PERPETUITY OF FRIENDSHIP. It is my wish, that the mutual friendship and esteem, which have been planted and fostered in the tumult of public life, may not wither and die in the serenity of retirement. We should amuse our evening hours of life, in cultivating the tender plants, and bringing them to perfection, before they are transplanted to a happier clime. FRIENDLY ADVICE. The opinion and advice of friends I receive, at all times, as a proof of their friendship, and am thankful when they are offered. NATURE OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation. ACTIONS, NOT WORDS. A slender acquaintance with the world, must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends; and that the most liberal professions of good-will are very far from being the surest marks of it. I should be happy, if my own experience had afforded fewer examples of the little dependence to be placed upon them. PROFESSIONS OF FRIENDSHIP. The arts of dissimulation I despise; and my feelings will not permit me to make professions of friendship, to the man I deem my enemy, and whose system of conduct forbids it. LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP. It is not the letters of my friends, which give me trouble, or add aught to my perplexity: To correspond with those I love, is among my highest gratifications. Letters of friendship require no study the com munications they contain, flow with ease; and allowances are expected and made. HOSPITALITY OF FRIENDSHIP. If the assurances of the sincerest esteem and affection, if the varieties of uncultivated nature, the novelty of exchanging the gay and delightful scenes of Paris, with which you are surrounded, for the rural amusements of a country in its infancy, if the warbling notes of the feathered songsters of our lawns and meads, can, for a moment, make you forget the melody of the opera, and the pleasures of the court, these all invite you to give us this honor, and the opportunity of expressing to you, personally, those sentiments of attachment and love, with which you have inspired us. 1786. I repeat to you† the assurances of my friendship, and of the pleasure I should feel in seeing you in the shade of those trees which my hands have planted; and which, by their rapid growth, at once indicate a knowledge of my declining years, and their disposition to spread their mantles over me before I go hence to return no more. For this, their gratitude, I will nurture them while I stay. *The Marchioness de Lafayette. 1784. FRIENDSHIP IN ADVERSITY. My friendship, so far from being diminished, has increased in the ratio of his misfortunes. 1796. RENEWAL OF FRIENDSHIP'S COVENANT. The friendship I have conceived, will not be impaired by absence; but it may be no unpleasing circumstance to brighten the chain, by a renewal of the covenant. PERSONAL FRIENDSHIP AND POLITICAL DISAGREEMENT. The friendship which I ever professed and felt for you, met with no diminution, from the difference of our political sentiments. I know the rectitude of my own intentions; and, believing in the sincerity of yours, lamented, though I did not condemn your renunciation of the creed I had adopted. Nor do I think any person or power ought to do it, * Lafayette, imprisoned at Olmütz. The Rev. Bryan Fairfax, an Episcopalian clergyman, of Alexandria, Virginia. He afterward became the eighth and last Lord Fairfax. |