WHAT IS A FRIEND?

What is a friend? A being who,
Through all the changes time may bring,
E'en though our joys may be but few,
Will still around us fondly cling:

Who in youth's bright and brilliant morn
A dearer charm to pleasure lends;
Whose smile can sweeten and adorn
Each gift that heaven so kindly sends ;
Whose approbation onward cheers

Our souls in manhood's busy strife;
Through scenes of toil, and woe, and tears,
Gilding the darkest shades of life:

Who shares our joy, if fortune smiles,
And shrinks not should she darkly low'r,
But, with a hallow'd balm, beguiles
The anguish of each trying hour:

And if we win a wreath from fame,

Whose heart with joy and pride will thrill,
And e'en through guilt, and sin and shame,
Will shield, excuse, and love us still :

And when by death we're called away
From all our joys and sorrows here,

Will often to our memory pay

The tribute of a burning tear.

M. L.

LINES TO THE MEMORY OF GENERAL WOLFE,

ON A TABLET IN WESTERHAM CHURCH, KENT.

While George in sorrow bows his laurell'd head,
And bids the artist grace the soldier dead;
We raise no sculptured trophy to thy name,
Brave youth, the fairest in the lists of fame;
Proud of thy birth we boast th' auspicious year,
Struck with thy fall we shed th' generous tear;
With humble grief inscribe one artless stone,
And with thy matchless honors date our own.

MY LODGINGS.

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

I am, whether for my sins or no I cannot exactly say, a single gentleman. For years I have been habituated to a rambling life-an Arab existence, that knows not to-day where it will be to-morrow, but takes circumstances as it finds them, and is ready for any part of the world in something less than ten minutes. For months past, however, the Bedouin disposition has evinced symptoms of what lawyers would call a settlement; I have become stationary like St. Paul's-fixed as Primrose-hill- a specimen of absolute immobility. Whether my reasons for such local adhesiveness are of native growth, or merely forced up, as it were, upon the hot-bed of eccentricity, the reader, when he has perused this veracious narrative, must himself judge. To begin with my lodgings: they are situated on the confines of civilization at Camberwell, and form the ground-floor of a house, exceedingly tall for its age, being only two years old; containing three stories and a decentsized garden, skirted by an unhappy-looking patch of mould, which a philanthropist might dignify as a meadow, but an agriculturist would baptize a nondescript. Besides this amphibious half-acre, and just at the extremity of the garden, stands an enormity yclept a summer-house, in which, on Sundays, my landlord and family regale themselves; the one smoking the leaves to death with tobacco; the other, more romantic, admiring the beauties of their domain on which may be seen, at times, a stray porker, a duck or two, a dog, a cat, or the fore quarters of a donkey (a neighbour of mine), as he peeps wistfully through an adjoining hedge at the thistles which luxuriate in this to him, forbidden paradise. Thus much for the scenery: the natives are equally characteristic. My landlady is a person who, having once been on intimate acquaintance with two hundred pounds a-year!--since defunct-considers herself a privileged grumbler, and has accordingly taken out a patent in the high court of hypochondriasm, much to the discomfiture of her husband and her children's respective

physiognomies. Her tribulation, however, to do it justice, is of the genteelest cast; she speaks in a low mincing tone, treads her kitchen in the very pathos, and, save when in liquor (which the best of mortals must sometimes be), seldom or never swears. By swearing, I should say, that she rarely condemns her own or other people's eyes, souls, or limbs-these orthodox English anathemas are reserved for great occasions; but with respect to the lighter style of execration, such as "zounds!"—" jemini". jingo""odds-bobs" "good gracious" my stars" my eyes!" &c.; by which the utterer would be understood as compromising the matter with his conscience-all such verbal elegancies she luxuriates in to satiety. Her children, like herself, are peculiar; reserved and ragged, with faces the very title-page of tribulation, and a genius for affliction that I never yet saw equalled. As for the husband, he is like all other husbands, remarkable for nothing but a brace of legs like compasses, and a black head of hair, bearing in character and color no faint resemblance to a shoe-brush.

The next in importance to this accomplished familyfor, in lodgings (such are the lax opinions of religion), the nearer you approach to heaven the more you are despised-is, I am told, myself, of whom I shall say nothing further, than that I am the sole occupant of the groundfloor. The second story is tenanted by a half-pay officer, at that peculiarly unpleasant age when a man is justified in thinking himself elderly, yet not altogether without excuse if he ape the dandy, and strive to make and consider himself acceptable to women. This gentleman is a lieutenant, somewhat bilious, but interesting, with an amazingly-old face, young figure, and half-military half-slovenly tout ensemble. He is much given to talking about India, backbiting England, and "doing the amiable”— '-on Sundays especially, when he sports a joint and the gentleman-towards the ladies of our establishment. Above him, in one of the attics, vegetates a poet, "fat and pursy," but exceedingly good-natured. This genius, whose pastoral propensities are marvellously quickened by the meadow and summerhouse above-mentioned, is a sad annoyance to the lieute nant; for, being immediately over head, and addicted, moreover, to inspiration, he is always walking up and down