THE

FALCON FAMILY;

OR,

YOUNG IRELAND.

Rennie on Bird-Architecture.

THE FALCONS ON THE WING-CONSTERNATION OF MARYLEBONE--A THREATENING LETTER-THE RED ROVER AND THE GIPSY--VISITATION OF THE REV. DR. KOBART-THE FREEMANS SURRENDER AT DISCRETION-SPUNGES AND THEIR CORRELATIVES--USE OF THE METALS IN THE ECONOMY OF HUMAN LIFE.

TOWARDS the middle of the month of May, not three years since, a lively sensation was produced in a circle of respectable families mostly residen333t in Mar ylebone, by the sudden arrival in town of a family of the high­flying name of Falcon.

The sensation, upon the whole, was decidedly alarm­ing. The Puddicomes, of Wimpole-street, quaked; the

Jenkinsons, of Portland-place, were fluttered; a family of Duckworths retreated to Norwood; and the Bompases, of Bryanston-square, were divided between burn­ing their house and starting upon a continental tour.

Yet it was neither upon the Puddicomes, the Bom-pases, the Duckworths, or the Jenkinsons, that the Falcons first stooped. The house of a Mr. Freeman, in Harley-street, was the primary object of attack, and the Freemans had no ground for complaining of want of notice, as the following letter, received a few days before by Mrs. Freeman, from Mrs. Falcon, will satis­factorily show.

"Broomfield, Stony-Stratford, May 25.

"my dear mrs. freeman,

"We are all charmed to hear you are going to Plymouth next week; the country will do you and dear Mr. Freeman so much good. I hope and trust he will benefit by the change of air and the salt water. Lady Charlotte Nostrum makes it a rule to go to Plymouth for three months after every course of the London doctors, and it infallibly sets her up, and enables her to go through it all over again the next season. Just think of our misery, obliged to go to town just when other people are thinking of leaving it, and when town is beginning to be downright odious, The Sympletones will never forgive us for running away from them so soon, but Mr. Falcon has business in London which requires his immediate presence, so we must submit to our hard fate. The Shycocks are looking out for a small house for us somewhere near

St. John's Wood, or the Bayswater-road; but if you should hear of anything (quite perfect) that would suit us elsewhere-in the cottage-style, you know, with just one coach-house, or without one (we have no horses just now)-pray do let us know before you leave town. I am perfectly ashamed to put you to this trouble, dear Mrs. Freeman, but you are always good­ness itself to us, and I know you will excuse,

"Yours, with a thousand loves,

"GEORGINA FALCON.

"P.S. How are your dear sweet girls?-should we not succeed in getting a house, would it be too unrea­sonable to beg of you, if perfectly convenient, to allow Mr. Falcon and me (nobody else), to sleep a night or two in Harley-street, until we suit ourselves? Any hole or corner would answer us. But if it would put you to slightest trouble it would make us all perfectly wretched. Remember to inquire at Plymouth for Dr. Pinch; he performs miracles by just throwing a grain of some wonderful powder into the sea, just before his patients bathe; he calls it pathetic mesmerism, or some­thing like that.

"To Mrs. Freeman, Harley-street,London."

The lady to whom this familiar and elegant epistle was addressed, was not at all deficient in simplicity; but, nevertheless, she comprehended its drift the instant she read it. She knew that Mrs. Falcon had no more intention of taking a house in town than Queen Pomare had, and understood the request in the post­script as a distinct announcement, on the part of the

Falcon family, of their resolution to quarter themselves in Harley-street, rent-free, for the summer months.

"I suppose we must submit, my dear?" said Mrs. Freeman to her husband, looking, as she spoke, the very picture of abused good-nature.

"I suppose so," said Mr. Freeman, with the half peevish, half indifferent air of a poco-curante invalid. "I'll certainly try Dr. Pinch."

"But it is provoking, just now, when every thing is laid up; the carpets off, the curtains down; no servants -no coals."

So much the better," said Mr. Freeman.

"As there will be only Mr. and Mrs. Falcon, I suppose I need not lock up the bronzes and alabasters?" said the lady.

"No necessity," said the gentleman. "I wish I had heard of Dr. Pinch before."

"They must be very poor, my dear," resumed Mrs. Freeman, beginning to think more of the inconve­niences the Falcons would be subjected to, than of those to which their visitation would occasion herself.

Mr. Freeman shook his head, took an infinitesimal pill, medicine enough for an infinitesimal disorder, and made no answer but an infinitesimal grunt.

"Have they anything at all, my dear?"

"Falcon has generally some little agency, or tem­porary employment."

"To be sure," said Mrs. Freeman, "they must live for almost nothing."

Mr. Freeman took a second homoeopathic pill, gave a second homoeopathic grunt, and said, "They save

house-rent, servants' wages, poor's-rates, assessed taxes. People always do by living in other people's houses. But it was thoughtful of Mrs. Falcon to mention Dr. Pinch."

At this point of the conjugal dialogue Mrs. Free­man's brother, Dick Chatworth, a spruce, chirping, middle-aged bachelor, smartly dressed, with a profusion of jewellery, dropped in, and laughed heartily when he heard of the threatened invasion of the Falcons.

"You know the Falcons, Dick?" said his sister.

"Know them! to be sure I do-by reputation. Every body knows them, and most people to their cost; they call Falcon the 'Red Rover,' and the lady goes by the name of 'The Gipsy.' "

"She's a brunette," said Mr. Freeman.

"She has all the gipsy peculiarities: the brown complexion, the vagrant habits, and the loose morality: she's Egyptian all over; a handsome strolling beggar; and she speaks such delicious French! But have you answered her letter, Elizabeth?-take care what you do!"

"Why, we can't refuse, Dick, they are such friends of the Bompases."

"Friends of the Bompases!-the Bompases have the greatest horror of them. All I say is, take care Mrs. Falcon is not in a certain interesting situation!"

"Good Heaven! is it possible she wants to be con-fined here?"

"She managed to be confined at the Rev. Dr. Hobart's, in Dover-street, a few years ago, to my own

knowledge; so look sharp, Elizabeth-take a friend's advice."

"I should have to pay for the straw," said Mr. Free­man.

"Poor Hobart paid the doctor, and 'faith, I believe, he also paid for the cradle. Besides, he was forced to stay at the 'Blenheim,' in Bond-street, for two months-I used to dine with him there."

"Well-if ever!" exclaimed Mrs. Freeman, with up­lifted hands.

"How did Hobart stand it?" inquired Mr. Freeman.

"Wonderfully. At the same time he did not quite like it-a bachelor and a clergyman, you know-peo­ple made remarks when they saw the outward and visi­ble signs of an accouchement at his house; but what he thought worst of was being obliged to stand godfather to the gipsy's brat, and present the nurse with a guinea. To be sure, Mrs. Falcon was very grateful: the child was christened Hobart!"

People like the Hobarts and Freemans are as neces­sary to people like the Falcons as argosies are to corsairs, or caravans to Arabian banditti. Your easy, good-natured people are the correlatives of spunges and land-pirates. Good temper, generosity, and facility of dis­position are frequently expensive accomplishments; and no man ought to start in life with them, any more than set up his coach, without a careful examination of the state of his finances.

Mrs. Freeman could not bring herself to disoblige friends of the Bompases;-however, she made inquiries

about Mrs. Falcon's times and seasons of gestation, and the result being satisfactory, she returned her a complaisant answer, to the effect that a room or two in Harley-street would be at her service for a fortnight; but she regret­ted that she could not offer such poor accommodation for a longer time, as there were repairs to be done, and carpenters and painters to be employed during the summer. Mrs. Freeman, too, had her postscript; but it was merely to recommend to Mrs. Falcon's parti­cular care a valuable and beautiful alabaster Diana in one of the drawing-rooms. The next day the Free-mans left town for Plymouth, leaving their house in the custody of two trusty domestics, to whom Dick Chatworth gave a shrewd hint not to divulge the name of the family coal-factor, and to be equally mysterious as to that of the baker and butcher.

"Success to the daring," he said to himself, as he left his sister's house, after giving these prudent direc­tions. "There is no getting on in this world without gold in the pocket, iron in the hand, silver on the tongue, or brass on the forehead;-Mrs. Falcon has got the silver and the brass, at all events."

"Sure in some countries Ladies are privy-councillors and more, Are they not, think ye? There the land is doubtless Most politicly govern'd; where the women Are crown'd wives and sceptre-bearing mothers, Such states are nourishing."

Massinger's "Fancies Chaste and Noble."

mrs. falcon's veracity-the arrival-portrait of the gipsy -a woman without a master-other family pictures- "attractions of the falcons-how mr. falcon won his way-HOW MRS. FALCON CARRIED HER POINTS-HOW LUCY IMPROVED HER MIND, AND HOW EMILY LOST EDEN.

"mr. falcon and myself-nobody else," those were the words of Mrs. Falcon's pregnant postcript. Oh, fie! Mrs. Falcon, you knew very well that your storm-ing party was to include your two pretty daughters, Emily and Lucy; with that eight-year-old imp of yours, wicked Willy in his Scottish costume; fie, Mrs. Falcon, where did you leave your veracity, where did you pick up your morals?

At a late hour in the evening, but before dark, a coach drove up to Mr. Freeman's house, and there was no extravagant eagerness on the part of the servants to open the door for the knocker was appealed to thrice, and thrice did the bell ring, before there was any reply to the besiegers' summons.

"While Mr. Falcon (little assisted by the domestics) was engaged in extracting numerous parcels from the pockets and other receptacles of the coach, Mrs. Falcon

stood on the flags, superintending the transportation of her goods and chattels; and the imperious tone in which she gave her minute directions as well as the petulant way in which she occasionally flung aside her luxuriant black hair, which travelling had thrown into disorder, showed clearly that there was at least one Woman in the world who acknowledged no Master.

"I don't see my cul-de-sac-oh, it's under the cushion where I was sitting; there, just under your hand."

"Sac-de-nuit, mamma," said one of the girls very quietly, as she stepped out of the carriage.

"Count the hampers, Mr. Falcon," continued the mother, not seeming to attend to the correction of her French; "there ought to be three; one, two, the other is on the top; all right. Where are the rabbits?"

"In papa's boots, ma," answered wicked Willy al­ready alluded to.

"I ordered you, sirrah, this morning, to see them put in the boot of the carriage, not in your papa's boots. Do take off your hat, Mr. Falcon, you can't put your head far enough into the boot with your hat on."

Nobody who heard or saw Mrs. Falcon, as she stood thus issuing her orders to every body round her, could doubt for a moment that she was commander-in-chief of the squadron. She was a woman in the August of her days; brisk and blooming, with black hair and brown complexion, her nose slightly aquiline, her lips small and compressed; her eyes dark, piercing, bold, practical; her features in general regular and massive, with a free and daring expression, which had a charm of its own for those who like what the French call une beaute insolente. She was above the middle height, and looked even taller

than she actually was, in consequence of her remarkably stately and commanding carriage, a point to which, perhaps, she paid the more attention, as it was the only carriage she could call her own. All the developments of her person were on a large scale; she wanted no milliner's assistance to help her to bustle through the world; and notwithstanding the intelligence which Mrs. Freeman received upon a certain delicate question, there were manifest indications about the bouncing gipsy, of a nature to alarm her friends and acquaint­ance, particularly the Rev. Mr. Hobart.

Falcon was alarming too, after a fashion of his own. He looked alarmingly hungry! Probably it was in the larders of Marylebone that his arrival was most dreaded. Imagine a famished, but tame wolf, and it will give some notion of the expression of his sharp, ravenous, but mild and subdued physiognomy. He was very tall and meagre; his nose was red and hooked; his eyes twinkling and intelligent; his forehead high, narrow, receding, bald, garnished on each side with an upright tuft of reddish hair; for, in obedience to his wife's mandate, he had taken off his hat, which certainly ena­bled him; to poke his head more conveniently into the various nooks and pouches where any property of the family might possibly be latent.

As to the girls, they were both very pretty, and pretty girls are often alarming personages. Otherwise, why any place in the world should have been thrown into consternation by either Emily or Lucy Falcon, seemed difficult to understand. To be sure, Lucy was a miniature of her mother, a piratical beauty, like Haidee, which may account, in some degree, for the

feeling in her case; but the other girl was of a different order altogether. She seemed, at least, beside her sister, one of those

"Maidens never bold, Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blush'd at herself."

Perhaps she had some other qualities (hereafter to be disclosed), in common with the daughter of Brabantio, but it is only necessary to add here that she was a charming blonde, of eighteen or nineteen, with deep blue eyes, dark hair, and a figure slighter than her sister's, but exquisitely formed.

The truth, indeed, was, and it is only fair to state it at once-that while collectively this vagrant family were regarded with apprehension, sometimes amounting to terror, there was no member of it (except the juniors of the masculine gender, who had yet to learn the politics of their tribe) who was not popular in some quar­ter or another; who had not a party, or at least, a faction, in his or in her interest, wherever the mother Falcon ordered their flight.

Mr. Falcon was an immense favourite with little England; he was the school-boy's architect and ship­builder, and Master of the Ordnance to the British Nursery; incomparable at making cannon with quills, mortars of trotter bones, armadas of old corks, and armies out of visiting-tickets. Then, for children who were sager than to play with any thing but the toys of philosophy, he could suffocate canaries in exhausted, receivers, develop electric sparks from the bristling backs of reluctant kittens, exhibit the laws of refraction with a slop-basin and a teaspoon, and seduce needles

out of work-boxes with a magnet of amazing virtue, which he always carried in his waistcoat pocket. In a word, he was the darling of the darlings; secured the nurseries first, and there planted the artillery with which he often carried the dining-room; which was, of course, the main point.

Mrs. Falcon had the usual success that follows the steps of a fine and a clever woman, where she had not the sharpness or the jealousy of her own sex to cope with. Wherever male influence was ascendent, the gipsy was seldom repulsed, and often re­ceived with hearty welcome. What man, who had either the eye of a Rubens for florid beauty, or the taste of a Borrow for Zinganee adventure, could con­template either her person or her character without admiration? In houses where petticoat government was established, she had a more difficult card to play; and she relied, of course, upon her intellectual re-sources and diplomatic abilities altogether. Lucy, the brown, girl, was playful and sprightly, with an agree­able knack of attracting the attention of governesses and masters, wherever she went; by which she not only improved herself, but often gratified the truant young ladies of her acquaintance, who preferred battledore and shuttlecock to counterpoint, or Mrs. Gore's novels to the German grammar.

Emily Falcon had the largest party of all; indeed, she was everywhere received with open arms, except in houses where loveliness and merit are positive grounds of exclusion; for in this world as well as in the next, are joyless mansions, not made to be lit by beauty or inhabited by worth.

"Puppy.-What sort or order of gipsies, I pray, sir? Cockrell.-A gipsy of quality, believe it. Townshead.-'Fore me, a dainty derived gipsy."

BenJonson--"TheGipsies Metamorphosed."

ANTECEDENTS OF MRS. FALCON-HER PATRICIAN BIRTH AND ARISTOCRATIC EDUCATION-HOW SHE RAMBLED ABOUT, AND WHAT SHE PICKED UP IN HER RAMBLES-HER METAMORPHOSIS INTO A MAGPIE-HOW POPULAR SHE BECAME WITH THE MIDDLE CLASSES-WHO FOUGHT FOR HER AND WHO WON HER-ANTECEDENTS OF MR. FALCON-VICISSITUDES OF HIS NOSE-HIS EDUCATION, CHARACTER, MIGRATIONS, AND PROPENSITIES.

MRS. FALCON had been, in her maiden estate, a Miss Georgina, Hawke, the daughter of a dissipated clergyman and the niece of a profligate peer, who had passed from the House of Lords into the bankrupts' calendar in consequence of his patrician propensity to deal in horse-flesh. Lively and handsome, indif-ferently educated, and loosely principled (having lost her mother at a very early age), the brown Georgina passed the first twenty years of her life wandering up and down the British dominions, in a sort of aristo­cratic vagrancy, transmitted from house to house, for­warded from uncle to aunt, tossed from one cousin to another, generally received with welcome, because, beside being a relative, she was pretty and entertain­ing, but as commonly parted with (when she was not unceremoniously packed off) with equal or greater

alacrity, in consequence of an amiable, and in her case a pardonable tendency to overtax the hospitalities of her friends and relations. Under these unfavourable circumstances, leading this vagabond life, the de­ficiencies she laboured under in the refinements and accomplishments of ladies of her social rank, were any thing but surprising. A tomboy at twelve, she was an Amazon at twenty; and those free, rollicking manners, which made her popular enough with country gentle­men, rendered her proportionally formidable to her own sex, particularly to mothers who had daughters to bring up and out, of an age to be influenced by bad example. However, she managed to pick up as she jogged along, a scrap of an accomplishment here, and a sprig of useful knowledge there. She could never remember where she got her music; and Heaven only knew where she acquired the little French she pos­sessed; and of which she was apt to make an adven­turous and amusing display. But she was accused of picking up other things, as well as information, on her rambles; and in truth she was from the outset a little predatory, as well as migratory, in her habits; that is to say, she did not participate in all the respect that judges and lawyers express for the rights of property; or perhaps she inclined to the primitive Christian system of community of goods. Her moral delin­quencies, however, were generally taken in good part; her relatives and connexions were as often entertained as annoyed by her petty larcenies; and sometimes they even laughed heartily, as they screamed, "A la voleuse! A la voleuse!" when the daughter of the

parson and niece of the lord trooped off in their satin, boots, or marched away in their Cashmere shawls. Considering that, amongst other houses, she had occa­sionally sojourned in those of dignitaries of the church, and even in episcopal palaces, it was marvellous that Georgina Hawke's organ of conscientiousness had not been better developed, and very curious, too, that she should evince, as she always did, a particular fancy for matters of gold and silver. But never could she resist the temptations of loose bijouterie; and numerous were the occasions when vanished thimbles missing pencil-cases, and rings or bracelets supposed to be in the crucible or in the moon, were accidentally discovered, in the recesses of her reticule, or the oubliette of some still more roguish privy pocket.

Miss Hawke, in fact, was an Autolycus in petticoats, "littered under Mercury," a "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles;" for, having a shrewd gift of observa­tion, she had remarked in her tenderest years the thousand "waifs and strays" (as lawyers phrase it) in the forms of combs, caps, aprons, chains, fans, feathers, veils, garters, flowers-the accumulations of bygone seasons, and the debris of fashions out of date-which, strew and encumber the bed-rooms and boudoirs of her sex, as leaves do the brooks in autumn; and perhaps she observed, too, that the hands of the lady's-maid are unequal in every case to the clearing away of all this gay rubbish. At any rate she was a match for any lady's-maid in the land at this species of Augean labour; but even when she pounced upon articles of greater value, a diamond brooch, or a braid of pearls,

how often did she redeem the act of temporary felony (in the opinion of all but the party plundered) by the transfer to a very pretty neck of what was destined to deck a very plain one?

Upon the whole, it was a question whether our hawk, turned "la pie voleuse" (for her girlhood was so nicknamed), was more admired than feared. She certainly did produce more or less alarm wherever she showed her handsome brazen face; and ere she attained her seventeenth year, there was a desire very generally felt and expressed to see her married and settled in the world.

At length she was thrown, by one of the changes and chances of a roving life, into a mercantile circle in some town in the north of England; and from that hour she may be said to have become the undisputed property of the middle classes. Then, for the first time, she found herself a personage, and discovered the import­ance in England of being allied even to nobility under a cloud. Could she have minced herself into twenty pieces, there would not have been enough of the lord's niece for the excellent people into whose society she was now cast. Cotton and hard-ware fought for her: she was the desire of the potteries, the idol of the power-looms, and the goddess of those who dealt in crockery. Now an iron-master carried her off to Bir­mingham; now the stocking-weavers of Nottingham possessed her; she was the pride of Kidderminster, the mania of Manchester, and the love of Leeds. There came matrimonial offers in the course of things:-indigos proposed; teas paid their addresses; wine wooed,

and cutlery courted her. It ended as such matters end frequently, in her intermarrying neither with china, cutlery, teas, wine, nor indigo. Suddenly-marvel­lously, mysteriously-she committed matrimony one foggy morning with a moss-trooping adventurer like herself. In short, never was there a more suitable union in point of character, or a more hazardous one in point of prudence, than that of Georgina Hawke to the ingenious Mr. Peregrine Falcon.

To the dismay of her patrician kindred she now re­appeared at their houses in town, and their halls in the country, presenting them with her straggling, eccentric husband. His picture has been already drawn; it is only necessary to add here, that his nose was not uni­formly pink, but changed colour with the seasons;- pink in spring, red in summer, purple in autumn, and in winter something between blue and crimson. The feature was the more important, because his nose was the only thing about Mr. Falcon that seemed to flourish. His person was a precise antithesis to his wife's: a shil­ling pamphlet on Poor Laws by Ridgway beside a thumping quarto Book of Beauty, by Heath.

Falcon, however, resembled his spouse in being equally self-educated. Whatever were his intellectual deficiencies, he did not owe them to the systems of Eton and Harrow. He was a living proof that a man may be shallow, without being indebted to Cambridge, or under the slightest obligation to Oxford. Busy rather than industrious; volatile rather than active, cleverish ra­ther than clever;-he had been in fifty different offices

in half that number of years; for all through life he was "the gentleman in search of a situation." He re­membered the time when he had been a clerk at So­merset House; he had once superintended a copper-mine; he had managed a lunatic asylum; controlled the accounts of a national cow-pock institution, super­vised port duties, been secretary to a horticultural as­sociation, and acted as deputy librarian to the British Museum; and he had now just resigned the place of inspector of works to a new railway company, which he had only filled for three weeks, with a view to obtain the appointment of secretary to the Irish Branch So­ciety for the Conversion of Polish Jews. His employers had generally a high opinion of his talents for a month, or so, but they usually got tired of him before the end of a second; and if they did not, he got weary of them before the expiration of a third; and thus the engage­ment very rarely lasted for half a year. The conse­quence, however, of this multifarious life was that he knew a little of every thing knowable, and something of everybody in England. He passed, upon twenty subjects, for a very learned man amongst people who knew nothing at all about them; in mathematics he had crossed the ass's bridge, peeped into the angles of a parallelogram, and nibbled a little at square roots; he was geologist enough to talk of conglomerate and to be up to trap; his botany qualified him to speak of the petals of a rose, the stamina of a tulip, and the nectary of a snap-dragon; he knew the alphabets of several lan­guages, and had "a little Latin and less Greek," like 23

his illustrious countryman, William Shakspeare; so that, upon the whole, he was not one of the least accom­plished smatterers of the smattering age we live in.

In the course of his many-coloured life he had nu­merous opportunities of conferring little official favours and obligations on a variety of people, and he had used these opportunities with tolerable dexterity and effect (if not always with the strictest regard to probity), so as to make a considerable number of friends, not in the sentimental sense of the word, but in its most practical, economical, and fiscal signification.

Such was the pair which had now roamed the world, without certain income or fixed residence, with various fortunes and few misfortunes, not always hand in hand, but still conjugally united, for nearly twenty years; living none knew how, yet living tolerably well; dwell­ing none knew where, yet never very badly housed; eat­ing, drinking, and sleeping better than nine-tenths of her majesty's subjects, yet seldom paying a butcher's bill, very rarely a wine-merchant's, and never a landlord or a tax-collector. Meanwhile, they had scrupulously obeyed the first rule of Nature's arithmetic; the law of multiplication. Besides the two daughters and the son already mentioned, they had another girl named Paulina, and an elder boy, Pickever Falcon, who was heir to the family estates in Airshire, and the patrimo­nial castle in the Isle of Sky.

"The early bird gets the worm."

Old Proverb,

"I'll example you with thievery."

Timon of Athens.

MRS. FALCON RISES WITH THE LARK-HER APPROPRIATION CLAWS AND MATERNAL ACTIVITY-OBSERVATIONS ON MR. FALCON'S NOSE-LARCENIES OF LUCY-THE GIPSY A FREE-TRADER-HER PASSION FOR ITALY-COMPARISON OF MR. FALCON TO THE COUNT D'ORSAY-BLEAK PROSPECTS OF BREAKFAST--A SAUCY DOMESTIC-HOW THE PROSPECTS BRIGHTENED, AND WHO BRIGHTENED THEM.

at an early hour on the morning that followed her arrival in town, Mrs. Falcon, the most strenuous of her sex, was up and stirring, fresh and vigorous as if she had undergone no fatigue on the preceding day. When a woman of her energetic character is once out of bed, it is the vanity of vanities for the members of her family to think of enjoying themselves in it. She first dressed herself for the day, and in doing so, she did not scruple to avail herself of an excellent pair of stays be­longing to Mrs. Freeman, whose bed-room she occu­pied; she first tried them on out of mere curiosity, and then finding they fitted her magnificent bust to ad­miration, she thought it was not worth while to change them for her own. Perhaps she desired to test the truth of the Shakspearian adage, that "every true

man's apparel fits your thief," or to try whether it applied equally to articles of feminine attire.

"It can do them no harm, to wear them for one day," she observed, coolly, revolving superbly as she spoke before a large mirror, and surveying the appro­priated corset over her plump shoulder.

"Not the least, my dear," replied her husband, who was still in bed, lying musingly on his back, presenting a subject to tempt a caricaturist, with his red nose, and a nightcap of the same flaming colour.

"I beg you will get up, Mr. Falcon; there is a vast deal to be done to-day, but I suppose I must do every thing as usual; dear me, how red your nose is this morning."

Mrs. Falcon next rang the bell for one of the maids to dress her promising son, Willy.

"There's no use, my dear, in ringing the bell in this house," said Falcon, sitting up and sedately doffing his red nightcap.

"Not much, indeed; I never saw such inattentive impertinent servants; however, I won't submit to it," and Mrs. Falcon rang the bell a second time a little vixenishly.

"My nose is red this morning," observed Falcon, now risen, and contemplating that imposing feature attentively in the looking-glass.

