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for any one to live in good-humor, and enjoy his present existence, who is apprehensive either of torment or of annihilation; of being miserable, or of not being at all.)

After having mentioned these two great principles, which are destructive of cheerfulness in their own nature, as well as in right reason, I cannot think of any other that ought to banish this happy temper from a virtuous mind. Pain and sickness, shame and reproach, poverty and old age, nay death itself, considering the shortness of their duration, and the advantage we may reap from them, do not deserve the name of evils. A good mind may bear up under them with fortitude, with indolence, and with cheerfulness of heart. The tossing of a tempest does not discompose him, which he is sure will bring him to a joyful harbor.

A man who uses his best endeavors to live according to the dictates of virtue and right reason, has two perpetual sources of cheerfulness, in the consideration of his own nature, and of that Being on whom he has a dependence. If he looks into himself, he cannot but rejoice in that existence which is so lately bestowed upon him, and which after millions of ages will be still new and still in its beginning. How many self-congratulations naturally arise in the mind, when it reflects on this its entrance into eternity, when it takes a view of those improvable faculties, which in a few years, and even at its first setting out, have made so considerable a progress, and which will still be receiving an increase of perfection, and consequently an increase of happiness! The consciousness of such a being spreads a perpetual diffusion of joy through the soul of a virtuous man, and makes him look upon himself every moment as more happy than he knows how to conceive.

The second source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of his perfections, we see everything that we can imagine, as great, glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by his goodness, and surrounded with an immensity of love and mercy. In short, we de

pend upon a Being, whose power qualifies him to make us happy by an infinity of means, whose goodness and truth engage him to make those happy who desire it of him, and whose unchangeableness will secure us in this happiness to all eternity.

Such considerations, which every one should perpetually cherish in his thoughts, will banish from us all that secret heaviness of heart which unthinking men are subject to when they lie under no real affliction; all that anguish which we may feel from any evil that actually oppresses us, to which I may likewise add those little cracklings of mirth and folly that are apter to betray virtue than support it; and establish in us such an even and cheerful temper, as makes us pleasing to ourselves, to those with whom we converse, and to Him whom we were made to please.-I.

No. 385.]

THURSDAY, MAY 22, 1712.

-Thesea pectora juncta fide.-OVID, I Trist. iii, 66.

Breasts that with sympathizing ardor glow'd,
And holy friendship, such as Theseus vow'd.'

I INTEND the paper for this day as a loose essay upon friendship, in which I shall throw my observations together without any set form, that I may avoid repeating what has been often said on this subject.

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 friendship, 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 warmths of friendship, without an affectionate good-will toward 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 honor 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 Æneas 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 hero'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 favorite, 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 speaking. This extraordinary person, amid the civil wars of his country, when he saw the designs of all parties equally tended to the subversion of liberty, by constantly 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 Marius, whose father was declared an enemy to the commonwealth, he was himself one of Sylla's chief favorites, and always near that general.

During the war between Cæsar and Pompey, he still maintained the same conduct. After death of Cæsar, he sent money to Brutus in h troubles, and did a thousand good offices to Antony's wife and friends when that party seemed ruined. Lastly, even in that bloody war between Antony 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, wrote 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 toward each other, as it is generally imagined, that I believe we shall find some of the firmest friendships to have been contracted between persons of different humors; the mind being often pleased with those perfections which are new to it, and which it does not find among its own accomplishments. Beside 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 reproved, 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 humanized 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 succors, it 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 arises from a voluntary choice, the latter from a necessity to which we could not give our own

consent.

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