 
new candidate for his love : 

Dear Friend : 

If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capac- 
ity ; sure to match my mood with thine, I 
13 



^ Friendship 

should never think again of trifles, in relation 
to thy comings and goings. I am not very 
wise : my moods are quite attainable : 
and I respect thy genius : it is to me as yet 
unfathomed ; yet dare I not presume in thee 
a perfect intelligence of me, and so thou art 
to me a delicious torment. 

Thine ever, or never. 

Yet these uneasy pleasures and fine 
pains are for curiosity, and not for life. 
They are not to be indulged. This is 
to weave cobweb, and not cloth. Our 
friendships hurry to short and poor 
conclusions, because we have made 
them a texture of wine and dreams, 
instead of the tough fibre of the human 
heart. The laws of friendship are 
great, austere, and eternal, of one web 
with the laws of nature and of morals. 
But we have aimed at a swift and petty 
H 



Friendship ^ 

benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. 
We snatch at the slowest fruit in the 
whole garden of God, which many sum- 
mers and many winters must ripen. We 
seek our friend not sacredly but with 
an adulterate passion which would 
appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. 
We are armed all over with subtle 
antagonisms, which, as soon as we 
meet, begin to play, and translate all 
poetry into stale prose. Almost all 
people descend to meet. All associ- 
ation must be a compromise, and, what 
is worst, the very flower and aroma of 
the flower of each of the beautiful na- 
tures disappears as they approach each 
other. What a perpetual disappoint- 
ment is actual society, even of the 
virtuous and gifted ! After interviews 
have been compassed with long fore- 
15 



^ Friendship 

sight, we must be tormented presently 
by baffled blows, by sudden, unseason- 
able apathies, by epilepsies of wit and 
of animal spirits, in the heyday of 
friendship and thought. Our faculties 
do not play us true, and both parties 
are relieved by solitude. 

I ought to be equal to every relation. 
It makes no difference how many 
friends I have, and what content I can 
find in conversing with each, if there 
be one to whom I am not equal. 
If I have shrunk unequal from one 
contest, instantly the joy I find in all 
the rest becomes mean and cowardly. 
I should hate myself, if then I made 
my other friends my asylum. 

** The valiant warrior famoused for fight. 
After a hundred victories, once foiled, 
i6 



Friendship ^ 

Is from the book of honour razed quite, 
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled." 

Our impatience is thus sharply re- 
buked. Bashfulness and apathy are a 
tough husk in which a delicate organ- 
isation is protected from premature 
ripening. It would be lost if it knew 
itself before any of the best souls were 
yet ripe enough to know and own it. 
Respect the naturlangsamkeit which 
hardens the ruby in a million years, 
and works in duration, in which Alps 
and Andes come and go as rainbows. 
The good spirit of our life has no 
heaven which is the price of rashness. 
Love, which is the essence of God, is 
not for levity, but for the total worth 
of man. Let us not have this childish 
luxury in our regards ; but the austerest 
17 



^ Friendship 

worth ; let us approach our friend with 
an audacious trust in the truth of his 
heart, in the breadth, impossible to be 
overturned, of his foundations. 

The attractions of this subject are 
not to be resisted, and I leave, for the 
time, all account of subordinate social 
benefit, to speak of that select and 
sacred relation which is a kind of 
absolute, and which even leaves the 
language of love suspicious and com- 
mon, so much is this purer, and nothing 
is so much divine. 

I do not wish to treat friendships 
daintily, but with roughest courage. 
When they are real, they are not glass 
threads or frost-work, but the solidest 
thing we know. For now, after so 
many ages of experience, what do we 
know of nature, or of ourselves ? Not 



Friendship ^ 

one step has man taken toward the 
solution of the problem of his destiny. 
In one condemnation of folly stand 
the whole universe of men. But the 
sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which 
I draw from this alliance with my 
brother's soul, is the nut itself whereof 
all nature and all thought is but the 
husk and shell. Happy is the house 
that shelters a friend ! It might well 
be built, like a festal bower or arch, to 
entertain him a single day. Happier, 
if he know the solemnity of that rela- 
tion, and honour its law ! It is no idle 
band, no holiday engagement. He who 
offers himself a candidate for that cove- 
nant comes up, like an Olympian, to 
the great games, where the first-born 
of the world are the competitors. He 
proposes himself for contests where 
19 



^ Friendship 

f . ] 

Time, Want, Danger are in the Hsts, 
and he alone is victor who has truth 
enough in his constitution to preserve 
the delicacy of his beauty from the 
wear and tear of all these. The gifts 
of fortune may be present or absent, 
but all the hap in that contest depends 
on intrinsic nobleness, and the con- 
tempt of trifles. There are two ele- 
ments that go to the composition of 
friendship, each so sovereign, that I 
can detect no superiority in either, no 
reason why either should be first named. 
One is Truth. A friend is a person 
with whom I may be sincere. Before 
him, I may think aloud. I am arrived 
at last in the presence of a man so real 
and equal that I may drop even those 
undermost garments of dissimulation, 
courtesy, and second thought, which 



Friendship ^ 

men never put ofF, and may deal with 
him with the simplicity and wholeness, 
with which one chemical atom meets 
another. Sincerity is the luxury al- 
lowed, like diadems and authority, only 
to the highest rank, that being per- 
mitted to speak truth, as having none 
above it to court or conform unto. 
Every man alone is sincere. At the 
entrance of a second person, hypocrisy 
begins. We parry and fend the ap- 
proach of our fellow man by compli- 
ments, by gossip, by amusements, by 
affairs. We cover up our thought 
from him under a hundred folds. I 
knew a man who, under a certain re- 
ligious frenzy, cast off this drapery, 
and omitting all compliments and com- 
monplace, spoke to the conscience of 
every person he encountered, and that 



^ Friendship 

with great insight and beauty. At first 
he was resisted, and all men agreed he 
was mad. But persisting, as indeed he 
could not help doing, for some time in 
this course, he attained to the advan- 
tage of bringing every man of his 
acquaintance into true relations with 
him. No man would think of speak- 
ing falsely with him, or of putting him 
off with any chat of markets or read- 
ing-rooms. But every man was con- 
strained by so much sincerity to face 
him, and what love of nature, what 
poetry, what symbol of truth he had, 
he did certainly show him. But to 
most of us society shows not its face 
and eye, but its side and its back. To 
stand in true relations with men in a 
false age, is worth a fit of insanity, is 
it not ? We can seldom go erect. 