"Pray stand out of my way; and do be so good as to dress yourself, and look at your nose afterwards; I see I must dress Willy myself this morning. I wonder what servants are paid for."

And the gipsy having completed her toilet, which

was smart and distinguished (although the details were perhaps a little incongruous, as if they did not belong to the same epoch of fashion, or were not the result of a single creative effort of millinery mind), hurried first to her daughters' room to see that they were in motion, and then proceeded to Master Willy's dormitory, where, with maternal vigour and intelli­gence, she discharged the various functions of the nur­sery, not unmixed with a few piquant personalities to overcome the varlet's aversion to practical hydropathy, and also by way of salutary admonition to refrain his little Gothic paws from the marbles, bronzes, and ala­basters, more especially the beautiful Diana, on which Mrs. Freeman set particular value.

Meantime her daughters were also at their toilets; and Lucy, the brunette, availed herself, after the ma­ternal example, of sundry odds and ends of lace and ribbon, and one or two small articles of jewellery, upon which it was evident Mr. Freeman's daughters set mo great value; but at any rate a chain or a bracelet would not be the worse for being worn for a day or two on the neck or arm of Lucy Falcon. The other girl, the blonde, seemed either not so dressy or not so larcenous; for she attired herself in a plain white frock taken from her travelling wardrobe, arranged her golden hair in massy braids upon each side of her fair face, and left the bower where she had passed the night, without any more serious depredation than the use of a pin.

Mrs. Falcon, her brown daughter, and her male chick, then proceeded on a little morning cruise, not

without practical objects, for the gipsy was a woman, of business every inch. Bearing down Oxford-street on a trade-wind, she negotiated a little affair of Hyson and Congo at the London and Canton Tea Warehouse. Shortly afterwards she drew up in front of a superb magazine of groceries, seemed greatly smitten by the sparkling whiteness of certain loaves of sugar, and in a wonderfully short time concluded another commercial treaty with the man of figs and nutmegs. There now fell a smart shower: was it the spell that resides in the name of Italy that drove Mrs. Falcon to take shelter in an "Italian Warehouse?" It is just possible that she thought of the land of statues, pictures, and blue skies; but by some degrees more probable that Italy presented itself to her imagination as the country of cheeses, sausages, and maccaroni-that she thought more of Parma, Bologna, and Naples, than of Venice, Rome, and Florence. At all events she transacted a little business in the Italian, as well as in the Chinese and Jamaica trade, before she returned to breakfast.

Meanwhile, Mr. Falcon, although he had admo­nished his wife that it was vain to expect attendance from the servants, found it so desirable to have hot water for the process of shaving, that he made several tintinnabulatory attempts to attract the attention of the household. At length, by dint of perseverance, he succeeded in procuring some water of Laodicean tem­perature; and having made the best shift he could to reap his long chin by its assistance, he joined his daugh­ter Emily in the drawing-room, looking as bleak as if he had made his toilet on an iceberg, or at least, at the

Hospice of St. Bernard. His black coat was severely brushed, and buttoned sharply up to his throat; not a trace of shirt was visible over his somewhat bolstery white cravat; his ancient ducks (which seemed the ori­ginal pair, or first parents of the Russian family of trousers) were clean, but much too short for a man of his height, exposing to view nearly the whole length of his veteran boots, which were probably (to make them fit company for the ducks) the first pair that ever bore the name of Wellington. On the whole, the simple and amiable Mr. Peregrine Falcon, when his toilet was most complete, looked very unlike Count d'Or-say, but strongly suggested the idea of a bankrupt bookseller, an insolvent teacher of geography and the use of the globes, or (saving the ducks) the working curate of an Irish pluralist parson.

Falcon received his daughter's salutations affec­tionately, but was rather laconic in returning them; in fact, he loved to jump from his bed-room to the break­fast-table, or, as the old French proverb expresses it? "faire le saut d'Allemand." It was his daily remark that he was good for nothing before breakfast, and many people thought he was not good for much after it. At all events he was a great breakfast eater; and he now trundled down stairs, like a father-long-legs carrying an express, to see what preparations had been made for the matin meal. But the parlour pre­sented him with a fearfully blank prospect; he darted his hungry eyes into every corner of the room, without discovering provisions enough to regale a church-mouse. The tea-caddies were invitingly open, but repulsively

empty; he peeped into a sarcophagus, and found it as vacant as if Belzoni had ransacked it. The "Vestiges of Creation" lay on the mantel-piece; but Falcon, although a dabbler in geology, would have infinitely preferred at that moment the vestiges of a pigeon-pie, or the fossil remains of a cold ham. He was retreating "slowly and sadly," when a smart female domestic, neatly aproned, and sprucely capped and ribboned, whisked into the room, threw down several parcels upon the side-board, and whisked out again as dis­respectfully as she had entered.

"Samples," said Falcon to himself, examining the parcels, and brightening as he proceeded in the exami­nation, "samples of teas and sugars. What's this in the large parcel? Bologna sausage, orange marmalade, and Yarmouth bloaters." Before he came to the end of this short soliloquy, he looked sunny as the clime from which the sausage came.

The smart maid re-entered. It was merely to say, that the boy who had brought the samples of tea desired to know when he was to call again for "the large order!"

"After breakfast-in the course of the day-any time-the things must be tried, you know-tell him your mistress is not at home," said Falcon, in a state of considerable indecision.

"My mistress!" repeated the girl in her sauciest tone.

"Oh, did I say your mistress? I meant mine" said Falcon, with a facetiousness intended to mollify the nymph of the brush.

30

"Oh, indeed!" returned the hussy with an imper­tinent toss of her head; and just at the same instant, a knock at the hall-door was heard, and Mrs. Falcon presently strutted in, blooming from her morning exer­cise; the impudent housemaid perusing and scrutinising her from head to foot, as if she were looking for Mrs. Freeman's stays under the gipsy's black velvet gown.

"There is a boy waiting, my dear," said Falcon, "for directions about these samples."

"Oh, I saw him at the door-I have given him his answer."

Then, turning to the seemingly impracticable domes­tic, she gave the necessary orders about breakfast, in a tone of bland dignity, which nobody knew better how to assume when occasion required it; and the desired effect was wrought, for in less than half-an-hour, the Falcons sat down to a tolerably good breakfast, for which they were mainly indebted to the early rising and commercial talents and activity of the lordliest of wives, and most executive of mothers.

The tea was highly commended; but whether the London and Canton Tea Warehouse in Oxford-street ever received the "large order," is not a fact sufficiently well established to justify the cautious historian in stating it with confidence.

" Jolly, jolly rover, here's one who lives in clover: Who finds the clover? The jolly, jolly rover. He finds the clover, let him then come over, The jolly, jolly rover, over, over, over."

Old Song.

MR. FALCON SEES BEYOND HIS NOSE-MRS. FALCON SEES FURTHER-LES ENFANS PERDUS-DINNER AND LUNCHEON ARRANGEMENTS-THE GIPSY ON THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE-CHEAP LESSONS IN DRAW­ING-mrs. falcon's idea of plutarch's lives-a conjugal CANNONADE-MR. FALCON ON FORTIFICATIONS-MRS. FALCON'S NOTION OF SIEGES AND SACKS-EMILY'S METHOD WITH IRISH LANDLORDS-WHAT MR. FALCON STUFFED HIS CRAVAT WITH, AND HOW MASTER W. FALCON LEARNED HIS CATECHISM.

"where do we dine to-day?" said Falcon, re­spectfully, to the governess-general, as he finished his second bloater, and was fixing amorous eyes upon a third.

Mr. Falcon had been more attentive all his life to the present tense than to the future; but he could see beyond his nose, and as that was a long one, he cannot be said to have wanted forecast: in fact, he could just peep five or six hours into futurity, a modicum of provisional talent which he daily exhibited, by making arrangements for dinner before he rose from the breakfast-table. His abler and deeper spouse not only provided for the exigencies of the day, but extended her views, like a consummate general, or profound

financier, to the demands and necessities of the morrow. But then she was a gipsy, and had the prophetic as well as the predatory spirit of Egypt. Mrs. Falcon's eye could look into the next season.

"I suppose either with the Puddicomes or the Ropers-those dear Ropers!-it is so long since we have been with them. At the same time, we must not neglect the Puddicomes-oh! and the Bompases!-our own relations-I was quite forgetting them, and my poor Paulina still with them. Lucy, hold up your head,-tete monte, my dear."

"Paulina!" exclaimed Falcon; " I thought Paulina was with the Owen Lloyds in Denbighshire."

Emily and Lucy laughed.

"How very strange, Mr. Falcon, you never do know where your children are."

Falcon could have given very good reasons for the difficulty, under which he occasionally laboured, to recollect in what parts of the kingdom, and in what houses, the several little scatterlings of his family were billeted, at any given time; but Mrs. Falcon was not in the habit of giving his reasons an audience, and accordingly he seldom pressed them on her attention.

"Papa, where is Pickever?" asked Lucy, with a roguish twinkle of her black eye, glancing at her mother and then at Emily.

Falcon helped himself to the third Yarmouth, and pretended not to hear his pert minx of a daughter.

"My poor Pickever!" said the gipsy, with maternal tenderness; "he is very provoking not to write to me. I hope the Smarts are good to him. Lady Smart promised me-what are you giggling at, girls?"

33

"Lady Smart! mamma," exclaimed both her daugh­ters together, and both laughing. "You are as bad as papa. Pickever is with the Horngreens at Weymouth."

"Oh, to be sure he is-what was I thinking of? I never could remember the names of persons and places. My poor Pickever! he left the Smarts because the boys were all so mean about their ponies-they must ride themselves-just as selfish as their odious mother."

"Where shall we lunch?" asked Falcon, rejoining the conversation with some spirit, encouraged by the discovery that his wife was as much at a loss about Pickever's whereabout as he had been about Paulina's.

"I'll tell you my plans, Mr. Falcon," replied his wife, in her lofty way, only wanting a sceptre in her hand to make her look like a czarina. "I shall dine to-day with the excellent Puddicomes, and lunch with the poor Ropers. To-morrow I shall devote to the Bompases; their house is the most convenient in Lon­don; and, to do them justice, they have been all kind­ness and attention to Paulina. I positively won't neglect them." And then Mrs. Falcon delivered an edifying homily on the sin of ingratitude, the practical conclusion from which (or "improvement" as divines call it) was, that when people have done us a signal service, it is our duty, as good Christians, to seize the earliest opportunity of dining, or at least lunching, at their house.

Falcon ventured to suggest that it would be better to take the Bompases first, as his daughter was with them, and he felt a natural parental yearning to see

her again-now that she was recalled to his recol­lection!

"No," said the head of the executive, with decision; "my plan is the best-leave it all to me. Mr. Tinto, who paints so beautifully in water-colours, is attending the Puddicomes, and I wish Lucy to resume her draw­ing-lessons; it's an excellent opportunity. I have no notion of paying masters myself for mere accomplish­ments-we can't afford it. Really, Mr. Falcon, it would be no harm if you thought a little more than you do about the education of your children; you throw every thing on me-it would kill any body else. I positively ought to have as many lives as a cat, or Plutarch."

"Plutarch, my dear-"and the erudite Mr. Falcon was about to correct (with becoming modesty, how­ever) the literary mistake under which his wife seemed to labour respecting Plutarch's lives.

"Now, I don't want to have Plutarch's history, Mr. Falcon-how very learned you are! How can you eat all that salt-fish! What a monstrous cravat you have got! did you put the bolster in it? Never mind it now -you will only make it worse. What do you propose to do, pray? Willy! fingers out of the marmalade!"

Falcon was so confounded by this sharp cannonade, opened so unexpectedly upon his learning, his appetite, and his toilet, that he hesitated and stammered a little before he was collected enough to reply-"Lunch with the Ropers, my dear, of course, as you propose, and dine-"

"There are other things to be thought of, I presume, besides lunching and dining, Mr. Falcon; I wish eat-

ing would make you fat, but I really think the more you eat the thinner you grow; if you ever intend to finish your breakfast, perhaps the sooner you make inquiries about those two appointments, the better."

"Papa, choose the place in London!" exclaimed Lucy.

"Papa, accept the appointment in Ireland!" cried Emily.

"What is the English situation?" demanded Mrs. Falcon.

"Connected with the woods and forests," replied her spouse.

"Woods and forests!-nonsense, Peregrine!-do you want to turn Robin Hood? I think I see you a forester!-Emily is wild enough, I think, as it is, with­out going to the woods to make her wilder; and as to Master Willy there, he would do nothing all day but gather blackberries."

"I am more disposed to the other place, I confess," replied the meek husband, not venturing to go into the explanation necessary to correct his wife's error respect­ing the department of the public service in question.

"I won't decide at present," said the gipsy-mother; "only recollect, Mr. Falcon, I positively won't go to Ireland, unless the situation is permanent, and the country quiet."

"Dublin is as safe as London, my dear," said Falcon; " indeed safer, if possible, for I am told it has lately been fortified. I know something about fortifica­tion. When I was deputy-storekeeper at the Tower-"

"I don't like the idea of living in fortified places," replied the mother Falcon, not waiting for the close of

this interesting chapter in her husband's life; "it's not pleasant to think of being besieged, sacked and ran­sacked. I have heard of women being sacked-they do it in Turkey constantly, and throw them into the Phosphorus. I'm not a coward, I flatter myself; I'm as stout as any woman, and I was never ashamed to own it-but I do like to be hors-de-combat." "Indeed, mamma," said Emily, "Ireland is quite as safe a country to live in as England; nobody is ever shot but a tyrannical landlord, occasionally."

"Occasionally!-upon my word, Miss Emily, you seem to think nothing of shooting people occasionally," said Mrs. Falcon, rising from the table, and simulta­neously boxing her son's ears for a repetition of his practices upon the sweetmeats.

"Well, I'm not a landlord," said Falcon, reluctantly rising too.

"If you were, papa, you would not be a tyrannical one," said his daughter Emily, smiling and kissing him; "but let me settle your cravat before you go out-it is positively frightful."

"Will you walk with me, Emily?" said Falcon, as with the prettiest of hands she untied the white mass that encircled his throat, in order to reduce within a reasonable compass, what was indeed a monstrous wisp of cambric.

"Yes, papa," she replied, unrolling the cravat; "but what have you stuffed it with?"

"I don't know, my dear; a stiffener I found in a corner of the bed-room."

"A stiffener!-ha, ha, ha!-mamma! Lucy! look at

papa's cravat-stiffener!" Emily held up a cushion in the form of a young moon, which probably belonged to Mrs. Freeman, and was not designed for that part of the person to which the innocent and ingenious Mr. Falcon had transferred it.

The gipsy and her daughters had a hearty laugh at his expense.

"My dear, I never saw one before," said poor Falcon; and his wife smiled at the observation, and patted his bald head good-humouredly, as she marched out of the breakfast-room, like the queen of the gipsies.

"Will you ever put your fingers in the marmalade again?" said she to her hopeful son, as they proceeded up stairs together.

"No, ma," said Willy.

"What did I teach you last Sunday morning?"

"To keep my tongue from picking and stealing, and my hands from evil sqeaking, lying, and slandering."

"Very well, love; and what did I tell you honesty was?"

"Politics, mamma."

"And where do good boys go to?"

"To the woods and forests, ma, to gather blackber­ries."

"You naughty fellow!-where do bold boys go to?"

"To Ireland, mamma."

"Well, indeed, I believe it is not a very bad guess. What is your duty to your neighbour?"

"I forget, ma."

"To the Ropers, for example: think, my dear."

"Oh, now I recollect, mamma-to lunch with them."

" Sir, he's a gentleman Desertful of your knowledge; you shall honour Your judgment to entrust him with your favour. His merits will commend it. Men of parts, Fit parts and sound, are rarely to be met with."

Massinger.

THE RED ROVER'S VISIT TO PATERNOSTER-ROW-HIS ESSAYS IN LITERATURE-PROJECT OF LETTERS ON IRELAND-MR. PRIMER'S IDEAS UPON THE SUBJECT-APPETITE FOR PERSONAL OBSERVATION-HOW TO TRAVEL IN IRELAND WITHOUT LEAVING ENGLAND-TREATY BETWEEN AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER.

mr. falcon, accompanied by his daughter Emily, and looking much the better for the retrenchment of his cravat, proceeded, for the fiftieth time in his life, in search of a situation, as nimbly and hopefully as if he were just beginning the world; and the result of the inquiries he made, and the comparisons he instituted, was, that before the expiration of an hour, he had conditionally accepted the post of Secretary to the Irish Branch Society for the Conversion of the Polish Jews; the condition being the consent of his wife to undertake a journey to Ireland, and submit to the many privations and dangers of a residence in that tempestuous part of the empire.

A modern philosopher affirms that mental action travels at the rate of 192,000 miles in a second.*

*Vestiges of Creation.

Whether the operations of Falcon's mind were so rapid, or not, it is certain that he had no sooner taken this provisional step, than his mind conceived a brilliant idea, which he immediately confided to his daughter, by whom it was so warmly encouraged, that he in­stantly called a cab, handed Emily in, jumped in after her, and in ten minutes was closeted with his old friend Primer, the bookseller and publisher in Pater­noster-row. Amongst his other speculations, Mr. Primer was proprietor of a weekly journal, called "The Metropolitan Mercury," to which Mr. Falcon had from time to time contributed "trifles light as air," probably often lighter, on a variety of interesting public ques­tions, such as Wooden Pavements, the Bude Light, Street Music, and the Health of the Parrots and Monkeys in the Zoological Gardens. Mr. Primer had not only a sincere regard for Falcon, but so great an admiration for his talents, that he always invited atten­tion to his articles in a short but conspicuous leader, assuring the public that the observations of "Viator," "Naso," or "Censorinus," were worthy of the most pro­found consideration.

"Mr. Primer, I am thinking of visiting Ireland before very long," said Falcon-literary speculation gleaming in his eye.

"Oh, indeed!" said the small, round, sallow pro­prietor of the "Mercury," rubbing his hands, and fidgeting about his little dark office, to find a chair for Miss Falcon.

"And I'm thinking, Mr. Primer, of publishing my travels. What would you say to a series of letters from Ireland for your weekly journal?"

"Oh! just the very thing we want. Letters from Ireland; and from your lively pen, Mr. Falcon!"

"You think they would do?"

"Do! yes and pay, Mr. Falcon-great demand for books on Ireland, just now. But you must take your time; less than a week won't do; the public wants full details-accurate information-you must see every thing, hear both sides of the question, visit Maynooth and Derrynane Abbey, know Mr. O'Connell, and make your observations on the Repeal of the Union and Young Ireland: in fact a personal narrative, Mr. Falcon-it must be personal."

"Oh! I shall probably remain in Ireland much longer than a week," said Falcon, "for I am about to accept an office in Dublin."

"Oh, indeed!-delighted to hear it, but very sorry to lose you, Mr. Falcon. Does the Honourable Mrs. Falcon go with you, and this young lady?"

Falcon first explained that his wife was not an honourable, in the titular sense of the term; and secondly, that his appointment was not yet definitively settled; but he hoped, if he did go to Ireland, that his wife and daughters would accompany him. "If any thing should happen to break it off-" he con­tinued.

"Oh! in that case, Mr. Falcon," said the bookseller, interrupting him, and suddenly lowering his voice and looking very grave, "I hope you will excuse me. You know how much I prize every thing that comes from you, but unless you actually go to Ireland, and travel in person-really, Mr. Falcon, I cannot under­take-I cannot promise-"

"My dear sir, you don't suppose I dreamed of writing my tour in Ireland without visiting it!"

"Well, now-upon my word-pray excuse me; but I burnt my fingers very lately, Mr. Falcon-upon my word I did-in that very way. Did you see the 'trot through ireland; or, pigs, potatoes, and pacificators,' published last autumn? Well, upon my word, it was very nicely written; we got it up beautifully, it was very handsomely noticed in my 'Mercury,' and the portraits of the pigs and pacificators were reckoned capital likenesses; but it lay on my hands-didn't sell a dozen copies. No reason in the world for it, but that I could not prevail on the author to cross the channel: he dreaded sea-sickness, and his wife was alarmed by the state of the country."

"And how did he manage?" inquired Emily, smiling.

"He visited the Holy Land, Miss."

"The Holy Land!" exclaimed Emily.

"Oh! not the Holy Land in the Bible-the Holy Land in St. Giles's; where the Jews live, and the low Irish; he picked up the manners and customs of the people there, and then he made a tour in Wales to get up the scenery and the geological hobservations. Really, he made a very nice book, considering every thing; only it didn't sell, Mr. Falcon, I assure you. There's a morbid happetite, just now, for personal hobservation."

The conclusion of the conference was a parole agree­ment that Mr. Falcon should furnish the "Mercury" with a series of letters on Ireland for a certain stipu-

lated remuneration; the tour to occupy at least a week, and the engagement to be null and void in case any fatality should prevent the tourist from visiting Ireland at all.

This business having been thus satisfactorily arranged, Mr. Falcon and his fair daughter bade the little yellow-bookseller adieu, and the westering wheels of their cab soon transported them to Charing-cross. There Emily proposed to walk through St. James's park to Pimlico, where the Ropers lived-those "dear Ropers," with whom Mrs. Falcon had affectionately resolved to lunch.

"What are pacificators, papa?" said Emily, as they entered the park.

"Agitators, my love, I am told, whose duty it is to traverse the country with stout olive-branches in their hands, with which they knock people down politely for knocking other people down without ceremony."

"I should think," she observed, "an olive-branch would give a very gentle tap."

"In the hand of a lusty agitator as good a blow, I am told, as a shillelagh," said her father.

"I had no notion the olive grew in Ireland," returned Emily.

"It is not indigenous, I believe," said Falcon, "but I hear it thrives pretty well with cultivation."

"It is a tree I love," said Emily, "but I do not ap­prove of making cudgels of it, and I suspect you do the pacificators a little injustice."

"Young St. Just is coming, more like a student than a senator, not five-and-twenty yet, a youth of slight stature, with mild mellow voice, enthusiast olive complexion, and long black hair."

Carlyle's French Revolution.

"It reads like one of Ossian's heroes, in that mystic and melodious style."

Historic Fancies.

ARCADIA IN TOWN-SCENERY OF LONDON-NURSERY-MAIDS' ARITHMETIC-THE ILLS THAT FOWL IS HEIR TO--THE SUN IN TAURUS-PRANKS OF A ZEPHYR-A CELTIC HERO MAKES HIS FIRST APPEARANCE-IDEA OF POLITICAL REGENERATION -IRELAND IN LABOUR-WHO SHALL BE ACCOUCHEUR?-THE CRUELTY AND GLUTTONY OFTHE SAXONS-BEAUTY AND THE BEAST-THE HERO SEES THE HEROINE.

IT is wonderful how much country may be found in the heart's core of so great a city as London. It would be wrong to assert that the British metropolis is an actual Arcady; yet the fancier of sylvan scenes, if he be not too exacting, may loiter agreeably under the elms of St. James's, or on the margin of the Serpentine. If he expect mountains, he will, of course, be disappointed. Snow-hill bears but a faint resemblance to Mont Blanc; the hill of Holborn is very different from the Jungfrau; and Temple-bar, though a perilous defile enough, gives a most inadequate notion of the Pass of the Simplon. In London we must put up with forest and park scenery; be thankful that amidst so much plebeian underwood we have so many patrician trees, and so 44

fair a sprinkling of little lakes amongst them-little Windermeres and small Killarneys; nor pass unblest the temples of Pan and Sylvanus, represented by the Commissioners of the Woods and Forests.

It is a pleasing contrast to pass suddenly through a dark-red lane, or a gray-stone archway, from the ob­streperous streets, where the ledger is posted in every face, and each man you meet wears an air of vulgar arithmetic, into the open parks, where the only specu­lations are on pretty faces, the only reckonings those of accountant Abigails and controlling Catherines, tott'ing up the fractions of humanity confided to their care, fearful of losing one of their decimal darlings in a thicket, or dropping some small item of the bill of live mortality into the remorseless ornamental waters. To how many strollers and gambollers in the woodland scene that stretches from the gray Horse-Guards to the old ruddy palace of Kensington, do its trees seem forests and its ponds Caspian seas! How many begin and end their acquaintance with groves and pastures within its narrow bounds! It circumscribes for thousands of little metropolitans, all they know, or ever will know, of sheep and sheep-folds, of Flora and the Dryads; the Sylva Sylvarum of the babyhood of Westminster; a duode­cimo book of Nature, for the use of the infantry of London.

But the chief attractions of the parks are the flocks of aquatic birds, beginning with the ladylike and lordly swans, and descending through all the grades of fea­thered dignity, to the smallest of her Majesty's duck-­lings. There existed once upon a time, when royalty

was more rural than it now is, a Master of the Swans amongst the officers of the palace; but that high func­tionary has disappeared from the household, unless the Clerk of the Signet may be counted his modern repre­sentative, under a quolibet, or the Poet Laureate may consider himself, in virtue of his bardic character, the natural guardian of the bird that fades in song.

However, the fowls seem to be safe enough under the protection of her Majesty's little public, by whom they are carefully nourished, in fair weather, with biscuits and gingerbread; unbirdlike diet, of which the swans that drew Juno's coach, or the wild ducks, whose mon­ster meetings on Asiatic lakes are described by Homer, had no conception, and for which they had probably as little taste. Yet the ducks of St. James's evidently love biscuit; and the only risk they seem to run (with no special providence to guard them), is the peril of surfeit and apoplexy, common to them with other featherless bipeds.

