Multitudes are unqualified for a constant and warm reciprocation of benevolence, by perpetual attention to their interest, and unresisting subjection to their passions; many varieties of dispositions also, not inconsistent with the common degrees of virtue, may exclude friendship from the heart. Some, ardent enough in their benevolence, are mutable and uncertain, soon attracted by new objects, disgusted without offence, and alienated without enmity. Others are soft and flexible, easily influenced by reports and whispers, ready to catch alarms from every dubious circumstance, and to listen to every suspicion which envy and flattery shall suggest. Some are impatient of contradiction, more willing to go wrong by their own judgment, than to be indebted for a safer and better way to the sagacity of others, inclined to consider counsel as insult, and inquiry as want of confidence. Some are dark and involved, equally careful to conceal good and bad purposes, and pleased by showing their design only in the execution. Others are unusually communicative, alike open to every eye, and equally profuse of their own secrets and those of others, ready to accuse without malice, and to betray without treachery. Any of these may be useful to the community, and pass through the world with the reputation of uncorrupted morals, but they are unfit for close and tender intimacy. He cannot properly be chosen for a friend, whose kindness is exhaled by its own warmth, or frozen by the first blast of slander—he cannot be a useful counsellor who will hear no opinion but his own—he will not much invite confidence, whose principal maxim is to suspect—nor can the candor and frankness of that man be much esteemed, who spreads his arms to human kind, and makes every man, without distinction, a denizen of his bosom. Such is the picture of human disposition, drawn by the pen of that great moral master. Having taken a view of the difficulties to be met with, I shall next take notice of those qualifications which seem necessary to obtain real and permanent friendship: and here we shall find that virtue is the only sure solid basis on which it can be built: if founded on other or less worthy motives, its continuance is short and precarious: as those motives shift and vary, it will vary with them: Cicero, in the treatise from which I have taken the prefatory lines says, “Nec sine virtute, amicitia esse ullo pacto potest.” Such unions deserve not the name of friendship; they are rather confederacies, so much the more dangerous and hurtful, as the uniting causes are mean and vicious.