Friendship ^ 

Almost every man we meet requires 
some civility, requires to be humoured 
— he has some fame, some talent, 
some whim of religion or philanthropy 
in his head that is not to be questioned, 
and so spoils all conversation with him. 
But a friend is a sane man who ex- 
ercises not my ingenuity but me. My 
friend gives me entertainment without 
requiring me to stoop, or to lisp, or to 
mask myself. 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 evi- 
dence to my own, behold now the 
semblance of my being in all its 
height, variety, and curiosity, reiter- 
ated in a foreign form ; so that a 
friend may well be reckoned the 
masterpiece of nature. 
^3 



■^ Friendship 

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 circum- 
stance and badge and trifle, but we 
can scarce believe that so much char- 
acter 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 olFer myself faintly 
and bluntly to those whose I effec- 
tually am, and tender myself least to 
him to whom I am the most devoted. '* 
24 



Friendship ^ 

I wish that friendship should have feet, 
as well as eyes and eloquence. It must 
plant itself on the ground, before it 
walks 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 neighbourhood ; 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 can- 
not forgive the poet if he spins his 
thread too fine, and does not substan- 
tiate his romance by the municipal 
virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity, 
and pity. I hate the prostitution of the 
25 



^ Friendship 

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 only 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 and passages of life and 
death. It is fit for serene days, and 
graceful gifts, and country rambles, 
but also for rough roads and hard fare, 
shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. 
It keeps company with the sallies of 
the wit and the trances of religion. 
We are to dignify to each other the 
26 . 



Friendship ^ 

daily needs and offices of man's life, 
and embellish it by courage, wisdom, 
and unity. It should never fall into 
something usual and settled, but should 
be alert and inventive, and add rhyme 
and reason to what was drudgery. 

For perfect friendship it may be said 
to require natures so rare and costly, 
so well tempered each, and so happily 
adapted, and withal so circumstanced 
(for even in that particular, a poet 
says, love demands that the parties 
be altogether paired), that very seldom 
can its satisfaction be realised. It 
cannot subsist in its perfection, say 
some of those who are learned in this 
warm lore of the heart, betwixt more 
than two. I am not quite so strict 
in my terms, perhaps because I have 
never known so high a fellowship as 
27 



^ Friendship 

others. I please my imagination more 
with a circle of godlike men and women 
variously related to each other, — 
and between whom subsists a lofty in- 
telligence. But I find this law of 
one to one^ peremptory for conversation, 
which is the practice and consumma- 
tion of friendship. Do not mix waters 
too much. The best mix as ill as 
good and bad. You shall have very 
useful and cheering discourse at several 
times with two several men, but let 
all three of you come together, and 
you shall not have one new and hearty 
word. Two may talk and one may 
hear, but three cannot take part in 
a conversation of the most sincere 
and searching sort. In good company 
there is never such discourse between 
two, across the table, as takes place 

38 , 



Friendship ^ 

when you leave them alone. In good 
company, the individuals at once merge 
their egotism into a social soul exactly 
coextensive with the several con- 
sciousnesses there present. No par- 
tialities of friend to friend, no fond- 
nesses of brother to sister, of wife to 
husband, are there pertinent, but quite 
otherwise. Only he may then speak 
who can sail on the common thought 
of the party, and not poorly limited to 
his own. Now this convention, which 
good sense demands, destroys the high 
freedom of great conversation, which 
requires an absolute running of two 
souls into one. 

No two men but being left alone with 

each other, enter into simpler relations. 

Yet it is affinity that determines which 

two shall converse. Unrelated men 

29 



^ Friendship 

give little joy to each other ; will 
never suspect the latent powers of 
each. We talk sometimes of a great 
talent for conversation, as if it were 
a permanent property in some individ- 
uals. Conversation is an evanescent 
relation — no more. A man is reputed 
to have thought and eloquence ; he can- 
not, for all that, say a word to his 
cousin or his uncle. They accuse his 
silence with as much reason as they 
would blame the insignificance of a 
dial in the shade. In the sun it will 
mark the hour. Among those who 
enjoy his thought, he will regain his 
tongue. 

Friendship requires that rare mean 

betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that 

piques each with the presence of power 

and of consent in the other party. Let 

30. 



Friendship ^ 

me alone to the end of the world, rather 
than that my friend should over-step 
by a word or a look his real sympathy. 
I am equally balked by antagonism 
and by compliance. Let him not 
cease an instant to be himself. The only 
joy I have in his being mine, is that 
the not mine is mine. It turns the 
stomach, it blots the daylight ; where 
I looked for a manly furtherance, or at 
least a manly resistance, to find a mush 
of concession. Better be a nettle in 
the side of your friend, than his echo. 
The condition which high friendship 
demands is ability to do without it. 
To be capable of that high office re- 
quires great and sublime parts. There 
must be very two before there can be 
very one. Let it be an alliance of two 
large formidable natures, mutually be- 
31 



^ Friendship 

held, mutually feared, before yet they 
recognise the deep identity which be- 
neath these disparities unites them. 

