should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such
friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things
are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one
time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of the
character, the most solid enjoyment.

If it were possible to live in right relations with men!--if we could
abstain from asking anything of them, from asking their praise, or help,
or pity, and content us with compelling them through the virtue of
the eldest laws! Could we not deal with a few persons,--with one
person,--after the unwritten statutes, and make an experiment of their
efficacy? Could we not pay our friend the compliment of truth, of
silence, of forbearing? Need we be so eager to seek him? If we are
related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the ancient world that no
metamorphosis could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse
which runs,--

"The Gods are to each other not unknown."

Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravitate to each
other, and cannot otherwise:--

When each the other shall avoid,
Shall each by each be most enjoyed.

Their relation is not made, but allowed. The gods must seat themselves
without seneschal in our Olympus, and as they can instal themselves
by seniority divine. Society is spoiled if pains are taken, if the
associates are brought a mile to meet. And if it be not society, it is a
mischievous, low, degrading jangle, though made up of the best. All the
greatness of each is kept back and every foible in painful activity, as
if the Olympians should meet to exchange snuff-boxes.

Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are hunted by
some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly we encounter a friend,
we pause; our heat and hurry look foolish enough; now pause, now
possession is required, and the power to swell the moment from the
resources of the heart. The moment is all, in all noble relations.

A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the hope of the
heart. Our beatitude waits for the fulfilment of these two in one. The
ages are opening this moral force. All force is the shadow or symbol of
that. Poetry is joyful and strong as it draws its inspiration thence.
Men write their names on the world as they are filled with this. History
has been mean; our nations have been mobs; we have never seen a man:
that divine form we do