It was a bright and blustery day in advanced spring- the sun in the roaring constellation of the Bull. There had been a shower in the forenoon, and the parks were fresh and verdant, even to brilliancy, obviously emu­lating the country out of town, and succeeding marvel­lously well, considering the great discouragement of the smoke that issued as usual from the tops of ten thou­sand chimneys. Little England was present in great force; there was a mob of Marias, a rabble of Rebeccas, Selinas swarmed and Tommies thronged. There per­haps a little bench of bishops, precociously rapacious, were busily amassing the gold hoarded in the cups of

the daisies. There a chancellor in embryo was laying down the law of leap-frog, for a small bar as clamorous as bar need be. There little shrews were practising to become, in the fulness of time, great termagants; and short coquettes threatening to shoot up into full-grown flirts. Young demagogues were taking their first lessons in agitation, and eight-year-old oppressors of junior things were giving their first indications of talents destined perhaps hereafter to misrule colonies and dis­member states.

The scene was innocently tumultuous; boys frolicked, tomboys romped, and the maturer portion of the mul­titude, chiefly of the feminine gender, indemnified themselves for the gravity of their conduct by the vo­lubility of their tongues. The breeze, a pert zephyr, blew perhaps a little fresher than was desirable; for while it crumpled the water, shook the trees, and ruf­fled the painted plumage of the fowls, it also took frolicksome liberties with hats and shawls, blew much beau­tiful hair into many bright eyes, fluttered caps and ribbons without scruple, puffed parasols into the air like parachutes, and occasionally grew so licentious as to inflate a petticoat and turn a silk gown into an air-balloon.

In the midst of this scene, sometimes on the verge of the throng, sometimes in the heart of it, were saun­tering (about the time that Mr. Falcon and his daugh­ter entered the park) two young men, students of law, who had torn themselves for half-an-hour from the captivations of Chitty on Heading, just to compare the intensity of the solar light at St. James's with its bril­liancy in Black-letter-court Middle Temple. The

younger of the two was a remarkable figure. He was tall and slight; his features were handsome and intel­lectual; his cheek was pale, but it was the paleness of study or temperament, not of disease or dissipation, The expression of his eye, which was dark and bright, was something between melancholy and fierceness; but the most striking of his personal peculiarities was the length and profusion of his hair, which hung in thick shining black ringlets over each temple, while at the same time it fell down in equal plenty behind, upon the collar of his coat, where it was crisped backwards, forming a thick continuous circular curl, like a solid groove of ebony, through which with a bodkin you might have passed a ribbon. In short, his hair, both in its redundance and elaborate arrangement, was almost a feminine feature, and the wind seemed to be toying with it under that impression. Although the day was warm, he wore a dark-green cloak, which he folded ambitiously about him, with a palpable attention to effect; and this unseasonable attire heightened the general air of sentimental ferocity by which he was distinguished, and at which perhaps he aimed. Although he was very young, scarcely twenty-three or twenty-four, it was evident that he either was, or considered himself, a personage, with some imposing character to support, or some startling career to run.

His companion was some two or three years his senior, but as florid and mercurial as the other was pale and saturnine. There was nothing very striking about his face or figure; but he had a quick, brilliant, gray eye, which announced not only intellect, but

intellectual vivacity and sunshine. His mouth had the same agreeable and social expression, as if it were made both for letting out good things of one kind, and for letting in good things of another. He was about the middle height, light-haired, dressed with the proper degree of attention to the main points of the toilet, totally free from every symptom of the coxcomb, and we have only to notice a tendency to corpulence, to-complete a picture which was agreeable when observed, though there was nothing about it to attract observation.

"You look particularly revolutionary to-day, Mac Morris," said the elder and livelier of the two young men, to the younger and graver; "pray come to the other side, the wind blows those rebellious locks of yours in my face."

The grave and fierce student complied with this rea­sonable request in silence, and the other continued in the same sprightly tone.

"Come, there is some wilder Celtic speculation than usual in your eye-what is it? You are wishing the Saxons had all but one neck, that you might decapi­tate the English nation at a blow."

"No, Moore," replied Mac Morris, speaking in a measured and solemn tone; "I was thinking of the full force of the expression-the regeneration of a country."

"It means radical reform, does it not?" said Moore; "a general and complete amelioration of customs, laws, and institutions."

"Yes, but it means much more: regeneration signi­fies a new birth. A nation-Ireland, for example-in order to be regenerated must be born again: that is,

she must return to the womb of anarchy, and be born again in the pangs and throes of revolution."

"I trust, then," said Moore, with constrained seri­ousness, "that Ireland will not be regenerated in our day. You propose," he added, turning his lively gray eye upon his companion, with an expression in which humour struggled with solemnity; "you propose, I presume, to officiate as Dr. Locock at the interesting accouchement of which you talk so coolly."

"Accoucheurs will not be wanting, when the hour of labour comes," answered young Mac Morris.

"Have we many months to go?" asked Moore, sedately.

"My belief is," replied the other, "that the night is far spent and the day is at hand."

"With revolution before my eyes, Tierna, I should propose to reverse that expression, and say, the day is far spent, and the night is at hand. What do you pro­pose to call your pretty insurrectionary bantling? What is to be its unchristian name?"

"It will be a republic of some shape or another," answered Mac Morris, not taking notice of the tone of his friend's conversation; "but the precise form of go­vernment is not yet decided."

"I'll tell you the form of it," said Moore, "and give it a name too, although I decline the honour of being its sponsor. Your plans appear to me to combine un-desirableness with impracticability in the highest degree; I therefore propose to call your new government a Utopian Anarchy. And now tell me, who is to be the Anarch? Old Ireland, or Young? O'Connell?"

"Decidedly not!" exclaimed Mac Morris, with energy; "with his senile twaddle about moral force, and the golden link of the crown! Moral humbug! Golden fudge!"

"Tigernach Mac Morris, then? No reply! You have not yet made up your mind to accept the throne of Chaos, and call Orcus and Demogorgon brothers!"

To this Mac Morris made no answer; and for some mo­ments the conversation was suspended, until they came to a spot from which they could observe a group of children amusing themselves with the aquatic birds, and gorging them with biscuit.

"Observe, Moore," said Mac Morris, pointing to a particular case of ornithological gluttony; "observe those little Saxons, with what glee they contemplate the tortures of that ravenous duckling!"

"Yes, Tierna, that duckling must be Irish!"

"Irish! No!-the Saxons don't torture us after that fashion; they reserve the voluptuous pangs of gluttony for themselves. The worst of it is, that it is our beef and pork-"

"To which they owe the pleasures of Indigestion," interrupted Moore. "There is our revenge! The Eng­lish are the most dyspeptic nation in the world, and no country is so free from that complaint as Ireland. However, the Saxon diet, I believe, is getting lighter and lighter every day; so that, in either case you have reason to be satisfied."

"I only wish them the lumper potato for one fort­night."

"It would breed a rebellion, I have no doubt; and,

on the other hand, what a prodigious sensation a sirloin of beef and a plum-pudding would make in Connaught; but, of course, no true Celt would dine upon those characteristically Saxon dishes."

"The Saxons are characteristically and nationally gluttons; the best fed and the worst conditioned race in Europe."

"Well, Tierna, their women are beyond exception."

"I don't think so; I can't admire their women."

"Come, that is pushing your Celtic prejudices a little too far. I thought beauty, like literature, was of no party: Paphos, at least, ought to be neutral ground."

"There is no neutral ground: the Saxon woman is the mother of the Saxon man: besides, there is more beauty, I do not hesitate to affirm, in my own county than in all England, from St. Michael's Mount to Skiddaw."

"Good Tierna, reserve such extravagance for the meridian of Dublin and the Hall of Clamour, where you are so soon to figure. For my part, were I ever so fierce a Celt, I feel that I could almost pardon the Saxons for the sake of their wives and daughters; for­give the Beast on account of the Beauty."

"There goes a specimen!" cried Mac Morris, calling his companion's attention to a lady who just then passed them, with the figure of an Amazon, and the face of a Gorgon."

"Neither a fair specimen, nor a fair lady," replied Moore; "indeed, her features are Celtic; she is pro­bably Scotch, and, consequently your national cousin-german."

"English, beauty has no spell for me; you may play Hercules to a Saxon Omphale, if you are disposed."

"Do you remember the woman we saw at the opera, last Saturday night?"

"She was Irish, I am positive."

"Every thing Irish is beautiful, and every thing beautiful is Irish-a pretty little Celtic circle to argue in! Here comes something intensely Irish, then; Celt or Saxon, I think you will admit this is handsome; the lady coming towards us in white, leaning on that odd-looking man with a nose like a red-hot reaping-hook."

Mac Morris made no reply, but he was evidently struck by the beauty of Emily Falcon, the effect of which was heightened by the extreme yet elegant sim­plicity of her dress, which displayed her figure to the best advantage, while the wind freshened her cheek, and threw her luxuriant yellow hair into charming dis­order.

Miss Falcon and her father were forcibly struck at the same time by the singularity of the Celtic student's physiognomy, attire, and deportment.

"There is a hero for you, Emily," said Falcon, when the young men had passed them.

Emily smiled, and observed that the wild figure re­minded her of Mr. Carlyle's description of St. Just, the French revolutionary leader. "Do you recollect your New Zealand chief, Emily?" "Now, papa, how can you be so malicious? you know he was a Persian," she replied, laughing. "Have you got the ring he gave you?"

Emily answered the question by pulling the glove off her left hand, and showing upon the middle finger a turquoise of uncommon size and beauty, which the Oriental grandee had placed there with his own august hands at a fete-champetre some years before, where Miss Falcon had been formally presented to him, after singing a popular Italian air in a style which he had not heard equalled in the gardens of Gul or the mea­dows of Cashmere.

"Emily, my romantic girl, your mother and I were afraid, I assure you, that you had a mind to be Lady Hassan Khan; I had hopes of being made a vizier, or at least a mufti; but we shall be late at Mrs. Roper's."

"Come Tierna," said Moore, as his associate con­tinued to gaze upon the receding form of the fair Emily, "depend upon it she is Saxon; you must not leave your heart behind you in England; I have no faith in Celtic prejudices when they come in contact with sterling English worth or loveliness. Come, I must restore you heart-whole to your friends, the re­pealers."

"My friends, the repealers!" exclaimed Mac Morris. "I am no repealer."

"You!-no repealer!"

"I go much further than that, I assure you. Ireland was once a nest of kingdoms, and my principle is to restore them all. Dominick!-mark what I now say!-the age of unions is past!"

"Lucullus.-Alas, good lord! a noble gentleman 'tis, if he would not keep so good a house. Many a time and oft I have dined with him and told him on't; and come again to supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less; and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. Every man has his fault, and liberality is his; I have told him on't, but I could never get him from it."

Timon of Athens.

THE BOMPASES-THEIR FAMILY HOTEL-THEIR COUSINS-THE MAN WITHOUT A COUSIN-DINERS OUT NORTH AND SOUTH OF OXFORD-STREET--MR. BOMPAS PROPOSES TO BURN HIS HOUSE-WHY THE ROPERS TOOK THE MEASLES-HOW MISS PAULINA FALCON LEARNED TO SING-SECOND SOLILOQUY OF MR. DICK CHATWORTH-DARING PROPOSITION OF MR. BOMPAS-MRS. BOMPAS IN TRIBULATION-A MAGISTRATE CALLED IN--FURNITURE OF THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.

the Bompases of Bryanston-square, upon whom the gipsy's little stray daughter Paulina had now been quartered for several months, were an opulent family who kept a plentiful table, a comfortable coach, nu­merous, fat servants, and (unhappily for themselves) several spare bed-rooms. Their house was one of those expensive establishments where a thousand pounds a year might have been saved by the mere inspection of bills, and the commonest precautions against domestic peculation. But Mr. Bompas (a retired merchant and an ex-senator), was content with keeping within his ample income; he left a large margin for extortions and superfluities, proceeding on the principle that he could

afford to be cheated, and that what he lost in revenue he gained in repose. He was a serene, social, dinner-giving, tooth-picking gentleman, with liberal good-natured opinions upon all subjects, an indolent vein of pleasantry, perfect digestive organs, a capital cellar which he visited daily, and a handsome library, where he studied remissly, but occasionally slept with atten­tion. Mrs. Bompas was a still nearer approach to that immoveable serenity, in which the Quietists supposed the perfection of human nature to consist. She was a preposterously amiable, and incorrigibly good-tempered lady, who never harboured a suspicion, refused a re­quest, or resisted an aggression, in her life. It might be said of her what Massinger says of a like character.

"The plethory of goodness is thy ill. Thy virtues vices."

In fact between the easy husband and the easy wife, the Bompases might as well have lived without clasps to their purses, or hinges to their hall-door. Their house was a general rendezvous for marauders and intruders of all sorts and sexes, social nuisances of every description, and country-cousins of all degrees of real or pretended consanguinity. This was so well understood that people would talk of going to Bompas's as they would of going to Thomas's or the Blen­heim; but it was much easier to keep their house full of dull and disagreeable interlopers than to make it the resort of good company; in fact, the latter shunned as much as the former infested it; the bores and monstrosities of every kind who swarmed round the Bompases thick as wasps round a jar of honey, left no

room: for respectable society, or scared it away by the terror of their names and reputations.

"The Bompases have asked us to dine-shall we go?"

"The Bompases! no!"-with a shudder-"they are very well themselves, but they have such strange people always with them."

"True, we should have the Kickshaws, or the Wad-diloves."

"Or the Kettlewells and Falcons."

"Oh! those Falcons-only look at Mrs. Falcon, and she construes it into an invitation to dinner. Send an apology this instant-not a question about it."

This is a sample of the kind of dialogue that often took place amongst the friends of this excellent family, who were forever wondering how it happened that so many people refused to come to them, and yet their table was always full.

Still Mr. Bompas was continually attempting dinners, and discovering pretexts for giving them, as if there was nothing he understood so well, or achieved so suc­cessfully; he was particularly ambitious of receiving authors, travellers, professors, Polish counts, Italian re­fugees, and miscellaneous moustaches of all nations. When they accepted his hospitalities (which they ge­nerally did) he was greatly flattered; and when they did not (a rare occurrence) it was still highly gratify­ing to have to say, "I expected Count Sneezinskoff;" or, I asked "Mr. Pritchard, from Tahiti;" or, "I was in hopes of having Captain Warner to meet you."

This Boniface of Bryanston-square was sauntering

down Oxford-street, on hospitable thoughts intent, musing on turbots, and devising means for catching an oriental tourist, when he suddenly met Mr. Dick Chatworth (with whom the reader has a slight acquaint­ance), and he was delighted with the opportunity of asking the brisk loquacious bachelor to make one of the contemplated party.

Mr. Chatworth was a professional diner-out in his secondary or tertiary sphere; and diners-out north of Oxford-street are fully as respectable as diners-out south of that important boundary, although they write no articles in the reviews to bait their dinner-hooks, and have no anecdotes to relate of dear duchesses who treat them behind their backs as literary parasites de­serve to be treated. Chatworth, like all his tribe, had his little budget always well filled with small talk for the parlour, and still minuter chat, mingled now and then with a dainty bit of scandal, for the drawing-room. He had a number of anti-narcotic talents, by the exercise of which he kept people from falling asleep before the second course; a prattling, rattling, tattling little fellow, who officiated as Fame's deputy-trumpeter in Marylebone society, where he seemed to possess the at­tribute of omnipresence. He was now tripping along in his meridian splendour, covered with chains, rings, pins, brooches, and studs enough to establish a jeweller's shop, recounting his dinner-invitations, and coining an Issue of light jokes to repay a round of solid hospi­talities.

"Dine with us to-morrow at six?" said the dinner-giver.

"With the greatest pleasure," said the dinner-eater.

"House full at present?-Capital family hotel!" he added, with the laughing freedom of an old acquain­tance.

"No, not full just now; the Humblebees left us yesterday; nobody with us, I think, but one of the Miss Falcons." "Falcon!"

"Distant relations of my wife: odd people, birds of passage: 'faith, Chatworth, I believe we have more cousins than any family in England."

"If the Falcons were not your cousins, I should say they were rather birds of prey than birds of passage."

"I quite agree with you; don't spare them for my sake-you bachelors know nothing of the plagues that we married men are subject to."

"One of them is keeping a house for the use of your cousins. The Falcons are the most domestic people I know-in other people's houses."

"I have no notion where the old birds are at present."

"Why, they are at my sister's in Harley-street; came to town yesterday."

"Devilish sorry to hear it-I thought the Freemans had left town."

"So they have, for Plymouth, and the Falcons have seized on the vacant nest. Falcons, you know, are like cuckoos; they don't build for themselves-Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves."

"Chatworth, I'll burn my house," said Bompas, puffing his florid cheeks, energetically buttoning his

blue coat, and feigning an exasperation he never felt in his life.

"No, you won't; you only keep it for the accommo­dation of your friends."

"Well, I won't burn my house, but I promised Mrs. Bompas a trip to the Rhine; I'll start the day after to-morrow."

"Can't you do what the Ropers do?-they muffle their knocker enormously, and give out that they have got the scarletina, or whatever may be the going com­plaint of the season. I called this morning, and found them all in the measles, expecting the Falcons to luncheon. They will pounce upon you next, depend upon it: somewhere about six o'clock-eh, mine host of the Bompas Arms?"

" 'Faith, I often tell Mrs. Bompas that we might as well keep a table-d'hote; but the Falcons are deuced clever. I have got a music-master for my daughters, but you would swear he was paid only to teach Pau­lina Falcon; she contrives to get his lessons all to herself."

"You not only board and lodge your cousins, but you educate them into the bargain; Bompas, you are the best family man I ever heard of. Well, I bless my stars, I have not a live cousin in the world."

"Happy man!"

"You'll take Miss Paulina Falcon to the Rhine with you."

"No, no, I won't."

"I prophecy you will; finish her education with a continental tour, and then provide her with a good

husband, before you get one of your own daughters off your hands."

"Well, Chatworth, remember to-morrow, six sharp; you'll meet the author of 'A Day in Jericho." And the becousined Bompas went his way, not actu­ally sorrowing, but provoked to think that his wife's piratical relations were within a few minutes' cruise of Bryanston-square.

Chatworth pursued his course, ruminating on cousins, and congratulating himself on his cousinless estate. Cousin, in French, he reflected, means a gnat, or mosquito; why should there not be cousin-screens as well as mosquito curtains? How fearfully cousin-bitten poor Bompas is! Why the deuce do people keep open houses and spare bed-rooms?

"I asked Chatworth to dine to-morrow," said Mr. Bompas, to his tranquil wife, when he returned home, "and I'm thinking of asking the author of 'A Day in Jericho,' and my brother's pupils."

Mr. Bompas's brother, Charles Bompas, was an eminent lawyer of the Middle Temple, who initiated young men into the mysteries of pleading, while he largely practised himself that divine art. "Who are they?" asked Mrs. Bompas, the picture of peace and plenty in bombazine.

"Two young Irishmen, my dear."

"Two Irishmen!" exclaimed the lady thus affec­tionately addressed, moved as much as it was pos­sible to move so inert a mass, for nothing ruffled that did not frighten her. "Two Irishmen! what shall we do?-what will become of us?"

"We shall do very well, my dear, don't excite yourself."

"But you know I'm so nervous-the bare idea of a riot-"

"Riot, my dear!" said Bompas, laughing, "there will be no riot, believe me."

"How can you say so? There always is-"

"Never in private society."

"And who, my dear, do you intend to ask to meet them? Nobody will venture."

"Why," replied Bompas, amused at his wife's ter­rors, "perhaps I may pick up a couple of Ioway Indians,-if not, I'll ask the Green Man without his still, and a few nice people from St. Giles's."

"Now, indeed, Mr. Bompas, it's no laughing mat­ter to ask two Irishmen to dinner; will you promise me to ask Mr. Daniel, the magistrate?"

"Very well, my love, that's settled."

"But, how shall I ever have enough of potatoes! Indeed, Mr. Bompas, it was very rash."

"Recollect the potatoes must come up in their jackets; otherwise-remember-I won't answer for the peace."

"I positively won't let the girls dine with us, to catch the Irish brogue. Oh, dear, dear!"

"Well, they must have a peep at the wild Irishmen over the bannisters. I stipulate for that. Lydia is improving in her singing."

The audible efforts of a fair vocalist in an adjoin­ing apartment occasioned the observation.

"That's Paulina Falcon, my dear, with the music-master."

"Oh, by the by, my dear, the Falcons are all in town, at Freeman's in Harley-street."

"Dear me! just think! and their own daughter not to know any thing about it!"

"Probably they have just as little idea where she is; at all events don't say a word to little Paulina until after our dinner to-morrow; this house is actually an hotel."

"What can I do, my dear?"

"What can I do?"

"I do not understand how other families manage. They must actually turn people out. I'm sure if I was to turn any people out, it ought to be the Falcons; only, indeed, Mrs. Falcon speaks French so beautifully, and is so useful to the girls. Besides, they are such friends of the Freemans.

"Well, I'll go to my brother's chambers."

"And don't forget Mr. Daniel, the magistrate."

"Never fear, and I'll bid him put the riot-act in his pocket."

"Now don't forget;" and good Mrs. Bompas, ex­hausted by a degree of excitement very unusual to her, sank into the drowsiest of all imaginable arm­chairs, billowing with fat cushions, in which guilt itself would have dropped asleep in five minutes. That chair, like most of the furniture in the house, seemed to have been, bought at an auction of the effects of the Castle of Indolence. The matron remained immersed in the

waves of down, alternately dozing and repeating to her­self, "This house is actually an hotel," until the next peal of the knocker announced a new arrival of social pirates, or a batch of relations from the country. Well might Mrs. Falcon say that Bompas's was "the most convenient house in London." But woe to you gen­tlemen and ladies who keep convenient houses! "It would appear;" says the writer on bird-architecture, already quoted, "that in proportion to the convenience of a nest, and the comforts it affords, it is the more liable to be seized upon by those birds who are fond of shelter, but dislike the trouble of procuring it by their own labour."

"My boyish ear still clung to hear Of Erin's pride of yore, Ere Saxon foot had dared pollute Her independent shore. Of chiefs long dead who rose to head Some gallant patriot few, Till all my aim on earth became To strike one blow for you, Dear land- To strike one blow for you." Song of Young Ireland: "Spirit of the Nation" mr. charles bompas's chambers in the temple-irish students at business-descent of mac morris from a shakspearian hero-shakspeare's dishonesty with respect to jack cade- irish hobbies-bucephalus-moore's count for the ice- superiority of the brehon law to the english-irish mists and optical illusions-a novel in law-calf-celtic and saxon hospitality-sudden explosion of the latter-tiger-nach's notion of a london dinner.

the Irish pupils of Mr. Charles Bompas have already been seen sauntering, and heard discoursing in St. James's Park. On the succeeding day, the two students, Mr. Tigernach Mac Morris and Mr. Dominick Moore, might have been found seated, one upon each side of a tall, black, worm-eaten desk, in a chamber not much more luminous than a coal-hole, prosecuting their legal studies, drafting declarations, drawing pleas, and set­tling surrebutters. Tigernach's hair was giving him considerable embarrassment, tumbling down over his

eyes, and occasionally dabbling in the spacious ink-bottle before him, and then sprinkling the paper with the spray of the black sea.

"A liberal occupation this," said Tigernach. " What may your task be this morning, Counsellor Moore?"

"Morning! I thought it midnight. But what am I doing? Declaring in debt against the son of a British peer for a thousand pounds and upwards, due to a tavern-keeper at Oxford for an incredible quantity of turtle, venison, Champagne, claret, fruit, and such lots of ice that I think I must throw in a count for an iceberg. What are you doing? Either in Battery or in Debt, I presume, considering that you come from Connaught."

"Mine is a turtle case, too," replied Mac Morris, with a vivacity unusual to him. "Breach of promise- the old thing-Dove v. Fantail-bill and cross-bill. Fantail plighted his troth to Dove, under the impres­sion that she was as rich as she was fair. He subse­quently found that her face was her fortune-"

"And he broke it."

"Of course he did. You can only hit the sordid Saxon heart with a shaft of gold."

" 'Cupid's best arrow with the golden head,' says Shakspeare."

"A sentiment worthy of a Saxon poet."

"Come, Mac Morris, it is not for you to run down Shakspeare. I presume you are descended from the Captain MacMorris immortalised in the play of 'Henry the Fifth,' as 'a very valiant gentleman,' intrusted by the Duke of Gloster with the direction of the siege of Harfleur."

"I am; but Irish heroism wants no Saxon rhymer to glorify it. However, is it not strange that my an­cestor should be the only Irishman in all the plays of Shakspeare?"

"Pardon me, there is another. Have you forgotten the celebrated demagogue, Mr. John Cade?"

"True, Cade was Irish; but Shakspeare represents him as a Kentishman. I wonder he didn't filch my ancestor, too, and assert that the great Mac Morris was born at Limehouse or Wapping."

"How did it happen that your forefather was only a captain?"

"More of Shakspeare's disparagements!* My ances­tor commanded in chief the Irish brigade that accom­panied Henry V. to France-at the head of our cavalry"-

"Pony-ry is the better word; for if I recollect well the Norman chronicler, Monstrelet, says that the Irish rode adroitly their little mountain horses."

"Yes, it was a small breed, but no such war-horses were ever seen on French ground since."

"Do you know what they were anciently called?"

"No."

"Hobbies. The hobby-horse is Irish. Your ancestor rode a hobby in the times of the Plantagenets, and the race seems not to have degenerated, for you ride a superb one yourself at the present day. Your Repeal is the very Bucephalus of Hobbies."

* Captain, however, was a title of great dignity in old Ireland. An Act of Queen Elizabeth abolished captainships, with a long train of exactions and impositions connected with those anarchic jurisdic­tions.

"False pleasantry, Dominick!-that hobby will ride the Saxon down before many moons go round. The moment I return to Dublin I shall leap on its back, undaunted by your sneers; and since you call it Bucephalus, I suppose I may accept the omen, and consider myself Alexander."

"The Repeal hobby carries better in Ireland than it does here," replied Moore; "so I think you are wise to reserve your wild ride for the other side of the channel."

