between reason and faith. Jesus--the wandering, weary Man of
Sorrows--loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus; but Jesus, in the hour of
supreme grief, allowed the most spiritual and intellectual of his
disciples to lean on his bosom. It was the son of a king whom David
cherished with a love surpassing the love of woman. It was to Plato that
Socrates communicated his moral wisdom; it was with cultivated youth
that Augustine surrounded himself in the gardens of Como; Caesar walked
with Antony, and Cassius with Brutus; it was to Madame de Maintenon that
Fénelon poured out the riches of his intellect, and the lofty Saint
Cyran opened to Mère Angelique the sorrows of his soul. We associate
Aspasia with Pericles; Cicero with Atticus; Héloïse with Abélard;
Hildebrand with the Countess Matilda; Michael Angelo with Vittoria
Colonna; Cardinal de Retz with the Duchess de Longueville; Dr. Johnson
with Hannah More.

Those who have no friends delight most in the plaudits of a plebeian
crowd. A philosopher who associates with the vulgar is neither an oracle
nor a guide. A rich man's son who fraternizes with hostlers will not
long grace a party of ladies and gentlemen. A politician who shakes
hands with the rabble will lose as much in influence as he gains in
power. In spite of envy, poets cling to poets and artists to artists.
Genius, like a magnet, draws only congenial natures to itself. Had a
well-bred and titled fool been admitted into the Turk's-Head Club, he
might have been the butt of good-natured irony; but he would have been
endured, since gentlemen must live with gentlemen and scholars with
scholars, and the rivalries which alienate are not so destructive as the
grossness which repels. More genial were the festivities of a feudal
castle than any banquet between Jews and Samaritans. Had not Mrs. Thrale
been a woman of intellect and sensibility, the hospitalities she
extended to Johnson would have been as irksome as the dinners given to