thing known specially as
friendship--the passionate, devoted, equal bond which exists between two
people of the same age and sex; many of which friendships are formed at
school and college, and which often fade away in a sort of cordial glow,
implying no particular communion of life and thought. Marriage is often
the great divorcer of such friendships, and circumstances generally,
which sever and estrange; because, unless there is a constant
interchange of thought and ideas, increasing age tends to emphasise
differences. But there are instances of men, like Newman and FitzGerald,
who kept up a sort of romantic quality of friendship to the end.

I remember the daughter of an old clergyman of my acquaintance
telling me a pathetic and yet typical story of the end of one of these
friendships. Her father and another elderly clergyman had been devoted
friends in boyhood and youth. Circumstances led to a suspension of
intercourse, but at last, after a gap of nearly thirty years, during
which the friends had not met, it was arranged that the old comrade
should come and stay at the vicarage. As the time approached, her
father grew visibly anxious, and coupled his frequent expression of the
exquisite pleasure which the visit was going to bring him with elaborate
arrangements as to which of his family should be responsible for the
entertainment of the old comrade at every hour of the day: the daughters
were to lead him out walking in the morning, his wife was to take him
out drives in the afternoon, and he was to share the smoking-room with a
son, who was at home, in the evenings--the one object being that the
old gentleman should not have to interrupt his own routine, or bear the
burden of entertaining a guest; and he eventually contrived only to meet
him at meals, when the two old friends did not appear to have anything
particular to say to each other. When the visit was over, her father
used to allude to his guest with a half-compassionate air: "Poor Harry,
he has aged terribly--I never saw a man so changed, with such a limited
range of interests; dear fellow, he has quite lost his old humour. Well,
well! it was a great pleasure to see him here. He was very anxious
that we should go to stay with him, but I am afraid that will be rather
difficult to manage; one is so much at a loose end in a strange house,
and then one's correspondence gets into arrears. Poor old Harry! What a
lively creature he was up at Trinity, to be sure!" Th