A sublime phenomenon

Friendship is to some extent but a sublime phenomenon to them.

The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such terms as these:—

‘I never asked thy leave to let me love thee—I have a right. I love thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. Oh, how I think of you! You are purely good—you are infinitely good. I can trust you for ever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to live.’

‘You are the fact in a fiction—you are the truth more strange and admirable than fiction. Consent only to be what you are. I alone will never stand in your way.’