SPECTATOR, Vol. 1. No. 68.

21. "Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to
promote the good and happiness of one another." Though the pleasures and
advantages of friendship have been largely celebrated by the best moral
writers, and are considered by all as great ingredients of human
happiness, we very rarely meet with the practice of this virtue an the
world.

22. Every man is ready to give a long catalogue of those virtues and
good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend, but very
few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves.

Love and esteem are the first principles of friendship, which always is
imperfect where either of these two is wanting.

23. As on the one hand, we are soon ashamed of loving a man whom we
cannot esteem; so on the other, though we are truly sensible of a man's
abilities, we can never raise ourselves to the warmths of friendship,
without an affectionate good will towards his person.

24. Friendship immediately banishes envy under all its disguises. A man
who can once doubt whether he should rejoice in his friend's being
happier than himself, may depend upon it, that he is an utter stranger
to this virtue.

25. There is something in friendship so very great and noble, that in
those fictitious stories which are invented to the honor of any
particular person, the authors have thought it as necessary to make