friendship who thinks what use he can make of it. Friendship is free trade, and knows neither charity, robbery, nor reciprocity. It keeps neither a debit nor a credit account, and it leaves no room for ingratitude, because the credit of each party is unlimited.
The completest friendship is that in which the utmost sympathy is united with the utmost independence. The differences must not be so great as to prevent a thorough understanding, nor so small as to do away with admiration for the personal qualities of each other, and some desire to emulate them.
These phrases do not mean that we should look for perfection in friends. Quite the contrary. What could be more fatiguing than perfection? Its monotony would be unendurable. The affection for friends is not a tribute paid to their merits. Their very faults often endear them. We do not wish them removed. For ourselves, it may be well to retain some of those defects which give our friends pleasure; though this is to be taken with reserve; for, on the other hand, a great charm in a friend is that he brings us not what we expected, but something equally pleasant which we did not expect.
Friendship is strengthened by a certain amount of reserve. Few persons, to use the slang of the studio, “strip well.” Every one gains by veiling some of his parts. For the same reason we should not ask nor desire complete confidence from a friend. There are always secrets which it is better not to know. We may inquire the cause of his
despondency, for sympathy and aid are natural to the sentiment of friendship; but should wait to be told the sources of his elation.
In a similar manner absence for not too long a time strengthens friendship by allowing its value to be felt, and the imagination to clothe the absent in some of the fanciful and beautiful garbs of the ideal. But too prolonged a stay leaves friendship a memory rather than a passion.
“But what!” some one will exclaim. “Are we to set about making and keeping friends with the same attention as if we were raising hot-house fruit?” Yes, precisely so; but if a friend is not in your estimation worth as much as a bunch of Hamburg grapes, I assure you it will be time wasted for you to try. When people complain that they have no friends, inquire what efforts they have made to get and keep them. True friendship is rare because it is rarely sought for. When Lord Bacon wrote, “There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals,” the great Chancellor unwittingly testified to the truth of those charges of perfidy which posterity has brought against his name. Friends must be diligently sought for, and when found must be sedulously cherished. Dr. Johnson never said a wiser word than when he gave the advice, directed especially to those who are advancing in years, “to keep our friendships in constant repair.”
Such a relation of sentiment between men can scarcely be formed in later life. As trees grow old their fibres become rigid, and their branches cannot be interlocked to
arch a bower. But, by a delightful compensation of nature, it is precisely at this period of life that the sweetest friendships of all are formed—those between men and women. Some have doubted these, and I grant you most are incapable of them; but in facts and friendships there is no such thing as gender. There are too many beautiful examples in history to allow room for scepticism here.
Need I count them? Need I refer to the friendship between Chateaubriand and Madame Recamier, extending over thirty years, during which she was the guide, consoler, and confidante of the great statesman and author; not as a learned woman,—for that she was not,—but as a truly sympathetic soul? Need I quote from that charming volume of letters, the Briefe an eine Freundin, which testify to the long, the loving, and the pure bond that united Wilhelm von Humboldt to Charlotte Diede?