Him too I saw carried to his narrow dwelling-place. In his latter days he had been regarded by his companions with a kind of superstitious awe; and, as his coffin fell with its solemn, reverberating sound, into its allotted space, the bearers looked upon each other with an expression of conscious mystery, and many shook their heads in silence. I lingered round the spot when they departed, and planted a rose upon his humble mound. I was to leave the village the next day in order to fix my abode among the haunts of busy men. In the evening, feeling a melancholy which I could not shake off, I took up my hat and wandered towards the churchyard. From a distance I perceived a bright and delicate figure hastily retiring from my approach. I leaned over the remains of the kind, the enthusiastic, the affectionate! The rose which I had planted there glistened beneath the moon. It was not the dew: it was something more clear, more precious--it was one beautiful tear! I had rather have such a tear on my grave than a pyramid of marble. ON TRUE FRIENDSHIP. “Infido scurræ distabit amicus.”--HORACE. How very seldom do we find any one who has a relish for real friendship--who can set a due value upon its approbation, and pay a due regard to its censures! Adulation lives, and pleases; truth dies, and is forgotten. The flattery of the fool is always pungent and delicious; the rebuke of the wise is ever irksome and hateful. Wherefore, then, do we accuse the Fates when they withhold from us the blessings of friendship, if we ourselves have not the capacity for enjoying them? Schah Sultan Hossein, says an old Persian fable, had two favourites. Mahamood was very designing and smooth-tongued; Selim was very open and plain-spoken. After a space, the intrigues of Mahamood had the upper hand, and Selim was banished from the court. Then Zobeide, the mother of the Sultan’s mother, a wise woman, and one learned in all the learning of the Persians, stood before the throne, and spoke thus:-- “When I was young I was said to be beautiful. Upon one occasion a great _fête_ was to be given. The handmaids dressed my hair in an inner apartment. ‘Look,’ said one, ‘how bright are her eyes!’ ‘What a complexion,’ said another, ‘is upon her cheeks!’ ‘What sweetness,’ cried a third, ‘in her voice!’ I grew sick of all this adulation. I sent my woman from me, and complained to myself bitterly. ‘Why have I not,’ I cried, ‘some friend on whom I can rely; who will tell me with sincerity when the roses on my cheeks begin to fade and the darkness of my eyebrows to want colouring? But alas! this is impossible.’ “As I spoke, a beneficent Genius rose from the ground before me. ‘I have brought thee,’ he said, ‘what thou didst require: thou shalt no longer have occasion to reproach the Prophet for denying thee that which, if granted, thou wouldst thyself destroy.’ So saying, he held forth to me a small locket, and disappeared.