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 dog-fight, 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 concanient" will preserve the most

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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-Dıxı.

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 air— The 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 heavenwards 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, resplendeut 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 burning, passeth as the breath

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

Interminable ages long gone by

Unfold their buried records to my eye.

Heavens! how the wide-spread scene is opening now-
How fresh the wreath on Time's perennial brow-

How clear his trace-worn path for centuries back—
How plain the progress of his forward track!
Forgotten empires burst oblivion's tomb,
And History casts away her shroud of gloom;
Egypt is up again in arts and arms;

Syria's unpeopled desert freshly swarms-
Rebuilded Babylon in grandeur stands ;
Palmyra's columns tower above the sands;
Athens and Rome-the once sublime abodes
Of Gods, and men more glorious than their gods-
Rise up again in majesty and might,

And spread their splendours to my dazzled sight.
But see! the pompous pageant fades away,
And Earth assumes the colouring of to-day:
And nought of all the brilliant show remains
But gilded misery, and a world in chains.
And thou, devoted city! even thou

With head long raised aloft-how humbled now!
Byzantium, Rome-whatever be thy name,
Disgrace is grafted on thy stem of Fame.
Six times polluted by some haughty foe,
To-day Fate strikes thee with its heaviest blow;
And Shame close locks thee in her withering fold,
For infidel hands have burst thy sacred gate of gold.
Even now to dust thy trophied columns fall;
And the loud strokes from each reverberant wall
Of temple or of palace, tell the fate

Of saint and sage, the godly and the great.
But thou, eternal Power that orderest all,

Whose wisdom works, though thrones and altars fall,
Still must these miscreant plunderers rend their spoil
From the pale kingdoms, and lay waste the soil!
Centuries have rolled, since first in locust throng
From snow-capped Caucasus they poured along;
O'er Asia's deserts led their long defile,

And sped their course from Tigris to the Nile;
On palsied Afric blew with pestilent breath,-
Their faith a frenzy, and its doctrines Death!
On Europe's pallid cheek a fevered flush
Glows in the fire of their envenomed rush:
Hope's harvest blighted lies-

But see on high
The scroll of Fate emblazon'd fills the sky;
Spreads o'er the azure its developed fold;
And shews the doom of worlds in words of gold.
Borne on Time's flood the nations rise and fall,
One common destiny engulphing all.

In the wide west far-stretching lands appear,
But Mahomet's iron rule is bounded here.
Beneath the Turkman's dull yet scorching eye,
I see refinement droop and science die ;
And giant crime, and enervating sloth,
Drag down the empire in its cumbrous growth;
Till plague and famine, feasting on their prey,
Leave of the rotting realm no vestige but decay.
VOL. VII. NO. XXVIII.