And then there are infinite gradations, such as the friendships of old and young, pupils and masters, parents and children, nurses and nurslings, employers and servants, all of them in a way unequal friendships, but capable of evoking the deepest and purest kinds of devotion:  such famous friendships have been Carlyle’s devotion to his parents, Boswell’s to Johnson, Stanley’s to Arnold; till at last one comes to the typical and essential thing known specially as friendship—­the passionate, devoted, equal bond which exists between two people of the same age and sex; many of which friendships are formed at school and college, and which often fade away in a sort of cordial glow, implying no particular communion of life and thought.  Marriage is often the great divorcer of such friendships, and circumstances generally, which sever and estrange; because, unless there is a constant interchange of thought and ideas, increasing age tends to emphasise differences.  But there are instances of men, like Newman and FitzGerald, who kept up a sort of romantic quality of friendship to the end.

I remember the daughter of an old clergyman of my acquaintance telling me a pathetic and yet typical story of the end of one of these friendships.  Her father and another elderly clergyman had been devoted friends in boyhood and youth.  Circumstances led to a suspension of intercourse, but at last, after a gap of nearly thirty years, during which the friends had not met, it was arranged that the old comrade should come and stay at the vicarage.  As the time approached, her father grew visibly anxious, and coupled his frequent expression of the exquisite pleasure which the visit was going to bring him with elaborate arrangements as to which of his family should be responsible for the entertainment of the old comrade at every hour of the day:  the daughters were to lead him out walking in the morning, his wife was to take him out drives in the afternoon, and he was to share the smoking-room with a son, who was at home, in the evenings—­the one object being that the old gentleman should not have to interrupt his own routine, or bear the burden of entertaining a guest; and he eventually contrived only to meet him at meals, when the two old friends did not appear to have anything particular to say to each other.  When the visit was over, her father used to allude to his guest with a half-compassionate air:  “Poor Harry, he has aged terribly—­I never saw a man so changed, with such a limited range of interests; dear fellow, he has quite lost his old humour.  Well, well! it was a great pleasure to see him here.  He was very anxious that we should go to stay with him, but I am afraid that will be rather difficult to manage; one is so much at a loose end in a strange house, and then one’s correspondence gets into arrears.  Poor old Harry!  What a lively creature he was up at Trinity, to be sure!” Thus with a sigh dust is committed to dust.