The autobiographer in a modern work of fiction, having occasion to acknowledge, after being thrust amongst strangers to sicken, and all but die, that among strangers he received as much sympathy and kindness as he should have done among his own people, and in his father’s house,—characterizes this sort of confession as one which people are apt to make as a reflection upon their relations, “whereas it disgraces only themselves.” It is a case of rare misfortune, he contends, when we are not loved by our nearest of kin, in proportion as we desire and deserve to excite affection. Nevertheless, there is a too ample _consensus_ of authorities whose testimony affirms, and confirms, the often slight and slender tenure of mere family ties, as such. “None of your family parties for me,” quoth one of Justice Haliburton’s shrewd spokesmen; “connections at best are poor friends, and commonly bitter enemies. If you want nothing, go to them, and you are sure to get it; if you are in want of any assistance, go to a stranger friend you have _made for yourself_, and that’s the boy that has a heart and a hand for you.” The Earl of Dudley, Bishop Copleston’s correspondent, in one of his always interesting letters to that prelate, adverting to the death of an uncle who had never taken the smallest interest in him, or showed him the smallest kindness, makes the avowal: “And, though I flatter myself that there is no person more capable of returning affection than myself, yet I fairly own that I am wholly unable to bestow it quite gratuitously even upon a near relation.” Richardson harps on this note again and again in his history of Clarissa. How much more binding and tender, that young lady writes—and the writing comes of bitter experience—are the ties of pure friendship and the union of like minds, than the ties of nature! And her chief correspondent, in commenting on the terms of a kinsman’s assurance, that he will not see Clarissa “imposed on either by friend or foe,”—interposes the verbal amendment: “By _relation_ or foe, should he not have said? For a friend will not impose upon a friend.” Elsewhere the same writer has to put the home-question: “Would you side with a false brother against a true friend? A brother may not be a friend; but a friend will be always a brother.”