Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.  There may be courtesy, there may be even temper, and wit, and talent, and sparkling conversation, there may be good-will even,—­and yet the humanest and divinest faculties pine for exercise.  Our life without love is like coke and ashes.  Men may be pure as alabaster and Parian marble, elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, and yet if there is no milk mingled with the wine at their entertainments, better is the hospitality of Goths and Vandals.

My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.  He is my real brother.  I see his nature groping yonder so like mine.  We do not live far apart.  Have not the fates associated us in many ways?  It says, in the Vishnu Purana:  “Seven paces together is sufficient for the friendship of the virtuous, but thou and I have dwelt together.”  Is it of no significance that we have so long partaken of the same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed the same air summer and winter, felt the same heat and cold; that the same fruits have been pleased to refresh us both, and we have never had a thought of different fibre the one from the other!

      Nature doth have her dawn each day,
      But mine are far between;
      Content, I cry, for sooth to say,
      Mine brightest are I ween.

      For when my sun doth deign to rise,
      Though it be her noontide,
      Her fairest field in shadow lies,
      Nor can my light abide.

      Sometimes I bask me in her day,
      Conversing with my mate,
      But if we interchange one ray,
      Forthwith her heats abate.

      Through his discourse I climb and see,
      As from some eastern hill,
      A brighter morrow rise to me
      Than lieth in her skill.

      As ’t were two summer days in one,
      Two Sundays come together,
      Our rays united make one sun,
      With fairest summer weather.

As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me to the ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as surely as the last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall make age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold influences of nature survive during the term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall forever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, no less than the ruins of temples.  As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.

But all that can be said of Friendship, is like botany to flowers.  How can the understanding take account of its friendliness?

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives.  They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.