I cipal charm, is far more inconsiderate, and far more guilty, than the heedless producer of misery, who forms a matrimonial connexion, without the prospect of any means of subsistence, for one who is to exist with him, only to suffer with him in indigence, and for the little sufferers who are afterwards to make indigence still more painfully felt. He who has vowed to love one to whom he pledges love, only because he knows that she is worthy of such a pledge, will not afterwards have reason to complain of the difficulty of loving the unworthy. If, however, it be necessary for man to be careful to whom he engages himself by a vow so solemn, it is surely not less necessary for the gentler tenderness of woman. She, too, has duties to fulfil, that depend on love, or at least that can be sweetened only by love; and when she engages to perform them where love is not felt, she is little aware of the precariousness of such a pledge, and of the perils to which she is exposing herself. It is truly painful, then, to see, in the intercourse of the world, how seldom affection is considered as a necessary matrimonial preliminary, at least in one of the parties, and in the one to whom it is the more necessary; and how much quicker the judgment of fathers, mothers, friends, is to estimate the wealth or the worldly dignity, than the wisdom or the virtue, which they present as a fit offering to her, whom wealth and worldly dignity may render only weaker and more miserable, but whom wisdom might counsel, and virtue cherish. It is painful to see one, who has in other respects, perhaps, many moral excellencies, consent as an accomplice in this fraud, to forego the moral delicacy which condemns the apparent sale of affection, that is not to be sold,rejoice in the splendid sacrifice which is thus made of her peace,-consign her person to one whom she despises, with the same indifference as she consigns her hand,-a prostitute for gold, not less truly because the prostitution is to be for life, and not less criminally a prostitute, because to the guilt and meanness of the pecuniary barter, are added the guilt of a mockery of tenderness, that wishes to deceive man, and the still greater guilt of a perjury, that, in vows which the heart belies, would wish to deceive God, on whom it calls to sanction the deceit. When marriages are thus formed, it is not for the sufferer to complain, if she find that she has acquired a few more trappings of wealth, but not a husband. She has her house, her carriage, and the living machines that are paid to wait around her and obey her; she takes rank in public spectacles, and presides in her own mansion, in spectacles as magnificent; she has obtained all she wished to obtain ;-and the affection and happiness, which she scorned, she must leave to those who sought them. - "There is a place on the earth," it has been said, "where pure joys are unknown-from which politeness is banished, and has given place to selfishness, contradiction, and half-veiled insults. Remorse and inquietude, like furies, that are never weary of assailing, torment the inhabitants. This place is the house of a wedded pair, who have no mutual love nor even esteem.There is a place on the earth, to which vice has no entrance,--where the gloomy passions have no empire,--where pleasure and innocence live constantly together,--where cares and labours are delightful,-where every pain is forgotten in reciprocal tenderness,-where there is an equal enjoyment of the past, the present, and the future. It is the house, too, of a wedded pair --but of a pair who, in wedlock, are lovers still."* *St. Lambert, Œuv. Phil. Tome II. p. 68. LECTURE LXXXIX. ON THE DUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP; DUTIES OF GRATITUDE. GENTLEMEN, in our arrangement of the duties which we owe to particular individuals, as reducible to five orders, those which arise from affinity, you will remember, constituted the first division. The particular duties, as yet considered by us, have all belonged to the first division-the duties of relationship,-parental, filial, fraternal, conjugal; in the exercise of which, and in the reciprocal enjoyment of them as exercised by others, is to be found that gracious system of domestic virtue, under the shelter of which man reposes in happiness-and resting thus, in the confidence of affection and delight, becomes purer of heart, and more actively beneficent, by the very happiness which he feels. It is of these domestic virtues that we must think, when we think of the morals of a nation. A nation is but a shorter name for the individuals who compose it; and when these are good fathers, good sons, good brothers, good husbands, they will be good citizens; because the principles which make them just and kind under the domestic roof, will make them just and kind to those who inhabit with them that country, which is only a larger home. The household fire, and the altar, which are coupled together in the exhortations of the leaders of armies, and in the hearts of those whom they address, have a relation more intimate than that of which they think, who combat for both. It is before the household fire, that every thing which is holy and worthy of the altar is formed. There, arose the virtues that were the virtues of the child, before they were the virtues of the warrior or the statesman; and the mother who weeps with delight at the glory of her son, when a whole nation is exulting with her, rejoices over the same heroic fortitude that, at a period almost as delightful to her, in the little sacrifices which boyish generosity could make, had already often gladdened her heart, when she thought only of the gentle virtues before her, and was not aware of half the worth of that noble offering, which she was speedily to make to her country, and to the world. From the domestic affinities, the transition