.

gazed for ever; and how, while we really loved each other, we were strangers to the very existence of love. Nothing is so feeble and artless as the language of real passion-oftentimes its communion is not intrusted to words, but its interchanges pass unconsciously from heart to heart in the language perhaps of unbodied humanity. We said things silly enough to others respecting the flowers we plucked or the sensations we felt, that were treasures of wisdom in each other's views. We had no idea of any thing good or great in the world that excluded our then situation from its limits. One day I took "Paul and Virginia” in my pocket, and we read it together. The tale affected us deeply, so that we shed tears, and the perusal opened our eyes and led to the asking our hearts if we could love as strongly as St. Pierre's lovers, provided we were loved in return. It is thus the mind leads on the affections from stage to stage. What we thought, was at length communicated-in what way at first I am unable to recall to mind :-I know that we vowed eternal constancy to each other-that no peril should make us break our engagements, and that we would keep our mutual affection to our own breasts. There was a shade of the romantic drawn over our intercourse, and it was also romantic in durability-death only having snapped the chord that bound our hearts together, ere the slightest chill had sullied the ardour of our affection.

By a strange coincidence, our first and last meetings were in the Spring season. It was an April evening, soft and mild as a clear sky, a breezeless atmosphere, and a declining sun could make it, when our final interview took place. E seemed in low spirits. There was a foreboding of something evil in the future hanging over us, of the kind that prompts a belief that the soul has prophetic powers which our present organization is not perfect enough to develope, and yet affording indistinct glimpses of what is to come. Madness could not erase that evening from my mind. We sat on the spot where we were accustomed to sit, we spoke little, we listened to the broken water, looked at each other, said something about our future expectations of happiness, sighed we knew not why, and, with a depression of spirits for which there was no cause, rose to return homewards. I pressed the lovely little E to my heart--I pressed her lips to mine, never imagining it was for the last time, and that the worm would be shortly their lover, and riot upon their paleness. We parted at her father's door, each thinking still of coming happinessof future prospects. In three weeks from that day our love had passed away for ever. E- had left me for the place where no knowledge nor device cometh." I had sat with a bursting heart on the sod that covered her remains! The dream-song of our happiness had ended, and the remainder of that Spring was to be a black winter to my soul.

66

Never, then, can I forget Spring. As we advance in years, we are more fond of the remembrance even of our youthful griefs, and all that was part of them, as if they were designed to bind us faster to earth, as we approach nearer to the period when we must leave it. Youth and Love have long departed from me-Spring remains. annual visitation is the only jewel, of my once rich casket of pleasures, left to me--I still possess it, but like a miser's treasure, only to be hoarded; yet I hail its approach still, my old heart palpitates with a

sort of rapture-a laboured demonstration of joy at the sight of the young leaves, and the rescuscitation of nature from her wintry desolation. I watch the flowers in my garden from my window, and mark them gradually unfold themselves-I see throughout creation a memento of golden times, and mark with melancholy feelings the beautiful sunsets of the season. I'stand at my door and inhale the breeze after a genial shower, and feel it penetrate to the very springs of life and revivify all of my frame that time has not indurated against its influence. Nature was perhaps never dearer to me. I still pluck the early primrose, and listen to the bird's matin song, as the sun begins to march up the sky-for I have ever been an early riser. He who is not, knows but half of nature. At such moments I call up long-buried sensations. Youth and love mingle in my reminiscences, for a moment, with the present time. I fancy the broken images of the past are present realities, stretch my hand to grasp them, and discover I am a weak old man, whose last Spring will shortly take wing after departed Youth and Love.

J.

PETER PINDARICS.
Patent Brown-Stout.

A Brewer in a country town

Had got a monstrous reputation;
No other beer but his went down,
The hosts of the surrounding station,
Carving his name upon their mugs,
And painting it on every shutter;

And though some envious folks would utter
Hints, that its flavour came from drugs,

Others maintained 'twas no such matter,

But owing to his monstrous vat,

At least as corpulent as that

At Heidelberg

and some said fatter.

His foreman was a lusty black,
An honest fellow;

But one who had an ugly knack
Of tasting samples as he brewed,
Till he was stupified and mellow.
One day in this topheavy mood,

Having to cross the vat aforesaid,
(Just then with boiling beer supplied,)
O'ercome with giddiness and qualms he
Reel'd-fell in-and nothing more said,
But in his favourite liquor died,

Like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey.

In all directions round about

The negro absentee was sought,
But as no human noddle thought

That our fat Black was now Brown Stout,
They settled that the had left

rogue

The place for debt, or crime, or theft.
Meanwhile the beer was day by day

Drawn into casks and sent away,

Until the lees flow'd thick and thicker,
When, lo! outstretched upon the ground,
Once more their missing friend they found,
As they had often done-in liquor.
See, cried his moralizing master,

I always knew the fellow drank hard,
And prophesied some sad disaster;
His fate should other tipplers strike,
Poor Mungo! there he welters, like
A toast at bottom of a tankard!
Next morn a publican, whose tap
Had help'd to drain the vat so dry,
Not having heard of the mishap,
Came to demand a fresh supply,
Protesting loudly that the last
All previous specimens surpass'd,
Possessing a much richer gusto
Than formerly it ever used to,
And begging, as a special favour,
Some more of the exact same flavour,

Zounds! cried the Brewer, that's a task

More difficult to grant than ask.

Most gladly would I give the smack
Of the last beer to the ensuing,

But where am I to find a Black,

And boil him down at every brewing?

York Kidney Potatoes.

