“A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.... In short, choose a friend as thou dost a wife, till death separate you.... Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their friendship.... This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.”
William of Orange
It may be worth while here to insert two passages from Macaulay’s History of England. The first deals with the remarkable intimacy between the Young Prince William of Orange and “a gentleman of his household” named Bentinck. William’s escape from a malignant attack of small-pox
“was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly to the intrepid and indefatigable, friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of Bentinck alone William took food and medicine—by Bentinck alone William was lifted from his bed and laid down in it. ‘Whether Bentinck slept or not while I was ill,’ said William to Temple with great tenderness, ‘I know not. But this I know, that through sixteen days and nights, I never once called for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my side.’ Before the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, he had himself caught the contagion.” (But he recovered.) History of England, ch. vii.
Princess Anne and Lady Churchill
The second passage describes the devotion of the Princess Anne (daughter of James II. and afterwards Queen Anne) to Lady Churchill—a devotion which had considerable influence on the political situation.
“It is a common observation that differences of taste, understanding, and disposition are no impediments to friendship, and that the closest intimacies often exist between minds, each of which supplies what is wanting in the other. Lady Churchill was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The princess could not live apart from the object of her romantic fondness. She married, and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife; but Prince George, a dull man, whose chief pleasures were derived from his dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no influence comparable to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave himself up with stupid patience to the dominion of that vehement and commanding spirit by which his wife was governed.” History of England, ch. vii.
Archbishop Potter
