where it is due, yet this is better than a half-way loyalty; there should be no _if_, followed by self-interest.... The seal of confederate nobles, opposed to some measures of Peter IV. of Aragon, 'represents the king sitting on his throne, with the confederates kneeling in a suppliant attitude, around, to denote their loyalty and unwillingness to offend. But in the back-ground, tents and lines of spears are discovered, as a hint of their ability and resolution to defend themselves.' ... This kind of allegiance no true heart will ever give. I take it for granted that you have a heart--not merely anatomically speaking, an organ to circulate the blood, but a something that prompts you to love, to self-sacrifice, to scorn of meanness, and, it may be, to good, honest hatred. All metals can be separated from their ores; but meanness is inseparable from some natures, so it is impossible to hate the sin without hating the sinner; we can't, indeed, conceive of it in the abstract. I don't mean hate in a malignant sense--here I may as well express my scorn of that sly hatred that is too cowardly to knock a man down, but quietly trips him up. It is well enough for those who think that 'life is a jest,' (and a bitter, sarcastic one it must be to them,) to mock at all nobler feelings and sentiments of the heart. None do they more contemn than friendship. I would not 'sit in the seat' of these 'scornful,' however they may have found false friends. Yet every man capable of a genuine friendship himself, will in this world find at least one true friend. Oxygen, which comprises one fifth of the atmosphere, is said to be highly magnetic; and any ordinary, healthy soul can extract magnetism enough from the very air he breathes to draw at least one other soul. Some people have an amazing power of absorption and retention of this magnetism. You feel irresistibly drawn toward them--and it is all right, for they are noble, true souls. There is a great difference between their attractive force and that kind of 'power of charming' innocence that villainy often has--just as I once saw a cat charm a bird, which circled nearer and nearer till it almost brushed the cat's whiskers--and had he not been chased away, he would have that day daintily lunched--and there would have been one songster less to join in that evening's vespers.