The necessity itself for
explanation,--what explanation will atone for that?
True love does not quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as
mutual acquaintances can explain away, but, alas, however slight
the apparent cause, only for adequate and fatal and everlasting
reasons, which can never be set aside. Its quarrel, if there is
any, is ever recurring, notwithstanding the beams of affection
which invariably come to gild its tears; as the rainbow, however
beautiful and unerring a sign, does not promise fair weather
forever, but only for a season. I have known two or three
persons pretty well, and yet I have never known advice to be of
use but in trivial and transient matters. One may know what
another does not, but the utmost kindness cannot impart what is
requisite to make the advice useful. We must accept or refuse
one another as we are. I could tame a hyena more easily than my
Friend. He is a material which no tool of mine will work. A
naked savage will fell an oak with a firebrand, and wear a
hatchet out of a rock by friction, but I cannot hew the smallest
chip out of the character of my Friend, either to beautify or
deform it.
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