Any discussion of the details, touching the requisite circumstances of compatibility to form friendships with any chance of their being pleasant and permanent, as well as the obligations and duties involved by it, would require a volume, and would carry me utterly beyond my present purpose. Books are ample, if not interesting and just, in the information which they impart upon this subject. With my views of its obligations and duties in few words, I shall dismiss it.
In a pecuniary point of view the claims of friendship are only limited by the sterner demands of justice. The common adage, which calls upon us to be just, before we allow ourselves to be generous, is worthy to be written in letters of gold; though it has been a thousand times wrested by selfish and cold hearts, into a pretext for their avarice. Whoever should think of lavishing his money upon a friend, in order to absolve himself from the more difficult calls of justice, would show a mind, too weak and incapable of discrimination, to honor that friend by his bounty. But, grant that the friends have delicacy, consideration and gentlemanly tact, and they may possess a common purse, without danger to the duties of either.
The fame and character of the one are strictly the property of the other. Let no one, who has the least particle of the base alloy of envy in his feelings towards him, whom he calls his friend, who is willing to hear, and countenance abatements of his qualities, talents, or virtues, dare to assume that almost sacred name. He is equally unworthy of it, if he stand by in neutrality when calumny is busily passing against him; and still more, if by smiles he gives his countenance, and half his consent to the story of detraction and abatement. It is a forfeiture of the right to the name, though it may be a less worthy one, to make the person, called friend, the subject of jest and ridicule. In regard to all these points, the duties are clear, distinct, palpable and not to be compromised. Every honorable mind feels, in witnessing any infraction of the laws of equity, or strict justice, a sentiment of recoil and disgust, difficult perhaps to define, but one which instantly designates the person guilty of it, as unworthy of the name of friend. Honest, frank and disinterested advice, especially in relation to concerns of great interest to the party, is a paramount obligation, whether the advised will bear, or forbear. This prerogative may, indeed, be claimed by unfeeling and rude bluntness. But, by a discriminating mind, the suggestions of a counterfeit, will never be mistaken for those of genuine friendship.
The time, the courtesy and the amount of intercourse, due from one friend to another, can never be brought under subjection to rules. Moral, like physical attraction, acting unconsciously, will regulate this portion of duty, with the unvarying certainty of the laws of nature. If persons, claiming to sustain this relation to each other, do not wish to be as much together, as duty and propriety will admit; if they allow this matter to be settled by the rigid tithing of etiquette, they are anything rather than real friends.
I have been struck by an incident in the life of a religious woman, I think it was Mrs Graham. There was a sacramental pledge between her and a friend, that, whichever of them should be first called from life, the other should visit her in the sickness, which she should consider her last, and not leave her, until she had received her last sigh. Sublime test of affection! What a tender, sacred office, after a life of friendship, thus, by a sacramental contract, to close the eyes of the friend beloved in life, and separated only by death! There can be no doubt that the feelings, called thus into action, are peculiarly fitted to mitigate the last sorrows; and in the simple grandeur of such a sentiment, so manifested, the departing friend will see a proof, that such affections are, in their own nature, immortal; and that such ties shall be renewed in the eternal regions of the living.
When friends are separated wide from each other by distance, duty, and the stern calls of our pursuits, I admire the custom of baptizing, if I may so say, our remembrances, by giving the names of our dear and distant friends to the hills, valleys, streams, trees or pleasant views in our walks; or the objects most familiar and pleasant to our view. The stern silence of nature may thus be compelled to find a tongue, and discourse with us of those we love.
In a word, the name, I am sensible, is too often a morbid mockery of cold and affected sentimentalism, both weak and disgusting, the cant term for the intercourse between the enlarged prisoners of boarding schools. But the sentiment exists, pure, simple delightful. Neither fawning, nor cant, nor flattery, nor any mixture of earth’s mould makes any part of it. Honorable, dignified, unshaken, it feels its obligations, and discharges them. The reputation, character and whole interest of the friend is its object; and his highest happiness its prayer. In holy segregation from the hollow intercourse, false phrases and deceitful compliments of fashion, and what is called the world, it is faithful and consistent, under all proofs and trials, until death; and when the eyes of the departed are closed, his memory is enshrined in the remembrance of the survivor. Thank God! I have seen, I have felt, that there are such friendships; and if there is anything honorable, dignified and attractive in aught, that earth presents, it is the sight of two friends, whose attachment dates from their first remembered sentiment; and has survived difference of opinion and interest, the changes of distance, time and disease, and those weaning influences, which, while they crumble the most durable monuments, convert most hearts to stone.
I have long been in the habit of measuring the character, mental power and prospects of the young, who are brought by circumstances under my observation, by the power which they evince, to resist the suggestion of the senses. In the same proportion, as I see them capable of rising above the thraldom of their appetites, capable of that energy of will, that gives the intellectual control over the animal nature, I graduate them higher in the scale of moral power and prospect. But if, in their course, they manifest the clear preponderance of the animal; if sloth, sensuality, and the inclinations, which have no higher origin than the senses, sway them beyond the influence of advice and moral suasion, be they ever so beautiful, endowed, rich, distinguished, be their place in general estimation ever so high, I put them down, as belonging to the animal, and not the intellectual orders. They can never reach higher worth and success, than that, which is the blind award of accident.