which the heart belies, would wish to deceive the God on whom it calls to sanction the deceit.

When marriages are thus formed, it is not for the sufferer to complain, if she find that she has acquired a few more trappings of wealth, but not a husband. She has her house, her carriage, and the living machines that are paid to wait around her and obey her; she takes rank in public spectacles, and presides in her own mansion in spectacles as magnificent; she has obtained all which she wished to obtain; and the affection and happiness which she scorned, she must leave to those who sought them.

"There is a place on the earth," it has been said, "where pure joys are unknown, from which politeness is banished, and has given place to selfishness, contradictions, and half-veiled insults. Remorse and inquietude, like furies that are never weary of assailing, torment the inhabitants. This place is the house of a wedded pair who have no mutual love, nor even esteem. There is a place on the earth to which vice has no entrance, where the gloomy passions have no empire, where pleasure and innocence live constantly together, where cares and labours are delightful, where every pain is forgotten in reciprocal tenderness, where there is an equal enjoyment of the past, the present, and the future. It is the house too of a wedded pair, but of a pair who, in wedlock, are lovers still."1

De St. Lambert, Euv. Phil. tome ii. p. 68.

LECTURE LXXXIX.

Of the Duties of Friendship; Duties of Gratitude.

GENTLEMEN, in our arrangement of the duties which we owe to particular individuals, as reducible to five orders, those which arise from affinity, you will remember, constituted the first division.

The particular duties as yet considered by us, have all belonged to this first division, the duties of relationship, parental, filial, fraternal, conjugal; in the exercise of which, and in the reciprocal enjoyment of them as exercised by others, is to be found that gracious system of domestic virtue, under the shelter of which man reposes in happiness, and resting thus, in the confidence of affection and delight, becomes purer of heart, and more actively beneficent, by the very happiness which he feels.

It is of these domestic virtues that we must think, when we think of the morals of a nation. A nation is but a shorter name for the individuals who compose it; and when these are good fathers, good sons, good brothers, good husbands, they will be good citizens; because the principles which make them just and kind under the domestic roof, will make them just and kind to those who inhabit with them that country which is only a larger home. The household fire, and the altar, which are coupled together in the exhortations of the leaders of armies, and in the hearts of those whom they address, have a relation more intimate than that of which they think, who combat for both. It is before the household fire, that every thing which is holy and worthy of the altar is formed. There

arose the virtues that were the virtues of the child, before they were the virtues of the warrior or the statesman; and the mother who weeps with delight at the glory of her son, when a whole nation is exulting with her, rejoices over the same heroic fortitude, that at a period almost as delightful to her, in the little sacrifices which boyish generosity could make, had already often gladdened her heart, when she thought only of the gentle virtues before her, and was not aware of half the worth of that noble offering which she was speedily to make to her country and to the world.

From the domestic affinities, the transition is a very easy one, to that bond of affection which unites friend to friend, and gives rise to an order of duties almost equal in force to those of the nearest affinity.

We are formed to be virtuous, to feel pleasure in contemplating those parts of our life which present to us the remembrance of good deeds, as we feel pain in contemplating other portions of it, which present to us only remembrances of moral evil; and the same principle which makes us love in ourselves what is virtuous, renders it impossible for us to look with indifference on the virtues of another. The principle of moral emotion alone would thus be sufficient to lead to friendship, though there were no other principle in our nature that could tend to make a single human being an object of our regard.

But we are not lovers of virtue only; we are lovers of many other qualities, which add to our happiness, not so much as our own virtues indeed, but often as much as we could derive, in the same space of time, from the mere virtue of those with whom we mix in society. We love gaiety, and we therefore love those who can render us gay, by their wit, by the fluency

of their social eloquence, by those never-ceasing smiles of good humour, which are almost, to our quick sympathy of emotion, like wit and eloquence; we hate sorrow, and we love those who, by the same powerful aid, can enable us to shake off the burden of melancholy, from which our own efforts are, as we have too often found, unable of themselves to free us; we have plans of business or amusement, and we love those whose co-operation is necessary to their success, and who readily afford to us that co-operation which we need; we are doubtful, in many cases, as to the propriety of our own conduct, and if all others acted differently, we should be driven back to the uncertainty or the reproach of our own conscience, without any consolation from without; we therefore love those who, by acting as we act, seem to say to us that we have done well; or who, at least, when it is impossible for us to flatter ourselves with this illusion, comfort us with the only palliation which our conscience can admit, that we are not more reprehensible than others around us. Even without regard to all these causes of love, it is miserable to us to be alone. The very

nature of all our emotions leads them to pour themselves out to some other breast; and the stronger the emotion, the more ardent is this propensity. We must make some one know why we are glad, or our gladness will be an oppression to us, almost as much as a delight. If we are in wrath, our anger seems to us incomplete, till not one only, but many, share our resentment. The sovereign would feel little pleasure in all the splendour of his throne, if he were to sit upon it for ever, with subjects around him to whom he was to be always a sovereign, and only a sovereign; and the very misanthrope, who abandons the race of mankind, in his detestation of their iniquity, must still

have some one with whom he may give vent to his indignation, by describing the happiness which he feels, in having left the wicked to that universal wickedness which is worthy of them, and which he almost loves, because it enables him to hate them more thoroughly.

Thus lavish has nature been to us of the principles of friendship. With all these causes, that, singly, might dispose to cordial intercourse, and that exert in most cases an united influence, it is not wonderful that the tendency to friendship of some sort should be a part of our mental constitution, almost as essential to it as any of our appetites. It is scarcely a metaphor, indeed, which we employ, when we term it an appetite, an appetite arising from our very nature as social beings; and, if our appetites, like our other desires, bear any proportion to the amount of the good which is their object, it must be one of the most vivid which it is possible for us to feel; because it relates to a species of happiness which is among the most vivid of our enjoyments; in many cases approaching the delight of the most intimate domestic relations, and scarcely to be counted inferior to the delight arising from any other source, unless when we think of that virtue which is essential to the enjoyment of all. To take friendship from life, says Cicero, would be almost the same thing, as to take the sun from the world. "Solem a mundo tollere videntur, qui amicitiam e vita tollunt." It is, indeed, the sunshine of those who otherwise would walk in darkness; it beams with unclouded radiance on our moral path, and is itself warmth and beauty to the very path along which it invites us to proceed. He knows not how poor all the splendours of worldly prosperity are in themselves, who enjoys them with that increase of