He only is fit for this society who 
is magnanimous. He must be so, to 
know its law. He must be one who 
is sure that greatness and goodness are 
always economy. He must be one 
who is not swift to intermeddle with 
his fortunes. Let him not dare to 
intermeddle with this. Leave to the 
diamond its ages to grow, nor expect 
to accelerate the births of the eternal. 
Friendship demands a religious treat- 
ment. We must not be wilful, we 
must not provide. We talk of choos- 
ing our friends, but friends are self- 
elected. Reverence is a great part of 
it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. 
Of course, if he be a man, he has 
.32 



Friendship ^ 

merits that are not yours, and that you 
cannot honour, if you must needs hold 
him close to your person. Stand aside. 
Give those merits room. Let them 
mount and expand. Be not so much 
his friend that you can never know his 
peculiar energies, like fond mammas 
who shut up their boy in the house 
until he is almost grown a girl. Are 
you the friend of your friend's buttons, 
or of his thought ? To a great heart 
he will still be a stranger in a thousand 
particulars, that he may come near 
in the holiest ground. Leave it to 
girls and boys to regard a friend as 
property, and to suck a short and all- 
confounding pleasure instead of the pure 
nectar of God. 

Let us buy our entrance to this guild 
by a long probation. Why should we 
33 



■^ Friendship 

desecrate noble and beautiful souls by 
intruding on them ? Why insist on 
rash personal relations with your 
friend ? Why go to his house, or 
know his mother and brother and 
sisters ? Why be visited by him at 
your own ? Are these things material 
to our covenant ? Leave this touch- 
ing and clawing. Let him be to me a 
spirit. A message, a thought, a sin- 
cerity, a glance from him I want, but 
not news, nor pottage. I can get poli- 
tics, and chat, and neighbourly con- 
veniences, from cheaper companions. 
Should not the society of my friend be 
to me poetic, pure, universal, and great 
as nature itself? Ought I to feel that 
our tie is profane in comparison with 
yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the 
horizon, or that clump of waving grass 
3,4 



Friendship ^ 

that divides the brook ? Let us not 
viHfy but raise it to that standard. That 
great defying eye, that scornful beauty 
of his mien and action, do not pique 
yourself on reducing, but rather fortify 
and enhance. Worship his superiori- 
ties. Wish him not less by a thought, 
but hoard and tell them all. Guard 
him as thy great counterpart ; have a 
princedom to thy friend. Let him be 
to thee for ever a sort of beautiful 
enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, 
and not a trivial conveniency to be 
soon outgrown and cast aside. The 
hues of the opal, the light of the 
diamond, are not to be seen, if the eye 
is too near. To my friend I write a 
letter, and from him I receive a letter. 
That seems to you a little. Me it 
suffices. It is a spiritual gift worthy 
35 



-^ Friendship 

of him to give and of me to receive. 
It profanes nobody. In these warm 
Hnes the heart will trust itself, as it 
will not to the tongue, and pour out the 
prophecy of a godlier existence than all 
the annals of heroism have yet made 
good. 

Respect so far the holy laws of this 
fellowship as not to prejudice its per- 
fect flower by your impatience for its 
opening. We must be our own before 
we can be another's. There is at least 
this satisfaction in crime, according 
to the Latin proverb : you can speak 
to your accomplice on even terms. 
Crimen quos inqulnat^ aquat. To 
those whom we admire and love, at 
first we cannot. Yet the least defect 
of self-possession vitiates, in my judg- 
ment, the entire relation. There can 
36 



Friendship ^ 

never be deep peace between two 
spirits, never mutual respect until, in 
their dialogue, each stands for the 
whole world. 

What is so great as friendship, let 
us carry with what grandeur of spirit 
we can. Let us be silent — so we 
may hear the whisper of the gods. 
Let us not interfere. Who set you 
to cast about what you should say to 
the select souls, or to say anything 
to such ? No matter how ingenious, 
no matter how graceful and bland. 
There are innumerable degrees of folly 
and wisdom, and for you to say aught 
is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy soul 
shall speak. Wait until the necessary 
and everlasting overpowers you, until 
day and night avail themselves of your 
lips. The only money of God is God. 

^1 



^ Friendship 

He pays never with anything less or 
anything else. The only reward of 
virtue, is virtue : the only way to have 
a friend, is to be one.. Vain to hope 
to come nearer a man by getting into 
his house. If unHke, his soul only flees 
faster from you, and you shall catch 
never a true glance of his eye. We 
see the noble afar off, and they repel 
us ; why should we intrude ? Late — 
very late — we perceive that no ar- 
rangements, no introductions, no con- 
suetudes, or habits of society, would be 
of any avail to establish us in such re- 
lations with them as we desire — but 
solely the uprise of nature in us to the 
same degree it Is in them : then shall 
we meet as water with water : and if 
we should not meet them then, we 
shall not want them, for we are already 
3S 



Friendship ^ 

they. In the last analysis, love is only 
the reflection of a man's own worthi- 
ness from other men. Men have 
sometimes exchanged names with their 
friends, as if they would signify that in 
their friend each loved his own soul. 

The higher the style we demand of 
friendship, of course the less easy to 
establish it with flesh and blood. We 
walk alone in the world. Friends, 
such as we desire, are dreams and 
fables. But a sublime hope cheers 
ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, 
in other regions of the universal power, 
souls are now acting, enduring, and 
daring, which can love us, and which 
we can love. We may congratu- 
late ourselves that the period of 
nonage, of follies, of blunders, and 
of shame, is passed in solitude, and 
39 



^ Friendship 

when we are finished men, we shall 
grasp heroic hands in heroic hands. 
Only be admonished by what you 
already see, not to strike leagues of 
friendship with cheap persons, where 
no friendship can be. Our impatience 
betrays us into rash and foolish alliances 
which no God attends. By persisting 
in your path, though you forfeit the 
little, you gain the great. You become 
pronounced. You demonstrate yourself 
so as to put yourself out of the reach 
of false relations, and you draw to you 
the first-born of the world, those rare 
pilgrims whereof only one or two 
wander in nature at once, and before 
whom the vulgar great, show as spec- 
tres and shadows merely. 