Dominick might have quoted Moryson in support of this last remark. "The said hobbies," says Moryson, "being bred in the soft ground of Ireland, are soon lamed when they are brought into England."

Perhaps it was some fiction of law that suggested the change of the conversation; but the next time the young pleaders relaxed from their dry toil, poetry was the topic of discussion.

"How do you account," asked Moore, "for the scarcity of Irish poetry? I suppose there is a Celtic explanation of it;-it was not for want of bards, cer­tainly, for there was an immense corporation of them."

"Recollect, the bards were judges, lawgivers, and historians, as well as poets. If you were Lord Chan­cellor of England, First Lord of the Treasury, and Dr. Lingard, all at the same time, your leisure for rhyming would be meagre. Besides, the chroniclers tell us that the destruction of Irish manuscripts by the Saxon barbarians was prodigious; many were torn up by English tailors for their measures."

"I observe," said Moore, "that Moses, the tailor of

the Minories, has established himself in Dublin; probably commissioned by the government to com­plete the havoc of our literary remains."

"Very probably," said Mac Morris, gravely.

"Well," said Moore, "there is no dearth of modern Irish poetry, at all events. Poetica surgit tempestas, as Juvenal has it;-it blows a heavy gale of song just at present. Poetry and politics seem in Ireland to be con­vertible terms. Your poets are politicians, and your politicians poets."

"So it is, and so it ought to be," said the other, "it is the politician's business to realize the poet's dreams. Poetry is but the theory of politics."

"Now for a count," cried Dominick, returning to his labours, without vouchsafing more than a smile in answer to his friend's last observations, "for all the Ice in Nova-Zembla; and Heaven knows it would hardly have been too much to cool all the French wine which this tufted Oxonian seems to have guzzled at the ex­pense of the simpleton who trusted him."

"Dominick, I ask you," said Mac Morris, throwing down his pen fiercely, "is this a pursuit for intellec­tual men?-above all, for men with our Past and our Future?"

"Mounting your hobby?" said Moore, without in­termitting his labours, or raising his eyes from the paper.

"Yes," continued Mac Morris, growing more vehe­ment, jumping down from his stool, and tossing his hair wildly about his temples; "yes, my spirit revolts from this pedantic drudgery. But term will soon be

over, and with it the term of my captivity. I enroll myself in the Young Ireland Club-I throw myself into the Hall of Clamour-"

"Good Tierna, keep your clamour until you go to Dublin. Shall I read you my count for the ice- 'Ten thousand icebergs, ten thousand icicles, ten thousand water-ices, ten thousand cream-ices-to wit, three thousand peach, three thousand pine-apple, &c. &c., by him, the said Gorges Merivale, commonly called the Honourable Gorges Merivale, eaten, drunk, swallowed, imbibed, devoured, and absorbed, in man­ner and form aforesaid, at Oxford aforesaid, in the year of our Lord, and so forth'-copy me that into your book of precedents."

"Collar of Moran! why don't we revive our own incomparable Brehon Law-the most perfect system of jurisprudence that human wit or divine wisdom ever produced? Here are we, Dominick, pent up in this dingy, sunless hole, studying the laws that have enslaved, and the statutes that have ground us to the dust."

"Mr. Bompas's chambers certainly want no Venetian blinds:-I firmly believe that the tenants of this court have about as much ocular acquaintance with the Georgium Sidus as they have with the planet Sol; but, benighted as we are, Mac Morris, I find much that is excellent in the laws you abuse, and a decided im­provement in the spirit and temper of modern legisla­tion."

"You are lynx-eyed."

"No; but my vision is less obscured than yours by the lamentable prejudices of race. You see English

objects only through the mists of your native moun­tains, and our Irish vapours have not the property of illuminating the landscape, or affording the most im­partial view of its details; you may have remarked that, in your roamings through Connemara. God knows that England has sufficiently sinned against us, esti­mating her conduct by the strictest rides of historic truth. Did you see my Tidd?"

"Dominick, would you were a better Celt!"

"I am neither Celt nor Saxon, but a law-student and British citizen of the name of Moore, and I beg to ask you have you eaten my Tidd?"

"There it is, on that lame hunchbacked chair yonder."

"What's this? 'Sybil!'-a novel in Charles Bompas's chambers!"

"Oh, it's mine. Charles Bompas is guiltless of having ever read a work of fancy in his life, except 'Redgauntlet,' for the sake of the case of Peebles versus Plainstanes. Look at it on the third shelf, bound in law-calf, beside Selwyn's 'Nisi Prius.'

"A very proper place for a work of fiction," said Moore. "The count in a declaration comes from the French conte, a tale. I have just produced a tale of an iceberg, and a very romantic one it is."

"There was now a pause for some minutes. Mac Morris pored over the Young England manifesto; and the pleading at which Moore was engaged, advanced with the most admired prolixity, exhausting sweet­meats and running out all the wines.

"The Celt is more hospitable than the Saxon, cer-

tainly," resumed the mercurial Moore, his thoughts being disposed by his present employment to run in a gastronomic channel. "I have been six or seven months in this opulent and luxurious capital, and I have never been served with a writ of invitation to dinner."

"They have all the vices of civilisation without any of the virtues of barbarism," said Mac Morris; "how well the words inhospita tecta tyranni, apply to the houses of the Saxon churls!"

"There is one thing which, on reflection, I must say for them," said Moore; "illustrious law-students as we are, not a family in London knows of our existence. As to Charles Bompas, our worthy master, he is not an entertaining man in any sense of the word-but some­body knocks."

"Another victim of Saxon perfidy, or some patri­cian swindler who wants to pay his tradesman's bills with a special demurrer."

Mac Morris opened the door and admitted Mr. Bompas of Bryanston-square, with whom both the students had a slight acquaintance.

He electrified them by the proposition which he came to make. "Plain dinner in the quiet way- nobody but a distinguished oriental traveller-make Mrs. Bompas appy-begged them to let his bro­ther know he would expect him-half-past six sharp- wind in the south-west-funds steady-a nice country is Hireland-law fine profession-great prizes-very laborious-good morning."

"The deuce, Dominick, what possessed you to ac­cept?" cried Mac Morris, the moment Mr. Bompas dis­appeared.

"Could I refuse to make Mrs. Bompas 'appy?" replied Moore:-"there's something in the wind, though, depend upon it. War with France, perhaps- the policy of conciliation! You heard the compliment to Hireland?"

"Barbarous race!-incapable of speaking their own paltry language!-Make his wife 'appy-I wonder he didn't say his lady. There's one of our lords and mas­ters for you!-By St. Patrick's staff, and St. Bridget's slipper, I'll not dine with him!"

"Oh, come, it's a compact;-were we to recede it would be said we kept no faith with heretics. It would be a set off for the Treaty of Limerick."

"A plain dinner in the quiet way! think of that, Dominick!-The invariable dinner in the house of a London merchant, is a round of beef and a couple of plum-puddings."

"Alarming, no doubt; but I am always curious to observe the manners and customs of foreign nations, so that with courage for our crest, and philosophy and religion for our supporters, I don't consider the case desperate. At the same time, this sudden burst of hos­pitality is singular. If we could see the sky from Bom-pas's windows, I have no doubt we should discern a small black cloud in the west." "I suppose we are in for it." "We are-shall we have a walk in the parks to

invigorate our nerves and whet our appetites? The clerk can throw in the money counts. 'To-morrow! God save the Queen!'"

And the light-hearted Dominick Moore jumped from his perch, twitched his hat from the peg where it hung, and followed by his fiercer and sedater associate, emerged from the eternal dusk of Mr. Charles Bom-pas's chambers into the everlasting twilight of the small smoked quadrangle, where that indefatigable lawyer had plodded and pleaded for thirty years, indulging himself with but one rural excursion in the interval, which was a trip to Scotland, not to admire the Highland scenery, but to visit the locality of the celebrated Auchterarder case.

"Brutus.-I know my hour is come. Vohmnius.-Not so, my lord."

Julius Caesar.

PUNCTUALITY THROWN AWAY-SIXES AND SEVENS--ORIENTAL TRA­VELLERS--REMOVAL OF DOCTORS' COMMONS-MOORE ALARMS THE LADIES-NOTE FROM AN EASTERN TOURIST-AGREEABLE WAYS OF DOROTHY BOMPAS-THE OBJECTIONABLE OLD GENTLEMAN-ICED SOUP AND FROZEN FISH-MOORE UPON WINE AND WATER-AN UNEXPECTED VISITATION.

mr. chatworth was the first arrival at Bryanston-square. As he was the pink of punctuality, he stood under the balcony of Mr. Bompas's drawing-room pre­cisely as his minute French watch, not much bigger than a wafer, pointed with its little finger to six o'clock.

There is no virtue more commonly thrown away than punctuality. It was only Chatworth's glittering even­ing-dress that prevented the servants from taking him for a morning visiter. A fellow in blue and crimson reconnoitred him sceptically; and an impudent page, studded with gold buttons, like a door with brass nails, seemed disposed to ask him had he come to breakfast. The clock in the hall pointed to half-past six, which made the page's impertinence more provoking. The hall was strewn with portmanteaus, great-coats, bags, and umbrellas, like the office of the White Horse

Cellar. "The effects of my cousins," thought Chatworth. He proceeded up stairs; and from the base of the second flight observed a rush of petticoats from the drawing-room, with sundry feminine flutterings, girlish titterings, and the rustle of many muslins. Of course there was nobody to receive him. Mr. Bompas was standing at that moment in Trafalgar-square, leisurely waiting for a Baker-street omnibus; and Mrs. Bompas had made up her mind not to appear until the magistrate was present to keep young Ireland in order. There was nothing for him but to revise his toilet in each looking-glass successively; smell each particular geranium and pelargonium, heliotrope and balsam; then travel through Brockedon's Passes of the Alps; next review all the plain faces in a soi-disant Book of Beauty; and, finally, compare the stories told by three pompous time-pieces with sentimental designs, that ticked in different parts of the room. Cupid and Psyche averred it was seven; Aurora and Tithonus vowed it was near eight; Time handing Truth out of a well, solemnly protested with the point of his golden scythe, that it was past midnight.

Chatworth was just marvelling what tale the clock in the kitchen was telling, when Mr. Dominick Moore was announced, unaccompanied by his friend Mac Morris.

"The author of 'A Day In Jericho,' " said Chatworth to himself, surveying Moore.

"The distinguished oriental traveller," thought Moore, paying the same attention to Chatworth, and confirmed

in his opinion by all the "barbaric pearl and gold" with which the spruce bachelor had decorated his person.

The young Irishman then did precisely the same thing that Chatworth had done; he took the tour of the chronometers, observed audibly-"conflicting tes­timony"-and then looked at his own watch. Chat-worth, on the other hand, found himself reduced to some stuffed humming-birds, in a glass case, which painfully reminded him of other stuffed birds which he would have had greater pleasure just then in criticising, for he was nothing of an ornithologist as long as fowl re­tained their plumage.

"If I don't speak to the Englishman he will never speak to me;" said Moore to himself, and advancing to Chatworth, he hazarded a remark on the hours of eating in the Ottoman empire.

"Did you find them convenient?" asked Chatworth.

"I!"-exclaimed Moore-"I was never further east than the Tower;-but you, I believe-"

"I have travelled further east than you," said Chat-worth, "for I have been at the Tunnel."

"Singular," said Moore laughing, "that we should take one another for oriental tourists, when we are, probably, the only two men in London who have not lounged in the Lebanon, and been bitten by the fleas of Jericho. I was positive that rose in your button-hole was the rose of Sharon."

"Ha, ha," laughed Chatworth,-"I took you for the 'Crescent and the Cross.' "

"And I you for the 'Tiara and the Turban.' "

"Palestine is now the regular lawyer's trip in the long vacation; the caravanseries are become inns of court."

"And Doctors' Commons," said Moore, "is removed to Old Jewry."

"I fear our host has gone crusading with the rest; I was asked for sharp six."

"And I for half-past six, with an acute accent."

"And I for a special seven, and here I am to the minute," said Charles Bompas, the pleader; who had entered the room unperceived, and now joined them, with his watch in his hand.

In a quarter of an hour the Amphitryon made his appearance; another pregnant quarter brought forth Mrs. Bompas, looking exhausted and terrified, as if she gazed on air-drawn shillelaghs, and fancied herself in the heart of Tipperary; and finally came rolling in two great globular Misses Bompas, accompanied by little Paulina Falcon (who looked like a cherry between two melons), all in considerable trepidation, likewise evi­dently caused by Mr. Dominick Moore, who never put his hand in his pocket, but the fair part of the com­pany thought he would pull out a pike, or produce a brace of pistols.

Moore apologised for his friend Mac Morris, who, he said, had been suddenly obliged to leave town for Salis­bury on urgent business, and had requested him to pre­sent Mr. and Mrs. Bompas with his regrets and excuses. In the course of a few minutes, two more apologies were received; one from Mr. Daniel, the magistrate, the other from the author of "A Day in Jericho," written on pa­pyrus, and excusing himself on the ground that he was en-

gaged to a pipe and pilaw party, at the Oriental Club, with forty or fifty authors of eastern trips and travels.

Mr. Bompas displayed this literary curiosity to his guests, and then rang the bell and ordered dinner.

"My dear," exclaimed Mrs. Bompas, "I asked old Mr. Copplestone."

"He asked himself, mamma," said the eldest Miss Bompas, Dorothy by name, an immense fat, white girl, who went swinging about the room like a pet porpoise, kissing her father, mother, uncle, sister, Paulina Falcon, and every thing kissable, except Dominick Moore and Mr. Chatworth, who sometimes thought she would end with kissing them too. Dorothy, however, was a clever girl, acquainted with three "onomys," two "ologies," and an "ism."

"But we never wait for any of the Copplestones," said Bompas.

"No, to be sure, my dear; but I said we dined at seven, and it's only half-past seven now."

"Half-hours count for nothing in this house," thought Chatworth.

"Eight, mamma," said Dorothy, appealing to Cupid and Psyche, and kissing the former through the force of habit.

Dinner, however, was ordered, and before it was announced Mr. Copplestone hobbled in; a most unat­tractive and objectionable old gentleman, seemingly afflicted with a complication of all the maladies that make people charming in the eyes of doctors and apo­thecaries, but proportionally disagreeable to the rest of the world. He was asthmatic, rheumatic, phlegmatic,

apoplectic, cataleptic, and dyspeptic, very lame, very deaf, and very blind. As he limped down stairs, he pulled out a box of pills, and politely asked Moore, would he like a "Cockle?"

"Thank you," said Moore, "I would prefer an oyster just at the present moment;" and the fat Doro thy, who had fallen to him in the lottery of ladies, gracefully giggled, and began to wonder what people found so alarming in a wild Irishman.

The dinner, which had been hot at half-past six, was as cold at eight as a picnic in Nova Zembla. It was not the cook's fault, nor that of Cupid and Psyche; there was nothing to blame but the system of the Bompases, who seemed, nevertheless, to fancy that it was their particular talent and vocation to give dinners. Burgess, Ude, and Grignon-all the ability of the Trois Freres-the genius of the Rochers de Cancales-the science of the Cafe de Paris-could have done nothing in, a house where chronology and arithmetic were so contemptuously treated; where every guest had a separate hour; and the number of the company, up to the latest moment, was an indeterminate problem.

The soup suggested frozen images, and the conver­sation turned upon ices and iced things.

Chatworth protested, when the fish came, that salmon was only worth eating in the Polar Seas, and told a story of Captain Parry, and an anecdote of a walrus.

"Mr. Moore, take a glass of Champagne with me," cried Bompas, driven from the cuisine, and wisely falling back on the cellar.

"With pleasure," said Moore, praying that the wine might prove as cool as the soup.

"You are not a teetotaller, though I believe Mac Morris is," said the lawyer to his pupil.

"In the cause of Matthew versus Bacchus," replied Moore, "Mac Morris is for the plaintiff, and I'm for the defendant. Mac Morris is a debauchee in cold water; goes to Donnybrook Fair for the sake of the brook itself. For my part, I could dispense with water alto­gether; managing to shave with mulled hock. The Rhine and Rhone are charming rivers; but I prefer their wines to their waters."

"But you approve of temperance, sir, I hope," said the timorous Mrs. Bompas, alarmed by Moore's strain, and recollecting all the tales she had ever heard of fighting and frolic.

"I do," said Moore, "when temperance keeps itself sober; but I confess I don't go with the stream that is running just now. Mrs. Bompas, may I have the honour of taking wine with you?-will you take Cham­pagne?"

As this was said in a gay, social, quiet way, it began to dispel good Mrs. Bompas's fears of an Irish row; but a storm was gathering in another point of the compass. She had scarcely raised the sparkling glass to her lips, when a thundering knock shook the house, and made the plate ring on the sideboard. Even deaf old Mr. Copplestone distinctly heard it.

"What unseasonable hours people take for visiting!" ejaculated Mrs. Bompas nervously, almost dropping the glass from her hands.

81

"Probably my good woman and the boys," said Mr. Copplestone; and a shudder ran through the company, at the idea of the wife and children of such a very objec­tionable father.

"Whoever they are, they are executing their habere and taking possession," said Bompas, the lawyer; and in a moment the door was thrown open, and a servant announced-

"Mr. and Mrs. Falcon, the Misses Falcon, and Master Falcon."

Moore was amazed; but Chatworth, who took the delight of a naturalist in studying the habits of rare birds of the parasitical species, forgot the cold soup in the excess of his satisfaction.

"You must double your guard, my lord, for, on my knowledge, There are some so sharp-set as not to be kept out By a file of musketeers; and 'tis less dangerous, I'll undertake, to stand at push of pike, With cannon playing on us, than to stop One harpy, your perpetual guest, from entrance."

Massinger.

ADVICE TO HARPIES-THE GIPSY'S DOCTRINE OF HOSPITALITY- HOME, SWEET HOME-ANECDOTE OF VOLTAIRE-MRS. FALCON DIS­COVERS AN ISLAND-HER POOR PETS-ADDITIONAL TOUCHES OF THE FAIR EMILY-IRISH NAMES AND NICKNAMES-THE POLITICAL PICTURESQUE-GALLOW-GLASSES AND WOOD-KERNS-MRS. FALCON IS GRATIFIED BY MOORE'S ACCOUNT OF IRELAND.

"Now, dear Mrs. Bompas," cried the gipsy, "are we not the most impudent people in the world? Now do confess we are. This is all my doing, I assure you. Falcon wanted to dine at home; but I could not think of being two days in town without coming to this dear house; the dear Bompases, as we always call you. Then I proposed to dine with you in the family way- enceinte, as the French say." This unintentional pic­ture of the speaker's actual situation produced an effect on the company that may be imagined. "The chil­dren were delighted; they are always so happy here; I often say they prefer it to home; so, here we are, such a mob of us."

Chatworth thought of the swell mob; but he could

not but admire the conduct of Mrs. Falcon, particularly when he contrasted it with the behaviour of her more scrupulous and less intrepid husband. The Gipsy incorporated herself with the company in an instant, while the Red Rover stood bowing, stammering, hesitating, protesting, and making absurd and inconsistent excuses; just as if a pirate were to jump on the deck of a prize, sword in hand, then suddenly take a fit of re­morse and sink from a Paul Jones into a Paul Pry, with "I hope I don't intrude," instead of a cut at the captain's throat. In cases of intrusion, like the present, the only course the intruders can take to palliate the enormity of the outrage, is to slip as quietly and speedily as possible into the agitated circle, and endeavour by easy impudence to efface as speedily as they can, the broad line of distinction which society in, drawing between the enlisted guest and the volunteer.

"Dear Mrs. Falcon, this is so good of you," said Mrs. Bompas, looking miraculously gracious, as she rose in her languid way to welcome the nomadic tribe. But the happy person on the occasion was little Paulina, who jumped about her parents and kissed them as if she had never expected to see them more. Then she made the same demonstrations of joy towards her sisters and small brother, embracing them as if they had just returned from Australia. In fact, she had not seen any of them for a long time, and had a vast deal of childish tenderness bottled up, which now gushed forth, like Champagne escaping from the flask.

“What will you eat?” said Bompas, addressing the new arrivals generally.

Falcon muttered something about an early dinner, and said; "I'll just pick the back-bone of a chicken," looking like the hungriest wolf in the Pyrenees.

"Don't be foolish, Mr. Falcon," said his intrepid wife; "you know you have not dined; there's nothing to be ashamed of, I'm sure, in dropping in to see one's dear old friends in this quiet way-now, is there, dear Mrs. Bompas?"

"Oh, no, no, indeed, quite the contrary."

"Falcon is always so modest and sheepish; but I say there is as much real hospitality, and twice as much domestic enjoyment, in this sort of thing as in giving solemn stupid dinners one's-self, that nobody cares to come to. But I do believe I am the most domestic wo­man in the world."

Chatworth looked at Bompas, and Bompas looked at Chatworth.

"What will you eat, Mrs. Falcon?"

"I'll have some of that roast veal with a slice of ham.

As to the Falcon girls and Willy, their sister Paulina scarcely allowed any body to pay them any attention but herself.

"More chicken, Willy?-Emily has got no veal- Dorothy Bompas, help Lucy to peas. Oh, mamma, I have been so attentive to my singing-I can sing 'Home sweet Home.' "

"Another commerce of glances took place between Bompas and Chatworth.

"And I hope, my love," said Mrs. Falcon, sotto voce, "you have not neglected your dancing."

"Mamma, there's no dancing-master," whispered Paulina, plaintively; "do make Mrs. Bompas get a dancing-master."

"Really, Mr. Bompas, this is taking your house by storm," said Falcon, laying down his knife and fork, after eating a prodigious dinner.

"An Englishman's house is his castle," replied the benignant host, "and castles are made to be stormed."

"A new version of the maxim," said Chatworth.

"A very hospitable one," said Falcon.

"Mr. Falcon, take a glass of Madeira? Mr. Moore will join us."

"Do you remember the story of Voltaire and the abbe?" said Chatworth.

"No; what is it?"

"The abbe used to visit Voltaire at the Chateau of Ferney, and his visits were visitations. 'M. l'Abbe,' said Voltaire, one morning, 'how do you differ from Don Quixote?' 'I can't guess,' said the abbe. 'Why, sir, the Don mistook an inn for a castle, and you mis­take a castle for an inn.' "

Falcon was a hardened moss-trooper, or he would have felt this palpable hit, which Chatworth, however, had no right to make, as it was no castle of his that was stormed.

"Mrs. Falcon, you and I must have a glass of Cham­pagne," said Bompas, with redoubled cordiality.

"And where are you now?" asked the mother Bompas.

"I really can hardly say where we are; in fact, we are nowhere. You know the life Mr. Falcon leads me.

If we are in one place more than another, we are at poor Mrs. Freeman's in Harley-street."

It is impossible to conjecture what the gipsy might proceeded to say of the family in whose house she lodged, had not Mrs. Bompas seasonably presented "poor Mrs. Freeman's" brother, Mr. Richard Chatworth.

"I call all my pets poor," said the imperturbable Mrs. Falcon, beaming in her most gracious manner on the gentleman introduced to her. “I always say, the poor Freemans, the poor Horngreens, and the poor Bom-pases.”

"And I have often heard my sister speak of the poor Falcons," said Chatworth.

Moore, who was fond of humour, beauty, and Champagne, was now enjoying himself thoroughly, recollecting Virgil's harpies, and contrasting the fright­ful Celaeno with the charming Mrs. Falcon. Moore's taste in beauty was more for midsummer than for spring, and the gipsy fascinated him even more than her daugh­ters. She had, perhaps, never looked better in her life than she did upon the present occasion. It was nothing to Moore who owned the guipure on her neck, the red cashmere shawl that tumbled obligingly off one of her shoulders, or the braid of pearls that wreathed her Egyptian brow; she realised his dream of Cleo­patra, and he thought her the most superb brunette he had ever seen. Some time elapsed before he paid either of her girls the attention they deserved, or recognised in Emily the lovely girl whom he and Tigernach had met only the day before in St. James's

Park. He now observed that her beauty was of a serious cast; that "the music breathing in her face" was of a pensive, perhaps a dreamy character. With­out pretending to any remarkable penetration, he thought he could discover in the sweet composure of her coun­tenance, the blue depths of her eye, the soft but earnest melody of her voice, the serenity of her whole de­meanour, and the severe yet elegant purity of her dress (without a gem on her white robe, or a flower in her golden hair), a something, he knew not what, that was not common-that was even more than intellectual; something refined and spiritual, that strikingly distin­guished her from her mother and sisters, handsome as they all were; and which he found it difficult to recon­cile with what he had already suspected to be the prin­ciples and practices of the family at large.

The same difficulty, indeed, occurred to every one who knew Emily Falcon, and the more she was known the more the wonder grew, that in the wayfaring life she had led, so little, or rather nothing of the soil of vulgar life had clung to her. She resembled a lovely flower discovered on the face of a barren crag, where it was strange to find, and hazardous to pluck it.

Still, perhaps, Moore would not have entered into conversation with her, had he not been accidentally seated at her side. The gipsy happening to mention that her husband was proposing to "drag her over to Ireland"-she, poor thing, who so dearly loved a quiet and settled life!-Irish affairs were talked of; and as one thing leads to another in desultory table-talk, re­marks were made upon Irish names, and Mr. Charles

Bompas observed, that he never met so strange a name as that of his pupil Mac Morris-Tigernach." "It smacks of the jungle-does it not?" said Moore.

Emily's curiosity was raised, and she asked Moore whether the name of his friend was a common one amongst the aborigines of Ireland. "Not very common, but it is not so terrible as it looks; it is soft to the ear, though it looks so intimidating on paper; we pronounce it Tierna. Our Celtic names look wild, but they don't sound so roughly."

"On the contrary," replied Miss Falcon, "Tierna is pleasing-something Italian."

