He admits, however, the notorious fact, that good persons are sometimes disagreeable; and he confesses that we have a right to seek in our friends amiability as well as moral excellence. "Sweetness", he says--anticipating, as all these ancients so provokingly do, some of our most modern popular philosophers--"sweetness, both in language and in manner, is a very powerful attraction in the formation of friendships". He is by no means of the same opinion as Sisyphus in Lord Lytton's 'Tale of Miletus'-- "Now, then, I know thou really art my friend,-- None but true friends choose such unpleasant words". He admits that it is the office of a friend to tell unpleasant truths sometimes; but there should be a certain amount of this indispensable "sweetness" to temper the bitterness of the advice. There are some friends who are continually reminding you of what they have done for you--"a disgusting set of people verily they are", says our author. And there are others who are always thinking themselves slighted; "in which case there is generally something of which they are conscious in themselves, as laying them open to contemptuous treatment". Cicero's own character displays itself in this short treatise. Here, as everywhere, he is the politician. He shows a true appreciation of the duties and the qualifications of a true friend; but his own thoughts are running upon political friendships. Just as when, in many of his letters, he talks about "all honest men", he means "our party"; so here, when he talks of friends, he cannot help showing that it was of the essence of friendship, in his view, to hold the same political opinions, and that one great use of friends was that a man should not be isolated, as he had sometimes feared he was, in his political course. When he puts forward the old instances of Coriolanus and Gracchus, and discusses the question whether their "friends" were or were not bound to aid them in their treasonable designs against the state, he was surely thinking of the factions of his own times, and the troublesome brotherhoods which had gathered round Catiline and Clodius. Be this as it may, the advice which he makes Laelius give to his younger relatives is good for all ages, modern or ancient: "There is nothing in this world more valuable than friendship". "Next to the immediate blessing and providence of Almighty God", Lord Clarendon was often heard to say, "I owe all the little I know, and the little good that is in me, to the friendships and conversation I have still been used to, of the most excellent men in their several kinds that lived in that age". CHAPTER XI. CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY. 'THE TRUE ENDS OF LIFE'.[1]