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would not go begging, if it were not for the occasional attraction of "eating a child."

Agreeably with this hypothesis, when you have breakfasted with a man, he is "your friend;" when you have dined with him, he is your "dear friend;" and a week's sojourn beneath his roof, renders him your "dearest and most intimate friend." Cutting a man, therefore, is a mere lucus à non lucendo, inasmuch as it may be presumed that nobody cuts his friend, as long as he can cut his friend's mutton. "Swallowing an affront," and "digesting an injury," explain themselves. When the subject was otherwise understood, old friendships were deemed preferable to new: but now, on a changé tout ça, and the newest friends are always the most esteemed. The reason is obvious; a new friend will never presume to offer you a pot-luck dinner; and it is a rule

"Si par fois on vous prie

A diner sans façon et sans cérémonie,

Refusez promptement ce dangereux honneur,
Cette invitation cache un piège trompeur.

Souvenez vous toujours dans le cours de la vie
Qu'un diner sans facon est un perfidie."

The first and most urgent interest of a new friend is to impress upon you a high idea of his wealth, luxury, and refinement; to introduce you to his service of plate, to furnish you with a catalogue of his rich wines, to bring you acquainted with his French cook, and to give you proof of his credit with Gunter. For this purpose you are sure of a splendid festival. A new friend, likewise, has never laughed at your most hackneyed joke, and you, on the other hand, have not listened to his most threadbare story. With you conversing, he forgets all times, all seasons, and their change ;" and it is hard indeed if you cannot empty a third bottle of claret together, before you are utterly wearied of each other, and wish one another fairly at the Devil.

Another most important advantage of a new friendship, which cannot be sufficiently appreciated, is, that your friend can neither ask you to lend money, nor to go bail for him; or if he be so indiscreet, you can with the less ceremony refuse him. The most approved ethical writers agree, it is true, that no length of acquaintance, no intimacy of affection, warrant such applications; but, as men will be impertinent, no one will deny that it is easier to refuse a new than an old friend. I have expatiated the more freely upon this theory of friendship, because it is the most prevalent, and seems to rest upon the greatest number of observed facts. But there is another sect, which has its followers, and those not a few, whose opinions are somewhat different. Among these persons the term friendship is applied to that union of the sexes, in which the parties agree to put, the one honour, and the other fortune, into a common purse, and live together without troubling the clergy, as long as money or inclination lasts. A "fair friend" is a necessary part of the paraphernalia of the man who wishes to run through a good estate; and the ardour which the lady exhibits in extravagance and caprice is the just measure of the extent of her friendship. When a woman of this description speaks of " her friend," you may be sure she speaks of the man in the world she hates and despises the most thoroughly; and she rarely does speak of him, but when on

the very point of playing him a trick. For this reason, your knowing fellows prefer other men's friends to their own, which at first sight must appear very unnatural.

Another sense in which the word "friend" is used, which, is still more extraordinary, is, when a man says, " my friend shall wait on you in the course of the day to settle time and place." In this case your friend is a man who uses his best endeavours to give you the satisfaction of either committing a crime or being the victim of one, and who takes with deliberate sang-froid the requisite measures for having you shot through the head.

"Nous devons convenir aussi

A la louange de nos frères

Que pour nous égorger ainsi

Ils donnent les raisons bien claires.

Et du moins il est constaté

Qu'ils nous feront mourir par principe."

Another friendship, and one of the warmest which is known in these degenerate times, is that which subsists between an electioneering candidate and his friends." This is indeed an attachment à tout éprouvé. All that this disinterested gentleman looks for, is the good word of his constituents, and to obtain this, what will he not sacrifice? Money is no object: he will give more to get one knave to speak for him, than Damon would have offered to save Pythias and all his kindred from perdition. No ill-treatment cools him, no inconstancy fatigues him, no inequality of condition repels him: and, what scarcely ever happens in other ties, his friendship will last unabated and unwearied for full seven years.

