There of the English soldier, and fire and sustain his noblest daring, so long as men shall learn the art of war. is to-day no aristocracy so peerless, no order of nobility so illustrious, among all England's titled ranks, as that little surviving company, concerning which men say as they point out a solitary passer-by, "There goes one of the 'Light Brigade."" There is no victory on all the plains which English blood has moistened the island bards shall love so well to sing, the plumed cohorts shall boast with so generous an emulation, as this wasteful, useless, unequalled charge. "When can their glory fade ? Oh, the wild charge they made! No, my friends. Noble six hundred." Nothing that is true to honor and courage and fidelity, nothing heroic and self-devoted, is ever in vain. The hearts of Christ's warriors on earth shall ever feel the thrill of brave blood at the name of John; the bards of Heaven shall celebrate his failure as one of the grandest victories of God's human champions. Young men, brethren, fellow-workers, go and do ye likewise. If you stand for a truth, a principle, a sample of conscience, a price of morality too high and pure for your associates to appreciate; if in any of these issues you stand alone; if for your persistent virtue the narrowing circle of neglect and want shut in about you like prison walls; if well-meaning if friends chide your too fastidious conscientiousness; you fail to carry your principle by the acclamation of majorities, and find that you must suffer for it instead in a minority of one; if you are moved to give your young life to the country that calls now for all her valiant sons, and the thought of finishing your career so soon, on some fatal field day, instead of living on in serene tranquillity and amid household ties to a late old age, wrestles with your spirit, look back again to that lonely prisoner, that heroic youthful preacher and confessor, done to death for his faithfulness, and accept your lot, listening the while to this watchword from overhead, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." XII. FRIENDSHIP. THERE IS A FRIEND THAT STICKETH CLOSER THAN A BROTHER. Prov. xviii. 24. WE ST E speak a very tender and sacred word when we call one our "brother." But a brother may not be a friend. All the household ties may be complete upon a heart that yet feels that it has not one friend. The intimacies of the home may be coupled together, leaving this heart unmated. And where love is not denied, the love that is rendered us in the natural ties scarce seems to us the tribute of the free heart. It is mixed with instinct. It comes not so much as a matter of choice, because the eye has seen and the heart has felt a charm that cannot be resisted, but as a matter of natural instinctive prompting, quickened by common blood, strengthened by common interest. It may not be a personal homage when those who are cradled together are found content with one another's society. Nature has joined them rather than elective affection. The fellowship is close often rather by force of habit than by clinging tenderness and mutual sympathy. The heart wants more than this. It wants one upon whom it can bestow its love and esteem, to whom it can impart all its confidence, and from whom it can receive the same, as a voluntary offering, the expression of a good will which it has won not by blood, but by its own qualities, not the dictate of nature, but the full, free choice of the heart. Sometimes this want is supplied within the circle of the home, not as the fruit of nature, but above nature. More frequently, perhaps, I had almost said more naturally, this intimate friendship is with one outside the home, the soul exercising its liberty, finding its happiness in giving without the constraint of nature, and craving in return that which is spontaneous and unconstrained. It would love and trust, not of debt, but of free will. Give me a friend. I am not myself till I have a friend. My nature is locked up; my friend has the key. Till he open, how can I know, how can another know, what my heart is capable of? I am restricted, stifled, suppressed. I do not grow up and out to the light and the air. I do not think my own thoughts, nor speak my own language, nor warm into true, loving, and genuine confidence till my friend come. If I have no friend, I shall be likely to remain unexpressed, and so to be less and less what I might be. My friend carries my development beyond all my old consciousness of capacity. What does a stranger or a mere acquaintance do for my truer self? He takes a careless greeting, a light courtesy, a civil word, a touch of my listless hand. Is this all I have to give? Is this all I am? What a transformation one hour of intercourse with a friend effects; how my heart opens; how I venture down for its deepest mysteries, and lead them up to day; how I dismiss the shyness that kept the sanctuaries of my soul veiled; how the soul itself walks forth like Adam in the garden, unrobed but not afraid, meeting in the paradise of friendship no eye that brings a blush; how I speak what my lips never uttered before; how I feel what my heart never felt before; how the hidden fountains at this breath of spring -the rigid frost all dissolved- well up and pour forth their fresh, unchecked streams; how my nature revels in this genial clime, whose brightness is the face of my friend! Is this myself? I knew it not. I should never have known it but for this touch of friendship's magic wand. It is not my old solitary self. It is my occult, my begotten, my possible self, and I come into actual and demonstrative being in this natal hour. I was never fully born until now, and knew no complete maternity till I knew the cherishing nurture of friendship. How much, then, do I need that friendship itself should do for me? If I can put into speech all that my soul, in its deepest asking, wants of a true friend, what shall I plead for? I want a friend that shall meet the craving of my heart for a perfect loveliness and beauty. I cannot be satisfied with loving fair and beautiful things that are inanimate. The rose is perfectly beautiful in its way. My heart springs toward the faultless arch and brilliant coloring of the rainbow; the wooded lake, far away from the |