APIAN COURTIERS. 235 



even among ordinary court danglers, a more effeminate set never 

 existed. Doing nothing, caring for nothing, but to eat, sleep, 

 and philander with their royal mistress, they were the only 

 members of the Apian community who never wore swords, and 

 whether as queen's suitors, or queen's consorts, they were 

 equally regarded, except just in that limited capacity, as the 

 merest nonentities. From one generation to another, these 

 poltroons had submitted, without care or murmur, to their 

 humiliating position, and unwarned by the usual fate of their 

 predecessors, were accustomed to purchase a brief season of 

 idleness and luxury by a bloody end. The Amazonian queens 

 of Apia were, in fact, a species of female Blue-beard, not that 

 they exactly murdered, or even ordered the execution of their 

 numerous lovers or husbands; but being truly patriotic 

 sovereigns and mothers of their people, they always connived 

 at their slaughter by an infuriated populace as soon as they 

 became an insupportable burthen to the community, and were 

 no longer acceptable to themselves. Indeed, the principle 

 carried out, through necessity, in a besieged city, of expelling 

 every useless member, had always been the ruling policy of 

 the monarchy of Apia ; and not only the male patricians, who 

 never laboured in their lives, but a portion even of the female 

 plebeians, when, from age, unable to labour any more, were 

 offered up a periodical sacrifice at the shrine of expediency. 

 However shocking the above customs, it would, nevertheless, 

 seem that, like the bloody code of Draco, they were salutary ; 



