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HROUGH the gloom of a deep ancient forest few men would desire to pass from the rising to the setting of the sun, walking in solitude. So it is in the wilderness of life, where the majority of mankind, impelled by a want that is a consequence of their nature, will

seek early to provide that consolation for themselves, which is promised by the title of a new road that here commences. We cannot therefore proceed to scale the rough and dangerous heights of practical life, without having first observed what direction is afforded on the secret lowly track of friends, and on other paths that branch from it; so that, though we left the last road expecting to find ourselves shortly upon ground of a different character from any that has hitherto been traversed, the division of our journey will here seem to correspond with nature, which introduces all great changes by degrees; and as when travellers in the morning obtain a distant indistinct view of an immense range of mountains that they are to cross, of which they soon after lose sight as the road winds between lofty trees and intervening slopes, covered with vines and groves; so, after already discerning the vast rocky region of practical life towards which we are advancing, it will be seen no more for some time in consequence of many undulations in the course of the intermediate alleys, through all of which the supreme force and beauty of the Catholic religion will be still most clearly perceptible. We shall have to pass through shades beneath the forest's dome that are found to produce very different effects upon all that lives within their range; elms here cast their broad and benign shadow; for this tree, unlike the ash,

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is said to nourish life-etiam nutriens, quacunque opacat-as Pliny says, and the vines, which here entwine their slender branches with every giant trunk, seem to represent the sweet bonds that connect together affectionately all who wander along the smiling roads on which we are now entering.

It may be an imperceptible advance to strike here into the road of friends, which, passing under the hawthorn in the dale, leads so near to spots with which the preceding walks of youth have already rendered us familiar; but it is a path which is generally followed before arriving at the more grave scenes through which we shall shortly have to pass. And the forest itself seems to propose the theme; for there is something about these white-thorns, never changing with years, like other trees that soon grow out of men's knowledge, but appearing always to be just the same, and ready to welcome back those who once knew them, that disposes the wanderer to think upon the friendship which he wishes to be, like them, constant. Men are not like oaks that thrive best when they stand alone, though even that tree grows crooked when quite isolated. "Solitude and life, without friends, are full of fear," says the Roman sage.† The Basques have a proverb in the same sense. "The rich man," they say, "who lives without making friends, is like a wanderer asleep on the brink of Picatu," which is a precipice in the Pyrenees: and the French agreeing with them said, with still the same intention, "Homme seul est viande à loup." Against nature and antiquity objecting, Alphonso, king of Portugal, replied to his wiser counsellors, "Habemus pecunias quæ quidem sunt omnibus amicis et propinquis fideliores;"§ to whom in consequence might have been addressed the last words of Hercules in the tragedy

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ὅστις δὲ πλοῦτον σθένος μᾶλλον φίλων
ἀγαθῶν πεπᾶσθαι βούλεται, κακῶς φρονεῖ.||

Livy and Cicero use the word "necessarius" to signify a friend, from the principle probably that is so quaintly expressed by the old French author who says, "Souvent sont plus fors deux amis que ne soient quatre ennemis," ** though some of the ancients felt with Cicero, that "if utility were the sole ground of friendship, it might be doubted whether

* xvii. 18.

+ Cicero de Finibus, i. 20.

Le Roux de Lincy, Livre des Proverbes, F.

§ Marinei Siculi de Reb. Hispan. lib. xix.
|| Herc. Furens, 1425.

Lib. iii. 12. lib. xiii. Epist. 40.

** Stans puer ad mensam, quatrains moraux.

farms and houses are not preferred by men." The necessity they all recognized was the having some one to whom they could speak without restraint, "quicum joca, seria, ut dicitur, quicum arcana, quicum occulta omnia;"* or, as Cicero says elsewhere, "quibuscum possint familiares conferre sermones."† Some Christian moralists, in times subsequent to the decline of the schools, exaggerating, ng, or misinterpreting perhaps, if one may venture to say so, the rules of ascetic perfection, or possibly even changing them a little to suit the poverty of unhappy times, have attempted to oppose the general voice of mankind with respect to the value of friendship. Mistaking for general the particular directions given to the holy inhabitants of cloisters, where in reality, all being dearest friends, any especial friendships, like partialities in an ordinary family, would have a factious tendency, they pretend without distinctions to disdain the bonds of friendship, as appertaining to the vulgar, appearing thus to some as if they sought to be more austere than the law, more exact than Moses, more spiritual than God himself, who delivered these solemn words, which the Catholic Church reads in Passion-week,

"Diliges amicum tuum sicut teipsum,

Ego Dominus. Leges meas custodite."‡

But if we survey the whole extent of Catholic philosophy in its magnificent domains, comprehensive as truth, we shall find that the depreciation of friendship rightly understood forms no part of its character. It follows the primal traditions of the human race; it follows the holy Scripture; it follows nature, or rather the Author of nature, who, while clothed in our humanity, recognized and experienced friendship; for, as the Père de Ligny observes, "As man, our Lord had a natural love for some, as for Martha and her sister Mary, and their brother Lazarus, founded on relationship, familiarity, sympathy; love of esteem and complaisance, founded on inclination and manners; love of gratitude, founded on proofs of attachment and service; therefore such loves cannot be sinful."§ How many especial friends are saluted by the elect vessel at the end of his Epistle to the Romans-Phebe, Prisca, and Aquila, Epenetus his beloved, Mary, Andronicus, and Junius, Ampliatus most beloved, Urbanus and Stachys, A pelles, those that are of Aristobulus's household, Herodion, and those that are of Narcissus's household, Tryphena and

* Cicero de Finibus, ii. 26.
Ed. Lib. Levitici 19.

+ De Off. ii.
§ Hist. de J. С.

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