It is foolish to be afraid of making 
our ties too spiritual, as if so we could 
40 



Friendship ^ 

lose any genuine love. Whatever cor- 
rection of our popular views we make 
from insight, nature will be sure to 
bear us out in, and though it seem to 
rob us of some joy, will repay us with 
a greater. Let us feel, if we will, the 
absolute insulation of man. We are 
sure that we have all in us. We go 
to Europe, or we pursue persons, or 
we read books, in the instinctive faith 
that these will call it out and reveal us 
to ourselves. Beggars all. The per- 
sons are such as we ; the Europe, an 
old faded garment of dead persons ; the 
books, their ghosts. Let us drop this 
idolatry. Let us give over this mendi- 
cancy. Let us even bid our dearest 
friends farewell, and defy them, saying, 
" Who are you ? Unhand me. I will 
be dependent no more." Ah ! seest 
41 



■^ Friendship 

thou not, O brother, that thus we part 
only to meet again on a higher platform, 
and only be more each other's, because 
we are more our own ? A friend is 
Janus-faced : he looks to the past and 
the future. He is the child of all my 
foregoing hours, the prophet of those 
to come. He is the harbinger of a 
greater friend. It is the property of 
the divine to be reproductive. 

I do then with my friends as I do 
with my books. I would have them 
where I can find them, but I seldom use 
them. We must have society on our 
own terms, and admit or exclude it on 
the slightest cause. I cannot afford to 
speak much with my friend. If 'he is 
great, he makes me so great that I can- 
not descend to converse. In the great 
days, presentiments hover before me, far 
42 • 



Friendship ^ 

before me in the firmament. I ought 
then to dedicate myself to them. I go in 
that I may seize them ; I go out that I 
may seize them. I fear only that I may 
lose them receding into the sky in 
which now they are only a patch of 
brighter light. Then, though I prize 
my friends, I cannot afford to talk with 
theni and study their visions, lest I lose 
my own. It would indeed give me a 
certain household joy to quit this lofty 
seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or 
search of stars, and come down to 
warm sympathies with you ; but then 
I know well I shall mourn always the 
vanishing of my mighty gods. It is 
true, next _week I shall have languid 
times, when I can well afford to 
occupy myself with foreign objects ; 
then I shall regret the lost literature 
43^ 



^ Friendship 

of your mind, and wish you were by my 
side again. But if you come, perhaps 
you will fill my mind only with new 
visions, not with yourself but with 
your lustres, and I shall not be able 
any more than now to converse with 
you. So I will owe to my friends this 
evanescent intercourse. I will re- 
ceive from them not what they have, 
but what they are. They shall 
give me that which properly they can- 
not give me, but which radiates from 
them. But they shall not hold me by 
any relations less subtle and pure. We 
will meet as though we met not, and 
part as though we parted not. 

It has seemed to me lately more 
possible than I knew, to carry a friend- 
ship greatly, on one side, without due 
correspondence on the other. Why 
44 



Friendship ^ 

should I cumber myself with the poor 
fact that the receiver is not capacious ? 
It never troubles the sun that some of 
his rays fall wide and vain into un- 
grateful space, and only a small part 
on the reflecting planet. Let your 
greatness educate the crude and cold 
companion. If he is unequal, he will 
presently pass away, but thou art en- 
larged by thy own shining; and, no 
longer a mate for frogs and worms, 
dost soar and burn with the gods of 
the empyrean. It is thought a dis- 
grace to love unrequited. But the 
great will see that true love cannot 
be unrequited. True love transcends 
instantly the unworthy object, and 
dwells and broods on the eternal, 
and when the poor, interposed mask 
crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid 
45 



^ Friendship 

of so much earth, and feels its inde- 
pendency the surer. Yet these things 
may hardly be said without a sort of 
treachery to the relation. The essence 
of friendship is entireness, a total mag- 
nanimity and trust. It must not sur- 
mise or provide for infirmity. It treats 
its object as a god, that it may deify 
both. 



46 



Love 



Love 

T?VERY soul is a celestial Venus to 
'^^ every other soul. The heart has 
its sabbaths and jubilees, in which the 
world appears as a hymeneal feast, 
and all natural sounds and the circle 
of the seasons are erotic odes and 
dances. Love is omnipresent in nature 
as motive and reward. Love is our 
highest word, and the synonym of 
God. Every promise of the soul has 
innumerable fulfilments : each of its 
joys ripens into a new want. Nature, 
uncontainable, flowing, fore-looking, in 
the first sentiment of kindness antici- 
49 



m Love 

pates already a benevolence which shall 
lose all particular regards in its general 
light. The introduction to this felicity 
is in a private and tender relation of 
one to one, vi^hich is the enchantment 
of human life j which, like a certain 
divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on 
man at one period, and works a revolu- 
tion in his mind and body ; unites him 
to his race, pledges him to the domestic 
and civic relations, carries him with 
new sympathy into nature, enhances 
the power of the senses, opens the 
imagination, adds to his character 
heroic and sacred attributes, estab- 
lishes marriage, and gives permanence 
to human society. 

