These were individuals then still well known in polite
society. If their examples have ceased to influence, it cannot
be pretended that the extinction of their authority has been the
consequence of competition. Our enlightened age has not produced them
any rivals.
Of all the differences between the ancients and ourselves, none more
striking than our respective ideas of friendship. Grecian friendship
was indeed so ethereal, that it is difficult to define its essential
qualities. They must be sought rather in the pages of Plato, or the
moral essays of Plutarch perhaps, and in some other books not quite
as well known, but not less interesting and curious. As for modern
friendship, it will be found in clubs. It is violent at a house
dinner, fervent in a cigar shop, full of devotion at a cricket or a
pigeon-match, or in the gathering of a steeple-chase. The nineteenth
century is not entirely sceptical on the head of friendship, but fears
'tis rare. A man may have friends, but then, are they sincere ones?
Do not they abuse you behind your back, and blackball you at societies
where they have had the honour to propose you? It might philosophically
be suggested that it is more agreeable to be abused behind one's back
than to one's face; and, as for the second catastrophe, it should not be
forgotten that if the sincere friend may occasionally put a successful
veto on your election, he is always ready to propose you again.
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