A FRIEND.


In utter prostration, and sacred privacy of soul, I almost think now,
and have often felt heretofore, man may make a confessional of the
breast of his brother man. Once I had such a friend--and to me he was a
priest. He has been so long dead, that it seems to me now, that I have
almost forgotten him--and that I remember only that he once lived, and
that I once loved him with all my affections. One such friend alone can
ever, from the very nature of things, belong to any one human being,
however endowed by nature and beloved of heaven. He is felt to stand
between us and our upbraiding conscience. In his life lies the
strength--the power--the virtue of ours--in his death the better half of
our whole being seems to expire. Such communion of spirit, perhaps, can
only be in existences rising towards their meridian; as the hills of
life cast longer shadows in the westering hours, we grow--I should not
say more suspicious, for that may be too strong a word--but more silent,
more self-wrapt, more circumspect--less sympathetic even with kindred
and congenial natures, who will sometimes, in our almost sullen moods or
theirs, seem as if they were kindred and congenial no more--less devoted
to Spirituals, that is, to Ideas, so tender, true, beautiful, and
sublime, that they seem to be inhabitants of heaven though born of
earth, and to float between the two regions, angelical and divine--yet
felt to be mortal, human still--the Ideas of passions, and desires, and
affections, and "impulses that come to us in solitude," to whom we
breathe out our souls in silence, or in almost silent speech, in utterly
mute adoration, or in broken hymns of feeling, believing that the holy
enthusiasm will go with us through life to the grave, or rather knowing
not, or feeling not, that the grave is any thing more for us than a mere