Friendship and Love.

    "The fountains of my hidden life
      Are through thy friendship fair."

No word in our language has a nobler meaning than "friendship;" it is a pity that none is more often abused. Every hasty intimacy formed by force of circumstances—often merely by force of living next door—is dignified with the title; but a deeper bond is needed to make a real friendship. "By true friendship," says Jeremy Taylor, "I mean the greatest love, and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the noblest suffering, and the most exemplary faithfulness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds of which brave men and women are capable."

"Friendship is the perfection of love," says the Proverb, and a certain James Colebrooke and Mary his wife, buried in Chilham churchyard, seem to have been of this mind, for the climax of their long epitaph is, that they "lived for forty-seven years in the greatest friendship."

Proverbs on this subject abound, and teach varied lessons: "A faithful friend is the medicine of life;" but it would seem to act differently on different constitutions, for, on the one hand, we are told, "a Father is a Treasure, a Brother is a Comforter, a Friend is both;" on the other, we hear the familiar exclamation, "Save me from my friends!" which is justified by experience from the times of Aristides downwards, and is endorsed by Solomon, when he said, "He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him;"—words of which the wisdom will be felt by all who know what it is to feel unreasoning prejudice against some unoffending person, solely because of the excessive praise of some injudicious friend. Yet none the less are we bound to defend our friends behind their backs and to set them in a fair light. If we cannot aspire generally to St. Theresa\'s title of "Advocate of the Absent," honour demands that we should at least earn it with regard to our friends: though it requires infinite tact to avoid making your friend fatiguing, if not distasteful, to your listener in so doing. For Tact, as well as Honour, is a necessary condition of friendship, in speaking both of, and to, your friend. In this matter of tact, Courtesy covers a large part of the ground.

    "We have careful thought for the stranger,
    And smiles for the some time guest,
            But we grieve our own
            With look and tone,
    Though we love our own the best."

This applies most to brothers and sisters, but also to friends; it takes the delicate edge from friendship if we think ourselves absolved from the minor courtesies of manner and speech.

We often say pretty things to an acquaintance, and omit them to a friend, "because she knows us, and we need not be ceremonious." But ceremony is not half such a bad thing as this age seems to think; it may be overdone, but so may its opposite. Why should we not give our friend the pleasure of this or that acknowledgment of her powers, which a stranger would give her, but which she would value far more from us, even though she "knows we know" it? Saying those things makes the wheels of life\'s chariot run smoothly,—we think them, why are we so slow to say them? Why should "the privilege of a friend" be synonymous with a cutting remark? Why should we all have reason to feel that "friend" might, without any violation of truth, be substituted for the last word in that acute remark on the "fine frankness about unpleasant truths which marks the relative"? Well might Bob Jakes say, "Lor, miss, it\'s a fine thing to hev\' a dumb brute fond o\' yer! it sticks to yer and makes no jaw." This question of making no "jaw" is rather a vexed one. Most people\'s experience would lead them to attend to a canny Dutch proverb, which observes that a "friend\'s" faults may be noticed but not blamed: since the consequences of blaming them are mostly unpleasant; but a braver proverb says, "A true friend dares sometimes venture to be offensive;" and we read that it is our duty to "admonish a friend; it may be that he hath not said it, and, if he have, that he speak it not again." But this earnest remonstrance which is sometimes required of us is very different from the small, nagging, and somewhat impertinent criticisms which pass so freely between many friends. But defending an absent friend is not the only point of honour essential in true friendship. At the present time the Roman virtues seem somewhat at a discount,—they are suspected of a flavour of Paganism; it is more in accordance with the Genius of our Age to show our interest in our friend by talking over his moral and spiritual condition (and par parenthèse, all his other affairs) with a sympathizing circle, than to heed the old-fashioned idea, "He that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter." How often do we hear, "I wouldn\'t, for the world, tell any one but you, but—;" and then follows a string of repeated confidences which the friend under discussion would writhe to hear; yet the speaker would be most indignant at being considered dishonourable, because "it was only said to So-and-so, which is so different from saying it to any one else"! The Son of Sirach made no exception in favour of "So-and-so" when he said, "Rehearse not unto another that which is told unto thee, and thou shall fare never the worse." If it be true of a wife, that "a silent and loving woman is a gift of the Lord," I am sure it is no less so of a friend; in friendship, as in most relations of life, silence, in its season, is a cardinal virtue.

Girls are often tempted to retail their family affairs to some chosen friend, from a love of confidential mysteries; the pleasure of being a martyr leads not only to the communication of moving details of home life, but frequently to their invention. A friend of mine adopted a niece, who afterwards married and wrote from India asking her aunt to look through and burn her old letters. My friend found touching pictures of home tyranny in the letters from school friends and answers to similar complaints, which the niece had evidently written about her own treatment and since forgotten; possibly the home circles of the other girls would have found the same difficulty that my friend did in recognizing themselves:

"Portrayed with sooty garb and features swarth."