"My very dear friend” is an admitted salutation to a money-lender, emphasis being laid upon very in due proportion to the extortionate premium and usurious interest. This phrase is the more legitimate, as such friendship must cost one of the parties dear, according as old Postobit does, or does not, get paid the money on which he speculates. I say nothing of great friends, little friends, d-d good-natured friends, Quaker friends, or the friends of humanity, whose practice is to study generals till they quite overlook particulars. Still less shall I mention epistolary "affectionate friends," and "most faithful and obedient friends;" these cases being too well known to require much illustration. But, before I take my leave, I must mention a property of friendships in general, which seems more particularly to apply to those of our own times. It is this Friendship, like Burgundy, does not bear travelling. But what is most extraordinary, an attachment, which in the country will subsist at the distance of twelve miles, will perish in London, if removed to the distance of half a mile. Friendship in Brighton does not imply friendship in town; and you may shake a man's hand upon 'Change, without exchanging salutations with him in Pall Mall. There are men whom you may know at Moulsey, at a dogfight, or an Hell, whom you could not possibly acknowledge elsewhere, simply because every one knows them too well. On the other hand, vicinity is a great bond of friendship. The living, as the Irish say, "hard by convanient" will preserve the most languid connexions;

while, as a great lady once observed, "no friendship can possibly cross to the north of Oxford-road."

Such are a few of the facts which a close observation of the phenomena of friendship has enabled me to pick up. They are not sufficient for building an entire new theory; but they will not be the less acceptable, because they leave the zealous inquirer ample room for ulterior investigation. Who knows? there is no saying but that, with time and patience, some one will discover sufficient traces for establishing the reality of friendship; or, having found a true friend, may exhibit him in Bond-street at a shilling per head, without being called upon, like the proprietor of the Mermaid, to cut up his specimen for the gratification of idle curiosity, and to afford satisfaction to impertinent sceptics and testy carpers-Dixi. M.

THE PROPHECY OF CONSTANTINE.

Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee. HABAKKUK, Ch. ii. v. 8.

AN Empire, mightiest of the mighty, crushed-
The shivered sceptre and the blunted sword
Wrenched from its nerveless arm-Barbarians, flushed
With conquest's pride, pouring their savage horde
Triumphant o'er the relics of great Rome,

Where, like a huge transplanted oak, she stood,

Blasted and branchless in her new-found home,

With scarce one withered leaf to shield her eaglet brood!—

Such was the scene, and such the moral too,

On which the sickening sun looked down, that day
When Constantine's proud city pallid grew-

Her life-blood trickling fast, in the slant ray
Which shot athwart the bending cypress groves
That graceful fringed the low Propontic shore,
Long sought by Grecian lovers and their loves,

But doomed to echo back love's melody no more.
For the hoarse yell of War was mounting then,
While chains were rattling round the sons of Greece,
And the sad blasphemies of dying men

Heard dismal as the artillery's thunders cease,
Deadlier to burst, and deal destruction round-

There javelins hiss, and crash the crumbling walls,
And the shrill scream upsends its anguished sound

From many a buried wretch as the breached bastion falls.
Oh God! that such deep discords e'er should rise
To blend their demon tones with angel notes

That swell the chorus of Heaven's harmonies!
But all is finished now :-the gasping throats

Of the last Greeks are parched and choked in death;
Well hath the smiter, Azräel, done his work-

And not one heart is heard to throb beneath

The mangled warrior-heaps, where sits the exulting Turk.
Panting and gorged the glutted victor sits-
Victor-how little worthy of the name!
O'er him no flash of memory's lightning flits,
Nor glory fans him with its breath of flame.

He knows no triumph o'er the splendid past

On which he tramples with unconscious tread,
As sweeps, on wasting wing, the poison blast
O'er Araby's blest vale, and leaves its gardens dead.

Byzantium, Rome, Greece-Virtue, Fame, and Power-
Cæsars and Constantines-alike by him

Reft of a thousand trophies in an hour,-
Ages of bright olympiads-dull and dim
To his dark gaze. His gross mind, fury-fraught,
With brute delight upon the present feeds-
No visioned glories shroud one sensual thought,
And his base bosom swells but when his victim bleeds.

The sun sinks fast; and, as his parting beam
Falls on the desolate grandeurs of the day,
Palace and pillar, and temple brightly gleam
In the rich crimson of the dying ray:
Bronzed in the glow, Sophia's reddening fane

Flings far its golden blaze o'er tower and tide,
And burnished dome and spire give back the stain
Where, sunk in recreant sloth, vile Cæsars ruled and died.
These all art's monuments.-But the bright Sun,

From his uprising hour till night's repose,

Upon no lovelier scene of Nature shone,

Than that o'er which his sinking glance he throws:The Thracian shores, Bithynia's wooded sides,

Vineyards and valleys rich,'and gushing rills

That mix their waters with the gentle tides,

To bathe the shelving rocks, whence rise the redolent hills.

