Chap. VIII.J

THE DUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP.

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call them friends. They are a kind of thermometer, by whichone may know the temperature of the public feeling towards him,their assiduities with exact regularity subsiding or rising as thatfeeling grows cool or ardent.”*

(5.) Cicero considers it an abuse of friendship, when superi-ors in birth, fortune, education, personal accomplishments, or anything else, arrogate any thing to themselves in consequence ofthese advantages ; and when those, who are conscious of theirinferiority in these respects, make it a subject of murmuring andcomplaint, that Providence has not conferred like superior advan-tages on them. He says, “ As superiors ought, in friendship, touse condescension, so, to enjoy this connexion, inferiors oughtto elevate themselves.” f The same thing may be as well ex-pressed by saying, that, in this relation, all considerations of supe-rior and inferior ought to be entirely lost sight of.

(6.) It is still another abuse of friendship, when friends cher-ish expectations of perfection in each other, which human nature,by reason of its many infirmities, is entirely incapable of satisfy-ing, and of which they do not furnish an example in themselves.They expect in their friends, perfections which they are not ac-customed to exhibit in themselves in return. We must entertainmoderate expectations of our friends and associates, unless weare willing to be disappointed. We must be prepared to see andtolerate, with patience, some things of which we disapprove. Itis a good rule, too, to be strict with ourselves, while we grant aliberal indulgence to others, in whatever way connected with us.

4. The last duty of friendship respects its close. After usingall possible precautions in the choice of our friends; afterperforming all the duties of this relation with faithfulness, andcautiously avoiding the abuses and violations incidental to it;—■still the painful necessity must sometimes occur of dissolvingour friendships. This necessity may arise from several causes.We may have been mistaken, — our friend may not be such aman as we have taken him to be, — there may not, after all, bethat correspondence of tastes, inclinations, and wishes, which wehad believed to exist, — collisions of interest, of principle, or of

Palfrey’s Sermons, p. 178.

t De Amicitia, c. 20.