joy to each other, will never suspect
the latent powers of each. We talk sometimes of a great talent for
conversation, as if it were a permanent property in some individuals.
Conversation is an evanescent relation,--no more. A man is reputed to
have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his
cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they
would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it
will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought he will regain his
tongue.

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness
that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other
party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my
friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am
equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an
instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that
the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or
at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be
a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which
high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office
requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there
can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures,
mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep
identity which, beneath these disparities, unites them.

He only is fit for this society who is magnanimous; who is sure
that greatness and goodness are always economy; who is not swift to
intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not intermeddle with this. Leave
to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births
of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We talk of
choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great
part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course he has merits
that are not yours, and that you cannot honor if you must needs hold
him close to your person. Stand aside; give those merits room; let them
mount and expand. Are you the friend of your friend's buttons, or of
his thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand
particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to
girls and boys to regard a friend as property, and to suck a short and
all-confounding pleasure, instead of the nobl