THE Friendship. "HE first law of friendship is sincerity; and he who violates this law, will soon find himself destitute of what he so erringly seeks to gain; for the deceitful heart of such an one will soon betray itself, and feel the contempt due to insincerity. The world is so full of selfishness, that true friendship is seldom found; yet it is often sought for paltry gain by the base and designing. Behold that toiling miser, with his ill-got and worthless treasure; his soul is never moved by the hallowed influence of the sacred boon of friendship, which renews again on earth lost Eden's faded bloom, and flings hope's halcyon halo over the wastes of life. The envious man-he, too, seeks to gain the applause of others for an unholy usage, by which he may unsurp a seat of pre-eminence for himself. Self-love, the spring of motion, acts upon his soul. All are fond of praise, and many are dishonest in the use of means to obtain it; hence it is often difficult to distinguish between true and false friendship. MYSTICAL, more than magical, is that communing of soul with soul, both looking heav enward. Here properly soul first speaks with soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call union, mutual love, begin to be possible. How true is that of Novalis: "It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the moment I can convince another mind thereof!" Gaze thou in the face of thy brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire of kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of anger; feel how thy own quiet soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame of embracing love, or of deadly grappling hate; and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our earthly life, how much more when it is of the divine life we speak, and inmost me is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost me!-Thomas Carlyle. Importance of Friendship. WHEN a man, blind from his birth, was asked what he thought the sun to be like, he replied, "Like friendship." He could not conceive of anything more fitting as a similitude of anything for what he had been taught to regard as the most material objects, and whose quickening and exhilarating influences he had rejoiced to feel. And truly friendship is a sun, if not the sun, of life. All feel it ought to be so. It would be commonplace to dwell on its delights and advantages. The theme of poets and moralists in all ages and countries, what can be said upon it has been said so often as to make repetition stale, so well as to make improvement impossible. How friendship is a pearl of greatest price; how it is often more deep and steadfast than natural affection, "a friend," sometimes "sticketh closer than a brother:" how it is as useful as lovely, "strength and beauty;" how it lessens grief and increases pleasure; all this is as familiar as the lessons of childhood, and true as the elementary principle of our nature.—Morris. Wishing, as we turned them o'er, And thy voice would grateful hear, In immortal Weller's name, By the flogging wreaked on Squeers, By the chime of Christmas bells, Chambermaid in love with Boots, To transfer his warm affections In the name of gentle Nell, Shed beside her snowy bier By the mournful group that played Round the grave where Smike was laid, By the life of Tiny Tim, And the lesson taught by him, Asking in his plaintive tone God to bless us every one," By the sounding waves that bore Welcome fills the throbbing breast -W. H. Venable. ENNY kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in. Time, you thief! who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in, Say I'm weary and I'm sad; Say that health and wealth have missed me; Say I'm growing old, but add Jenny kissed me! -Leigh Hunt. COM Your name may flaunt a titled trail And mine as brief appendix wear You've won the great world's envied prize With H. O. N. and LL. D., In big brave letters, fair to see,— |