My dear Nephews:
I think it was Burke who said that those who desire to improve, should always choose, as companions, persons of more knowledge and virtue than themselves. He had, however, the happy faculty of eliciting information from all with whom he came in contact, even as the bee extracts sweetness from the most insignificant and unattractive flower. It is said of him, you are aware, that he never took refuge under a projecting eave for five minutes, to escape a shower, with another man, without either giving or receiving instruction.
His excellent habit in this respect, nevertheless, in no degree invalidated the practical wisdom of the remark I have ascribed to this celebrated statesman. It is not easy to attach too much importance to the choice of Companions and Friends, especially during that period of life when we are most susceptible to outward influences.
Much enjoyment is derived from association with those whose tastes, pursuits, and sentiments are similar to our own; but, in making a selection in this respect, it is better to seek the companionship of persons whose influence will have the effect to elevate rather than to depress our own mental and moral standard. Hence, young persons will be most improved by the example of those whose greater maturity of years and acquirement give them the advantage of experience.
Byron and others of the morbid school to which he belonged, or rather, perhaps, which he originated, strove to establish as a truth, the libellous charge that humanity is incapable of true, disinterested friendship. Happily for the dignity and healthfulness of the youthful mind, this affected misanthropy, having had its day, is dying the natural death to which error is doomed, and we are again permitted to respect our common nature without wholly renouncing our claims to poetic sensibility!
It seems, to my poor perceptions, that there needs no better test of the capacities of our fellow-creatures, with regard to the nobler sentiments, than our own self-consciousness! If we know ourselves capable of lofty aspirations, of self-sacrifice for others' good, of rejoicing in the happiness of our friends, of deep, enduring affection for them, by what arrogant right shall we assume ourselves superior to the race to which we belong?
As the man who habitually rails at the gentler sex must, necessarily, have been peculiarly unfortunate in his earliest associations with woman, so he who professes a disbelief in true friendship, may be presumed, not only to have chosen his associates unwisely, but to be himself ill-constituted and ill-disciplined. If
——"Virtue is more than a shade or a sound,
And man may her voice, in this being, obey,"
then is friendship one of the purest and highest sources of human enjoyment!
Eschew, then, the debasing, soul-restraining maxims of Byron, Rochefoucauld, and their imitators, and seek in communion with the gifted and the good, elevated enjoyment and inspiring incentives to noble purposes and manly achievements.