The man who ill-naturedly said that the church would not hold his
acquaintance, but the pulpit would contain his friends, cannot be
congratulated upon the disproportion.
“Who is your friend?” is an every-day question, probably never better
answered than in the following forcible and eloquent rebuke by a modern
writer:
Concerning the man you call your friend, tell me, will he weep with
you in the hour of distress? Will he faithfully reprove to your
face, for actions which others are ridiculing or censuring behind
your back? Will he dare to stand forth in your defence, when
detraction is secretly aiming its deadly weapons at your reputation?
Will he acknowledge you with the same cordiality, and behave to you
with the same friendly attention, in the company of your superiors
in rank and fortune, as when the claims of pride or vanity do not
interfere with those of friendship? If misfortune and losses should
oblige you to retire into a walk of life in which you cannot appear
with the same distinction, or entertain your friends with the same
liberality as formerly, will he still think himself happy in your
society, and, instead of withdrawing himself from an unprofitable
connexion, take pleasure in professing himself your friend, and
cheerfully assist you to support the burden of your afflictions?
When sickness shall call you to retire from the gay and busy scenes
of the world, will he follow you into your gloomy retreat, listen
with attention to your “tale of symptoms,” and minister the balm of
consolation to your fainting spirits? And lastly, when death shall
burst asunder every earthly tie, will he shed a tear upon your
grave, and lodge the dear remembrance of your mutual friendship in
his heart, as a treasure never to be resigned? The man who will
_not_ do all this may be your companion,—your flatterer,—but, depend
upon it, _he is not your friend_.
Southey has left this charming picture of Friendship which ceases but
with existence:
It may safely be affirmed that generous minds, when they have once
known each other, never can be alienated as long as both retain the
characteristics which brought them into union. No distance of place
or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are
thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth. There are even some
broken attachments in friendship, as well as in love, which nothing
can destroy, and it sometimes happens that we are not conscious of
their strength till after the disruption. There are a few persons
known to me in years long past, but with whom I lived in no
particular intimacy then, and have held no correspondence since,
whom I could not now meet without an emotion of pleasure deep enough
to partake of pain, and who, I doubt not, entertain for me feelings
of the same kind and degree—whose eyes sparkle when they hear, and
glisten sometimes when they speak of me, and who think of me, as I
do of them, with an affection that increases as we advance in years.
This is because our moral and intellectual sympathies have
strengthened, and because, though far asunder, we know that we are
travelling the same road towards our resting-place in heaven. “There
is such a pleasure as this,” says Cowper, “which would want
explanation to some folks, being perhaps a mystery to those whose
hearts are a mere muscle, and serve only for the purpose of an even
circulation.”[119]
And Professor Wilson has written these words of sweet consolation for
the loss of friends:
Friends are lost to us by removal—for then even the dearest are
often utterly forgotten. But let something that once was theirs
suddenly meet our eyes, and in a moment, returning from the region
of the rising or the setting sun, the friend of our youth seems at
our side, unchanged his voice and his smile; or dearer to our eyes
than ever, because of some affecting change wrought on face and
figure by climate and by years. Let it be but his name written with
his own hand on the title-page of a book; or a few syllables on the
margin of a favourite passage which long ago we may have read
together, “when life itself was new,” and poetry overflowed the
whole world; or a lock of _her_ hair in whose eyes we first knew the
meaning of the word “depth.” And if death hath stretched out the
absence into the dim arms of eternity, and removed the distance away
into that bourne from which no traveller returns—the absence and the
distance of her on whose forehead once hung the relic we adore—what
heart may abide the beauty of the ghost that doth sometimes at
midnight appear at our sleepless bed, and with pale uplifted arms
waft over us at once a blessing and a farewell!
It rarely happens that broken friendships can be repaired or renewed.
Mrs. Richard Trench, in her Journal, relates this remarkable instance of
a failure:
At last, after an interval of twenty-four years, which succeeded a
tolerably intimate acquaintance of seven weeks, I saw Count Münster
of Hanover again. We met like two ghosts that ought to have been
laid long since. I witnessed the whole process of the difficulty of
persuading him that I was I; and I thought him as much changed in
his degree as he could have found me. When we conversed, all the
persons we referred to were dead and gone; and our interview added
another link in my mind to the chain of proofs that, after a very,
very long interval, neither friends nor acquaintance ought to meet
in this world. He was kindly anxious to renew our acquaintance, and
visited me next day; but still it seemed as if seeing me had renewed
some painful associations.
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Footnote 119:
_The Doctor._
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