The natural association of the senti- 
ment of love with the heyday of the 
blood, seems to require that in order to 
50 



Love^ 

portray it In vivid tints which every 
youth and maid should confess to be 
true to their throbbing experience, one 
must not be too old. The delicious 
fancies of youth reject the least savour 
of a mature philosophy, as chilling with 
age and pedantry their purple bloom. 
And, therefore, I know I incur the im- 
putation of unnecessary hardness and 
stoicism from those who compose the 
Court and Parliament of Love. But 
from these formidable censors I shall 
appeal to my seniors. For it is to be 
considered that this passion of which 
we speak, though it begin with the 
young, yet forsakes not the old, or 
rather suffers no one who is truly its 
servant to grow old, but makes the 
aged participators of it, not less than 
the tender maiden, though in a dif- 
51 



^ Love 

ferent and nobler sort. For, It is a 
fire that kindling its first embers in the 
narrow nook of a private bosom, 
caught from a wandering spark out 
of another private heart, glows and 
enlarges until it warms and beams 
upon multitudes of men and women, 
upon the universal heart of all, and 
so lights up the whole world and all 
nature with its generous flames. It 
matters not, therefore, whether we at- 
tempt to describe the passion at twenty, 
at thirty, or at eighty years. He who 
paints it at the first period, will lose 
some of its later ; he who paints it at 
the last, some of its earlier traits. Only 
it is to be hoped that by patience and 
the muses' aid, we may attain to that 
inward view of the law, which shall 
describe a truth ever young, ever beau- 
5^ 



Love^ 

tiful, so central that It shall commend 
itself to the eye at whatever angle be- 
holden. 

And the first condition is, that we 
must leave a too close and lingering 
adherence to the actual, to facts, and 
study the sentiment as it appeared in 
hope and not in history. For each 
man sees his own life defaced and dis- 
figured, as the life of man is not, to his 
imagination. Each man sees over his 
own experience a certain slime of error, 
while that of other men looks fair and 
ideal. Let any man go back to those 
delicious relations which make the 
beauty of his life, which have given 
him sincerest instruction and nourish- 
ment, he will shrink and shrink. Alas ! 
I know not why, but infinite compunc- 
tions embitter in mature life all the 
S3 



Si-? 



Love 



remembrances of budding sentiment, 
and cover every beloved name. Every- 
thing is beautiful seen from the point 
of the intellect, or as truth. But all is 
sour, if seen as experience. Details 
are always melancholy ; the plan is 
seemly and noble. It is strange how 
painful is the actual world — the pain- 
ful kingdom of time and place. There 
dwells care and canker and fear. With 
thought, with the ideal, is immortal 
hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all 
the muses sing. But with names and 
persons and the partial interests of to- 
day and yesterday, is grief. 

The strong bent of nature Is seen 
in the proportion which this topic of 
personal relations usurps in the con- 
versation of society. What do we wish 
to know of any worthy person so much 
54 



Love^ 

as how he has sped in the history of 
this sentiment ? What books in the 
circulating libraries circulate ? How 
we glow over these novels of passion, 
when the story is told with any spark 
of truth and nature ! And what fastens 
attention, in the intercourse of life, 
like any passage betraying affection 
between two parties ? Perhaps we 
never saw them before, and never 
shall meet them again. But we see 
them exchange a glance, or betray a 
deep emotion, and we are no longer 
strangers. We understand them, and 
take the warmest interest in the de- 
velopment of the romance. All man- 
kind love a lover. The earliest demon- 
strations of complacency and kindness 
are nature's most winning pictures. It 
is the dawn of civility and grace in the 
55 



^ Love 

coarse and rustic. The rude village 
boy teases the girls about the school- 
house door ; but to-day he comes run- 
ning into the entry, and meets one fair 
child arranging her satchel : he holds 
her books to help her, and instantly it 
seems to him as if she removed herself 
from him infinitely, and was a sacred 
precinct. Among the throng of girls 
he runs rudely enough, but one alone 
distances him : and these two little 
neighbours that were so close just now, 
have learned to respect each other's 
personality. Or who can avert his 
eyes from the engaging, half-artful, 
half-artless ways of schoolgirls who 
go into the country shops to buy a 
skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and 
talk half an hour about nothing, with 
the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy ? 
56 



In the village, they are on a perfect 
equality, which love delights in, and 
without any coquetry the happy, af- 
fectionate nature of woman flows out 
In this pretty gossip. The girls may 
have little beauty, yet plainly do they 
establish between them and the good 
boy the most agreeable, confiding re- 
lations, what with their fun and their 
earnest, about Edgar, and Jonas, and 
Almira, and who was invited to the 
party, and who danced at the dancing- 
school, and when the singing-school 
would begin, and other nothings con- 
cerning which the parties cooed. By 
and by that boy wants a wife, and very 
truly and heartily will he know where 
to find a sincere and sweet mate, with- 
out any risk such as Milton deplores 
as incident to scholars and great men. 
S7 



-^ Love 

I have been told that my philosophy 
is unsocial, and, that in public dis- 
courses, my reverence for the intellect 
makes me unjustly cold to the personal 
relations. But now I almost shrink 
at the remembrance of such disparag- 
ing words. For persons are love's 
world, and the coldest philosopher 
cannot recount the debt of the young 
soul wandering here in nature to the 
power of love, without being tempted 
to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught 
derogatory to the social instincts. For, 
though the celestial rapture falling out 
of heaven seizes only upon those of 
tender age, and although a beauty over- 
powering all analysis or comparison, 
and putting us quite beside ourselves, 
we can seldom see after thirty years, 
yet the remembrance of these visions 