"There, too, is Ollavh Fodhla, our royal sage (wiser than ten Solomons),-the pronunciation is Ollav Folla-it would do in a song. But talking of names, my friend's father has got one still stranger than even Tigernach;-what do you think of Shane Mc Ever-Boy Mac Morris? His friends call him Ever-Boy for brevity, although the most of them have time enough on their hands to give him his full title."

"Dear me," exclaimed Emily, "Ever-Boy!-that is so singular!"

"Why the name suits him wonderfully well; for he's as young at sixty as he was at sixteen; but Boy of Buidhe, means yellow, or auburn; the Yellow, or Yellow-haired Mac Morris. He has, however, an­other appellation which will surprise you still more: he is styled Mac Morris of the Unchristened Hand."

"How strange!"

"It was an ancient custom, you must know, Miss Falcon, amongst us polite Celts, after we condescended

to become Christians, to leave the right hand unbap-tised, that being thus (as we maintained) relieved from pious responsibilities, it might strike a more ungracious blow in fight. In the Mac Morris family the custom is kept up to this day. There is an account of it in an old English writer, Campion."

"Is Mr. Tiger-Tierna's hand unchristened?" asked Emily.

"Yes; it makes his Puseyite friends at the Temple very uneasy; they go for total immersion."

Moore now took wine with his fair neighbour, and grew more conversational. Emily asked him several questions about Ireland, evincing by her inquiries and observations that the subject interested her, and that her attention had been already directed towards it. Dominick told her anecdotes of old customs, described remarkable places, and drew humorous sketches of public men. The picturesque in politics insensibly mingled with the picturesque in nature. The scenery of the Galtees brought reminiscences of Captain Rock; the natural wealth of the plains and valleys of Munster led by the association of contrast to the unnatural des­titution of their inhabitants; the charming scenery of Kerry involved an account of O'Connell; and the wilder features of Connemara conducted the conver­sation back to Tierna Mac Morris and Young Ireland.

"In other parts of Ireland," said Moore, "the wealth of the soil, and the poverty of the husbandman are painfully and fearfully contrasted, but in the western highlands, my friend's country, Nature and man seem more in unison; both are attractively wild, and the

barrenness of the mountains corresponds with the indi­gence of the mountaineer. I often compare the sterile sublimity of Connemara with the magnificent unproductiveness of my friend Mac Morris's speculations, a superb chain of fancies, like the scenery of the clouds at sunset."

Moore then spoke of his absent fellow-student with affectionate fervour, and enlarged upon his talents and enthusiasm, touching the extravagant points of his cha­racter without ridicule, and sketching his personal cox­combries without caricature or satire. The pale countenance-the profuse black hair-the sentimental fero­city of the eye and the lip-recalled the form she had, on the previous day, encountered in the park; and Emily Falcon had no hesitation in identifying the friend of Moore with the dramatic figure which she had likened to St. Just. She made the remark to her father in an under-tone, and Moore, who was equally struck by the felicity of the similitude, and by the singularity of its having first occurred to the girl beside him, could not help inquiring if she admired the revolutionary chief whose name she had mentioned.

Emily coloured slightly, but replied with her charm­ing frankness, that she thought there was much roman-tic interest in the character and portrait of St. Just, drawn by Mr. Carlyle in his work on the French Revo­lution. Moore perceived that he had made the acquaint­ance of a hero-worshipper; the blush, slight as it was, satisfied him that she was not a blue-stocking. "Oh, you have no notion how romantic Emily is," exclaimed the gipsy-mother, joining the conversation in

her unceremonious abrupt way; "I often tell her she will marry Blue-Beard, or St. George and the Dragon."

"How can you say so, mamma?" cried Emily, now blushing decidedly, and justly displeased at this not very flattering account given of her to a stranger.

"Ireland is the country for heroes," said Dominick, and then checked himself, seeing that Miss Falcon dis­liked the turn the conversation had taken.

However, it was not easy to keep Mrs. Falcon quiet. She again exclaimed, "Oh, indeed, Mr. Moore, it was a countrywoman of yours made Emily so sentimental; she met her in Scotland two or three years ago. I knew an Irishman myself once; he was a count-I quite forget his name-Count O something-but he was a very handsome man, and very highly connected-lie avec toutes lespotences de l'Europe?

"Puissances" whispered Emily, colouring as she in­stinctively, but vainly, corrected her mother's French.

Dominick could not guess who the Irish noble was, who had the honour of moving in so high a sphere as the scaffolds of the continent, but he said,

"I presume the count was a gallow-glass" and then he entertained Emily again with an account of the ancient gallow-glasses, and wood-kernes; whence he was led into the history of a variety of ancient manners and customs, such as coshering, coigne and livery, cuddles, and night-suppers. Mrs. Falcon, true to her freebooting character, was infinitely charmed by the account Moore gave of the system of coshering or living at large on society, using other peoples' houses as your own, and making yourself as comfortable and luxurious

as possible at the expense of your kindred and acquaintance.*

"It must be positively delightful," she said. "I had no idea Ireland was so lovely a country-really people have very mistaken notions-I hope coshering and night-suppers are not gone out of fashion," "Why, they have fallen a little into disuse," said Dominick, "but my friend Mr. Tierna Mac Morris is going over to Ireland in a few days to revive that and twenty more charming barbarian usages."

The separation of the sexes now took place, after the custom of England, which is the law of the land. The gentleman adhered to the dinner-table and their claret--the ladies retired to their drawing-room and their tea; the fair fat Dorothy availing herself of the opportunity to kiss all her visitors as they successively passed her, and then making her exit, kissing her mother, as if she had never kissed her before.

The jug went round with the rosy wine, and Mr. Bompas repeated his regret that he had not had the pleasure Mac Morris's company.

*An Act of Henry VI. was made against night-suppers, or cuddies, lawless festivities indulged in (particularly in time of harvest) by the Irish captains, marchers, and gallow-glasses, with their wives, daughters, pages, and sons, at the expense, and often to the ruin, of the husbandmen and tenants of the soil, who, it would appear, were so un-Irish as not to enter into the spirit and fun of those nocturnal gaities--probably because they "paid the piper." The revival of customs at once so pleasant and picturesque, is evidently a project worthy of the young Celtic statesmen of the day. "Coigne and livery" was a usage still more uncivilised and extortionate. Sir John Davis was of opinion that Beelzebub might have borrowed it with advantage for the improvement of Pandemonium. Perhaps in the custom still prevalent in Dublin of giving money to the servants of the house where you dine may be detected a trace of the barbarous practice of coin and livery.

"Is your friend a poet, Mr. Moore?"

"No-except in his politics. There's nothing wilder or dreamier in German romance, than the projects of Young Ireland."

"Too much occupied with his political engagements to remember his dinner ones."

"I don't think he can have any political business at Salisbury," said Moore.

"Perhaps he has gone down to excite young Wilts," said Chatworth.

"Does Mac Morris stand high in the opinion of his party?" asked Charles Bompas.

"He is the Coningsby of Ireland," replied Moore.

"Perhaps he is in love, like Coningsby,-some beauty of Salisbury-eh?"

"If he is in love, it is with an ideal mistress-and why should not a young Numa have his Egeria as well as an old one?"

"Don't you think, had he been here to-day, his ideal mistress might have been realised?" said Bompas apart to Moore.

"I think his Egeria could not take a more attractive shape," Moore answered, "but a Saxon nymph in a Celtic grotto would be treason to the principle of na­tionality."

"Is the prejudice so very strong?"

"As strong as human folly, which is the strongest thing I know, let fools say what they will of wisdom. I have immense faith in the rising generation of fools and coxcombs."

"What do you mean by the principle of nationality?" asked the lawyer, a sensible man, but one who knew little of what went on in the world beyond the precincts of Westminster Hall and the Inns of Court.

"Ireland for the Irish," replied Moore, "Wales for the Welch, Sark for the Sarkians, and the Scilly Isles for the Scilly people; the principle of confusion opposed to the principle of fusion; the best of all imaginable systems to reduce the human race below the monkey, to the level of the Yahoo."

"The thing is fortunately impracticable," said Mr. Bompas, the ex-senator. "I always considered the division of the world itself into nations a serious evil."

"So far from saying Ireland for the Irish, Scotland for the Scotch, and England for the English; I should say Ireland for the English, England for the Irish, Scotland for Irish and English, and-but there is not much occasion to dissuade the Scotch from sticking too close to Scotland.

"We are all relations--all one imperial family," said the lawyer.

"All cousins-eh, Bompas?" said Chatworth, laughing.

"Faith, I believe so," replied Bompas, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. "Pass the bottle, Mr. Falcon."

In the drawing-room they found the two Bompas girls vigorously belabouring the piano, and extorting the most discordant sounds from the tortured instrument.

"Did you ever see a pair of globes?" whispered Chatworth to Moore, alluding to the graceful figures of the young ladies.

"But I never heard the music of the spheres before," replied Moore.

"Your daughters are lovely," said the flattering gipsy to Mrs. Bompas.

''Dorothy is not come out yet-would you believe it?" said the fat, fond mother.

"She will make such a sensation!" said Mrs. Falcon.

"She ought to come out in numbers," said Chatworth sotto voce. "She is too voluminous for a single publi­cation."

"Miss Falcon has not forgot her singing, I hope," said Mr. Bompas.

"Emily, my dear, sing something for Mr. Bompas," said the gipsy.

Miss Falcon obeyed, selecting

"Blow, blow, thou wintry wind," &c.

the exquisite strain of Amicus in " As You Like It."

"Your daughter has a voice to create a soul under the ribs of death," said Chatworth, who understood vocal music, to Mr. Falcon, who stood behind Emily, exulting in her performance, which was indeed admi­rable.

"Or under yours, Charles," said Mr. Bompas to his brother the lawyer, "and that would be quite as mira­culous."

"Who is Sylvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she, The heavens such grace did lend her."

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

HOW EMILY DIFFERED FROM DESDEMONA-INFERENCES FROM HER EYES-READINGS IN THE BOOK OF LIVING BEAUTY-EMILY'S AC-QUAINTANCE WITH MARY TALBOT-THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE DYING-THE MOON AND THE OLD CASTLE-THE MOUNTAIN GRAVE-THE HOUSE OF THE HEARTLESS, AND WHO DELIVERED MISS FALCON FROM IT.

moore's conversation was airy without frivolity, and instructive without being didactic. The lively sketches he drew of Irish scenery and society, mingled with serious touches, alternately of sympathy and satire according as he spoke of the sufferings and grievances of the people or the follies and delinquencies of their chiefs and rulers, failed not to make a deep impression upon the thoughtful and imagina­tive girl to whose ear they were addressed. There was something about Emily Falcon of the old-world freshness and intense yet delicate enthusiasm of Shakspeare's most romantic female characters, his Helenas, his Rosalinds, his Mirandas; but, perhaps, her girlish admiration of the heroic and chivalrous strain in the

other sex made her still more resemble Desdemona,- she who shunned

"The wealthy curled darlings of her nation,"

and shocked the formal Roderigo by

"Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes

To an extravagant and wheeling stranger."

This comparison had occurred to Moore, when he observed how "seriously" she "inclined" to the wilder and more fantastic features, both physical and moral, of his picture of Ireland, particularly the romantic schemes and aspirations of the youthful patriots of the day; but there was this obvious difference, which he was equally quick in noting, namely, that the fair Englishwoman was not charmed, like the lovely Vene­tian, by the teller of the wondrous tale, but only by the tale itself, which would, doubtless, have been more be­witching had Mac Morris been the chronicler as well as the hero.

It is possible, nay, probable, that had Miss Falcon received a stricter education, and had the characters and roving life of her parents been as favourable to the form­ation of her judgment as they were to the play of the imaginative faculties (which are themselves of the va­grant and gipsy strain), the ludicrous points of the political sketches which Moore dashed off for her en­tertainment, would have produced their due effect;-but disciplined or undisciplined as she was,-with an en­thusiastic temperament and quick sense of truth and beauty, exulting in the creations of poetry and idola­trous of the works of nature, with affections pure and

elevated, that gave her tears for all who suffer and smiles for all who sympathise with suffering, predisposed too (from, circumstances subsequently to be explained), to regard with tender interest everything connected with the history and fate of Ireland,-what was to be less marvelled at than that she should confound the political Quixotism, which was there so rife, with the wise, patriotic spirit, which was so uncommon? that a girl like her should fall into such an error, was just as natural as that she should court acquaintanceship with the wild charms of Kerry, or the more savage at­tractions of Connemara. The idea of youthful patriotism-of a youthful patriot rather (for imagination loves the singular number-to separate a solitary figure from the group, and array it with all the qualities of its compeers)--the idea, in fact, of young Mac Morris, so poetically handsome, so heroically moulded, with that frenzied eye and those impassioned locks, sweeping like a storm to the defence of a lovely and an outraged land, possessed itself of Emily's fancy, there to be contemplated with intellectual rapture, only too convertible (as many a tale told by old experience testifies) into more perilous delight. As to the freaks and extravagances of the party of which our young Celtic enthusiast was certainly the best representative that could have been returned to the parliament of Fancy, Emily was just as little minded to treat them with disrespect as was the hero-worshipping daughter of Brabantio to ridicule Othello's tale of the Anthropophagi. She would as soon have smiled at a comet for its eccentricity, or upbraided a meteor with its irregular streaming to the gale.

A few touches have been already given of Miss Fal­con's personal attractions, and a certain pensive expres­sion was noticed as one of the traits of her quiet but exquisite style of beauty. It was not melancholy-not at all-but a deep and tender seriousness, related not very remotely to that mood of mind. It was visible in her eyes, which looted as if they had wept, without the tears having dimmed their lustre; and even more perceptible in her voice, which was spoken music, a low, deep, clear murmuring voice, which, when it sang, was only more powerful, not sweeter, and in its most delicious warblings had an under-current of sadness in unison with the spirit of her beauty. To those who read the story of woman in the favour of her countenance, and the breath of her lips, the thought would just suggest itself that at some period of the fair girl's existence, brief as it had been, care had crumpled a rose-leaf in her pillow, or haply stung her with a thorn: she had been a spirit of charity in some house of mourning, a fair paraclete by some bed of sorrow, or she had sat and watched the fading of some beloved face, and dropped a tear and a flower upon some untimely tomb.

And there was a passage in her life connected with her romantic attachment to Ireland, which supported the inference drawn from her charms.

A few years before the present period (when she had not counted quite sixteen summers) Emily had been sent on a vagrant expedition, of her mother's proposal and contrivance (to suit some temporary convenience of roving life), to the house of a relation, in Scotland, a cold, austere, unfeeling woman, by whom she was re-

ceived with scarce the forms or affectation of hospita­lity. It was there her unexpected lot to perform the last offices of tenderness in the sick-room of an interesting girl, some years older than herself, labouring under a tedious disorder, which had at length been pronounced incurable. This poor girl, an orphan, named Mary Talbot, was not a temporary intruder, like Emily; it was her severer fate to drink the cup of absolute de­pendency, and she had now nearly drained it to the lees. It was just at the time of Emily's arrival that such medical skill as had been employed had pronounced the case hopeless, and unremitting attention to the patient having been strictly enjoined, Miss Falcon found herself required, partly by her inhuman relative, but more by the dictates of that humanity of which her relative had none, to discharge the anxious and unceasing duties of a nurse-tender, before she had once bounded on those heathered hills with whose charms magic poetry, and still more enchanting prose, had so inflamed her. But she could not have set out on the most ravishing excursion in the Highlands with half the heart with which she undertook the agonising office of tending the dying girl. It was a period of gloom, anxiety, and sorrow; but the very agony and hopelessness of her duties heightened their interest, and she grew every day more and more devoted to the perishing object of her care. The case­ment of the apartment, when her pale and tremulous hand withdrew a curtain, opened upon scenery the most picturesque in the Perthshire mountains; there would Emily sit and record to her fading listener the

varying glories of the landscape, as the motion of the sun, the passing of the clouds, or the dispersion of a mist before the breeze, diversified its splendid features. Thus there grew that harmony between them that springs from a common worship of nature, a common gift of understanding her language, and sucking sweet divinity from her flowers. There is, perhaps, no other bond save that of love that knits human hearts so close; and love itself is often born of this sympathy, and al­ways ennobled and strengthened by it.

But sad is the friendship contracted at the grave­side-an union to be severed as soon as formed-a seed­time to be followed by no harvest.

It was spring when the gentle Emily first sat by that high window, marking and describing every moutain-change-the historian of tints, and the chronicler of clouds. The year advanced, ripening the hues of the flowers and swelling the foliage of the woods, until the fulness came of summer-time, when the sun stands still to glory in his works, and contemplate young autumn bursting from the beauty-teeming womb of beauty. Ah! within that chamber, how different was the law of change! There was nature exhibiting the sad pheno­mena of decay, the fading tint, the daily-wasting form, the eye growing dim, the cheek hollow,-a spectacle old as the world; a sight to be seen in every street, in every house; but one to which humanity will never be inured, which will ever be contemplated with fresh agony and new horror. Emily had scarce even heard before of death, and now the grim shadow, mightier than all substances, sat almost palpable on the other

side of the couch, mocking her anxieties, scoffing at her useless toils. Autumn, too, began to pass away, and then nature seemed to be working within and with­out on the same destroying principle; the sympathised with the languishing frame and paling countenance; and Emily loved October more than June, for the declining month seemed to feel for her patient, and to be pining with her.

Still the vespers of late autumn, when the leaves are sere and yellow, are charming in the Scottish Highlands; and especially picturesque, when the full-moon pours a tide of silver or golden light upon the mountain tops, or down into the deep valleys. On one memorable evening of this lovely character, Emily occupied her accustomed seat of observation, conversing in a dove-like murmur with the sick girl, who occa­sionally made a remark in her faint voice, or asked a question. She was so placed as to see the summits of the opposite hills, which were now mingled with fantastic piles of vapour, forming together one huge castellated structure, of which the purple sides of the mountain were the walls, and the clouds the battle-ments and towers. The scene melted away, and the broad disc of the moon was revealed, just risen behind a grove of larch that crested the hill, with their tops now bathed in light. The living and the dying both rejoiced in silence, beholding the sacred beauty of the scene. The planet mounted the sky in her solemn state, like a vestal going up the hill of the Capitol to worship, and soon she was to be seen from the couch no longer.

"I see her no more," said the wasting girl.

"I shall soon lose her, too," said Emily.

"You will often see her again," replied Mary.

"We shall often see her together, dearest," said her tender nurse, in her cheeriest strain.

"Ah! no, my good Emily; I shall soon be beyond even her sphere. But tell me, have her beams fallen upon the ruined castle?"

Emily looked, and answered that they had; then she painted the effect of the pale light upon the gray fragment of the antique building, which stood boldly upon a rocky platform, halfway up an eminence to the right, between two tufts of wood, which seemed detached from the general plantation to frame the pic­ture of the ruin.

"That ruin always interests you, Mary."

"It reminds me of one with which I was familiar in Ireland."

"You are not Irish?" said Emily, inquiringly.

"Half Irish," said Mary; "my mother was Irish. I love Ireland, and call it my country. There alone do I possess a friend."

Emily flew to the speaker's side; they were both in tears.

"Say not so, dear Mary!"

"Forgive me, Miss Falcon-forgive me, Emily- you are good to me, divinely good; but why should you love me?-why should I expect it?"

"Oh! I should be a monster not to love you!" cried Emily; "you are good-you are true-you

love those mountains and that moon as I do-you are unfortunate--you are sick. Oh! what would I be if I did not love with all my heart?"

Mary threw her arms about Emily's neck; wept in silence; then sank back exhausted by the burst of feeling. There was a pause, a mutual wiping of tears, and an interchange of smiles and murmurs more than supplied the place of words.

The patient was the first to renew the dialogue; she said, in a tone scarcely audible,

"Under that sweet sky, I have none but you now to care for me."

"I know you are an orphan," said Emily; "but you spoke just now of a friend you had in Ireland."

"A friend of my mother's;-what would I not give to see him once more."

"Does he know of your illness?"

"Some time ago I wrote to him. He could not have been in Ireland, or he would have been at my side ere this."

"Trust me, he will come; but you must now repose; I fear you have been excited over much."

But the days and the nights passed, and Mary Talbot's Irish fried failed to verify Emily's prediction. They passed amongst the sad details of medicine that hoped not to cure, and all the harrowing incidents of a fruitless struggle with mortality.

With soft hand on the pillow, velvet foot on the floor, and warbling voice in the ear, Emily discharged to the last, her amiable ministry; and when at length

came the inevitable hour, she felt not that she was released from afflicting duties, but that she had lost a beloved friend.

They had been conversing together (as they now frequently did) on the subject of Ireland; and Mary Talbot had been speaking of its beauties, and again re­peated that she loved it as her country. Emily said she would always be interested in Ireland for her friend's sake.

The voice of the sick girl now grew fainter, but still she spoke. She seemed to speak of feelings against Ireland, and prejudices against the Catholic religion, by which she herself or her mother (it was uncertain which) had been sufferers; and at the same time she placed her pale hand upon a bible that lay upon the couch, as if she meant to intimate a meek opinion that the feelings she alluded to were not in harmony with the precepts of the sacred volume. She then appeared to sleep, and Emily sat by her side in silence;-but she had conversed with Mary Talbot for the last time.

Her remains were deposited beneath the turf upon the side of the mountain, in an old churchyard, not far from the gray ruin which was one of her latest objects of interest. On the second day after her interment, a grave, elderly man, habited in black, arrived in the neighbourhood and made inquiries, by the replies to which he was painfully affected: he turned abruptly away, and walked towards the cemetery upon the hill. He entered, and at the side of a new-raised monument of the green sod he saw a young and lovely girl kneeling, her hands full of autumnal flowers,

her hair streaming on her shoulders, and "now and then an ample tear trilling down her delicate cheek." As he gazed, she strewed her floral offerings on the grave, and looked up to Heaven, as if she dreamed that the odour of her gifts would go up there, too, and mix with that of the everlasting flowers. When she rose to depart, the grave gentleman confronted her, and the tears in his eyes rendered introduction super­fluous. But few words were interchanged. The stran­ger sought the minister of the parish, and Emily re­turned to a house that she abhorred. But her deliver­ance came speedily: her Irish acquaintance visited her the following day, learned from her own lips every thing but her own sufferings and devotion, and gathering her anxiety to return to her parents, he proffered his ser­vices to conduct her to Liverpool, and never was an, offer more cheerfully accepted.

The parting from her relation was in keeping with the previous conduct of that heartless woman. She dismissed the lovely and tender girl with an embrace without love, and a gift without affection. Emily endured the former; but as she crossed a rude bridge that spanned a torrent at a short distance from the house of the heartless, she flung the odious present into the stream. It sank glittering into the pool, not unmarked by her sedate companion, who seemed unobservant of the action, but quickly divined its motive and its spirit.

the SUN-BURST was, of which she found such frequent mention in modern Irish minstrelsy. Moore informed her that it was the Labarum, or Oriflamme of ancient Ireland,-the banner called in Irish Gall-Grena, or the standard of the sun, under which the national force called the Fianna Eireanne, never took the field but to conquer.

"The first time I myself ever heard of the Sun­burst," said Dominick, "for I am no great Celtic anti­quary, was from my friend Mac Morris one night ex­claiming in his sleep, that he would unfurl it to the wind upon Tara-hill, and summon all the chivalry of Ireland to assemble round it. My friend is a little wild at times, particularly in his dreams!"

"Is not wildness one of the characters of greatness?" asked Emily, with a timidity caused by the very bold­ness of the thought she expressed.

"I distinguish," said Moore, "between wildness and courage-the difference is the same as between chivalry and Quixotism. Mac Morris would encounter a real foe as gallantly as any man, but then returning from the field, he would be equally ready to tilt with the first windmill he met. However, I would readily par­don a romantic soldier; my objection, Miss Falcon, is to a political knight-errant."

"How does it happen that you and Mr. Mac Morris differ so much in politics, such intimate friends as you are?"

"I am not so fanciful as he is, and I have not got so retentive a memory by many degrees."

"I don't understand you," said Emily.

"I am apter than Mac Morris to forget the past, and my policy is rather to employ the present than to dream of the future. There are but two of the mental faculties exercised at present in Ireland-the memory and the imagination. Those who are not occupied with the irremediable past are equally busy with an unattainable future. The country is divided between the subjects of King Dathi, and those of Queen Mab. Now, I am neither an antiquary nor a poet in my politics; my friend Tigernach is both. He passes his days in Celtic recollections, and his nights in Celtic dreams. He is so industrious a visionary that I call him an Active-Supine."

"How can intellectual activity be properly termed indolence, Mr. Moore?"

"The fat bard in the Castle of Indolence is all activity in the shadowy world where he dwells.

'Ten thousand glorious systems would he build,

Ten thousand great ideas filled his mind.' "

"But why should memory be a fault in a politi­cian?"

Moore smiled, and proceeded to explain his mean-ing.

"Don't understand me to condemn the study of history, or undervalue its use. But history is abused when it is cultivated with a vindictive spirit to stimulate the passions, not to direct the judgement; when its records are searched for precedents of violence and folly; when we refer to its fountains, not to water the flowers of peace, but to revive the drooping weeds of bigotry and strife. I would resort to the books of

profane, as to those of sacred history, for light, Miss Falcon, not for fire."

"But the wrongs of your country, sir-" said Emily, and suddenly paused, embarrassed by the thought that there was something almost amounting to absurdity in the part she was taking in this unexpected discussion.

Moore was not slow to perceive what was passing in her mind, and said, with gaiety,

"Now is not this a droll position? Here am I checking the Celtic ardour of a Saxon lady;-at the same time," he added, "I must admit that her wild Irish feeling sits gracefully on her;-the wrongs of Ireland have indeed been grievous, and well may excite a woman's sympathy."

A slight blush at this just compliment, tinged the cheek of the fair girl, as she replied,

"Then why are you not more tolerant of those whose only fault is too much enthusiasm in the cause of their country?"