Equal with Honour, and before Tact, among the conditions of Friendship, I would place Truth, for there can be no union without this for a basis. We have touched already on the truth involved in what is called being "faithful" to a friend, but there are many other kinds required. Passing over the more obvious of these, I would draw attention to the subtler form of untruth, involved in endowing your friend with imaginary gifts and graces.

Yet the more we know of a true friend, the more we find to reverence in him, and the more ground for humility in ourselves: "Have a quick eye to see" their virtues; nay, more, idealize those virtues as much as you will, for this is a very different thing from endowing them with those they have not; this is only learning to see with that divine insight essential to the highest truth in friendship. "There is a perfect ideal," says Ruskin, "to be wrought out of every human face around us," and so it is with our friends\' characters.

And when we have found that ideal and true self, we must be loyal to it—loyal to our friends against their lower selves as well as against their detractors. Plutarch says, "The influence of a true friend is felt in the help that he gives the noble part of nature; nothing that is weak or poor meets with encouragement from him. While the flatterer fans every spark of suspicion, envy, or grudge, he may be described in the verse of Sophocles as \'sharing the love and not the hatred of the person he cares for.\'" Such a bit as that makes us forget the centuries which have rolled between us and Plutarch; his temptations are ours—how much easier it is to us to please our friends by sympathizing with their feelings, whether that feeling be right or wrong! How much pleasanter it is to us to gratify our selfish affection by giving them what they want, as Wentworth did King Charles, than to brace them to endure hardness for the sake of others!

We are so apt to give and to ask for weakening consolation. Sympathy in the ordinary use of the term is more weakening than anything, and it is pleasant to give and to take.

But sympathy should be like bracing air: "no friendship is worth the name which does not inspire new and stronger views of duty." We all care to be sons of consolation,—let us see to it that we brace others instead of giving mere pity. We all like to be pitied, but in our heart we are more grateful to the friend who puts fresh spring into us, by what perhaps seems hard common sense. Those are the friends whose memory comes back to us when circumstances, or years, or distance, have drifted us far apart.

The friend who fed the weaker part of us never gets from us the same genuine affection with real stuff in it. How much easier it is to sympathize with our friends\' unreasonable vexation—to join in their uncharitable speeches, or in laughing at something we ought not to laugh at, than to brace them

"to welcome each rebuff That turns earth\'s smoothness rough, each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!"

We find it very hard, almost impossible, to live always up to our own best self, and we may be quite sure our friends do too, whether they talk about it or not, and our duty, as a friend, is to see their best self and help them to be it. Very often the mere fact of knowing that our friend sees our nobler nature, and believes in it, heartens us to keep faith in it and to go on striving after it. "Edward Irving unconsciously elevated every man he talked with into the ideal man he ought to have been; and went about the world making men noble by believing them to be so."

It rests with each of us to draw out the better part in others; we all know people with whom we are at our best, and we have failed in our Duty to our Neighbour if we do not make others feel this with us. "Each soul is in some other\'s presence quite discrowned;" let the reverse be true where we are.

It is a terrible thought that we have perhaps made others less noble, less pure, less conscientious, than they would have been. We can never repair the harm we do to one who loses faith in our goodness,—he inevitably loses some part of his faith in goodness itself. "Much of our lives is spent in marring our own influence," says George Eliot, "and turning others\' belief in us into a widely concluding unbelief, which they call knowledge of the world, but which is really disappointment in you or me."

Nobody, who has not watched or felt it, knows the laming of all spiritual energy, the hardening, the blighting of all noble impulse which comes from this sort of knowledge of the world; and who can say that he has never (more or less) been thus guilty?—it is more truly blood-guiltiness than anything else, for it helps to murder souls.

Perhaps the greatest of the innumerable blessings which friendship confers on the character, lies in this fostering of moral thoughtfulness produced by its responsibilities: "I know not a more serious thing than the responsibility incurred by all human affection. Only think of this: whoever loves you is growing like you; neither you nor he can hinder it, save at the cost of alienation. Oh, if you are grateful for but one creature\'s love, rise to the height of so pure a blessing—drag them not down by the very embrace with which they cling to you, but through their gentleness ensure their consecration."[6]

It needs a noble nature to be capable of friendship, or rather a nature which has carefully trained itself by discipline and self-denial, so as to develop all the possibilities of nobleness which were latent in it.

God gives each of us a nature with "pulses of nobleness," and it rests with us whether this shall grow, or be choked by the commonplace part of us. To be noble does not come without trouble. Good things are hard, and "noble growths are slow."[7]

He who would be noble must go through life like Hercules and the old heroes, working hard for others; not troubling about personal comfort and amusement, but practised in going without when he could have,—for the sake of better things.