Love ^ 

outlasts all other remembrances, and 
is a wreath of flowers on the oldest 
brows. But here is a strange fact ; it 
may seem to many men in revising 
their experience, that they have no 
fairer page in their life's book than 
the delicious memory of some passages 
wherein affection contrived to give a 
witchcraft surpassing the deep attrac- 
tion of its own truth to a parcel of 
accidental and trivial circumstances. 
In looking backward, they may find 
that several things which were not 
the charm, have more reality to this 
groping memory than the charm itself 
which embalmed them. But be our 
experience in particulars what it may, 
no man ever forgot the visitations of 
that power to his heart and brain, 
which created all things new ; which 
59 



^ Love 

was the dawn in him of music, poetry, 
and art ; which made the face of nature 
radiant with purple light ; the morning 
and the night varied enchantments ; 
when a single tone of one voice could 
make the heart beat, and the most 
trivial circumstance, associated with 
one form, is put in the amber of 
memory ; when we became all eye 
when one was present, and all memory 
when one was gone ; when the youth 
becomes a watcher of windows, and 
studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, 
or the wheels of a carriage ; when no 
place is too solitary, and none too 
silent for him who has richer com- 
pany and sweeter conversation in his 
new thoughts, than any old friends, 
though best and purest, can give him j 
for, the figures, the motions, the words 
60 



Love^ 

of the beloved object are not like other 
images written in water, but, as Plu- 
tarch said, " enamelled in fire," and 
make the study of midnight. 

'* Thou are not gone being gone, where e'er 

thou art. 
Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in 

him thy loving heart." 

In the noon and the afternoon of 
life, we still throb at the recollection 
of days when happiness was not happy 
enough, but must be drugged with the 
relish of pain and fear ; for he touched 
the secret of the matter, who said of 
love, 

" All other pleasures are not worth its pains : " 

and when the day was not long enough, 
but the night too must be consumed 
in keen recollections ; when the head 

6i 



^ Love 

boiled all night on the pillow with 
the generous deed it resolved on ; 
when the moonlight was a pleasing 
fever, and the stars were letters, and 
the flowers ciphers, and the air was 
coined into song ; when all business 
seemed an impertinence, and all the 
men and women running to and fro 
in the streets, mere pictures. 

The passion remakes the world for 
the youth. It makes all things alive 
and significant. Nature grows con- 
scious. Every bird on the boughs of 
the tree sings now to his heart and 
soul. Almost the notes are articulate. 
The clouds have faces, as he looks on 
them. The trees of the forest, the 
waving grass, and the peeping flowers 
have grown intelligent ; and almost he 
fears to trust them with the secret 
6-2 



Love^ 

which they seem to Invite. Yet nature 
soothes and sympathises. In the green 
solitude he finds a dearer home than 
with men. 

'* Fo^mtain heads and pathless groves, 
laces which pale passion loves, 
.^loonlight walks, when all the fowls 
Are safely housed, save bats and owls, 
A midnight bell, a passing groan. 
These are the sounds we feed upon.'* 

Behold there In the wood the fine 
madman ! He is a palace of sweet 
sounds and sights ; he dilates ; he is 
twice a man ; he walks with arms 
akimbo ; he soliloquises ; he accosts 
the grass and the trees ; he feels the 
blood of the violet, the clover and the 
lily in his veins ; and he talks with 
the brook that wets his foot. 
63 



■^ Love 

The causes that have sharpened his 
perceptions of natural beauty have 
made him love music and verse. It is 
a fact often observed, that men have 
written good verses under the inspira- 
tion of passion, who cannot write well 
under any other circumstances. 

The like force has the passion over 
all his nature. It expands the senti- 
ment ; it makes the clown gentle, and 
gives the coward heart. Into the most 
pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart 
and courage to defy the world, so only 
it have the countenance of the beloved 
object. In giving him to another, it 
still more gives him to himself. He is 
a new man, with new perceptions, new 
and keener purposes, and a religious 
solemnity of character and aims. He 
does not longer appertain to his family 
64 



Love 






and society. He is somewhat. He is 
a person. He is a soul. 

And here let us examine a little 
nearer the nature of that influence 
which is thus potent over the human 
youth. Let us approach and admire 
Beauty, whose revelation to man we 
now celebrate, — beauty, welcome as 
the sun wherever it pleases to shine, 
which pleases everybody with it and 
with themselves. Wonderful is its 
charm. It seems sufl[icient to itself. 
The lover cannot paint his maiden to 
his fancy poor and solitary. Like a 
tree in flower, so much soft, budding, 
informing loveliness is society for 
itself, and she teaches his eye why 
Beauty was ever painted with Loves 
and Graces attending her steps. Her 
existence makes the world rich. 



^ Love 

Though she extrudes all other per- 
sons from his attention as cheap and 
unworthy, yet she indemnifies him by 
carrying out her own being into some- 
what impersonal, large, mundane, so 
that the maiden stands to him for a 
representative of all select things and 
virtues. For that reason the lover sees 
never personal resemblances in his mis- 
tress to her kindred or to others. His 
friends find in her a likeness to her 
mother, or her sisters, or to persons 
not of her blood. The lover sees no 
resemblance except to summer even- 
ings and diamond mornings, to rain- 
bows and the song of birds. 

