FRIENDSHIP.

SOMETHING like home that is not home, like alone that is not alone, to be wished, and only found in a friend, or in his house. Sir Wm. Temple, Heads of an Essay on Conversation.

FRIENDSHIP.

FIRST on thy friend deliberate with thyself;
Pause, ponder, sift; not eager in the choice,
Nor jealous of the chosen : fixing, fix :
Judge before friendship, then confide till death.
Young, Night Thoughts, ii.

FRIENDSHIP.

A GENEROUS friendship no cold medium knows,
Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;
One should our interests and our passions be;
My friend must hate the man that injures me.
Pope-Homer, Iliad, b. ix.

FRIENDSHIP.

FRIENDSHIP, which once determined, never swerves,
Weighs ere it trusts, but weighs not ere it serves.

FRIENDSHIP.

Hannah More, Sensibility.

WELL-chosen friendship, the most noble
Of virtues, all our joys makes double,
And into halves divides our trouble.

Sir John Denham, Friendship and Single Life.

FRIENDSHIP.

PEOPLE at first, while they are young, and raw, and soft natured, are apt to think it an easy thing to gain love, and reckon their own friendship a sure price of another man's. But when experience shall have once opened their eyes, and

showed them the hardness of most hearts, the hollowness of others, and the baseness and ingratitude of almost all, they will then find that a friend is the gift of God; and that He only who made hearts can unite them.

It is an invisible hand from heaven that ties this knot, and mingles hearts and souls, by strange secret and unaccountable conjunctions.

FRIENDSHIP.

South, Sermons, xiv.

Ir is a noble and a great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the house-top. South, Sermons, xiv.

FRIENDSHIP.

THERE is perhaps no time at which we are disposed to think so highly of a friend, as when we find him standing higher than we expected in the esteem of others.

DEATH OF A FRIEND.

Sir Walter Scott.

WHEN a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed, and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood. Johnson, Rambler, No. 54.

DEATH OF FriendS.

THIS may be Nature: when our friends we lose,
Our altered feelings alter too our views;
What in their tempers teased us or distressed,

Is with our anger and the dead at rest ;

And much we grieve, no longer trial made,
For that impatience which we then displayed;
Now to their love and worth of every kind
A soft compunction turns the afflicted mind;
Virtues neglected then, adorned become,
And graces slighted, blossom on the tomb.

DEPARTED FRIENDS.

Crabbe, The Borough.

WHEN musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone;
Something, my friend, we yet may gain,
There is a pleasure in this pain :
It soothes the love of lonely rest,
Deep in each gentler heart imprest;
'Tis silent amid worldly toils,
And stifled soon by worldly broils;
But, in a bosom thus prepared,
Its still small voice is often heard,
Whispering a mingled sentiment,
Twixt resignation and content.

Scott, Marmion, Int. to Canto II.

DEPARTED FRIENDS.

OFT may the spirits of the dead descend
To watch the silent slumbers of a friend ;
So hover round his evening walk unseen,
And hold sweet converse on the dusky green;
To hail the spot where first their friendship grew,
And heaven and nature opened to their view!
Oft, when he trims his cheerful hearth, and sees
A smiling circle emulous to please ;

There may these gentle guests delight to dwell,
And bless the scene they loved in life so well.
Rogers, Pleasures of Memory.

FRUIT.

THERE the blushing peach,

The apple, citron, almond, pear, and date,
Pomegranates, purple mulberry, and fig,
From interlacing branches mix their hues
And scents, the passenger's delight.

Glover, Leonidas, b. ii.

FRUIT.

THERE is great beauty, as well as other agreeableness, in a well-disposed fruiterer's window. Here are the round piled up oranges, deepening almost into red, and heavy with juice; the apple, with its brown red cheek, as if it had slept in the sun; the pear, swelling downwards, and provocative of a huge bite in the side; thronging grapes, like so many tight little bags of wine; the peach, whose handsome leathern coat strips off so finely; the pearly or ruby-like currants, heaped in light, long baskets; the red little mouthfuls of strawberries, ditto; the larger purple ones of plums; cherries, whose old comparison with lips is better than anything new; mulberries, dark and rich with juice, fit to grow over what Homer calls the deep black-watered fountains; the swelling pomp of melons; the rough inexorable looking cocoa-nut, milky at heart; the elaborate elegance of walnuts; the quaint cashoo-nut; almonds, figs, raisins, tamarinds, green leaves in short:

:

'Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields

In India East or West, or middle shore

In Pontus or the Punic coast, or where

Alcinous reigned; fruit of all kinds, in coat

Rough, or smooth rind, or bearded husk, or shell.'

Leigh Hunt, Indicator.

FRUIT.

BEAR me, Pomona, to thy citron groves;

To where the lemon and the piercing lime,
With the deep orange, glowing through the green,
Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined
Beneath the spreading tamarind that shakes,
Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit.
Deep in the night the massy locust sheds,
Quench my hot limbs; or lead me through the maze,
Embowering endless, of the Indian fig:

Or thrown at gayer ease, on some fair brow,
Let me behold, by breezy murmurs cooled,
Broad o'er my head the verdant cedar wave,
And high palmettos lift their graceful shade.
Or stretched amid these orchards of the sun,
Give me to drain the cocoa's milky bowl,
And from the palm to draw its freshening wine,
More bounteous far than all the frantic juice
Which Bacchus pours. Nor, on its slender twigs
Low-bending, be the full pomegranate scorned,
Nor, creeping through the woods, the gelid race
Of berries. Oft in humble station dwells
Unboastful worth, above fastidious pomp :
Witness, thou best Anana, thou the pride
Of vegetable life, beyond whate'er
The poets imaged in the golden age!

Quick let me strip thee of thy tufty coat,

Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove.

Thomson, Summer.

FRUIT.

WHAT Wondrous life is this I lead !
Ripe apples drop about my head:

The luscious clusters of the vine

Upon my mouth do crush their wine :