“I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God.... I love my friend before myself, and yet methinks I do not love him enough: some few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from him, I am dead till I be with him; when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but would be still nearer him.... This noble affection falls not on vulgar and common constitutions, but on such as are marked for virtue: he that can love his friend with this noble ardour, will in a competent degree affect all.” _Sir Thomas Browne_, _Religio Medici_, 1642. [Sidenote: _William Penn_] William Penn (b. 1644) the founder of Pennsylvania, and of Philadelphia, “The city of brotherly love” was a great believer in friendship. He says in his _Fruits of Solitude_:— “A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.... In short, choose a friend as thou dost a wife, till death separate you.... Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their friendship.... This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.” [Sidenote: _William of Orange_] It may be worth while here to insert two passages from Macaulay’s History of England. The first deals with the remarkable intimacy between the Young Prince William of Orange and “a gentleman of his household” named Bentinck. William’s escape from a malignant attack of small-pox “was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity, and partly to the intrepid and indefatigable, friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of Bentinck alone William took food and medicine—by Bentinck alone William was lifted from his bed and laid down in it. ‘Whether Bentinck slept or not while I was ill,’ said William to Temple with great tenderness, ‘I know not. But this I know, that through sixteen days and nights, I never once called for anything but that Bentinck was instantly at my side.’ Before the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, he had himself caught the contagion.” (But he recovered.) _History of England_, ch. vii. [Sidenote: _Princess Anne and Lady Churchill_] The second passage describes the devotion of the Princess Anne (daughter of James II. and afterwards Queen Anne) to Lady Churchill—a devotion which had considerable influence on the political situation.