e,
philosophy have this advantage over friendship: remove one object from
them, and others fill the void; remove one from friendship, one only,
and not the earth nor the universality of worlds, no, nor the
intellect that soars above and comprehends them, can replace it!

_Epicurus._ Dear Leontion! always amiable, always graceful! How lovely
do you now appear to me! what beauteous action accompanied your words!

_Leontion._ I used none whatever.

_Epicurus._ That white arm was then, as it is now, over the shoulder
of Ternissa; and her breath imparted a fresh bloom to your cheek, a
new music to your voice. No friendship is so cordial or so delicious
as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense and immovable as that
of woman for woman. In youth you love one above the others of your
sex; in riper age you hate all, more or less, in proportion to
similarity of accomplishments and pursuits--which sometimes (I wish it
were oftener) are bonds of union to man. In us you more easily pardon
faults than excellences in each other. _Your_ tempers are such, my
beloved scholars, that even this truth does not ruffle them; and such
is your affection, that I look with confidence to its unabated ardour
at twenty.

_Leontion._ Oh, then I am to love Ternissa almost fifteen months!

_Ternissa._ And I am destined to survive the loss of it three months
above four years!

_Epicurus._ Incomparable creatures! may it be eternal! In loving ye
shall follow no example; ye shall step securely over the iron rule
laid down for others by the Destinies, and _you_ for ever be Leontion,
and _you_ Ternissa.

_Leontion._ Then indeed we should not want statues.

_Ternissa._ But men, who are vainer creatures, would be good for
nothing without them: they must be flattered even by the stones.

_Epicurus._ Very true. Neither the higher arts nor the civic virtues
can flourish extensively without the statues of illustrious men. But
gardens are not the places for them. Sparrows, wooing on the general's
truncheon (unless he be such a general as one of ours in the last
war), and snails besliming the emblems of the poet, do not remind us
worthily of their characters. Porticos are their proper situations,
and those the most frequented. Even there they may lose all honour and
distinction, whether from the thoughtlessness of magistrates or from
the malignity of rivals. Our own city, the least exposed of any to the
effects of either, presents us a disheartening e