is a very easy one, to that bond of affection which unites friend to friend, and gives rise to an order of duties almost equal in force, to those of the nearest affinity. We are formed to be virtuous,-to feel pleasure, in contemplating those parts of our life, which present to us the remembrance of good deeds, as we feel pain, in contemplating other portions of it, which present to us only remembrances of moral evil; and the same principle, which makes us love in ourselves what is virtuous, renders it impossible for us to look with indifference on the virtues of another. The principle of moral emotion alone, would thus be sufficient to lead to friendship, though there were no other principle in our nature, that could tend to make a single human being an object of our regard. But we are not lovers of virtue only,—we are lovers of many other qualities, which add to our happiness, not so much as our own virtues indeed, but often as much as we could derive, in the same space of time, from the mere virtue of those with whom we mix in society. We love gaiety, and we, therefore, love those who can render us gay, by their wit, by the fluency of their social eloquence, by those never-ceasing smiles of good humour, which are almost to our quick sympathy of emotion, like wit and eloquence; we hate sorrow, and we love those, who, by the same powerful aid, can enable us to shake off the burden of melancholy, from which our own efforts are, as we have too often found, unable of themselves to free us ;-we have plans of business or amusement; and we love those whose co-operation is necessary to their success, and who readily afford to us that co-operation which we need ;-we are doubtful, in many cases, as to the propriety of our own conduct; and, if all others acted differently, we should be driven back to the uncertainty or the reproach of our own conscience, without any consolation from without; we, therefore, love those who, by acting as we act, seem to say to us that we have done well; or who, at least, when it is impossible for us to flatter ourselves with this illusion, comfort us with the only palliation which our conscience can admit, that we are not more reprehensible than others around us. Even without regard to all these causes of love, it is miserable to us to be alone. The very nature of all our emotions leads them to pour themselves out to some other breast; and the stronger the emotion, the more ardent is this propensity. We must make some one know why we are glad, or our gladness will be an oppression to us, almost as much as a delight. If we are in wrath, our anger seems to us incomplete, till not one only, but many, share our resentment. The sovereign would feel little pleasure, in all the splendour of his throne, if he were to sit upon it for ever, with subjects around him, to whom he was to be always a sovereign, and only a sovereign; and the very misanthrope, who abandons the race of mankind, in his detestation of their iniquity,-must still have some one with whom he may give vent to his indignation, by describing the happiness which he feels in having left the wicked to that universal wickedness which is worthy of them, and which he almost loves, because it enables him to hate them more thoroughly. Thus lavish has nature been to us, of the principles of friendship. With all these causes, that, singly, might dispose to cordial intercourse, and that exert in most cases an united influence, it is not wonderful, that the tendency to friendship of some sort, should be a part of our mental constitution, almost as essential to it, as any of our appetites. It is scarcely a metaphor, indeed, which we employ, when we term it an appetite,-an appetite arising from our very nature as social beings; and, if our appetites, like our other desires, bear any proportion to the amount of the good which is their object, it must be one of the most vivid which it is possible for us to feel; because it relates to a species of happiness, which is among the most vivid of our enjoyments, in many cases approaching the delight of the most intimate domestic relations, and scarcely to be counted inferior to the delight arising from any other source, unless when we think of that virtue which is essential to the enjoyment of all. To take friendship from life, says Cicero, would be almost the same thing, as to take the sun from the world. "Solem a mundo tollere videntur, qui amicitiam e vita tollunt." It is, indeed, the sunshine of those who otherwise would walk in darkness; it beams with unclouded radiance on our moral path, and is itself warmth and beauty to the very path, along which it invites us to proceed. He knows not, how poor all the splendours of worldly prosperity are in themselves, who enjoys them with that increase of happiness which friendship has given to them; and he who is still rich enough to have a friend, cannot know what extreme poverty VOL. II. 50 and misery are; because the only misery which is truly misery, is that which has no one to comfort it. Celestial Happiness, whene'er she stoops To visit Earth,-one shrine the Goddess finds, Quantum bonum est, ubi sunt præparata pectora, in quæ tuto secretum omne descendat, quorum conscientiam minus quam tuam timeas, quorum sermo solicitudinem leniat, sententia consilium expediat, hilaritas tristitiam dissipet, conspectus ipse delectet." How great a blessing is it, to have bosoms ever ready for receiving and preserving faithfully, whatever we may wish to confide, whose conscious memory of our actions we may fear less than our own, whose discourse may alleviate our anxiety, whose counsel may fix our own doubtful judgment, whose hilarity may dissipate our sorrow, whose very aspect may delight. There is unquestionably, in the very presence of a friend, a delight of this sort, which has no other source than the consciousness of the presence