The affections, and those virtues which signally reach them, we have for ages been accustomed to place to the heart’s account. We yield to it all the virtues of sensibility, and thus it becomes the great source and centre of feeling. To it we ascribe that generous commiseration and sympathy which constitute the pillars of society, and which have long since confirmed the declaration of the great Roman orator, that no nation has ever existed where civility, good nature, and gratitude, were not had in esteem, and where the proud, the mischievous, the cruel, and ungrateful, were not had in contempt and abhorrence. Wisdom may flatter our self-love, and as it advances, justly challenge our respect, but we fail to see in it the power or the pleasure which is inseparable from the heart’s good sentiments. “It is to no purpose to be wise, unless we are rendered better,” truly observes Lucian. Life is made a blessing, not through the influence of mind, however much it may have done to surround us with the means of comfort and enjoyment, but through the great excellencies of man’s nature. It is a law of nature, as we are told by the most eminent moralists, that each should cultivate an agreeable sociability as the best means of promoting the end for which human society has been instituted. This can never be successfully done without the virtues of the heart--such as friendship and love, and above and including all, CHARITY. The pleasure of man’s intercourse with his fellows depends principally upon the virtues that adorn him. The wise, if arrogant, vain, and ungrateful, may only succeed in awakening within the good feelings of mingled respect and contempt; whilst the generous, the humble, the just, will ever elicit universal esteem. We rely upon their gratitude and confide in their friendship, realizing the happiness of their guileless sincerity and truth. Without friendship, life would be a gift which we might well despise. “By what other means,” asks Seneca, “are we preserved, but by the mutual assistance of good turns?” It is this generous virtue, springing from the heart, that renders our associations agreeable, and throws around our existence the joys and pleasures of social life. “If any man,” says Xenophon, “a lover of virtue, ever found a more profitable companion than Socrates, I deem that man the happiest of human kind.” This celebrated ancient general and scholar, in thus speaking of his friend, utters but a truthful tribute to the virtue of friendship, as exemplified in the life of every honest man.