Beauty is ever that divine thing the 

ancients esteemed it. It is, they said, 

the flowering of virtue. Who can 

analyse the nameless charm which 

66 



Love^ 

glances from one and another face 
and form ? We are touched with 
emotions of tenderness and compla- 
cency, but we cannot find whereat this 
dainty emotion, this wandering gleam 
points. It is destroyed for the imag- 
ination by any attempt to refer it to 
organisation. Nor does it point to 
any relations of friendship or love that 
society knows and has, but, as it seems 
to me, to a quite other and unattainable 
sphere, to relations of transcendent 
delicacy and sweetness, a true fairy- 
land ; to what roses and violets hint 
and foreshow. We cannot get at 
beauty. Its nature is like opaline 
doves'-neck lustres, hovering and ev- 
anescent. Herein it resembles the 
most excellent things, which all have 
this rainbow character, defying all at- 
(>7 



-^ Love 

tempts at appropriation and use. What 
else did Jean Paul Richter signify, when 
he said to music, " Away ! away ! thou 
speakest to me of things which in all 
my endless life I have found not, and 
shall not find." The same fact may 
be observed in every work of the plas- 
tic arts. The statue is then beautiful, 
when it begins to be incomprehensible, 
when it is passing out of criticism, and 
can no longer be defined by compass 
and measuring wand, but demands an 
active imagination to go with it, and 
to say what it is in the act of doing. 
The God or hero of the sculptor is 
always represented in a transition from 
that which is representable to the 
senses, to that which is not. Then 
fixst it ceases to be a stone. The 
same remark holds of painting. And 
68 



Love^ 

of poetry, the success is not attained 
when it lulls and satisfies, but when it 
astonishes and fires us with new en- 
deavours after the unattainable. Con- 
cerning it, Landor inquires " whether 
it is not to be referred to some purer 
state of sensation and existence." 

So must it be with personal beauty, 
which love worships. Then first is it 
charming and itself, when it dissatisfies 
us with any end ; when it becomes a 
story without an end ; when it suggests 
gleams and visions, and not earthly 
satisfactions ; when it seems 

" Too bright and good. 
For human nature's daily food ; *' 

when it makes the beholder feel his 

unworthiness, when he cannot feel his 

right to it, though he were Caesar; 

69 



^ Love 

he cannot feel more right to it, than 
to the firmament and the splendours 
of a sunset. 

Hence arose the saying : " If I love 
you, what is that to you ? " We say 
so, because we feel that what we love, 
is not in your will, but above it. It is 
the radiance of you and not you. It 
is that which you know not in your- 
self, and can never know. 

'This agrees well with that high phi- 
losophy of Beauty which the ancient 
writers delighted in ; for they said, that 
the soul of man, embodied here on 
earth, went roaming up and down in 
quest of that other world of its own, 
out of which it came into this, but was 
soon stupefied by the light of the nat- 
ural sun, and unable to see any other 
objects than those of this world, which 
70 



Love^ 

are but shadows of real things. There- 
fore, the Deity sends the glory of youth 
before the soul, that it may avail itself 
of beautiful bodies as aids to its recol- 
lection of the celestial good and fair ; 
and the man, beholding such a person 
in the female sex, runs to her, and finds 
the highest joy in contemplating the 
form, movement, and intelligence of 
this person, because it suggests to him 
the presence of that which indeed is 
within the beauty, and the cause of the 
beauty. 

If, however, from too much convers- 
ing with material objects, the soul was 
gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in 
the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow \ 
body being unable to fulfil the promise 
which beauty holds out ; but if, accept- 
ing the hint of these visions and sugges- 
71 



-m Love 



>AJ> 



tions which beauty makes to his mind, 
the soul passes through the body, and 
fails to admire strokes of character, and 
the lovers contemplate one another in 
their discourses and their actions, then 
they pass to the true palace of Beauty, 
more and more inflame their love of 
it, and by this love extinguishing the 
base affection, as the sun puts out the 
fire by shining on the hearth, they be- 
come pure and hallowed. By conver- 
sation with that which is in itself ex- 
cellent, magnanimous, lowly, and just, 
the lover comes to a warmer love of 
these nobilities, and a quicker appre- 
hension of them. Then, he passes 
from loving them in one, to lov- 
ing them in all, and so is the one 
beautiful soul only the door through 
which he enters to the society of all 
72 • 



Love^ 

true and pure souls. In the particular 
society of his mate, he attains a clearer 
sight of any spot, any taint, which her 
beauty has contracted from this world, 
and is able to point it out, and this with 
mutual joy that they are now able with- 
out offense to indicate blemishes and 
hinderances in each other, and give to 
each all help and comfort in curing the 
same. And, beholding in many souls 
the traits of the divine beauty, and 
separating in each soul that which is 
divine from the taint which they have 
contracted in the world, the lover 
ascends ever to the highest beauty, to 
the love and knowledge of the Divinity, 
by steps on this ladder of created souls. 
Somewhat like this have the truly 
wise told us of love in all ages. The 
doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If 



^ Love 

Plato, Plutarch, and Apuleius taught it, 
so have Petrarch, Angelo, and Milton. 
It awaits a truer unfolding in opposi- 
tion and rebuke to that subterranean 
prudence which presides at marriages 
with words that take hold of the upper 
world, while one eye is eternally boring 
down into the cellar, so that its gravest 
discourse has ever a slight savour of 
hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, 
when the snout of this sensualism in- 
trudes into the education of young 
women, and withers the hope and 
affection of human nature, by teach- 
ing that marriage signifies nothing but 
a housewife's thrift, and that woman's 
life has no other aim. 

But this dream of love, though 
beautiful, is only one scene in our 
play. In the procession of the soul 
74 



Love^ 

from within outward, it enlarges its 
circles ever, like the pebble thrown 
into the pond, or the light proceeding 
from an orb. The rays of the soul 
alight first on things nearest, on every 
utensil and toy, on nurses and domes- 
tics, on the house and yard and pas- 
sengers, on the circle of household ac- 
quaintance, on politics, and geography, 
and history. But by the necessity of 
our constitution, things are ever group- 
ing themselves according to higher or 
more interior laws. Neighbourhood, 
size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by 
degrees their power over us. Cause 
and effect, real affinities, the longing 
for harmony between the soul and the 
circumstance, the high progressive 
idealising instinct, these predominate 
later, and ever the step backward from 
75 



^ Love 

the higher to the lower relations is im- 
possible. Thus even love^ which is 
the deification of persons, must be- 
come more impersonal every day. Of 
this at first it gives no hint. Little 
think the youth and maiden who are 
glancing at each other across crowded 
rooms, with eyes so full of mutual in- 
telligence, — of the precious fruit long 
hereafter to proceed from this new 
quite external stimulus. The work 
of vegetation begins first in the irri- 
tability of the bark and leaf-buds. 
From exchanging glances, they ad- 
vance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, 
then to fiery passion, to plighting troth 
and marriage. Passion beholds its ob- 
ject as a perfect unit. The soul is 
wholly embodied, and the body is 
wholly ensouled. 