To be noble means having your impulses under control, and this most especially where your affections are concerned.

Do you want to help others to go right in life? I need not ask, for every generous nature would care to do that, even if she did not care much about her own soul.

Now, you will not do much by direct effort, but you will do an immense deal by conquering your own besetting sin. In the "Hallowing of Work," Bishop Paget says, "Increased skill and experience and ability are great gifts in working for others, but they do not compare with the power gained by conquering one fault of our own."

Friendship can be the most beautiful thing in the world: it can be the silliest thing in the world. It can be the most lowering: it can be the most ennobling. Nothing excites so much laughter and hard speaking in the world as "schoolgirl friendships;" as often as not they are found among older people, but schoolgirls have given a name to this particular kind of folly, so it behooves schoolgirls to keep clear of it, and to deprive the name of its point.

But can you help being sentimental if you are made like that? Some are of good wholesome stuff, with an innate distaste for everything of the kind, while to some it is their besetting sin.

You can at least take precautions; for instance, do not day-dream about your friend,—brooding over the thought of her weakens your fibre more than being with her.

Make a rule of life for yourself about your intercourse; walk and talk with her more than with others, but at the same time sandwich those walks and talks by going with other friends,—it is a great pity to narrow your circle of possible friends by being absorbed in one person.

Do not write sentimental letters, and, finally, do not sit in your friend\'s pocket and say "Darling." (If you wish to know how it sounds, read "A Bad Habit," by Mrs. Ewing.)

I must confess that I believe in what is so often jeered at as "kindred souls." Love is not measured by time; often we are truer friends through some half-hour\'s talk, in which we saw another\'s real self, than through years of ordinary meeting. But this is so different from the folly I speak of, that I need not dwell on it; except to say that you will be spared many disappointments if you are content with the fact that such moments of sympathy have been, and do not look to have a permanent friendship on that basis. When people draw the veil aside for a minute they generally put it back closer than ever, and do not like to be reminded of the self-revelation.

In the foolish friendships that make so much unhappiness, half the folly lies in expecting the other person to be always at high-water mark, and in being fretful and reproachful when she is not.

But to return to "schoolgirl friendships." When you go out into society you may perhaps want to make private jokes among your friends, or to talk privately to them instead of helping in general conversation, and you may feel "I have nothing much to contribute to the general stock; why shouldn\'t I enjoy myself? it\'s very hard I should be so severely criticized for bad manners if I do." But if you look into any such matter, you are sure to find that bad manners are bad Christianity. There is a want of self-restraint in this schoolgirlishness; and you ought not to be able to pick out a pair of great friends in general society, not merely because, if you could, it would show them to be absurd and underbred, but because it would mean that others were made to feel "left out." Have you ever had some violent friendship—or laughed at it in others—which meant running in and out of each other\'s houses at all hours—being inseparable—quoting your friend, till your brothers exclaimed at her very name—and making all your family feel that they ranked nowhere in comparison with her? In this matter of home and friends conflicting, I quite see the point of view of some: "My family don\'t give me the sympathy and help that my friend does—they always tease or scold if I come to them in a difficulty, and yet they are vexed and jealous when I find a friend who can and will help."

I do not say, Cut yourself off from your friend,—she is sent by God to help you; but, Remember to feel for your Mother;—see how natural and loving her jealousy is, and spare it by constant tact—instead of being a martyr, feel that it is she, and not you, who is ill-used. And in all ways, never let outside affections interfere with home ones. It is the great difference between them, that outside, self-chosen affections burn all the stronger for repression and self-restraint; while home ones burn stronger for each act of attention to them and expression of them; e.g. postponing a visit to a friend for a walk with a brother will make both loves stronger, and vice versa,—and your friendship will last all the longer because you consume your own smoke. Dr. Carpenter says that signs of love wear out the feeling;—every now and then they strengthen it, but their frequency shows weakness. Friendships are God-given ties when they are real, but inseparable ones are mostly only follies;—anyhow, family ties are the most God-given of all, and friendship should help us to fulfil family claims better, instead of making us neglect them. The best test of whether your love for an outside person is of the right kind, is, does it make you pleasanter at home? Mr. Lowell mentions an epitaph in the neighbourhood of Boston, which recorded the name and date of a wife and mother, adding simply, "She was so pleasant."

We realize that we ought to make the world better than we find it, but we do not realize how much more we should succeed in doing so if we made it brighter,—a task which is in everybody\'s power. We are all ready to bear pain for others, but we overlook the little ways in which we might give pleasure. "Always say a kind word if you can," says Helps, "if only that it may come in perhaps with a singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man\'s darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, fo............