"Do not mistake the censure of extravagance for disapproval of patriotic spirit. That spirit would be more powerful if it were better disciplined, and more sober. Real grievances do not require to be eked out with imaginary ones; the wrongs of the present day do not need reinforcement from the injuries of by-gone centuries. I'll tell you the story of the hawk of Kildare. You have heard of our round towers-well, there is one at Kildare, a place of ancient sanctity, patronised by the fair St. Bridget, who dwelt there under the shadow of a great oak, from which the name of Kildare is taken: it means the Cell of the Oak. The

saint had a hawk, a wild favourite for a godly lady, but she loved it, and it survived her death for centu­ries, nestling still in the summit of the sacred tower, only taking one yearly excursion in Spring to keep up its spiritual acquaintance with St. Kevin's hawks at Glendalough. The bird, as you may suppose, was venerated and cherished, and its offences winked at when it stooped on the Kildare chickens, or pounced upon a secular duckling. It flourished in the pride of place until the coming of Prince John to Ireland or rather up to the day of his departure, for on that day a miscreant of the royal train (Norman or Saxon is not recorded) flung a staff or a stone at the bird, and it fell dead at the base of the round tower. Now Young Ireland is capable of declaring war with Eng­land, and assigning the death of St. Bridget's hawk in the days of King John, as a valid reason for draw­ing the sword in the reign of Queen Victoria!"

"Going pretty far back for a grievance, I must own," said Emily, smiling.

"Like Mahomet the Second," added Moore, "who wrote a letter to Pope Pius, in which he urged the Italians, on the ground of their Trojan origin, to join him against the Greeks to revenge the death of Hector. Or like the Sultan of Egypt, who plundered the Jews, by way of reprisals for the jewels of gold and silver which their forefathers borrowed from the subjects of Pharaoh."

"I require first, In civil manners that you grant my will In all things whatsoever, and that will To be obey'd, not argued. This subscribed to, And you continuing an obedient husband, Upon all fit occasions you shall find me A most indulgent wife."

Massinger.

DOMESTIC EVENINGS-THE GIPSY'S OPINION OF A THE DANSANT-THE SHYCOCKS DEGRADED-MR. FALCON'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES- MRS. FALCON RAISES A QUESTION IN POLISH STATISTICS--HER NO­TION OF A GENTLEMANLIKE SITUATION-FALCON RECEIVES PERMIS­SION TO GO TO IRELAND-UPON WHAT OCCASION HE BURNED A HOUSE DOWN AT SOUTHAMPTON, AND HIS WIFE'S PRECAUTIONS AGAINST A SIMILAR DISASTER IN LONDON.

TWO or three days elapsed before Falcon could ob­tain five minutes' audience of his queen-consort, to bring the question of the Irish expedition to a final issue; so much business of all sorts had her imperious highness on her hands, so many petty interests had she to conciliate, so many small objects to secure, so many little points to carry. At length, however, there oc­curred one of what she called her "delicious domestic evenings." Delicious as she pronounced such evenings, she omitted no precaution to make them as few as possible. Perhaps the bliss she enjoyed upon those occasions, was so intense as to be allied to pain; perhaps with that Christian spirit which pervaded her entire

life, as a silken string runs through a chain of pearls, she only valued pleasure as an opportunity for self-denial and mortification. In point of fact, the present "delicious evening" was owing to the failure of a Ma­chiavellian move to secure a dinner with the Shycocks of St. John's Wood; the gipsy's three-cornered pro­tocol suggesting that desirable arrangement having been promptly answered with a diplomatic note, triangular also, politely demurring to the dinner, but hinting that a convention of the high contracting parties might be desirable at some future period, hereafter to be specified, upon the simpler basis of a "the dansant." Now Mrs. Falcon detested thes of every kind, with all the force of her vigorous character; she declared that an invitation to tea was just what she expected from the Shycocks, and that tea would be still the same shabby meal that it always was, even were it made by Cerito, and poured out by Taglioni. Besides, the notion of the Shycocks giving a the dansant!-St. John's Wood aping Holderness House!-The gipsy's position in life, by birth connected with the upper, and by policy with the middle classes, gave her an insight into the follies of both; she had a strong de­mocratic sense of the extravagances of May Fair, and an equally keen aristocratic perception of the airs and affectations of Marylebone.

However, it was only in the foreign department that Mrs. Falcon held a the so very cheap; for in her admi­nistration of the home-office, it was a point of consider­able importance, and she frequently made it the dina-

toire, which is decidely a better thing than a the dansant.

On the present evening there had been a the of the former description,-a motley meal between cutlets and congo, the tea-cup and the tankard. The feast was over, -Master Willy Falcon had gone to his repose,-a step by which the peace of the realm was considerably promoted. The gipsy sat down to revise her list of useful people and accessbile houses of which she kept an exact registry in a little blue book, the contents of which will vastly amuse the world if they ever come to be published. Lucy Falcon was absent, improving herself in drawing at Mr. Puddicome's under the tution of Miss Tynte, to whose teaching she did considerably more credit than the young ladies who were formerly and financially her pupils. Emily was buried in the pages of a work refulgent in green and gold, a present from Mr. Primer the bookseller, consisting of Young Ireland melodies, or "Groans of the Nation." And the amiable father of the family, having just completed a magnetic duck for his hopeful son, was applying his talents to gratify the military tastes of the small Puddicomes, with a battalion of card soldiers.

"And now pray, Mr. Falcon," said the gipsy, after degrading the Shycocks from the column of the "usefuls" into that of the "shabbies," "what is this Irish appointment that you have got, now that I have time to talk to you?"

"Secretary, my dear, to the Irish Branch Society for the Conversion of the Polish Jews. I have been

studying Hebrew," replied Falcon, with vivacity dropping a card which was just beginning to take the form of a sergeant-major.

"Polish Jews!" exclaimed his wife, throwing her­self back in her chair, and closing the blue book; "and what do you know about Jews? The notion of your converting Sir Moses Montefiore, or Baron Rothschild! Convert them to what, pray?"

"My dear, to Christianity, of course."

"Christianity!-and what do you know about Christianity?"

Mr. Falcon ought to have known a great deal about Christianity, for he had been, amongst the other vicis­situdes of his life, a temporary member of most of the thousand and one sects into which the religious world is divided; the same rambling propensities which marked his character as a secular personage, having influenced his spiritual estates also, and led him to box the compass of conventicles and churches. He had been a Trinitarian and a Unitarian, in his day; he had been a Baptist for a month, an Anabaptist for a fortnight, and an Antipoedobaptist for three days. The Moravians had once seduced him with their love-feasts; but, perhaps, their banquets were not as sub­stantial as he had reckoned on, for he soon became enamoured of Quakerly simplicity, and purchased a brown coat; on which, before the moon filled her horns, he superinduced gilt buttons, having returned in a fit of orthodoxy to the bosom of mother church, where he nestled comfortably for a season, until a casual visit to North Wales revived his desultory tendencies, and

made him as nimble a jumper as any Williams, Jones, or Ap-Griffifth in the principality. These, too, were but a few of his wanderings in the wide field of religious doctrine. No wonder, then, that he should think it a little hard that Mrs. Falcon should say-"What do you know about Christianity?" At all events, the meekness of his reply proved his practical acquaintance with the subject, for instead of making a sharp rejoinder to a remark that must have hurt him, he patiently recalled his wife's attention to the various agremens of the post in question. "One hundred and fifty pounds a-year, apartments, coals, candles, stationery, and pa­tronage; the advowson of a clerkship worth, half a guinea per week; and the right of presentation to the office of house-maid, on the first vacancy."

"Stationary, indeed!-you stationary! For my part I don't expect ever to be stationary! You lead me the life of a strolling beggar. Is the situation perma­nent?"

"I presume so," replied Mr. Falcon, who had never dreamed of making the inquiry, perhaps having rather a preference for engagements of a fleeting nature.

"How many Jews are there in Poland?"

"Indeed, my dear, I can't exactly answer the ques­tion; but do you think it signifies?"

"Do I think it signifies?-of course I do. The permanence of the place depends upon it; the more Jews there are, the longer time it will take to convert them."

"Oh! my love, don't alarm yourself about that point; I have had a letter from my friend, Mr. Scatterseed, to whose kindness I am indebted for this offer,

and he says there's nothing doing in Jews at present; there has not been a conversion for the last ten or a dozen years, at least, in Poland. In fact, my dear, there is absolutely nothing to do."

"Oh-that alters the matter-it's a gentlemanlike situation, then. Well, really, putting every thing to­gether, salary, house, coals, candles, no duty, and the toute ensemble-"

Falcon thought toute ensemble was French for sta­tionery.

"Putting every thing together-"

"Besides, my dear, I am engaged to write my Tra­vels in Ireland, Loiterings in Leinster, and a Canter through Connaught."

"Nonsense, Mr. Falcon! you never could ride-the idea of you cantering through Connaught!"

"Mamma," said Emily, "Mr. Moore said there were such nice small horses in the West of Ireland, called hobbies; papa would manage them very nicely."

"Yes, I dare say he would make a figure upon a hob­by," said the gipsy, who, although she had, au fond, a due conjugal attachment for her husband, was apt occa­sionally to affect something like scorn of his personal qualities, a common practice with handsome women of masculine character united to men who chance to be their inferiors in spirit and energy.

"Well, my dear," said her titular lord and master, "you agree, then, to go to Ireland. I may finally accept the situation."

"You may-what I propose is this-indeed, it is my decision-do you go to Ireland at once-if I like your

account of the Dublin people I shall follow you; re-member, I'm not very fond of official residences, so if ours is not comfortable and handsome, I won't set my foot in it; I'll take Mr. Moore's hint, and go about from house to house. I forget what they call the cus­tom, but I was charmed with Mr. Moore's account of it.* Now, go to bed, Emily dear-go to bed, Mr. Falcon."

"My dear, I am making a regiment of horse-artillery for the little Puddicomes,-now do not put out the candles."

"Indeed I will; do you want to burn the house down with your horse-artillery, as you always do?"

"Now, my dear, I never burned a house but once in my life, and that was making fire-works to celebrate our wedding-day, when we lived at Southampton. It was not my fault if Sir John Drake had not his property insured, and, at all events, I wrote him a very pathetic letter."

"Well, I know it was one of the best houses at that time on our list," said the gipsy, using the extinguisher inexorably; "and I had to jump out of a window to save my life."

"You remember I wanted you to jump into my arms."

*The gipsy alludes to the jolly practice of "cosherings," described by Sir John Davis as "visitations and progresses made by the chiefs, with their ladies and retainers, amongst their tenants, wherein, the chief did eat them (as the English proverb is) out of house and home." This free and easy custom corresponded in peace with that of coigne and livery in war; but in truth war and peace were as like as twins in the glorious days of old, for which statesboys pine and the Celtic harp "sighs like a furnace."

"Into your arms!" repeated the portly matron, with much more playfulness, however, than contempt in her tone, and none of the latter expression at all in her look, as she contrasted her own flourishing and massive person with her consort's meagre frame, and with good-humoured determination put out the second candle, having previously kindled the lesser light destined to conduct the oddly matched yet not ill-yoked pair to their matrimonial bower.

"Oh, happy child! Thou art so exquisitely wild. I think of thee with many fears, Of what may be thy lot in future years."

Wordsworth.

TIGERNACH RETURNS FROM SALISBURY-STONEHENGE DISCOVERED TO BE THE PROPERTY OF IRELAND-HOW IT WAS STOLEN FROM THE CURRACH OF KILDARE, AND BY WHOM-YOUNG IRELAND RESOLVES TO RETAKE STONEHENGE-THE INSTALMENT PRINCIPLE REPUDIATED -DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DREAMS AND VISIONS-MOORE'S PROJECT OF A COUNTER-AGITATION IN IRELAND-REASONS FOR NOT VISITING GALWAY-NATURE DISCOVERED TO BE A CELT-CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF BEAUTY.

"RETURNED from Salisbury?" cried Moore to Mac Morris, as the latter stalked into Mr. Bompas's chambers on the third day after the dinner-party in Bryanstone Square, every detail of his dress exhibiting a true Jacobinical contempt for order.

"This moment returned," answered Mac Morris, shaking the Saxon dust from his Celtic curls.

"Seen Stonehenge?" asked Moore, at random.

"I went down for that purpose."

"Oh!-a sudden paroxysm of antiquarian curiosity!

-'Curius incomptis capillis,'-the pun is irresistible, seeing the disorganized state of your tresses. But Stonehenge, I believe, is interesting."

"Intensely!"

"I am happy that at length you have found some­thing English to admire."

"Stonehenge is not English," said Mac Morris drily, arranging his hair, as he spoke, in a triangular frag­ment of looking-glass, which had the advantage over a common mirror of possessing the property of refracting light in as high a degree as the power of reflecting it.

"Stonehenge not English!" repeated Moore. "What do you mean?"

"It is ours!" said Mac Morris, in his coolest way of advancing the most daring propositions.

'Ours! I don't understand you-the work of Irish Druids, I suppose?"

"Not at all. Ours, I mean, as the round towers are ours-as St. Patrick's Purgatory is ours-as much as the Hill of Howth or the Rock of Cashel is ours."

Dominick looked at his Celtic friend with a twink­ling eye, and a gentle biting of his under-lip; as men look at their companions mounting their hobbies or hippogrifs.

Tigernach continued-

"You know, Moore, I am fearless of ridicule: it is the test of truth."

"From which you infer, I presume," answered Moore, "that the more a proposition is ridiculous, the more it should command my respectful attention. But tell me your tale of Stonehenge-I shall listen with becoming gravity."

"There is nothing new in the tale of Stonehenge;

you will find it in Campion's 'Historie,' and more in detail in Dr. Hanmer's Chronicle. Aurelius Ambrosius, King of Britain, at the head of a gang of English adventurers, stole the monument from the Curragh of Kildare, and pitched it in Salisbury Plain."

"They were lusty robbers. What was the King of Leinster about?-why did not the Lagenians defend their monuments?"*

"The English were aided by enchantment; the ex­pedition was advised by Merlin, the famous wizard."

"No wonder they stole our parliament, Mac Morris, when we could not even keep our Stonehenge-the stones are enormous, are they not?"

"They are."

"Really, Mac Morris, I should think that the less we say about the loss of Stonehenge the better for our reputation; people will not believe in magic in these days; so the story, if true, will only prove what thews and sinews the subjects of King Ambrosius had, and what poltroons our countrymen were at the period of the great larceny in question, far greater than that of the church bells of Notre Dame by Gargantua the Great, You must have felt mortified and ashamed as you surveyed the huge memorials of our national pusil­lanimity."

"True! I felt as I feel when I contemplate the union."

"Yes, but you say the union can be repealed!"

"Ay!-and I say too, that Stonehenge can be and shall be retaken."

*The people of Leinster were anciently called Lagenians.

"Stonehenge!-retaken! What if the Saxons should defend their spoil better than the Irish defended their property? Do you depend on magic?"

"On the magic of youth and determination."

"But you will first make your demand."

"It shall be my first step in the Hall of Clamour."

"And a pas de geant it will be; you will be consi­dered as great a wizard as Merlin himself. How fortu­nate that O'Connell never thought of the Stonehenge question! He fancies he has left no stone unturned, and ho has left the biggest of all for you-the stones of Salisbury Plain."

"If the thought had occurred to O'Connell, he would take it by instalments at the rate of a stone in a century. Young Ireland repudiates that base principle-What do you think of my first step?"

"Why, man, it's not a step-it's a flight-the flightiest step you could possibly take; it will make you facile princeps of the Statesboys of Ireland."

"You use the phrase in banter, but it is a good one, and has a serious and solemn meaning. The age of statesmen is past-the great truth has gone abroad through all the earth in the oracular words of D'lsraeli, ‘It is a glorious thing for a nation to be saved by its youth.’ "

"I have already named you the Coningsby of your country."

"Old Ireland is dreaming dreams, instead of-"

"Seeing visions like Young Ireland. I remember Bacon quotes the text to prove that the imagination of youth is more vivid than that of age, as a vision is brighter than a dream."

"Every substantial glory was once but a glorious imagination. The romance of history precedes its reality, and the most solid political advantages were begotten in prophetic raptures."

"Talking of realities, while you were flirting with charming fancies in the country, I was enjoying the society of lovely women in town, one of them a particularly substantial beauty."

And Moore gave friend an account of the dinner at Bompas's, and painted Mrs. Falcon and her daughters in such delicious colours, that Mac Morris wished for an instant (though he made no such admission) that he had reconciled his visit to Stonehenge with the acceptance of the Saxon invitation."

"And one of the girls, Tierna, was as romantic as she was pretty, and as Irish as she was romantic," continued Moore.

"Irish!-the name is not Irish-there is nothing Irish without a Mac or an O."

"Irish, I mean, in her Irish sympathies, in the interest she takes in Ireland. The Geraldines were not Irish originally, yet they became Hibernicis Hiberniores, more Irish than the Irish themselves."

"More than the Saxon spite I detest Saxon sympathy. They are never so intolerable as when their insolence takes the shape of interest in our welfare. To hear their expression of contemptuous pity! Poor Ireland!-what has made us poor but Saxon plunder? Unfortunate Ireland!-what misfortune have we ever known but the curse of their acquaintance and connexion?"

"Say what you will of the nation, but I cannot

understand how either the acquaintance or the alliance of an amiable and lovely daughter of England could be a curse to any one. It is my deliberate opinion that one of the young women I met last night would agitate Ireland to the heart's core, spite of all the Celtic antipa­thies which you and your friends take so much pains to cherish. Happily for myself, I am the most unloving and most unmarrying of men; but you could as easily resist Circe and the Syrens;-I know your tempera­ment and your taste. The blue lightning of Miss Fal­con's eye, and the sweet thunder of her powerful and delicious voice (for she is more a nightingale than a falcon), would infallibly agitate the agitator. Habet sua fulmina Juno."

"Young Ireland is made of sterner stuff."

"Ah, Tierna, ambition before love is not the natu­ral order of the passions;-you might as well think of beginning with avarice-commencing a Harpagon, and ending a Lothario."

"I start for Ireland next week: join me in Galway after the recess, and I'll show you women worthy of the admiration of a man-beauty for the eye, and music for the ear, Dominick."

"No,-I shall not go to Galway, to be burked by the Burkes, lynched by the Lynches, and bored by the Bodkins."

"Moore, you have no relish for the beauties of Celtic nature?"

"Is nature a Celt?"

"I confess I never stand upon my paternal moun­tains-carpeted, by the gorse and heath, with gold and

purple-but I think so. I ask myself, is not this a Celtic grandeur? I consider myself the porphyrogenitus of Celtic royalty. But, Moore, you have neither a Celtic eye for mountains, a Celtic ear for music, or the true Celtic gust for either sublimity or beauty."

"In beauty I confess myself a citizen of the world, with a cosmoplitan eye for fair Saxons, charming French, sunny Italians, glowing Spaniards, dark Greeks,-the bright and lovely of all climes and colours, by whatever sun they may be bleached, rouged, bronzed, or browned. As to mountains, I like them too in time and place; and I like the mountain-nymph also, like a true whig,-which she is not the French Oread, worshipped by St. Just in France and Mac Morris in Ireland.

"Well, we shall make a mountain-party for you without politics."

"Yes, and let there be abundance of the true party-spirit for the mountains, which I take to be good Champagne,-in that case, if you get the windows of your paternal mansion glazed, I shall consider the expediency of paying you a visit in the first summer vacation after the retaking of Stonehenge."

"The first man is the first spirit-seer; all appears to him as spirit. What are children but first-men? The fresh gaze of the child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indu­bitable seer."

Novalis.

WILD IRELAND-THE GREEN CHILDREN-SOURCE OF TIGERNACH's IMPORTANCE-CAREER OF YOUNG IRELAND-OLD IRELAND DIS­TANCED-POLITICAL GEOLOGY-FOSSIL REMAINS OF GRIEVANCES-THE IRISH MOUNTAIN-HISTORIC FANCIES OF YOUNG IRELAND-REVIVAL OF THE BREHON LAW-OPENING OF THE NATIONAL GREENHOUSE-THOUGHTS OF REVIVING FIRE-WORSHIP-DISPUTES IN THE CRYPTS OF AGITATION-MANIAC AGAINST MADMAN-MAC MORRIS THE SPIRIT OF THE STORM-POETICAL INVOCATION IN THE SUN­BURST.

To understand the position of the young Mac Morris, it is necessary now to glance at the state of affairs in the capital of Ireland, anciently called Dyvelin, possibly to commemorate the important share which the author of evil has had for so many centuries in the concerns of that part of the empire.

The Young Ireland regime had commenced, and things were going at a pace to satisfy the greenest Irishman, and in a spirit to content the wildest Celt. Old Campion, who has graduated the orders of abori­ginal Irish fierceness "mere Irish, wilde Irish, very wilde Irish, and extreme wilde Irish," would have found it difficult to discover a form of superlative to express the degree of Irish savagery which was now the fashion,

or the rage. Young Ireland consisted of some half-dozen shoots of prodigious verdure, which had recently started from the aged trunk of agitation, like freshsprouts from a veteran cabbage-stock. O'Connell was considered as fallen politically, even more than physi­cally, into the sere and yellow leaf; and, indeed, the foliage of the parent tree looked marvellously pale and sickly, contrasted with the green of the underwood that sprang daily from its roots. William of Newbridge relates in his history of Britain, that in the reign of King Stephen, a pair of green children - toto corpore virides- green from head to foot, fell from heaven in East Anglia, near the monastery of St. Edmund the Martyr.* There was ground to think that a similar miracle in a political sense, and upon a larger scale, had been wrought in Ireland at the period of our narrative; so profusely were the views and opinions, the and undertakings of an ambitious boyocracy, dyed with the intensest tint of the national colour. It was the day of green opinions, green sentiments, principles, and green doings. Green writers wrote green books, with green goose-quills; and green politicians, in green coats, made green speeches on hills, about green Ireland and College Green. He that, like Harry the Fifth, "could not look greenly and out his eloquence," was a nonentity; while he who, like Michael Cassio, "had all those requisites in him that folly and green minds look after," enjoyed

*Cap. xxvii. The old chronicler hesitates to record the story, but he tells us that he is "overwhelmed by the weight of testimony," and his scruples yield to his sense of duty.

the pre-eminence due to his venerable youth and verdant qualifications. In a green party it was but na­tural that he whose years were greenest should com­mand the most respect; and it was this that made Tigernach Mac Morris the natural leader of the young patriots of Ireland. In his absence they had chosen him their captain; and their counsels were directed by his temerity and extravagance, even before the-time came when he was personally to preside over their frantic deliberations. Already they had written and raved enough to frighten any decent island from her propriety. Scarcely did they commence their meteoric career, before they left Old Ireland a thousand miles behind. His giantship of Derrynane roared for his seven-leagued boots to follow them; but he might as well have attempted to keep pace with a troop of wild horses in the Pampas, or overtake the train of the spectre-huntsman. The chariot in which they took their des­perate drive, was his; but it was horsed with coursers of their own mad breeding; and when the old coach­man would have put on the drag, they spurned him from the wheel, and dashed, with a Scythian yell and an Irish hubbub, across the frontier of common, sense into the country of chimeras, where they had many a good day's shadow-hunting, to the dismay of all steady sportsmen, but to the infinite delight of the jockeys of Laputa. With indefatigable industry were the records of the past ransacked to revive obsolete feelings, and awaken acrimonious recollections. To the most luminous horror of the antipathies of creed, they

added the most unenlightened devotion to the prejudices of race. To hound Protestant against Catholic, was intolerable bigotry; but to cheer on the Celt against the Saxon, was the spirit of liberty and the very soul of patriotism. To love Ireland and to hate England, were but two phrases for one duty; and to inculcate this beautiful morality, history was racked for tales of expression; eloquence was abused, and even the sacred gift of poetry profaned. Nothing was to be forgotten, nothing pardoned; there was to be no absolution for state offences, no amnesty of public wrongs. As if there were not bones of contention only too many on the surface of affairs, Young Ireland must excavate the deepest strata of bygone centuries for the fossil remains of grievances. No doubt the political geologist found such relics abundant in his quarryings; the mammoths and megatheria of British misgovernment, are scattered thick in the seams of Irish history, and the vindictive antiquary may enjoy a perpetual feast; but if such a taste is healthy and legitimate, what political connexions can be lasting-what brethren can dwell together in unity? If to allow one sun to go down upon our wrath be repugnant to the law of Christian charity, what shall be said of those upon whose implacable resentments the suns of centuries have set, and who declare that till the end of time the "god of gladness" shall never rise upon feuds extinguished and nations reconciled? It is for Heaven, not for man, to "visit the father's sins upon the children;" and it is as true, with respect to the ills

of the past, which are not to be repaired, as of the ills of the future, which may never be realised, that "sufficient to the day is the evil thereof."

But to another effect was the popular preaching of the day. Such was not the moralising in the columns of the "Sun-burst," the weekly organ of Young Ire­land opinions; such were not the doctrines promulgated in the Hall of Clamour, where the knot of young Septembrizers formed a mimic mountain;-and when the hundred bards struck their Celtic harps, and raised the voice of song, such was not the burden of the min­strelsy.

In fact, a Celtic revolution was the project or the dream. The most preposterous claims were set up to antiquity, brilliant in arts and splendid in arms. Ire-land had only to retrace her steps to gain the culmi­nating point of social refinement and national glory. Celtic civilisation and renown were the historic fancies of Young Ireland. Their island was too rich in the stores of native literature and science, to value the partnership of Saxon wit, or even to prize the monu­ments of Greek and Italian genius. It was described as basking in the meridian blaze of philosophy and letters, in the fruition of more than Roman grandeur and more than Ionian elegance, when the residue of Europe sat in utter darkness, save when a solitary beam from the western fount of light, struck across the gloom, and for a moment illuminated the nations. What was then to be done but to restore? Accord­ingly, it was the aim of the party (which they pursued with a vigour and steadiness proportioned to their sin-

cerity, of which there was no doubt) to un-Saxonise and Celtify the laws and institutions, the manners and customs, the commerce, the agriculture, the learning, language, nay, the very costume of the country.

