THE ATTRACTING FRIENDSHIP. 327 



the beauties of its scenery, or of its old castles and 

 obelisks, though I am not the kind of person wholly to 

 slight these, I think of it as the home of some of my 

 friends ; particularly as the home of her who has so 

 kindly interested herself in my welfare, whose friend- 

 ship I have deemed so much an honour, and found so 

 much a happiness, and who in her warm-heartedness has 

 held converse with me, not as the mere lady of birth 

 and education who condescends to notice some poor half- 

 taught mechanic, but such as one intelligence holds with 

 another of the same class. It is wonderful how numer- 

 ous the analogies are which subsist between the intel- 

 lectual and material worlds. You are acquainted with 

 that principle of attraction which binds into one solid 

 mass any amount of particles which have been pressed 

 together until brought within the sphere of its influence, 

 and that opposite principle which makes them repel one 

 another when removed from out of this sphere by the 

 least possible distance. And are there not similar prin- 

 ciples operative in the respective states of mere acquaint- 

 anceship and friendship ? Is there not repulsion in the 

 one, attraction in the other? Nay, are they not both 

 operative in even friendship itself ; the friend who con- 

 verses with one merely on paper, or in a mixed company, 

 or under the influence of some such evil spirit as diffi- 

 dence, is environed by an atmosphere very different from 

 that which surrounds the friend to whom, when the pen 

 is happily no longer of use, the world shut out, and the 

 fiend dispossessed, one can open one's whole heart, and 

 mingle thought with thought, and feeling with feeling. 

 I trust that before the end of May I shall have availed 

 myself so much of your kindness as to be fully within 

 the influence of the better principle. But not one word 

 of Altyre ; remember the giant's wife. 



