Lonely Cottage

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  “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-west. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd. Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who “conceive and meditate of ple...

Of Freonds and Feonds

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Friends and fiends, friends and enemies. The wordplay is fascinating in Old English. The friend is free, compelled, bound by love while the fiend, the enemy, is captive, burdened, consumed by not-love. 

Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle wrote of his fellow Scot, the poet Thomas Campbell, “I could have loved him, but he seemed to have forgotten how to love." Friendship is unconditional and is frequently tested by loyalty. When you make a mistake, large or small, the one(s) who remain are friends. Be not surprised when there are few. “A friend lives at all times but a brother is born for adversity.” (Proverbs 17:17) 


Friends check in on one another asking, “how’s your soul?” Seneca wrote to Lucillus, “if you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means.” (Letter 3, On Friendship). 


“False friendship is the worst. Avoid it at all costs. If you’re honest and straightforward and mean well, it should show in your eyes. It should be unmistakable.” (Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”, 11.15)

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