every friend will depart*." We may observe in this and several other precepts in this author, those little familiar instances and illustrations which are so much admired in the moral writings of Horace and Epictetus. There are very beautiful instances of this nature in the following passages, which are likewise written upon the same subject: "Whoso discovereth secrets, loseth his credit, and shall never find a friend to his mind. Love thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but if thou bewrayest his secrets, follow no more after him; for as a man hath destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend go, and shalt not get him again: follow after him no more, for he is too far off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare. As for a wound it may be bound up, and after reviling there may be a reconciliation: but he that betrayeth secrets, is without hopet." Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise man has very justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the principal; to these, others have added virtue, knowledge, discretion, equality in age and fortune, and, as Cicero calls it, morum comitas, a pleasantness of temper. If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifications a certain equability or evenness of behaviour. A man often contracts a friendship with one whom perhaps he does not find out till after a year's conversation; when on a sudden some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never discovered or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him. There are several persons who in some certain periods of their lives are inexpressibly agreeable, and in others as odious and detestable. Martial has given us a very pretty picture of one of this spe cies, in the following epigram. Ecclus. ix. 20, 21, 22. + Ibid. xxvii. 16, & seq. Difficilis, facilis, jucundus, acerbus es idem, EPIG. xlvii. 12. "In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow; Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, nor without thee." It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship with one, who by these changes and vicissitudes of humour, is sometimes amiable, and sometimes odious; and as most men are at some times in an admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should be one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves well when we are so, and never to go out of that which is the agreeable part of our character. Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another. Though the pleasures and advantages of friendship have been largely celebrated by the best moral writers, and are considered by all as great ingredients of human happiness, we very rarely meet with the practice of this virtue in the world. Every man is ready to give in a long catalogue of those virtues and good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend, but very few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves. Love and esteem are the first principles of friend. ship, which always is imperfect where either of these two is wanting. As on the one hand, we are soon ashamed of loving a man whom we cannot esteem; so, on the other, though we are truly sensible of a man's abilities, we can never raise ourselves to the warmth of friendship, without au affectionate good-will towards his person. Friendship immediately banishes envy under all its disguises. A man who can once doubt whether he should rejoice in his friend's being happier than himself, may depend upon it that he is an utter stranger to this virtue. There is something in friendship so very great and noble, that in those fictitious stories which are invented to the honour of any particular person, the authors have thought it as necessary to make their hero a friend as a lover. Achilles has his Patroclus, and Eneas his Achates. In the first of these instances we may observe, for the reputation of the subject I am treating of, that Greece was almost ruined by the he. ro's love, but was preserved by his friendship. The character of Achates suggests to us an observation we may often make on the intimacies of great men, who frequently choose their companions rather for the qualities of the heart than those of the head, and prefer fidelity in an easy inoffensive complying temper to those endowments which make a much greater figure among mankind. I do not remember that Achates, who is represented as the first favourite, either gives his advice, or strikes a blow, through the whole Æneid. A friendship which makes the least noise, is very often most useful; for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one. Atticus, one of the best men of ancient Rome, was a very remarkable instance of what I am here speak. ing. This extraordinary person, amidst the civil wars of his country, when he saw the designs of all parties equally tended to the subversion of liberty, by con stantly preserving the esteem and affection of both the competitors, found means to serve his friends on either side and while he sent money to young Marins, whose father was declared an enemy of the common. wealth, he was himself one of Sylla's chief favourites, and always near that general. During the war between Cæsar and Pompey, he still maintained the same conduct. After the death of Cæsar he sent money to Brutus in his troubles, and did a thousand good offices to Anthony's wife and friends when that party seemed ruined. Lastly, even in that bloody war between Anthony and Augustus, Atticus still kept his place in both their friendships; insomuch, that the first, says Cornelius Nepos, whenever he was absent from Rome in any part of the empire, writ punctually to him what he was doing, what he read, and whither he intended to go; and the latter gave him constantly an exact account of all his affairs. A likeness of inclinations in every particular is so far from being requisite to form a benevolence in two minds towards each other, as it is generally imagined, that I believe we shall find some of the firmest friend. ships to have been contracted between persons of dif ferent humours; the mind being often pleased with those perfections which are new to it, and which it does not find among its own accomplishments. Besides that a man in some measure supplies his own defects, and fancies himself at second hand possessed of those good qualities and endowments, which are in the possession of him, who, in the eye of the world, is looked on as his other self. The most difficult province in friendship is the letting a man see his faults and errors, which should, if possible, be so contrived, that he may perceive our advice is given him, not so much to please ourselves, as for his own advantage. The reproaches therefore of a friend should always be strictly just, and not too frequent. The violent desire of pleasing in the person reprov. ed, may otherwise change into a despair of doing it, while he finds himself censured for faults he is not conscious of. A mind that is softened and bumanized by friendship, cannot bear frequent reproaches; either it must quite sink under the oppression, or abate considerably of the value and esteem it had for him who bestows them. The proper business of friendship is to inspire life and courage; and a soul thus supported, outdoes itself; whereas, if it be unexpectedly deprived of these succours, droops and languishes. We are in some measure more inexcusable if we violate our duties to a friend, than to a relation; since the former arise from a voluntary choice, the latter from a necessity to which we could not give our own consent. As it has been said on one side, that a man ought not to break with a faulty friend, that he may not expose the weakness of his choice; it will doubtless hold much stronger with respect to a worthy one, that he may never be upbraided for having lost so valuable a treasure which was once in his possession. IT would be a nobler improvement, or rather a recovery of what we call good breeding, if nothing were to pass amongst us for agreeable which was the least transgression against that rule of life called Decorum, or a regard to decency. This would command the respect of mankind, because it carries in it deference to their good opinion; as humility lodged in a worthy mind is always attended with a certain homage, which no haughty soul, with all the art imaginable, will ever be able to purchase. Tully says, " Virtue and decency are so nearly related, that it is difficult to separate them from each other, but in our imaginatiou: as the beauty of the body always accompanies the health of it, so certainly is decency concomitant to virtue; as, |