Steps had already been taken to revive the Brehon law; and although a Brehon Inn of Court was still only in contemplation, and a professorship of Celtic jurisprudence was not yet actually instituted, on many a hill-side and daisied bank were to be seen sitting expe­rimental tribunals of the old national law, under the name of Arbitration Courts, presenting a new variety of the plant, Wild Justice, which the political herborist was charmed to meet with, when, perhaps, he was only looking for a flower of literature, blossoming in a hedge-school. But the grand design, of course, was to Celtify the fountain of law itself; and the day was ac­tually fixed for the meeting of the Irish states-general in College Green, or the opening of the national Green-House. Some suspected that even deeper designs were entertained; that even Scythian creeds were to be dis-entombed; the Scythian gods invoked again upon the ancient Cromlechs, and the fires of Baal kindled upon the hilltops. But this (although an appropriate consum­mation of the projects of a mountain party, and necessary to complete the parallel between Celtic fanatacism and Jacobin insanity) was never, perhaps, more than the untold dream of a solitary furioso, or the whisper of one lunatic interchanging fine frenzies with another.

Of course there was much of this extravagance that did not meet the eye. Many things were done in a corner, and, perhaps, in momentary fits of reason, some

freaks of folly were abandoned which were even too lunatic for lunacy itself. It was good comedy to hear in the crypts of agitation the dreamer laughing at the visionary, and the maniac pitying the madman. Bed­lam protested occasionally against the introduction of measures hatched in Swift's hospital; and Swift's in its turn, had no notion of allowing the provincial lu­natic asylum to turn the country topsy-turvy. It will now be understood how distinguished a position in a party like this belonged of right to Tierna Mac Mor­ris, the youngest member of the fraternity, the descen­dant of the hero of Harfleur, the son of Shane Mac-Ever-Boy of the Unchristened Hand, and the restorer of Stonehenge! The portrait of Tierna has already been drawn; his features were all the handsomer for not being as Hibernian as his politics; it was observable that he did not quarrel with nature for having given him black hair instead of red, a nose rather aquiline than retrousse, and the "dolcemente feroce" of one of Tasso's heros instead of the humorous ruffianism of a Tipperary bravo.

It will now be understood also with what ardour our pale and fiery enthusiast burned to take the place as­signed to him by the unanimous vote of his compeers; how he loathed the Saxon soil on which, for a season, he was doomed to tread; how he detested the dry study that detained him from the most animating of all pursuits; how he panted to mingle in the hurly-burly beyond the channel, tumble in the agitated waves, and, like a young spirit of the storm, direct the western hurricane.

If aught was wanting to inflame his ambition, it was supplied by the following poetical invocation addressed to him at this period, by one of the numerous bards of the party, and published in the columns of the "Sun-burst."

"There is no question that in all civilized nations the women must on the whole gain the ascendancy. I find universally that the active woman, formed to acquire and to uphold,is master in the house; the beauty master in larger circles."-Gothe.

FINANCIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRY-MRS. FALCON CATCHES SALMON WITH SPRATS-ADVANTAGES OF BEING SHABBY-THE PRESENT OF BLACK GAME-HOW MRS. FALCON AND MASTER W. FALCON DIFFERED IN THEIR TASTE IN TREES-MR. FALCON'S CALCULATIONS IN BED-DESIGNS ON THE CROZIERS OF HERTFORD­SHIRE-THE GIPSY'S TENDER CONSCIENCE-HER FREEDOM FROM RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY-OUTRAGE TO DIANA-ALABASTER SUFFERS FOR ALABASTER-THE GIPSY'S FLIGHT FROM HARLEY-STREET AND HER FEELING LETTER TO MRS. FREEMAN.

the Falcons made but a brief stay in Harley-street. The gipsy was not over fond of vacant houses in town, for she found by long experience that they always involved her in more or less of the trouble and expense of housekeeping. In the country there was always a dairy to supply cream and butter, a garden to yield fruit and vegetables, a farm-yard to contribute poultry, with perhaps a moor to furnish a brace of grouse, or a preserve to embellish the second course with a pheasant; and it is worthy of observation that people who board and lodge themselves in their friends' houses are never content without a second course, par­ticularly when, like Mrs. Falcon, they have been edu­cated in patrician tastes and habits. In town-residences the case was painfully altered; there were no broods of

young chickens in Harley-street for the Falcons to pounce on, no wild-fowl but the sparrows under the eaves and the jackdaws in the chimneys, no kitchen-garden but the greengrocer's shop;-nay, even a decoc­tion of chalk-and-water involved a pecuniary expendi­ture. With all the gipsy's piratical craft and daring, an expedition would sometimes fail. The Ropers, for instance, affected the meazles the moment they descried her flag in the offing; she attempted to board the Duck-worths, but the Duckworths were resolved not to board her; several other families put their larders and cellars in a state of defence; and the result was that the Falcons were now and then reduced to the afflicting necessity of lunching and dining at their own cost and charges, which was disagreeable in two ways-first, because it pressed upon finances which were none of the most flourishing; and secondly, because the table was never so well spread when they spread it themselves, as when their friends and acquaintances spread it for them. However, the gipsy never left a country place for town without making some little arrangement with gardeners and gamekeepers, in order to have supplies of rural produce forwarded after her to London. Hampers of fowl and vegetables, turkeys from Norfolk, and clouted cream from Devonshire, were agreeable links between town and country; they enabled Mr. Falcon, who had, dipped into "Locke on the Human Understanding," to make philosophical remarks on the association of ideas; they kept people in mind who were out of ken; and when they were not wanting for actual home-consump­tion, they served as capital bait to catch fresh invitations,

for Mrs. Falcon knew how to take salmon with sprats, as the proverb goes, as well as the keenest angler of her sex in England.

A few days after the eventful arrival in Harley-street there was a lively expectation of good things from Broomfield, near Stony Stratford, where the Fal­cons had been displaying their talents for nidification when affairs of moment decided them to repair to London.

"If Ringwood does not forget the pheasants," said Mrs. Falcon, "I'll send one brace to the Spooners, and another to--;" and she paused to think in what quarter the second brace of pheasants might be disposed of with the greatest advantage to the family.

"What do you think of the Ropers, my dear?" asked her very simple husband.

"Nonsense!-and the children in the meazles!"

"The Puddicomes, mamma," gratefully suggested Lucy.

"The Puddicomes-yes-perhaps so. No-a hare or a rabbit will do for the Puddicomes; they are not penurious, I must say that for them; and indeed, Lucy, love, I think Miss Tynte has been of great use to you. No-I'll send a brace of pheasants to the shabby Shycocks; and if Mr. Marrowfat sends up a good lot of potatoes and asparagus-there's that odious Lady Grubb-I suppose she may as well get them."

Such are some of the advantages of being odious and shabby in this frolicsome world; shabby people receive pheasants, while the liberal are put off with a hare or a rabbit. Be odious, and you shall at least have a basket

of new potatoes; be all hospitality, kindness, and good­ nature-nay, keep a family hotel for your friends, like the Bompases-and you will never be once named or thought of in the distribution of the gifts of fortune. The Germans have a proverb, "as ungrateful as a cuckoo,"-as ungrateful as a Falcon would be equally true to nature; but then both cuckoo and falcon belong to the class of parasite birds.

And a deal box with a large hamper did arrive, in due course of steam and railway, from Ringwood, the gamekeeper, and Marrowfat, the gardener, of Broom-field. The offerings of the former were examined first. Mr. Falcon thrust in his hand to pull out the pheasants.

"What's this?" he exclaimed, at the first glimpse of the plumage-"blackcock!"

"Blackcock!-there's no blackcock at Broomfield."

"Fine fat birds, at any rate," he continued, fumbling under the hay, and gradually extricating the game.

"It is blackcock, and very black, too; I am so fond of Ringwood, he is so thoughtful!" cried the gipsy.

"Three brace of rooks!" ejaculated poor Mr. Falcon, dropping his under-lip very low, and letting the sable proofs of the gamekeeper's thoughtfullness drop at the same time into the box.

Mrs. Falcon blew a little hurricane for several mi­nutes, but there was no great use in being angry, and so, like a sensible woman, she recovered her temper.

However, these little disasters of the agricultural interest, coupled with the marked inattentions of the servants in Harley-street, suggested the idea of a new

migration; but Mrs. Falcon's mind was of too com­prehensive a character to be decided by any single con­sideration in a question so important as a change of residence. The plan she now broached combined several advantages, physical and moral, immediate and remote.

"Sir Frederick Crozier, my dear," she said, to her husband, as he lay on his back one morning, calculating how many years it would take to convert all the Jews in Poland at the rate of three per annum, supposing the number of Israelites to be twenty thousand. "Sir Frederick Crozier has left St. Ronald's for Cheltenham, -how many years-"

"More than six thousand, my dear," replied Mr. Falcon; "but that's only an approximation, I'll do it by logarithms when I get up."

Mrs. Falcon rose on her elbow, and turned her pierc­ing black eyes sharply round on her red-nosed partner, to ascertain whether he was not somniloquising.

"What are you thinking of?" she demanded, seeing that his little gray orbs were wide-awake and twink­ling with activity.

"Of the Polish Jews, of course, my love-you asked me-"

"I was going to ask you how many years it is since we were last at Sir Frederick Crozier's place in Hertfordshire."

"I beg pardon, my dear;-we spent the autumm there the year before last."

"Well, then, I think I shall go down with Emily and Davy, and stay there until you have arranged

every thing for our journey to Ireland; indeed, I have made up my mind. Now don't interrupt me, Mr. Falcon, if you please,-there's no use in your making objections. Do you remember Rebecca Spriggs?"

"Yes, my dear,-the finishing governess?"

"Well-I have secured her for Emily-that is, I recommended her to Sir Frederick for his daughters, and he has engaged her; she is perfect mistress of Italian and German, and she will also teach Davy the Latin grammar. As to French, I don't want the as­sistance of any governess. Now you must write to Sir Frederick this day, Mr. Falcon."

"But, my dear, in Sir Frederick's absence do you think it would be quite-?" and Falcon was proceed­ing, with amusing trepidation, to insinuate a shadow of doubt as to the decorum of the step which his sove­reign mistress seemed resolved to take.

"In his absence! Why, that's the attraction; I should not think of going to St. Ronald's, if he was to be at home. When we were there last, I never had a privacy; he used to lounge into the drawing-room with his hat on, and a hatchet in his hand like a ploughman; I never knew such a vulgar intrusive old curmudgeon."

"My dear, he has been very good to us in a variety of ways-we must not be ungrateful, my dear." It was not often that Falcon ventured on a moral lecture, and even this short didactic effort was so arduous (such was his of the fair audience at his side) that his voice grew as husky as that of a young curate preaching his first sermon in presence of an archbishop.

"Ungrateful!-now really it's too bad to hear you talk of our being ungrateful to Sir Frederick Crozier. Do you forget the time that you were secretary to the Midland Horticultural Association?"

"No, my dear."

"And who was it that got the St. Ronald's carnations and apricots the prize at the grand exhibition?-They were the poorest flowers I ever laid my eyes on, but I made you keep the good ones behind the rhododendrons -it was that did it."

"It helped, I fear," muttered Falcon, unable to re­press his feeling of remorse at the profligate transaction thus suddenly recalled to his memory.

"You fear!-how conscientious you are!-as if it signified who got the prize for a parcel of worthless pinks. I presume I am as conscientious as any body need be; indeed I often think I am too conscientious a great deal; but there's no use in talking. I'm de­termined to go to St. Ronald's with the girls and Willy, so get up, Mr. Falcon, and write to Sir Frederick the first thing you do."

Had Mrs. Falcon been queen of the Amazons, her spouse could not have obeyed her orders with more prompt submission; but as he rose he reminded her that Mr. St. John Crozier, the eldest son of Sir Frede-rick, passed most of his time at his father's country-scat, where, being the most Puseyitical of Puseyites, he had introduced as many popish usages as were consistent with a domestic establishment, and had it in contemplation to try, with the concurrence of a few of

his tractarian friends, the experiment of a little monastic institution.

"I knew that he was some ite or another," said Mrs. Falcon, who was as free from religious bigotry as any gipsy that ever dwelt in tents. "What are Puseyites?"

"A kind of Protestant papists, my dear, or popish Protestant; they fast and feast-ring bells-light can-dles-dress in white; there's nothing very wrong in it all, except the fasting. That's a fetal mistake."

"I hate and detest these religious distinctions," said Mrs. Falcon; "one never knows what to do; I wish to be accommodating, but it's next to impossible in these times, with their Puseyism, their mesmerism, and their galvanism; however, I'll make Lucy and Emily fast at St. Ronald's, if it's the rule of the house;-but poor Rebecca Spriggs!"

"She's not Puseyitical, I believe."

"Oh no, she is a bitter Protestant."

"My dear, she will be miserable at St. Ronald's."

"Miserable!-ha! ha!-the idea of her being mi­serable in so good a situation-the best governess-ship in England-fifty pounds a year-not expected to wash any things but her own-no pickling or preserving. I think the least she may do is to count her beads, and cross herself, if it's the rule of the house. I hope she'll be as grateful to me as she ought, and devote herself to my poor girls.-Good heavens! what noise is that!"

"Something heavy has fallen below stairs," said Mr. Falcon.

Two images started together into the gipsy's mind-

the one was that of her wicked Willy, the other that of the beautiful alabaster Diana in the drawing-room. The mis­chief was indeed the work of the little Falcon, whose Gothic crime was promptly visited with a classical correc­tion, precisely similar to that which, at the shrine of the same fair deity, the Spartan youth underwent in the olden time, and which no doubt made the "queen o' the woods" as unpopular with them as she continued to be for a long time with the little English martyr. This sharp little execution was in strict conformity with Mrs. Falcon's system; for in the surveillance and pro­tection of articles of vertu in her friends' houses nothing could exceed her vigilance and activity; she might pardon offences directly against herself, but she never left unrevenged a mutilated Mars, or a violated Venus; for those were crimes that shut the doors of mansions in her face, and were utterly incompatible with her scheme of life. It is deeply to be regretted that the gipsy's invariable practice in cases of this nature did not receive the sanction of the three estates of the realm, until the destruction of the Portland Vase pressed upon the public the wisdom and necessity of adopting it.

Mrs. Falcon, however, while she enforced her funda­mental law, could not but admit that a house so full of marbles and alabasters was not the fittest residence for her son, at the period of life when the animal spirits are exuberant, while the artistic tastes are but imperfectly developed. Accordingly, dreading another occasion for reasoning with her hand, she forthwith announced her resolution to remove immediately to some house where there were not so many fragile curiosities re-

quiring for their protection the hands of Briareus as well as the eyes of Argus; and this rational as well as hu­mane determination was carried into effect the very next day; not, however, until a letter, full of feeling, had been despatched to the Freemans, lamenting in eloquent terms the fate of the goddess of the Ephesians, and detailing the martyrdom of the young iconoclast, which had made such satisfactory atonement for it.

"Good heaven!" cried Mrs. Freeman, "did any body ever hear of such a woman? She breaks my beautiful Diana, and thinks to compensate me by whipping her children."

When Mr. Chatworth heard of the transaction, he observed, that he never admired the Falcon so much as when she was metamorphosed into a Whip-poor-Will.

the deeds of his ancestor; Grattan, because he pro-claimed the rights of Ireland; the poetry of Moore, because he sang of the days of old; and the prose of Disraeli, because it addressed the hot blood and white waistcoats of the rising generation, announcing a new order of things, and claiming for Youth, the honour and authority of Age.

Moore sought him one afternoon, and found him with the pages of Fearne spread on his desk, but his thoughts as far from the subject of "Contingent Re­mainders" as the zenith is from the nadir.

"The old thing-luxuriating in Fearne. I have been revelling in that great work on 'Powers.' "

"Ay, Sir Edward Shakspeare is one of their greatest Brehons-lawyers, I should say."

"Sir Edward Shakspeare!"

"Did I say Shakspeare?-I meant Sugden-of course, I meant Sugden."

"Well, Tierna, there is more law in the works of Shakspeare than poetry in the works of Sugden. Shakspeare delights in legal imagery, and indeed poetry and law have a great deal in common. Pegasus is the crest of the Inner Temple, and a more appro­priate one than the heralds commonly hit upon; one wing, I presume, is for law, and the other for equity- not a little poetic fiction, it must be owned, in both."

"Our lawyers were always bards;-after all, what justice is so perfect as poetic justice?"

"The code of Justinian was called his Novels, and. there was another celebrated work on the Roman law, entitled the 'Extravagantes Johannis.' You may borrow

the name for your Brehon code when you revive it- what think you of the Extravaganzas of Tigernach? eh, my most extravagant and erring spirit?"

"Extravagant, not erring," said Mac Morris, with his solemn enthusiasm; "but a poem has a strong resemblance to an action. The 'Paradise Lost,' for in­stance is an ejectment."

"Yes!-and what a glorious John Thrust-out is the angel with the flaming sword! Then the 'Paradise Regained' is a redemption-suit, and the 'Iliad' a case of assault and battery-Menelaus and others versus Paris and others. But did the analogy ever strike you between the seven phases of life in Jacques' soliloquy, and the seven steps in pleading as you find them in Chitty and Stephen? There is a stage of litigation for every stage of existence; our law-suits are calculated to last as long as ourselves; we file our declaration in the cradle, and arrive simultaneously at the surrebutter and the tomb:

"Last scene of all
That ends this strange eventful history."

"Sad justice," said Mac Morris.

"Wild justice," said Moore, "and not the worse for being wild, in the opinion of a Brehon like you."

"In Ireland we have no other species; it is the only kind the Saxons have left us, and we shall cultivate it with our best husbandry."

"It is vain, Tierna, to ask you to be moderate. I know as well as you do that the stream of justice in Ireland was long polluted and often poisoned; I feel as strongly as you do, that too much pains cannot be

taken to brighten and purify its waters,-I would have them healing as the waters of Israel, and lucid as the rivers of Damascus."

"But flowing from Saxon fountains, they are more like Acheron and Styx than Abana and Pharphar."

"Certainly not now. The judicial bench is no longer the monopoly of a faction; the administration of justice has been purged and reformed in many notorious particulars. I read the signs of the times amiss, if I do not clearly perceive the Scorpion withdrawing his claws from the house of Libra."

"Your next astronomical discovery will be the name of the cutler on the sword of Orion, or a gray hair in the tail of Halley's comet."

"No, I shall discover the man in the moon, and have his portrait taken for a frontispiece to the ‘History of Young Ireland.’ Shall we have a stroll?"

"Where?"

"Leave it to the power that erring men call chance; the steps of a poor law-student like myself may be mat­ters of hap-hazard, but some special providence must needs direct those of the saviour of a state."

To this Mac Morris made no reply; but demurely extricating his gloves from under a miscellaneous pile of books, consisting of "Wordsworth's Poems" and "Chitty's Pleading," Carlyle's "Past and Present," "Powellon Mortgages," "Grattan's Speeches," "Mimes' Palm Leaves," "Moore's Reports," and "Moore's Me­lodies," he put on his hat with a little "giddy cun­ning," so as not to derange, or too much conceal, his hyacinthine locks, redundant as Absalom's, and

"wreathing his arms like a malecontent," followed Moore into the outer air.

Proceeding in a north-westerly direction, they passed through the region of St. Giles, where the labours of the Metropolitan Improvement Commissioners have made the Rookery as Nineveh, and all the ancient haunts of the Irishry in London, even as Tadmor of the Wilderness. Moore remarked the improvement of the district; spacious, airy, and lightsome thoroughfares, in place of the dark row and the noisome alley. "Improvement!"-repeated Tierna, bitterly. "Is it not?" demanded Moore.

"Saxon improvement," said Mac Morris, "which means the extermination of the Celts, in the streets of London, as well as in the fields of Ireland."

"You have discovered a new grievance," said Domi-nick. "I said your steps would be supernaturally directed."

"As a grievance, I shall record it in my catalogue," replied Tigernach.

"Seriously, would you have spared the foul and pestilential dens than once covered the place where we now walk?"

"Some of those dens were inhabited by the de­scendants of a hundred kings," answered Mac Morris. "It is because the Rookery was the retreat of Celtic royalty that the Saxon has razed it to the ground."

"Did ever mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? Sure something holy lodges in that breast, And with its raptures woos the vocal air To testify its hidden residence."

Comus

PORTLAND-PLACE-A CELTIC WAR-SONG BY A SAXON SONGSTRESS-ECSTACIES OF TIGERNACH-MOORE PREFERS THE REFECTORY TO THE MUSIC-ROOM-DISCUSSION ON IRISH BARBS AND ENGLISH POETS-THE HURRICANE AND THE LAKE SCHOOLS-YOUNG ENGLAND ADMIRES YOUNG IRELAND-TWO SIDES TO THE PORTICO-MOORE PREFERS THE SUNNY ONE-A BAD PUN AND A GOOD OMEN-THE MOON'S JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS-SONG OF THE CELTIC CHERUBS.

they wandered in the Regent's Park until the hour admonished them that it was time for the planets of the Temple to retrograde towards the refectory, that impor­tant point in the orbit of the law-student. It was verging to six o'clock, and the streets of that part of the town were growing still and silent; indeed, they are always remarkable for their good behaviour; pre­senting a most praiseworthy contrast to the riotous con­duct of the city thoroughfares, and the fashionable hubbub of the west-end. As Moore and his friend passed through Portland-place, domestic sounds were distinctly audible, which would have merged and been lost altogether in the din of Cheapside, or even in the clatter of Brook-street; for example, they could hear the clocks striking in the houses, and various other

noises from the interiors, sometimes perhaps indicat­ing that passion and reason were at their old war in the drawing-room, or that big England and little England were not on the most peaceable terms in the nursery. The day had been, and still continued, sultry, so that numerous windows were raised, to catch whatever cool air might be flitting through the summer sky. At length as they passed a certain house, they heard the notes of a piano, and suddenly there gushed from the open casement a stream of voice, so sweet, so strong, so clear, so voluptuous, that Mac Morris stopped abruptly, and paused to listen. The air was plaintive, and there was a delicious thrill in the notes-whether the skill of the performer, or the effect of the air rippling the stream of sound-which made the strain almost magical. Tigernach felt not only the power and beauty, but he appreciated the rarity and value of the voice, which was a contr'-alto. Admiration and rapture struck him dumb; but in another mo­ment, when he heard the words of the air (for one of the merits of the singer was the lucid clearness of her pronunciation), his astonishment had no bounds. "Great Heaven!-Dominick!-this is strange!"

"Hope no more for fatherland,
All her ranks are thinn'd and broken;-
Long a base and coward band
Recreant words like these have spoken.

"But we preach a land awoken,
A land of courage true and tried,
As your fears are false and hollow,
Slaves and dastards stand aside.

"Knaves and traitors"--

"Divine!-wonderful!" cried Tigernach, in a low,

enthusiastic tone, powerfully affected by the music and the singularity of hearing one of the "Songs of the Nation" chanted in the streets of the Saxon capital.*

"She can't pronounce 'Fag-a-bealac,' " said Dominick, who was acquainted with the lay and the Celtic words that close each stanza; "but one can't blame a Saxon songstress for that."

"Hark, again!"

Dominick would have moved on, but Tigernach grasped his arm.

"Fling our Sun-burst to the wind,
Studded o'er with names of glory,
Worth and wit and might and mind
Long shall make it shine in story.

"Close your ranks-the moment's come,
Now, you men of Ireland, follow,
Friends of freedom, charge them home!
Foes of freedom-fag-fag-fag-a-"

"Won't do-can't do it-can't manage the 'fag-a-bealac;' but for that she would not be so bad-for a Saxon."

"Saxon or Celt, she is divine!" cried Mac Morris, in transport.

"Fie, Tigernach!" said Dominick.

Tigernach made no answer, and still maintained his ground, in hopes that the song would be resumed; but he was disappointed.

* The song entitled Fag-a-Bealac, appears amongst the Songs of the Irish "Nation," as " chanted in full chorus at the Symposiacs" of Young Ireland. The wild words that form the burthen, were the cry of some Western clans in their barbarous faction lights; and the 88th regiment, or Connaught Rangers, carried it with them to the Peninsula, where it is said to have added wings to the feet of the French soldiery; who without knowing that it meant "Clear the road," acted upon the hint which it gave them, as if they had been the most accomplished Celtic scholars.

"I have heard the best female singers of France, Germany, and Italy," said Tigernach, as they sat down to dinner in the Temple hall, "but a voice so divine as that-and then the words-how very strange!-in Portland-place!"

"She's not to be compared to Grisi," said Moore, helping himself to the dish before him.

"A different thing-totally different--just as perfect in its kind."

"Shall I help you to roast veal?"

"Moore, you have no music in your soul-you want the sense."

"I have the sense to dine. I have the sense to know that this is execrable sherry, and capital South African Madeira. Shall I give you a slice of ham?"

"No;-the peculiarity of that voice is this---"

"Still at the voice!-that strain again!"

"Ah!-how unlike you are to the Duke Orsino!"

"Well, I resemble Jessica-

'I'm never merry when I hear sweet music.'

The music for me is that which is mellowed by dis­tance; and I prefer the old concert of the morning stars to the finest modern concerts at Her Majesty's Theatre, upon the principle that the charm of music is directly proportioned to the space intervening between the ear and the orchestra. But you are not eating."

"I have dined."

"Dined!-upon an air, then, most chameleon-like. I never understood before what Milton meant by-

" 'Even against eating cares
Lap me in soft Lydian airs.' "

I wish nations could be fed so cheaply; in what fine condition Ireland would be, if people could breakfast on ballads, and sup on a song. Your national rhymers forget that men have mouths to be fed as well as ears to be tickled."

