154 EMERSON’S ESSAYS

admiration, by every circumstance and badge and tri- He, but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in another as to draw us by love. Can another be so blessed, and we so pure, that we can offer him tenderness? When a man becomes dear to me, I have touched the goal of fortune. I find very little written directly to the heart of this matter in books. And yet I have one text which I cannot choose but remember. My author says, “I offer my- self faintly and bluntly to those whose I effectually am, and tender myself least to him to whom I am the most devoted.” I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults over the moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen before it is quite a cherub. We chide the citizen because he makes love a commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall at the funeral, and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the relation. But though we cannot find the god under this dis- guise of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, fidelity, and pity. I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the com- pany of ploughboys and tin-peddlers to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of en- counter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the best taverns. The end of friend-_ ship is a commerce the most strict and homely that can be joined; more strict than any of which we have