ness. When we look to the grey hairs of him, in the serenity of whose parental eye, even in its most serious comtemplation, there is a silent smile that is ever ready to shine upon us,

"Whose authority, in show,

When most severe, and mustering all its force,

Was but the graver countenance of Love;

Whose favour, like the clouds of spring might lour,

And utter now and then an awful voice,

But had a blessing in its darkest frown ;"*

When we look to that gracious form, in whose thought, even in the moments in which he addresses to Heaven his gratitude or his prayer, we are still present, as he thinks of that common home of our immortality, to which he is only journeying before us,-or commends us to the protection of that great Being who has been, in his own long earthly career, the protection and happiness of his youth and his age,-are there no feelings of our heart, no enjoyments of early fondness and increasing gratitude, and reverence unmixed with fear, which we have combined with the very glance of that eye, and the very tone of that voice, whose glance and tone are to us almost like a blessing? The friend whom we have long loved, is, at each single moment, what he has been to us in many successive years. Without recalling to us the particular events of these years, he recalls to us their delights; or rather the very notion which we form of him contains in itself this diffused pleasure, like some etherial and immortal spirit of the past.

Nor, as I have already said, is it only in our moral affection, for beings living like ourselves, and capable, therefore, of feeling and returning our kindness, that this condensation of regard takes place. It produces an affection of almost moral sympathy, when there can be no feeling of it, and, therefore, no possibility of return; and where that softening influence, accordingly, must be wholly reflected from our own mind. That, for inanimate objects, long familiar to us, we have a regard, in some degree similar to that which we feel for a friend, has been the remark of all ages; since every individual, in every age, must have been subject to the universal influence, which gives occasion to it. A little

* Cowper's Task, Book VI. v. 30-35.

attention to this process, by which an object, of trifling value, becomes representative of feelings that are inestimable, will not be uninteresting in itself, and will throw much light on that similar process, by which, in the case of beauty, I conceive objects to become representative, by a sort of spiritual reflection, of the pleasure which they excite. I cannot prepare you better for this discussion, than by quoting some remarks from the eloquent work of Dr Smith.

"The causes of pain and pleasure, whatever they are, or however they operate, seem to be the objects, which in all animals, immediately excite those two passions of gratitude and resentment. They are excited by inanimate, as well as by animated objects. We are angry, for a moment, even at the stone that hurts us. A child beats it, a dog barks at it, a choleric man is apt to curse it. The least reflection, indeed, corrects this sentiment, and we soon become sensible, that what has no feeling is a very improper object of revenge. When the mischief, however, is very great, the object which caused it becomes disagreeable to us ever after, and we take pleasure to burn or destroy it. We should treat, in this manner, the instrument which had accidentally been the cause of the death of a friend; and we should often think ourselves guilty of a sort of inhumanity, if we neglected to vent this absurd sort of vengeance upon it.

"We conceive, in the same manner, a sort of gratitude for those inanimate objects, which have been the causes of great or frequent pleasure to us. The sailor, who, as soon as he got ashore, should mend his fire with the plank upon which he had just escaped from a shipwreck, would seem to be guilty of an unnatural action. We should expect that he would rather preserve it with care and affection, as a monument that was, in some measure dear to him. A man grows fond of a snuff-box, of a pen-knife, of a staff, which he has long made use of, and conceives something like a real love and affection for them. If he breaks or loses them, he is vexed out of all proportion to the value of the damage. The house which we have long lived in, the tree whose verdure and shade we have long enjoyed, are both looked upon with a sort of respect that seems due to such benefactors. The decay of the one, or the ruin of the other, affects us with a kind of melancholy, though we should sustain no loss by it. The Dry

ads and the Lares of the ancients, a sort of genii of trees and houses, were probably first suggested by this sort of affection, which the authors of those superstitions felt for such objects, and which seemed unreasonable, if there was nothing animated about them."

