y renew and add to
us, more even than change of climate and season. We are (luckily for
every one) such imitative creatures that every person we like much, adds
a new possible form, a new pattern, to our understanding and our
feeling; making us, through the pleasantness of novelty, see and feel a
little as that person does. And when, instead of _liking_ (which is the
verb belonging rather to good acquaintance, accidental relationship as
distinguished from real friendship), it is a case of _loving_ (in the
sense in which we really love a place, a piece of music, or even, very
often, an animal), there is something more important and excellent even
than this. For every creature we do really love seems to reveal a whole
side of life, by the absorbing of our attention into that creature's
ways; nay, more, the fact that what we call _loving_ is in most cases a
complete creation, at least a thorough interpretation of them by our
fancy and our shaken-up, refreshed feelings.

A new friendship, by this unconscious imitation of the new friend's
nature and habits, and by the excitement of the thing's pleasant
novelty, causes us to discover new qualities in literature, art, our
surroundings, ourselves. How different does the scenery look--still
familiar but delightfully strange--as we drive along the valleys or
scramble in the hills with the new friend! there is a distant peak one
never noticed, or a scented herb which has always grown upon those
rocks, but might as well never have done so, but for the other pair of
eyes which drew ours to it, or the other hand which crushing made us
know its fragrance. Pages of books, seemingly stale, revive into fresh
meaning; new music is almost certain to be learned; and a harmony, a
rational sequence, something very akin to music, perceived in what had
been hitherto but a portion of life's noise and confusion. The changes
of style which we note in the case of great geniuses--Goethe and
Schiller, for instance, or Ruskin after his meeting with Carlyle--are
often brought about, or prepared, by the accident of a new friendship;
and, who knows? half of the disinterested progress of the world's
thought and feeling might prove, under the moral microscope, to be but a
moving web of invisible friendships, forgotten, but once upon a time
new, and so vivid!

The falling off from such pleasure and profit in older friendships (it
is very sad, but not necessarily cynical to recognize the fact) is due
in so