ingly with a clear view to public effect. On the seats, round the hall, were disconsolate suitors, black with apprehension and fear.

"The sight of a court of justice is enough to inspire one with grave thoughts. A slumber hangs, in general, over the judges, and they appear like pictures at a distance. Every thing serious, however, was dispelled from my mind by the faces of our Irish judges. Never were the risible muscles of man more strongly tempted to burst all bounds of decorum, than mine were at sight of the comical faces ranged on some of the benches of the Four Courts. Nor was I long under the slightest restraint, for the court became convulsed at the tart observations and keen inuendoes of the judges. Yet, while many a ha! ha! ha! paid them in the coin expected, not a muscle of their own quizzical faces moved; nor could I have surmised any internal commotion, had not a slight curl of the lips and a scintillation of their eyes assured me that punsters enjoy their own jokes quite as much as those who hear them.

"I heard the eloquence of the Irish bar; I saw it flow in a living stream. Serjeant Joy spoke with

emphasis; Serjeant Burton answered with gesture; Counsellor G― travelled from the point; but Mr. Scriven kept him to recollection. The honey of Mr. Pannefather's tongue fell, like manna, in a plentiful shower; Mr. O'Connel argued enthusiastically. At length Counsellor Sstarted up, whose warmth of manner indicated the heat of his temper, and levelling a look at their lordships, rolled his eyes terrifically, flourished his arms, made the court resound with the drum of his feet, and foamed forth a burst of legal contradiction. "Ah!' exclaimed I, mentally, 'here M'Arthy found his original for Weathercock, in his law fit.' In eloquence, like all other fine things, there is only a line between the sublime and the ridiculous. Whenever we o'erstep thy modesty, O Nature! we make the foolish laugh, and the judicious grieve. With this application of Shakespeare's wise saw, I left court; reflecting, that Providence never yet made a man to be laughed at; while human folly, by creating affectation, arms grinning satire, and points the sting of malice.

No. IX.

SCENES OF BOYHOOD.

"Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to his mother's breast,
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more."

GOLDSMITH.

"IT has been asserted by a philosopher, that friends cannot meet, after long absence, without feeling mutual pain! There is, I fear, much truth in this melancholy declaration; for our passions, affections, and sensations being in a state of continual change, sympathy must be broken when our ear becomes unused to a wellknown voice, when our eye ceases, for a length of time, to behold an object of love, and when the understanding is left to pursue its own march

after knowledge and amusement. That invaluable communication which we can hold with the absent by letters, does not reconcile our eye to the ravages of time. Blindness and absence resemble each other. He who returns to his friend after a twenty winters' absence, gazes with the same feeling of wonder as a man couched for visual opacity, after an equal period spent in external darkness.

"Such reflections, however, never occurred to me, whilst I stood with outstretched neck, and anxious look for the coach, which conveyed to my longing embrace the friend of my earliest adventure, the man of men whom I had chosen and placed in my heart's core pleasure and pain, suffering and hardship, congeniality of mind, aye, even contrast of disposition, had linked our souls together. Like Euryalus and Nisus, we had breathed into each other's bosom a sigh for fame, and risked our mortality for glory. It was our fate to be separated. him for many a rolling year. He followed fortune to the West, whilst I pursued her in the

I had not seen

burning East. She was, notwithstanding all that

has been said of her capriciousness, favourable to both; and we at length sat down in our native lands, England and Ireland, to trim our own gardens, and make ploughshares of rusty swords.

"This conquest, which Providence had permitted us to gain over great difficulties, was enhanced, in my estimation, by an interesting circumstance: I had felt all the truth of Dr. Young's pathetic

"When Heav'n would man's obedience prove,

And earth's enchantment end,

It takes the most effectual means,
And robs him of a friend ;'

for mine had been publicly numbered with the dead, and I had poured out my pensive sorrows to the moon, over his imagined grave; yea, I had invoked his beloved shade to

"Look down and see deep sorrow, grief, and pain,
Wring my sad heart, again—again—again—

For, ah! thy loss can never be supplied,

Thou friend in danger and in peril tried!

Thou man of men, who, from my heart of heart,
Didst never-never-never once depart!

With thee I cross'd rough seas and burning sands,
Hardships endur'd, saw foes in countless bands;
The naked Niar and fierce Poligar,

With Travancore's hard marches and red war,