part, let us part like friends_." I am certain, from what Charles
reported to me, that Mr. L. and I think Mr. R. [Rees] are hurt by this
sudden disunion.

Recollect how serious every dispute becomes upon paper, when a man
writes a thousand asperities merely to show or support his superior
ability. Things that would not have been spoken, or perhaps even thought
of in conversation, are stated and horribly magnified _upon paper_.
Consider how many disputes have arisen in the world, in which both
parties were so violent in what they believed to be the support of
truth, and which to the public, and indeed to themselves a few years
afterwards, appeared unwise, because the occasion or cause of it was not
worth contending about. Consider that you are, all of you, men who can
depend upon each other's probity and honour, and where these essentials
are not wanting, surely in mere matters of business the rest may be
palliated by mutual bearance and forbearance. Besides, you are so
connected by various publications, your common property, and some of
them such as will remain so until the termination of your lives, that
you cannot effect an entire disunion, and must therefore be subject to
eternal vexations and regrets which will embitter every transaction and
settlement between you.

You know, moreover, that it is one of the misfortunes of our nature,
that disputes are always the most bitter in proportion to former
intimacy. And how much dissatisfaction will it occasion if either of you
are desirous in a year or two of renewing that intimacy which you are
now so anxious to dissolve--to say nothing of your relative utility to
each other--a circumstance which is never properly estimated, except
when the want of the means reminds us of what we have been at such pains
to deprive ourselves. Pause, my dear sirs, whilst to choose be yet in