est benefit.

Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should we
desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on
rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know
his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own?
Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and
clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity,
a glance from him, I want, but not news, nor pottage. I can get politics
and chat and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not
the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal and great as
nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison
with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of
waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to
that standard. That great defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien
and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and
enhance. Worship his superiorities; wish him not less by a thought, but
hoard and tell them all. Guard him as thy counterpart. Let him be to
thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered,
and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside. The
hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the
eye is too near. To my friend I write a letter and from him I receive
a letter. That seems to you a little. It suffices me. It is a spiritual
gift worthy of him to give and of me to receive. It profanes nobody.
In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the
tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence than all the
annals of heroism have yet made good.

Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its
perfect flower by your impatience for its opening. We must be our own
before we can be another's. There is at least this satisfaction in
crime, according to the Latin proverb;--you can speak to your accomplice
on even terms. Crimen quos inquinat, aequat. To those whom we admire
and love, at first we cannot. Yet the least defect of self-possession
vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation. There can never be deep
peace between two spirits, never mutual respect, until in their dialogue
each stands for the whole world.

What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of
spirit we can. Let us be silent,--so we may