of one who feels for us the regard which we feel for him. "When I ask myself," says Montaigne, after a very lively description which he gives of his affection for his friend,-"When I ask myself, whence it is, that I feel this joy, this ease, this serenity, when I see him,-it is because it is he, it is because it is I, I answer; and this is all which I can say." On the delights which friendship affords, however, it would be idle to expatiate. There is no subject, scarcely even with the exception of love itself, on which so much has been written, by philosophers and declaimers of all sorts, in prose and poetry. I might repeat to you innumerable common places on the subject, and prove to you, logically, by many arguments, that' what you have all felt to be delightful, is delightful. For the evidence of this, however, I may safely leave you to your own consciousness. You have many friendships, and, perhaps, your most important and permanent friendships still to form; but if you have never yet felt what friendship is, there is little reason to think that you will ever feel it; and if you have felt it, though you may not yet have been in situations, that might enable you to derive from it all the advantages which it is capable of yielding, the very consciousness of the regard itself will enable you to anticipate them all. He who has never been in poverty, in long and almost hopeless disease, in any deep distress of any sort, may yet know, what consolation the attentions of friendship would administer to the sorrow, which he has never felt; and if he ever feel the sorrow and the consolation, will not acquire any new knowledge of the extent of the delightful influence which he had long known how to appreciate, but only a new cause of gratitude to him, who, in doing much, had done only what it was expected of his ready tenderness and generosity to do. "There is, indeed," as it has been truly said, "only one species of misery which friendship cannot comfort,-the misery of atrocious guilt,-but hearts capable of genuine friendship, are not capable of committing crimes. Though it cannot comfort guilt, however, which ought not to be comforted, friendship is still able to console, at least, the too powerful remembrance of our faults and weaknesses; its voice reconciles us to ourselves; it shows us * Night Thoughts. Night Second. the means of rising again from our fall; and our fall itself leads others to forget, in the same manner as it leads us to forget it, by recalling to us, and to others, our estimable qualities, and prompting us to the exercise of them. Friendship repairs every thing-remedies every thing-comforts every thing."* Friendship, however, is not a source of pleasure only; it is also a source of duty; and it is chiefly in this respect that we are now to regard it. The duties that relate to friendship may be considered in three lights-as they regard the commencement of it-the continuance of it—and its close. Our first duties are those which relate to the choice of a friend. If we were sufficiently aware, how great a command over our whole life, we give to any one whom we admit to our intimacy-how ready we are to adopt the errors of those whom we love; and to regard their very faults, not merely as excusable, but as objects of imitation, or at least to imitate them without thinking whether they ought to be imitated, and without knowing even that we are imitating them, we should be a little more careful than we usually are, in making a choice, which is to decide, in a great measure, whether we are to be virtuous or vicious, happy or miserable,—or which, in many cases, if we still continue happy, upon the whole, must often disturb our happiness; and, if we still continue virtuous, make virtue a greater effort. "The bandage which, in our poetic fictions, we give to Love," says the Marchioness de Lambert, "we have never thought of hanging over the clear and piercing eyes of Friendship. Friendship has no blindness: it examines before it engages, and attaches itself only to merit."+ The picture is a beautiful one; but it is a picture rather of what friendship ought to be, than of what friendship always is. The bandage, indeed, is not so thick, as that which covers the eyes of love, and it is not so constantly worn; but when it is worn, though it admits some light, it does not admit all. We must tear it off, before we see clearly; or we must be careful, at least, what hands they are which we permit to put it on. It is before we yield ourselves, then, to the regard, that we should strive to estimate the object of it, and to estimate his value, not by the gratification of a single day, but by the influence which he may continue to exercise on our life. If friendship, indeed, were a mere pastime, that ended with the amusement of some idle hours, it might be allowed to us to select, for our companions, those who might best amuse our idleness; it would be enough to us, then, that our friend was gay, and had the happy talent of making others gay. If it were a mere barter of courtesy, for a little wealth or distinction, it might be allowed to us, in like manner, to select those whose power and opulence seemed to promise, to our ambition and avarice, the best return of gain;-it would then be enough, if our friend possessed a station that might enable him to elevate us, not perhaps, to his own rank, but at least a little higher than we are. Then, indeed, the propriety or impropriety of friendship might be estimated as readily, and almost in the same manner, as we estimate the worth of any common marketable commodity. But if it be an alliance of heart with heart,-if, in giving our sorrows or projects to be shared by another, we are to partake, in our turn, his sorrows or designs, whatever they may be,-to consider the virtue of him whom we admit to * St. Lambert, Euv. Phil. Tome III. p. 82. |