Friendship, less vigorous than self-love, is, for that reason, less apt to communicate itself to the friend's children, or other relations. Instances, however, are not wanting of such communicated passion, arising from friendship when it is strong. Friendship may go higher in the matrimonial state than in any other condition; and Otway, in Venice Preserved, takes advantage of that circumstance: in the scene where Belvidera sues te her father for pardon, she is represented as pleading her mother's merits, and the resemblance she bore to her mother:

Priuli. My daughter!

Belvidera. Yes, your daughter, by a mother
Virtuous and noble, faithful to your honour,
Obedient to your will, kind to your wishes,
Dear to your arms. By all the joys she gave you
When in her blooming years she was your treasure,
Look kindly on me; in my face behold
The lineaments of her's y' have kissed so often,
Pleading the cause of your poor cast-off child.

And again,

Belvidera. Lay me, I beg you, lay me
By the dear ashes of my tender mother :
She would have pitied me, had fate yet spar'd her.

Act V. Sc. 1:

This explains why any meritorious action, or any illustrious qualification, in my son or my friend, is apt to make me over-value myself: if I value my friend's wife or son upon account of their connexion with him, it is still more natural that I should value myself upon account of my connexion with him.

Friendship, or any other social affection, may, by changing the object, produce opposite effects.

Pity, by interesting us strongly for the person in distress, must of consequence inflame our resentment against the author of the distress : for, in general, the affection we have for any man, generates in us good-will to his friends, and ill-will to his enemies. Shakspeare shows great art in the funeral oration pronounced by Antony over the body of Cæsar. He first endeavours to excite grief in the hearers, by dwelling upon the deplorable loss of so great a man: this passion, interesting them strongly in Cæsar's fate, could not fail to produce a lively sense of the treachery and cruelty of the conspirators; an infallible method to inflame the resent-ment of the people beyond all bounds:

Antony. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle. I remember
The first time ever Cæsar put it on;
'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
That day he overcane the Nervii-
Look! in this place ran Cassius's dagger through ;-
See what a rent the envious Casca made.
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb’d;
And, as he pluck'd his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Cæsar follow'd it!
As rushing out of doors, to be resolv’d,
If Brutus so unkindly knock'd or no:
For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel.
Judge, oh you Gods! how dearly Cæsar lov'd him!
This, this, was the unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Cæsar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitor's arms,
Quite vanquish'd him ; then burst his mighty heart;.
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell,
Even at the base of Pompey's statue.
O what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I and you, and all of us, fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us.
0, now you weep; and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity; these are gracious drops.
Kind souls! what! weep you when you but behold

Our Cæsar's vesture wounded ? look

you

here! Here is bimself, marr'd as you see, by traitors.

Julius Cesar, Act III. Sc. 6.

Had Antony endeavoured to excite his audience to vengeance, without paving the way by raising their grief, his speech would not have made the same impression.

Hatred, and other dissocial passions, produce effects directly opposite to those above mentioned. If I hate a man, his children, his relations, nay his property, become to me objects of aversion: his enemies, on the other hand, I am disposed to esteem.

The more slight and transitory relitions are not favourable to the communication of passion. Anger, when sudden and violent, is ore exception; for, if the person who did the injury be removed out of reach, that passion will veni itself against any related object, however slight tie relation be. Another exception makes a greater igure: a group of beings or, things, becomes often he object of a communicated passion, even where the relation of the individuals to the percipient is but slight. Thus, though I put no value upon a single man for living in the same town with myself; my towns

; men, however, considered in a body, are preferred before others. This is still more remarkable with respect to my countrymen in general : the grandeur of the complex objects swells the passion of selflove by the relation I have to my native country; and every passion, when it swells beyond its ordinary bounds, hath a peculiar tendency to expand itself along related objects. In fact, instances are not rare, of persons, who upon all occasions are willing to sacrifice their lives and fortunes for their country. Such influence upon the mind of man

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hạth a complex object, or, more properly speaking, a general term.

The sense of order hath influence in the communication of passion. It is a common observation, that a man's affection to his parents is less vigorous than to his children: the order of nature in descending to children, aids the transition of the affection: the ascent to a parent, contrary to that order, makes the transition more difficult. Gratitude to a benefactor is readily extended to his children ; but not so readily to his parents. The difference, however, between the natural and inverted order, is not so considerable, but that it may be balanced by other circumstances. Plinyt gives an account of a woman of rank condemned to die for a crime; and, to avoid public shame, detained in prison to die of hunger her life being prolonged beyond ex. pectation, it was discovered that she was nourished by sucking mik from the breasts of her daughter. This instance of filial piety, which aided the transition, and made ascent no less easy than descent is commonly, proured a pardon to the mother, and a pension to both. The story of Androcles and the lions may be accounted for in the same manner: the admiration, of which the lion was the object, for his kindness and gratitude to Androcles, produced good-will to Androcles, and a pardon of his crime.

And this leads to other observations upon communicated passions. I love my daughter less after she is married, and my mother less after a second marriage: the marriage of my son or of my father diminishes not my affection so remarkably. The

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same observation holds with respect to friendship, gratitude and other passions: the love I bear my friend, is but faintly extended to his married daughter: the resentment I have against a man is readily extended against children who make part of his family; not so readily against children who are foris-familiated, especially by marriage.

This difference is also more remarkable in daughters than in sons. These are curious facts; and, in order to discover the cause, we must examine minutely that operation of the mind by which a passion is extended to a related object. In considering two things as related, the mind is not stationary, but passeth and repasseth from the one to the other, viewing the relation from each of them perhaps oftener than once; which holds more especially in considering a relation between things of unequal rank, as between the cause and the effect, or be, tween a principal and an accessory; in contemplating, for example, the relation between a building and its ornaments, the mind is not satisfied with a single transition from the former to the latter; it must also view the relation, beginning at the latter, and passing from it to the former. This vibration of the mind in passing and repassing between

things related, explains the facts above mentioned: the mind passeth easily from the father to the daughter: but where the daughter is married, this new relation attracts the mind, and obstructs, in some measure, the return from the daughter to the father; and any circumstance that obstructs the mind in passing and repassing between its objects, occasions a like obstruction in the communication of passion. The marriage of a male obstructs less the easiness of transition; because a male is less sunk by the relation of marriage than a female. VOL. I.

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