To have lost a friend by death while your mutual regard was warm and unchilled, while the tear can drop unembittered by any painful recollection of coldness or distrust or treachery, is perhaps an escape from a more heavy dispensation.

Look round you--how few do you see grow old in the affections of those with whom their early friendships were formed! Our sources of common pleasure gradually dry up as we journey on through the vale of Bacha, and we hew out to ourselves other reservoirs, from which the first companions of our pilgrimage are excluded;--jealousies, rivalries, envy, intervene to separate others from our side, until none remain but those who are connected with us rather by habit than predilection, or who, allied more in blood than in disposition, only keep the old man company in his life, that they may not be forgotten at his death-- Haec data poena diu viventibus.
Ah, Mr.Lovel! if it be your lot to reach the chill, cloudy, and comfortless evening of life, you will remember the sorrows of your youth as the light shadowy clouds that intercepted for a moment the beams of the sun when it was rising.

But I cram these words into your ears against the stomach of your sense." "I am sensible of your kindness," answered the youth; "but the wound that is of recent infliction must always smart severely, and I should be little comforted under my present calamity--forgive me for saying so--by the conviction that life had nothing in reserve for me but a train of successive sorrows.

And permit me to add, you, Mr.Oldbuck, have least reason of many men to take so gloomy a view of life.

You have a competent and easy fortune--are generally respected--may, in your own phrase, vacare musis, indulge yourself in the researches to which your taste addicts you; you may form your own society without doors--and within you have the affectionate and sedulous attention of the nearest relatives." "Why, yes--the womankind, for womankind, are, thanks to my training, very civil and tractable--do not disturb me in my morning studies--creep across the floor with the stealthy pace of a cat, when it suits me to take a nap in my easy-chair after dinner or tea.