A LONG LETTER FROM SCOTLAND. 75 



or hard-working physician in our own day who should 

 receive a business letter such as this ! 



" Health to you. 



" Since it is important in all new conjunctions of events, 

 most learned man, to understand how they arose, and by 

 what recommendation friendship comes to us from strangers, 

 I think it right to give the reason of this letter to you from 

 me, a man unknown to you indeed, but by whom you have 

 been diligently studied. 



" To many the source of the most delightful friendship is 

 a certain sympathy and a similitude of disposition. To 

 others, that friendship seems to contribute not little to the 

 pleasantness of life, which is induced by a similitude of 

 studies. For nothing excites more desire than likeness to 

 oneself, and there is no claimant more ready than nature. 

 JNTevertheless it happens easily that the web of friendship of 

 this kind is broken. Especially when together with educa- 

 tion, language, and commerce, customs also vary, similarity 

 of study may then easily be changed into a cause of differ- 

 ence. I think with Cicero, that the best basis of friendship 

 is a faith in character ; because it is the property of virtue 

 to conciliate to itself the minds of men, and to unite them in 

 its service and in friendship with each other. For in her 

 lies the fitness of things, in her lies their stability, in her is 

 constancy, and when she goes abroad, and extends her light, 

 and has seen and recognised the same light in another, she 

 enters to it, and in turn 'receives into herself that which was 

 in another, whence there arises between them love or friend- 

 ship. "Whence we see that there is nothing more to be loved 

 than virtue, nothing that more attracts men into friendship. 



