[Footnote 4:  Methuen. 1_s. 6d._]

[Footnote 5:  “Be silent to God, and let Him mould thee.”—­Ps. xxxvii. 7.]

Friendship and Love.

    “The fountains of my hidden life
      Are through thy friendship fair.”

No word in our language has a nobler meaning than “friendship;” it is a pity that none is more often abused.  Every hasty intimacy formed by force of circumstances—­often merely by force of living next door—­is dignified with the title; but a deeper bond is needed to make a real friendship.  “By 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.