The reason of this friendship for inanimate objects, seems to me to be, that, with such objects, in the circumstances supposed, there is really combined a great part of that which forms the complex conception of our friend; and it is not wonderful, therefore, that there should be a considerable similarity of the feeling excited. There is not, indeed, and cannot be, in the case of lifeless matter, that admiration of virtue and genius,-that gratitude for a preference voluntarily made, and for kindness voluntarily shown,-and that confidence in future displays of similar devotion,-which form so gratifying and ennobling a part of friendship. But what constitutes the real tenderness of friendship, is something more than all these feelings. These may be felt, in attachments that are formed at any period of life, and at a very early period of mutual acquaintance. But that, which gives to such a union its chief tenderness, is long and cordial intimacy, and especially that intimacy, which has taken its origin in an early period of life. The friend of our boyish sports-of our college studies-of our first schemes, and successes, and joys, and sorrows, is he, in whose converse the heart expands most readily, and with whom, in latest old age, we love to grow young again. With the very image of the person, is mingled the remembrance of innumerable enjoyments and consolations shared in common. They are, as it were, condensed and fixed in it, and are reflected back upon us, as often as the image arises. But the remembrance of a long series of agreeable emotions may be mingled with inanimate scenes, as well as with persons; and if, by the reflection of these past emotions, it produce tenderness, in the one case, it surely is not surprising, that the same cause should produce a feeling of tenderness, in the other; and that, as the chief source of the affection is thus in circumstances that are common to both, we should feel something very like regard for every long familiar object, while it exists, and of grief, when it exists no more.

The old man who pointed out the house of a deceased friend,

Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part II. Sect. iii. c. 1.

and said, " formerly I had only to climb those steps, to forget all the miseries of life," must have felt for the steps, which he had so often trod, that regard, which arises from the remembrance of past delight, a remembrance, which constituted so important a part of the pleasure formerly received by him, when they led him to the apartment of his friend, and to all that happiness, which was more than the mere forgetfulness of grief, even when there was grief, or the very miseries of life to be forgotten.

The same effect in heightening friendship, which is produced, by long intimacy, is produced, in a great degree, by any single feeling of very vivid interest; such as that of peril shared together,the strong emotion of the moment of enterprize,—the joy of the escape, and, in many cases, the glory which attended it, being blended and reflected from each individual, as from another self. In one of those admirable tragedies, which form a part of the series of plays on the Passions, there is a very striking picture of this kind, in the speech of an old maimed soldier, who, with all his modesty, has been forced to allude to some of his past exploits.

"For I have fought, where few alive remain'd,

And none unscathed: where but a few remain'd,
Thus mar'd and mangled ;-as belike you've seen,
O' summer nights, around the evening lamp,
Some wretched moths, wingless and half consumed,
Just feebly crawling o'er their heaps of dead.
In Savoy, on a small, though desperate post,

Of full three hundred goodly chosen men,

But twelve were left;—and right dear friends were we
Forever after. They are all dead now ;--

I'm old and lonely."*

In a real case of this sort, every vivid feeling, which attended the action, and the remembrance of which was, in a great measure, the remembrance of the action itself,-would be combined with the perception of each individual survivor. The common peril, the common escape, the common glory, would be conceived as one; and, in consequence of this unity, as often as the thought of the glorious action recurred, each would be to the others as it

*Count Basil, a Tragedy, Act III. Scene 1.

were another self. Indeed, so closely would the conception of the action itself, and of the right-dear friends be blended, that, in a case like that which the drama supposes, I have little doubt, that when all but one of the little band of heroes had perished, it would seem to the melancholy survivor,-when all the real component parts of the action had thus ceased to exist,-as if the happiness and glory of the action had perished likewise; and old age and loneliness would be felt the more, as if stripped, not of the enjoyments of friendship only, but almost of the very honours of other years.

The same feeling in this case, too, it must be remarked, extends itself, if not equally, at least in a very high degree, to inanimate things; and there can be no question, that the sword, which has been worn only as an ornament, and the sword which has been often wielded in battle, and in battle the most perilous, will be viewed by their possessors with very different regard. The weapon is itself a real component part of the glorious actions which it represents; and we transfuse, as it were, into the mere lifeless steel, a consciousness and reciprocity of our vivid feelings, exactly as, in the case of beauty, we animate the external object with our own delight, without knowing that we have done so.

The grief which we feel for the loss of an object, insignificant in itself, and deriving all its value from its associations formed with it, presents, in another form, that transfusion of feeling from the mind, and concentration of it in the object, which constitute our lively pictures of beauty, when it is regarded not as the unknown cause of our delightful feeling, but as that embodied delight itself.

An object long familiar to us, by occurring frequently, either in perception, or in trains of thought, together with many of our most interesting emotions, and the images of those friends of whom we think most frequently, is, by the common laws of suggestion, so clearly associated with these emotions and ideas, that, when it it is present to our mind, these shadowy images of happiness may almost be considered as forming with it a part of one complex feeling, or at least, are very readily recalled by it. When such an object, therefore, is lost, and we think of it as lost, we do not conceive it as that simple object of perception which it was originally, when it first affected our senses, in which case, the loss