It is with a good book as it is with good company. Introduce a base person among gentlemen. It is all to no purpose; he is not their fellow. Every company protects itself. The company is perfectly safe and he is not one of them though his body is in the room.

No man can learn what he has not preparation for learning, however much the object is before him. A chemist may tell his most precious secrets to a carpenter and he shall be never the wiser,—the secrets he would not utter to a chemist for an estate. Thus God screens us evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden and we cannot see things that stare us in the face; until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened,—then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not, is like a dream.

Another property of the soul is that like fire it will not be hidden but evermore it publishes its nature through action, word, countenance. A power quite superior to his private will forces every man to hang out his colors, to give a tongue in every action to his ruling thoughts; so sung old Gower,

The privates of man’s heart

They speken and sound in his ear

As though they loud winds were.

If you would not be known to do anything never do it. A man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be a solitary eater but he cannot keep his foolish counsel; a broken complexion, a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and the want of due knowledge—all blab. Can a cook, a Chiffinch, an Iachimo be mistaken for a Seneca? Confucius exclaimed, “How can a man be concealed? How can a man be concealed?”

And as you cannot read in the same book what your friend reads there; as you cannot see anything that you have not within; as you cannot be in a company where you do not belong; as you cannot conceal anything; so the relation which you sustain to other men is not to be determined by the will; but the mind of your companion and your own determine the character of the connexion by their intrinsic nature. They refuse to abide by any covenant: day by day they make their own. That mood into which a friend can bring us is his dominion over us. To all the thoughts of that state of mind, he has a right. All the secrets of that state of mind he can compel. There is no need of professions: there is no need of promises: you know what impression you have made on any man by considering how superficial or how sincere communications he has made to you.