But hark! loud music sends a stunning crash

The war-horse neighs-shouts vibrate through the airThe straitened Bosphorus resounds with splash

Of thousand oars, which urge the gallies there

On to the shattered breach. The moslem bands,
Rapine and lust forsaking, join the throng-

And heavenward raised are clasped and blood-stained hands,
And turbaned heads bowed low as Mahomet moves along.

"He comes, he comes, the conqueror of the world!
Clash cymbals! trumpets swell your brazen voice!

Let the broad banners of the Faith unfurled

Wave o'er his sacred head! Rejoice, rejoice!"

Such the enthusiast sounds which rose aloft,

From fierce fanatics, echoing back the strains, For centuries of their triumphs poured too oft

Towards Heaven's insulted vault from Earth's ensanguined plains,Since bold Tangrolipix from Persia's lord

Forced victory in the desert, and sent down

His crimsoned laurel-wreath and conquering sword
To the fierce heritors of his renown-

Othman, and Bajazet, and Amurath-

Whose lustre before Mahomet's but shone,

As morning lights on Heaven's effulgent path
Come heralding the blaze of noon's meridian sun.

Mark his audacious front and fiery glance-
Bashaws and guards, and viziers' servile troops
Low bowing:-but, if checked in his advance
His proud head bends, 'tis as the vulture stoops,

To feast his eyes upon his prostrate prey

For oft the startled courser swerves aside,

Scared by the outstretched corpse that chokes the way,
And doubts his slippery foot in steaming carnage dyed.

Wrenched by the brazen ram's redoubled blows,
Back flies, with starting bolt and jangling bar,
The ponderous portal, whose broad opening shows
The city's splendent glories wide and far.
On the swart Sultan spurs-he clears the gate,
With barbarous shout and brandished battle-axe :
In vain the sallying Christians dam the strait-

An Empire's death and doom are on the Moslem's tracks.

Tell not the rest, Religion:-ear, nor eye

May brook such horrors-wrap the curtain round!
Yet, where yon slaughtered forms are piled on high,
Gaze, if thou wilt, and weep-'tis sacred ground.
For where that red and fleshly mountain reeks,
Fit monument war's deadliest strife to tell,
There, 'midst the mingled mass of Turks and Greeks,
The latest Cæsar lies where hero-like he fell.

As monarch and as man he scorned to swerve
From that last spot, envisaging his fate
With regal valour and plebeian nerve,

And proved how, throneless, sovereigns can be great:
Unpurpled rushed, and dared the battle-blast,

His name redeeming-for on Freedom's grave
The earliest Cæsar built his power-the last,

Its latest remnant lost, but spurned the name of slave.
Immortal Heavens! what mockery comes to blast
The withering sight. The bloody basement shakes—
The hideous mound upheaves-and, stiff and 'ghast,
Each death-locked carcase from its fellow breaks.
And lo! emerging from the horrent pile

Faltering and faint a spectral figure rears

His gashed and livid head and joins the while

His trembling hands in gest which marks the Christian's prayers.
His brow was kingly, but uncrowned-his eye,
Alight with inspiration's heavenly flame,
Beamed forth such rays of tempered majesty
As godlike virtue sheds o'er mortal frame.
His glance exploring Marmora's sunlit surge,
Where day's departing orb, in hues divine,
Was melting on the green wave's tremulous verge,
Thus the last Cæsar spoke-imperial Constantine!

"O thou, in radiance floating, o'er the brink
Of yonder billowy ridge, as loth to sink;
Fountain of life and light, resplendent ball,
Sun of a thousand worlds and soul of all-
My throbbing bosom feels thy quickening beam,
And drinks new being from its golden stream;
My bloodless body springs refreshed and free;

My heart and brain are filled with Heaven and thee-
Earth's clogging ties are loosed, and through my frame
A flood of radiance and a rush of flame,

Bright, but not buruing, passeth as the breath

Which bears the spirit aloft, and cools the fires of death!

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