76 



Love ^ 

" Her pure and eloquent blood 

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 

That one might almost say her body thought. " 

Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into 
little stars to make the heavens fine. 
Life, with this pair, has no other aim, 
asks no more than Juliet — than 
Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, 
kingdoms, religion, are all contained 
in this form full of soul, in this soul 
which is all form. The lovers delight 
in endearments, in avowals of love, in 
comparisons of their regards. When 
alone, they solace themselves with the 
remembered image of the other. Does 
that other see the same star, the same 
melting cloud, read the same book, 
feel the same emotion that now de- 
light me ? They try and weigh their 
affection, and adding up all costly ad- 

L.ofc. 






Love 



vantages, friends, opportunities, proper- 
ties, exult in discovering that willingly, 
joyfully, they would give all as a 
ransom for the beautiful, the beloved 
head, not one hair of which shall be 
harmed. But the lot of humanity is 
on these children. Danger, sorrow, 
and pain arrive to them, as to all. 
Love prays. It makes covenants with 
Eternal Power, in behalf of this dear 
mate. The union which is thus af- 
fected, and which adds a new value to 
every atom in nature, for it trans- 
mutes every thread throughout the 
whole web of relation into a golden 
ray, and bathes the soul in a new and 
sweeter element, is yet a temporary 
state. Not always can flowers, pearls, 
poetry, protestations, nor even home 
in another heart, content the awful 
1'^ 



Love^ 

soul that dwells in clay. It arouses 
Itself at last from these endearments, 
as toys, and puts on the harness, and 
aspires to vast and universal aims. 
The soul which is in the soul of each, 
craving for a perfect beatitude, detects 
incongruities, defects, and dispropor- 
tion in the behaviour of the other. 
Hence arises surprise, expostulation, 
and pain. Yet that which drew them 
to each other was signs of loveliness, 
signs of virtue : and these virtues are 
there, however eclipsed. They appear 
and reappear, and continue to attract ; 
but the regard changes, quits the sign, 
and attaches to the substance. This 
repairs the wounded affection. Mean- 
time, as life wears on, it proves a 
game of permutation and combination 
of all possible positions of the parties, 
79 



^ Love 

to extort all the resources of each, 
and acquaint each with the whole 
strength and weakness of the other. 
For, it is the nature and end of this 
relation, that they should represent the 
human race to each other. All that 
is in the world, which is or ought to 
be known, is cunningly wrought into 
the texture of man, of woman. 

*' The person love does to us fit. 

Like manna, has the taste of all in it." 

The world rolls : the circumstances 
vary, every hour. All the angels that 
inhabit this temple of the body appear 
at the windows, and all the gnomes 
and vices also. By all the virtues, 
they are united. If there be virtue, 
all the vices are known as such ; they 
confess and flee. Their once flaming 
80 



Love^ 

regard is sobered by time in either 
breast, and losing in violence what it 
gains in extent, it becomes a thorough 
good understanding. They resign each 
other, without complaint, to the good 
offices which man and woman are 
severally appointed to discharge in time, 
and exchange the passion which once 
could not lose sight of its object, for 
a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, 
whether present or absent, of each 
other's designs. At last they discover 
that all which at first drew them to- 
gether — those once sacred features, 
that magical play of charms — was 
deciduous, had a prospective end, like 
the scaffolding by which the house 
was built ; and the purification of the 
intellect and the heart, from year to 
year, is the real marriage, foreseen and 
8i 



■^ES^ 



-^ Love 

prepared from the first, and wholly 
above their consciousness. Looking at 
these aims with which two persons, a 
man and a woman, so variously and 
correlatively gifted, are shut up in one 
house to spend in the nuptial society 
forty or fifty years, I do not wonder 
at the emphasis with which the heart 
prophesies this crisis from early in- 
fancy, at the profuse beauty with 
which the instincts deck the nuptial 
bower, and nature and intellect and 
art emulate each other in the gifts and 
the melody they bring to the epithala- 
mium. 

Thus are we put in training for a 
love which knows not sex, nor person, 
nor partiality, but which seeketh virtue 
and wisdom everywhere, to the end of 
increasing virtue and wisdom. We are 



Love ^ 

by nature observers, and thereby learn- 
ers. That is our permanent state. But 
we are often made to feel that our 
affections are but tents of a night. 
Though slowly and with pain, the 
objects of the affections change, as 
the objects of thought do, there are 
moments when the affections rule and 
absorb the man, and make his happi- 
ness dependent on a person or persons. 
But in health the mind is presently 
seen again, — its overarching vault, 
bright with galaxies of immutable 
lights, and the warm loves and fears 
that swept over us as clouds, must lose 
their infinite character, and blend with 
God, to attain their own perfection. 
But we need not fear that we can lose 
anything by the progress of the soul. 
The soul may be trusted to the end. 
83 



>A-J> 



Love 



That which is so beautiful and attract- 
ive as these relations, must be suc- 
ceeded and supplanted only by what 
is more beautiful, and so on for 
ever. 



THE END. 



m 31934