ONE Farmer Giles, an honest clown,
From Peterborough had occasion
To travel up to London town

About the death of a relation,
And wrote, his purpose to explain,
To cousin Jos. in Martin's-lane;
Who quickly sent him such an answer as
Might best determine him to dwell

At the Blue Boar—the Cross-the Bell,
Or some one of the caravanseras

To which the various coaches went,

All which, he said, were excellent.

Quoth Giles, "I think it rather odd he
Should write me thus, when I have read
That London hosts will steal at dead

Of night to stab you in your bed,
Pocket your purse, and sell your body,-
To 'scape from which unpleasant process

I'll drive at once to cousin Jos's."

Now cousin Jos. (whose name was Spriggs)

Was one of those punctilious prigs

Who reverence the comme il faut;

Who deem it criminal to vary

From modes prescribed, and thus "monstrari
Pretereuntium digito."

Conceive him writhing down the Strand
With a live rustic in his hand,

At once the gaper and gapce,

And pity his unhappy plight

Condemn'd, when tête-à-tête at night,
To talk of hogs, nor deem it right
To show his horrible ennui.

Jos. was of learned notoriety,

One of the male Blue-stocking clan,
Was register'd of each Society,
Royal and Antiquarian ;

Took in the Scientific Journal,

And wrote for Mr. Urban's Mag.
(For fear its liveliness should flag)
A thermometrical diurnal,

With statements of old tombs and churches,
And such unreadable researches.

Wearied to death one Thursday night,
With hearing our Northampton wight
Prose about crops, and farms, and dairies,
Spriggs cried "A truce to corn and hay,—

Somerset House is no great way,

We'll go and see the Antiquaries."

"And what are they?" enquired his guest;—
Why, Sir," said Jos. somewhat distress'd

66

To answer his interrogator,—

They are a sort-a sort-a kind

Of commentators upon Nature"-

"What, common 'tatoes!" Giles rejoin'd,
His fist upon the table dashing,

"Take my advice-don't purchase one,
Not even at a groat a ton,-

None but York kidneys does for mashing."

H.

"Love your neighbour, but don't pull down your own hedge."

PROVERBS.

FIGARO has remarked, that it is not necessary to possess a thing in order to talk of it; and this I suppose is the reason why so much has been said of friendship. Wits, poets, philosophers, and parsons have written "about it and about it," in all sorts of ways, ethically, satirically, farcically, sententiously, religiously, politico-œconomically, critically, and hypocritically; and yet, as some think, it still remains to be proved whether the thing itself be a reality, or only a philosophical whimsey, a "dagger of the mind," or, in plain English, an absolute nonentity. Judge Hales, I believe it was, considered witchcraft as proved by the fact that laws were made concerning it; and such a reasoner might be tempted to take friendship for granted, on the mere ground that poets have painted it. But then, on the other hand, if friendship really exists, some one must have met with it, some one must have been able to speak of it, not on hearsay, which, you know, is not admissible evidence, but from autopsia, or actual inspection; and in failure of this, the axiom of "de non apparentibus," must be taken as conclusive against it.

In the present state of the question, however, though I have my own opinion, I should hold myself very blameable to dogmatize either pro or con, or to knock my adversary flat, in failure of good argument, with a quicunque vult, for not being as much a philo, or a misophiliac as myself. But thus far all are agreed, that if there is, or ever was a parte reali, any such feeling, affection, passion, disease, or hallucination as friendship in existence, it is, and always has been, at least as rare as a black swan, or a phoenix, a sea snake, a craken, a mermaid, a Queen Anne's farthing, or an "honest attorney."

"Rien n'est plus commun que ce nom,
Rien n'est plus rare que la chose."

LA FONTAINE.

It cannot therefore, be a matter of surprise, that, like all our other hypotheses, our theories on friendship are mere moonshine. To hear the fellows talk, indeed, you would imagine that they were in full possession of their subject; had touched it, eyed it, tasted it, experimented upon it in all sorts of ways;-in short, were as familiar with all its modifications, attributes, and accidents, as Jack Ketch with a felon's neck, or a Methodist parson with the Devil,-and familiarity can go no farther. But what is the result of all this, I beseech you?-in the words of the strolling actress," chaise horse (chaos) is come again."— Inconsistency and contradiction form the sum total of our knowledge on the matter and, as in all other instances of overburthened science, where authority passes for argument, and hard words for facts, nothing useful can be effected, till the rubbish is cleared away, and a fair ground made for the re-construction of a newer and better edifice.

To take a few examples of error at hazard;-what axiom is more confidently advanced than that amicus certus in re incerta cernitur, and what more practically false? Does not all-experience shew that this is precisely the circumstance under which a true friend is never found? "Viri infortunati, procul amici," is a known proverb, and decisive on the subject, All the world indeed acknowledges, that the prosperous and the wealthy alone have friends, and that

"Raise but the beggar and denude the lord;

The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,
The beggar native honour."-

Again, that Kings rarely know the pleasures of friendship, is another mistake. I say nothing of Pylades and Orestes, because (as the sailor said on another occasion) the thing happened in a far distant country and a long time ago, and therefore perhaps it is not true. But, even in our own memory, the whole British nation was divided between "the King's friends" and "the Prince's friends ;" and, which comes to the same thing, "the Minister's friends" are to this day a very bustling, active set of men, whose friendship will never be found wanting, as long as the minister is minister. But we know by the concurrent testimony of many competent witnesses, that ministerial bounty has no bounds; and that a true friend of a minister, "though he got all Ireland from the premier for his estate, would still ask for the Isle of Man for a cabbage-garden."

Voltaire has somewhere said that "les hommes vertueux ont seuls des amis;" and Isocrates, if he affirms the contrary, admits that the friendships of the wicked have no long duration. But this is an evident mis