"I wonder what we shall have after the 'Songs of the Nation," said O'Regan, another Irish student.

"Probably," said Moore, who was now in his light vein, "probably the 'Sighs of the Nation;' then a series of' Popular Sobs,' or a few numbers of Irish Groans;' after which, it is devoutly to be hoped that this rhym­ing frenzy will breathe its last."

"But you admire the ‘Songs of the Nation,’ Moore, do you not?" said O'Regan.

"They have the merit of earnestness, and the deme­rit of bluster: for middling poetry they are very good indeed: but I hold, with Horace, that there is no such thing."

"The ‘Young Ireland melodies,’" said an English student, "belong to the Hurricane School in poetry."

"Which I dislike as much as I do the Lake School," said Moore. "I know Skiddaw there will burn me for a heretic."

"You deserve it," drawled Skiddaw; a tall, solemn student, with a dreamy eye, and a head as vapoury as the summit of the Wordsworthian mountain whose name he bore. "The ‘Excursion’ is the greatest and sweetest poem in the language."

"The drowsiest syrup of the poetical world," said Moore; "a hundred lines of it would make the green-eyed monster itself sleep like a nurse-tender."

"Have you read ‘Palm Leaves?’" asked a pert youth in a white waistcoat.

"Or the ‘Historic Fancies?’" asked another white waistcoat, a pensive stripling.

"I have nodded impartially over both," said Moore.

"I hope you nodded over the 'Songs of the Nation' in your impartiality," said the white waistcoat that was pert.

"No; the clatter of the stanzas kept me awake. Ours are not the bards to let you slumber over their strains; you might as well think to sleep in the bed of a torrent, or in sheets of lightning."

"But, seriously, did you nod over the 'Historic Fancies?"

"I not only nodded seriously, but slept soundly; I am thinking of publishing my literary nutations. Cox­combry is always soporiferous; but when it takes the poetic form, it beats poppy and mandragora."

Here Mac Morris, who had been sitting still and mute as a statue, chewing the cud of the delicious voice in Portland-place, rose from the table, and strode some­ what melodramatically from the hall, followed by many eyes, particularly by those of the white waistcoats, one of whom burst forth into rapturous admiration of our hero's hair.

"It is longer and blacker than St. Crispin's, and hit had the finest head of hair, and was the cleverest fellow at Oriel."

"You think the longest hair makes the longest head," said Dominick. "On that principle, Absalom should

have been the wisest of men instead of his brother, and Colonel Sibthorpe ought to be a privy councillor."

"Young Ireland is mimicking La Jeune France," said a student.

"Mimicking a Frenchman is aping a monkey,"'said Moore.

"What is the Young Ireland principle?" asked an Englishman.

"Ireland for the Irish," said O'Regan; "just as if I were to throw up my hat, shout the Oregon Territory for the O'Regans! and declare war with England and America."

"How do you account, Moore," said an English student, who had not before joined the conversation, "for the political extravagance which seems just now so prevalent amongst your countrymen?"

"It is easier," Moore replied, "for rulers to change their principles of government, than to get rid of the evils which former maladministration has engendered. You see in the Irish extravagance of today the latest corollary from your English misrule of ages."

"We have been greater in arms than in govern­ment, it is too true."

"You overlooked in Ireland the greatness of liber­ality; you forgot that where the state is the donor and the people the donee, the true economy is profusion. Fru­gality is an excellent Chancellor of the Exchequer; but Bounty should be Secretary for the Home Department. By a few autumns of franchises, how many winters of discontent might you have saved yourselves in Ire­land."

"We are beginning to understand the policy of munificence."

"Munificence is the instinct of greatness, not its policy. The bounty of a great country like this, and of a minister worthy of such a country, ought to be like Mark Anthony's. There should be 'no winter in it.' "

"Well, we are waxing autumnal." "The summer, I think, has commenced." "Yet the voice of the turtle has not been heard in your land; your public men are like the Canadian bishops, who had a solemn religious ceremony, and, perhaps retain it still, for the excommunication of the doves."

"Mac Morris would tell you, if he were here, that the public men in Ireland, like the Canadian bishops, excommunicate no doves that do not commit more havoc than kites; but for my part, I neither justify the indiscriminate violence of Irish agitation, nor do I admit that England is yet entitled to complain that her liberal advances have not been met in a generous spirit. As you have sown, you must reap. You are at length climbing the hill of virtue, but your past conduct has left you only the thorny path to mount by. However, you have the cheers and good wishes of my humble self, and, I trust, of many others who prefer substances to shadows, and a cottage on the earth to a castle in the air. My disposition inclines me to cheerful views in politics, as in private life. In every school I choose the sunny side of the portico. It is both my taste and my principle to hail the first

violet that peeps, and welcome the first swallow that dares."

"The name of your present viceroy is auspicious of peace and reconciliation-Hates-bury" said the live­liest of the white waistcoats.

"I accept the good omen," said Moore, "even in the shape of a bad pun."

They rose, and dispersed by the mild splendour of a full summer moon. One was in law, and he absconded to his books; another in love, and he repaired to his ladye's bower; one white waistcoat went to a Young England club, the other went to a Puseyitical soiree. Skiddaw ascended demurely to his garret, and he was not long there before he mounted higher still, for he got into Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Son­nets," and thence into the clouds. Moore proceeded in search of the song-smitten Tierna, whom he found sauntering alone in the deserted gardens of the Temple, while the pale planet, who turns tides and brains, im­memorial patroness of lovers, lunatics, poets, and poetical politicians-the lady high-chancellor of the skies-sat on the azure woolsack, dispensing her beams with unearthly equity, to the least wave that rippled on the river, and the tiniest leaf that rustled on its banks.

The sweet Saxon voice was still warbling the rude Celtic melody in the retentive ear of the susceptible-Mac Morris. Moore walked by his side for a moment or two in silence, believing him absorbed in his cus­tomary subjects of meditation, and being too unmu­sical himself to conceive it possible that the snatch of a song, flung by an unseen songster from a window,

could make an impression of a sufficient depth to last for a summer evening.

At length Mac Morris stopped abruptly, Moore marked the wild glancing of his eye, and expected one of his finest explosions. "Never did a flash more faith­fully predict a thunder-clap.

"What notes!" he exclaimed with transport. “What notes would those be to hymn the birthday of a na­tion's liberty-to sing at the nativity of Irish inde­pendence!”

"I like the idea," said Moore, quietly, "of cele­brating a Celtic revolution with Saxon minstrelsy."

"Saxon!-how do you know it to be Saxon?" asked Tigernach, sharply, after having been at first taken aback by Moore's natural observation.

"She could not pronounce Fag-a-bealac;-the vile Saxon--"

"Moore!-do not--"

Tigernach paused, and Dominick laughed; both, felt the absurdity of the remonstrance keenly; and again they paced up and down the cool terrace, Mac Morris looking wild enough to take Hotspur's jump at the moon, and Moore observing him with the glance of a practical metaphysician, or a mad-doctor.

Tigernach stopped a second time in the same the­atrically sudden manner, and said,

"Moore, you talked of a lady whom you met at Mr. Bompas's-I forget her name-she sang, you said, and was handsome, and talked of Ireland."

"Miss Falcon-yes, and now I recollect, her voice resembled that which we heard to-day."

"Perhaps the same," said Mac Morris.

"No," said Moore, "the Falcons live in Barley-street."

Mac Morris made no reply, and Moore soon left him to his solitary ruminations, having business or pleasure in another place.

"I can fancy," he said to himself, as he proceeded to his chambers, "the song of his Celtic cherubs, abiding in the fields by night, carolling what he calls the nativity of Irish freedom-strife on earth, and ill-will to Englishmen, would assuredly be the burden of the lay. I should be sorry to see any girl of beauty and accomplishment engaged in such an operatic com­pany." He paused, and reflected for a moment. "Could the voice in Portland-place have been that of Emily Falcon?" It now occurred to him that it was just possible that the Falcons might have shifted their quarters; he recalled what he had picked up of the habits of the old birds, and why might they not have flitted since he last met them, from Harley-street to Portland-place? But was it worth the trouble of investigation? The gipsy was very amusing, her daughter was very interesting, both were very hand­some, each in her style of beauty: the mother to please the lovers of full-blown charms, the daughter to captivate those who are rather Buddists in their no­tions of female loveliness. Whether it was the attrac­tion of the rose or the rose-bud, of a roguish brunette or a romantic blonde, Moore determined on a cruise to Portland-place in chase of the piratical squadron.

"Chewing the cud of sweet fancies" as he went his

way upon this pleasant expedition, he thought of law and love alternately; and his ideas wandering from the halls of Themis to the bowers of Venus, fell into the following idle rhymes:

Say, what is Love?-a litigation-
A law-suit brought in Cupid's courts,
Beginning with a declaration-
See Suckling's or see Moore's Reports.

One suitor seeks sweet satisfaction
For damage done by woman's wile;
Another brings his lawful action
Upon a promissory smile.

Your billets-doux are Love's citations
To rosy bowers and myrtle shades.
They sometimes leave us no vacations,-
Those process-serving ladies' maids.

Appearance is the lover's duty,
And with a speed beyond the dove,
Subpoena'd by the writ of Beauty,
He flies upon the wings of Love.

How sweet in moonlit hall or bower
With fair defendant to imparl;
But when th' imparlance lasts an hour,
The court above is apt to snarl.

If mothers still will be Vansittarts,
And fathers calculate like Neckar,
Let Mammon be the Judge to knit hearts,
And Love Chief Baron of th' Exchequer.

plexion reminded Dominick (although only an ad­mirer, not a lover) of "Helen's beauty on a brow of Egypt."

She received the young Irishman with an affability at once gracious and dignified, but she did not conceal her surprise at seeing him; she presumed, however, that he had heard of her last migration through the Bom-pases. Emily coloured slightly when she learned in what way their present residence was discovered; but it is doubtful whether she would have severely re­proached herself with attracting attention by her warbling, had it brought Mac Morris to Portland-place along with Moore.

The gipsy asked Dominick why he was not accom­panied by his friend, whose name, she added, she never ventured to pronounce. Dominick smiled, and asked Miss Falcon whether she had forgotten the little lesson he had given her in pronouncing Irish; he then an­swered her mother's question by saying that Mac Morris and he had separated for the evening, before the sudden recollection of Emily's voice had suggested the idea of his present visit.

"Is Mr. Mac Morris as musical as you are?" in­quired Mrs. Falcon, naturally thinking that her daugh­ter's voice was the spell operating upon Dominick.

"As I am!" exclaimed Moore, "ah, I am not mu­sical at all-I do not understand music-Mac Morris is as fanatical on that subject as he is on politics. Miss Falcon would not believe me were I to tell her how her voice transported him; nay, I positively assure you,

he dined upon the memory of the notes, and I have no doubt he will sup upon them too."

This was the first triumph of the fair Saxon over the fierce Celt, and probably the relation of it, slight as it was, flushed her cheek; for she changed her position so that Moore could not remark the alteration, if any, that her countenance underwent.

"I am making her learn some popular Irish airs, Mr. Moore, for those delightful night-suppers you gave us such a charming account of at Mr. Bompas's. It is very uncertain whether we shall go to Ireland or not, but if we do, I shall positively go cockering-"

"Coshering," said Moore, correcting her.

"Coshering, I mean,-it must be enchanting; and as to the night-suppers, I am determined to go to them all."

"I shall urge Mac Morris to revive that antique mode of jollification, expressly for your entertainment," said Dorninick. "You must know that both coshering and night-suppers were forbidden by act of parliament, so that nothing more piquant can be imagined in the way of festivity."

"When does Mr. Mac Morris go to Ireland?" Emily now ventured to ask.

"In a few days; he is all ardour to take the field, and indeed his young countrymen are equally im­patient to range themselves under his banners. By the by, I must send you a poetical address to him by the chief of the Celtic bards: his position is really a bril­liant one, but I grieve to say that I do not consider it

as creditable to his discretion, as it is flattering to his vanity. Now, I know Miss Falcon thinks me sadly deficient in enthusiasm."

"Well, I do think you are," said Emily, frankly, but smiling as she spoke.

"Emily is quite wild. I often tell her she is half Irish; she talks of monster-meetings quite coolly, Mr. Moore, and thinks nothing of shooting a landlord."

Emily blushed and laughed. "You must not be­lieve half of what mamma says of me, Mr. Moore."

"You would not shoot a landlord, yourself," replied Moore, gaily.

"No," laughed Emily, "but, Mr. Moore, I have a favour to ask you."

"You want to pronounce the Irish words in the song you were singing this evening."

"How well you guessed!"

But Moore, while he instructed the fair enthusiast to pronounce the old Celtic battle-cry, could not help expressing his regret that, after having done good ser­vice in our glorious Peninsular campaigns, where the foreign enemy fled before it, it should now be made the whoop of a domestic faction, and raised in that worst of wars, where laurel was never gathered, and from which victor never returned in triumph.*

"I am no musician," he added, " as I before told you; but I know that music, like poetry, is a divine gift, and I feel that it would be better employed in

*Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos."

Pharsalia, Lib. I.

establishing concord between nations than in widening the breach between them: at least, I would leave that ungracious office to the drum and the trumpet. Pardon me, if I question whether so sweet an instrument as a woman's voice-a voice like yours-is not rather made to sing such songs as Shakspeare's, your own sweet old English ballads, than the virulent and rude strains in that flagrant green music-book."

Emily would have found a reply difficult, but she was saved the necessity of making one by the sudden exclamation of her mother (who had been for the last few minutes busily engaged in examining and noting her registry of useful people and accessible houses):

"Mr. Moore, are you engaged for the day after to­morrow?"

"No," replied Dominick, anticipating an invitation to dinner; and he was not disappointed.

"Because we must really have another day with the Bompases, before we leave town; Mr. Falcon is going to Ireland, and it would be a great point for him to meet you, and perhaps Mr. Mac Morris also, before he starts; your advice and directions would be of immense use to him. I'll manage it. Emily, have you Mr. Moore's address? The Bompases are such good people; in fact, we live with them; of course you know, Mr. Moore, we have no establishment of our own just at present. We are here only by accident; mere birds of passage."

It would have been extremely dull in Moore to have declined an invitation, at once so hospitable and characteristic. He accepted it gaily for himself, and

promised to acquaint his friend with the gipsy's ami­able proposition.

"You will receive a note," she added, "from Mr. or Mrs. Bompas to-morrow morning."

"It is scarcely necessary," said Moore.

"No," said Mrs. Falcon, "but it is just as well, for form's sake."

already seen once before, and which she had no doubt was that of our Celtic hero.

She shrank back instinctively into the room, and closed the window. But Tigernach had been a rapturous listener; his countenance and his attitude, as he hearkened to the sweetest voice he thought he had ever heard, warbling in the heart of the English ca­pital one of the fiercest productions of Young Ireland minstrelsy, expressed astonishment and rapture in a high degree; but when the unseen songstress came to the close of the stanza, and he expected the pause and the stumbling at those uncouth Celtic words, what lan­guage can describe his amazement? Saints and angels I -how he started-when the strong, rich stream of sound leaped with melodious agility over the obstruc­tion which had so lately thwarted it, just as a torrent in his native hills might bound exultingly over a mass of granite newly detached from the rugged sides of the ravine.

It is difficult, by the rays of the moon, to take exact observation of faces and figures, even when there is abundant time to note their peculiarities; but what could Tigernach pronounce of an apparition which came and went within the space of a minute? Nothing but that it was the figure of a girl dressed in pure white, and that its movements seemed light and graceful. Indeed, the suddenness with which it disappeared, was sufficient evidence of the sylph-like elasticity, if not of sylph-like beauty.

Who could she be? What might be her name? As

to her race, perhaps, after all she was Irish. What a triumph would it afford him over Moore, if, after all, she should prove a Connaught Circe, or a syren of Glen-gariff. He inquired, and found that the house be­longed, to a Mr. Jenkinson, and that Mr. Jenkinson had daughters. "Jenkinson!" He ran through the roll of all the worthies of Ireland, but he could not find the name of Jenkinson amongst them: he might as well have looked for Stubbs or Bompas. After all, it was but a voice, but a vision: but the snatch of a song, but the glimpse of a girl. What was Miss Jen­kinson to him, or he to Miss Jenkinson? This was no time for yielding to soft impressions, even asso­ciated as they were with the stern duties of his station. He who had the dismemberment of the British empire on his hands to be swayed by the breath of a woman, a stranger, and a Saxon! He, who was to restore Stonehenge and repeal the Union, to be influenced by a voice from a window, and a white lady on a bal­cony! He stood and gazed awhile, however, before he could tear himself from the spot. Not till he utterly despaired of hearing "that, strain again," and beholding the vision of white muslin among the balsams, did Tigernach Mac Morris, the head and front of Young Ireland, the great champion of the Celtic cause, retire to his chambers in the Temple. As he re-tired, too, a white-robed phantom clogged his steps, moved as he moved, and turned, as he turned, still whooping Fag-a-bealac in his ears, in a most delicious contr'-alto. The time was past when, in such an emer-

gency, he would have implored the help of Chitty or Sugden to exorcise a demon or lay a ghost. The lawyers, in truth, had never been of signal service to him, when he most wanted their succour, against the assaults of fancy, and the perilous pleasures either of memory or imagination. Now he did not solicit their aid. He sat down to revise and embellish the oration which he had prepared for his first appearance in the political arena. Ah, Mac Morris! the image of woman and the joys of music, with the "soft and delicate de­sires" that "come thronging" in the train of the graces and the syrens, were more germane to your age than any figures of rhetoric or any clamours of a mob. The notes of his speech dropped from his hand; neither for exordium or peroration, nor for the body of the harangue, could he frame any combination of sounds but the cry of the Connaught Rangers;-it was still "Fag-a-bealac! -Fag-a-bealac!" In a sort of despair, he seized on a work of German metaphysics; he had been much de­voted of late to that branch of study (so excellent a pre­paration for the business of life, and particularly for the practice of statesmanship!)-at all events it now stood his friend, for, assisted by the lateness of the hour, it opened the gates of Sleep and ushered him into Dreamland.

Wandering in that magic realm, populous with the shadows of the day's experience, grouped according to no discovered law, in "a most admired disorder" of persons and things, an anarchy of shapes and sounds, occurrences in uproar, and dates in open insurrection-

the slumbering Tierna saw barristers in petticoats and maidens in huge wigs; reticules changed into lawyers' bags; and he beheld queen's counsel swimming in robes of muslin, and beautiful women in forensic silks. In the Court of Chancery, an Irish bard was administering the Brehon law, rhyming his orders, and chanting his decrees. He found himself in the Common Pleas, and, lo! there was Serjeant Talfourd executing a bravura: only that his name was Jenkinson. How well he moved it!-She's a divine pleader-Grisi is nothing to him. She has the ear of the court-the serjeant's voice is a contr'-alto-her wig-his hair-it sounds in damages-but he couldn't pronounce Fag-a-bealac-no, Mr. Serjeant Jenkinson-now he has it-lovely lawyer-pro­found lady. Take your motion, Miss Talfourd: no costs, sweet serjeant.

But were the thoughts of Tigernach the only thoughts busy on that evening? Was his the only fancy at her loom? His the only brain seething? Perhaps, while he dreamed himself, he had set others dreaming also; pos­sibly there was one imagination in which the shadows were combined in even more fantastic forms. What a work would be the secret history of the mind's "painted chamber!" At all events, if ever the annals of the female fancy shall be chronicled, perhaps to constitute the light reading of joyous spirits in Elysium, there will be found a chapter in the rosy volume entitled the "Visions of the Enthusiastic Emily;" and in those visions, on a certain summer-night, a principal shadowy character will assuredly be a pale student devouring a strain

of music, with the features of young Mac Morris and the attributes of young St. Just.

"Her name is Jenkinson," said Tierna to Dominick, when they met the following morning in one of their common haunts.

"Whose?" asked Moore, affecting ignorance of Mac Morris's meaning.

"That voice," said Tigernach.

"As good a name for a voice as any," said Dominick, smiling; "but I see you can breakfast as well as dine upon sweet sounds."

"Jenkinson,"-murmured Mac Morris, musingly, as if he was thinking that a melodious Jenkinson was a phenomenon utterly unaccountable.

"Suppose her name should not be Jenkinson," said Moore.

"I ascertained it," said Tigernach.

"I ascertained it to be Falcon!" said Moore.

"Falcon!-then I was right in the guess I made last night."

"You were; and only that we parted so soon, I should have taken you with me upon the voyage of discovery which I made myself, and to which I was indebted for a charming evening with a pair of en­chantresses, although the mother is the dame to bewitch me. I am serious. I prefer August to May; and of all things, I delight (merely for my pastime) in a clever, roguish, brazen, imperious, unprincipled beauty."

"A flattering account of an English matron."

"Oh, she is a fascinating vagabond, a regular free-

booter; 'the world is her oyster,' which she opens with her tongue tetter than Pistol did with his sword. But her daughter-I can hardly believe she is her daughter-she is a being of another clay, with a fine natural morale, although wanting discipline and culture; she is as enthusiastic, and about Ireland too, as if every drop in her veins were pure Celtic ichor."

"You have not been unobservant of her, it seems," said Mac Morris.

"No; but I have marked her for you, not for myself."

"For me!" cried Tigernach, with a disdainful look that did not express what he really felt. "But tell me, Moore," he added, "was it for me that you passed a live-long summer evening hearkening to Miss Falcon's strains?"

"She did not sing-I never asked her; but--"

"You taught her to pronounce Fag-a-bealac."

"Ah, Tierna!-were you too in Portland-place? false Celt I-hollow patriot!-I blush for you."

"No;-I was unemployed. I was curious to ascertain the name of an English girl that sang our national songs in such brilliant style,-that was all. But she is handsome, you say?"

"What can it be to you, whether she is a Helen or a Hecuba, a Miranda or a Sycorax?"

"Mere idle curiosity, I admit."

"Well, to gratify that 'laudable feeling, I tell you that you never saw or dreamed of any thing lovelier in the shape of a girl. She has eyes like load-stars. Her

hair is that which poets rejoice in-the tresses that Milton compares to the morn,-that Shakspeare calls 'a golden mesh to trap the hearts of men.' Her form is that of a nymph-I prefer her mother's, for my theory of beauty is, that the attraction is in proportion to the mass; but the daughter's is not to be paragoned in the style of figure most orthodox amongst lovers and artists. Then her lips-need I tell you that those lips are sweet and lovely from which issue notes like the nightingale's. Well, Tierna, I have now only to add, that she seems as pure as she is fair; that she is one of those radiant creatures who make an atmosphere of light round about them, and seem rather angels who have been women, than women destined to be angels. Alas! however, nobody is faultless!"

"Ah! now comes the black spot on the disc of your Venus."

"Yes! black, indeed! She is, Tierna-I grieve to say it,-she is-English!"

"Well, England has few such daughters, if you are a portrait-painter with any pretension to veracity-"

"You may see her before you leave for Ireland, if you are disposed; I have an invitation for you from my magnificent gipsy to dine with her to-morrow."

"At Mr. Jenkinson's?"

"No; but at Bryanstone-square, with the Bompases."

"With the Bompases!-invited by Mrs. Falcon!"

"Ay, that's the way we do things in gipsy-life; a new mode of living altogether, of which my glorious

Egyptian is the great inventress; and, as I am resolved to see the system thoroughly developed, I have accepted the invitation for to-morrow, and you cannot spend your last day in London in a more edifying and agreeable manner. Put by your Celtic prejudices, and dine with Mrs. Falcon at Bompas's."

"Well, I consent."

"And remember, Mac Morris!-no more trips to Stonehenge!"

of Waddiloves from Monmouthshire, a mother Waddilove and three young Waddiloves-all were at length assembled, except the illustrious Mr. Tigernach Mac Morris, who (being seemingly born to make a sensation in the world) was again in the missing list. But now his absence was unexplained. Moore could only say that he had appointed to call at his friend's chambers to accompany him to Bryanstone-square, and that upon doing so, he had found the chambers deserted, and was only answered by the echo of his own voice, when he repeatedly invoked the sonorous name of Ti­gernach. This fresh breach of a solemn convivial en­gagement, deliberately contracted by writing under hand and seal (for the Bompases had gone through the ceremony of sending cards to Mrs. Falcon's no­minees), was, of course, the subject of some surprise, and a little good- humoured animadversion. The Bompas establishment was habitually too irregular to justify severe remark on a social delinquency, which in other houses would have been considered a grave one. Some concluded that Mac Morris was a lover; some that he was a poet; others that he belonged to the third of those who are said to be "of imagination all compact." As to Moore, he could hardly help suspecting that his friend Tierna had discovered the title of Ireland to the pyramids of Egypt, and had started for the Nile as abruptly as he had taken his trip to Stonehenge. The fair Emily laughed at herself for feeling some little disappointment at the non-appearance of our hero, whom, she seemed fated never to meet. His absence, however, only piqued her curiosity the

more, and tended to heighten the romantic opinion she had been led to form of his character; it was evident he was none of the vulgar luminaries that move in their hum-drum orbits, and keep their appointments like Sunday-citizens, but some devious and sublimer pheno­menon, superior to the common law of the firmament, and only obeying the impulse of its own fiery and meteoric nature.

The conversation turning after dinner upon the va­rious fopperies of the day, the youthful political cote­ries existing in most parts of Europe were a good deal discussed and ridiculed. Mr. Bompas remarked that the claim set up by those juvenile cliques to pre-emi­nence and precedency in the public councils, was a practical reversal of the fifth commandment, which asserts the right of the old to the deference and homage of the young.

"And oddly enough," said Moore, "it is a Jewish pen that has been most industrious in shaking the authority of the great article of the Jewish code to which you allude."

"We do not read," said Charles Bompas, "of a Young Israel in sacred history."

"Perhaps that may be the true import of the phrase children of Israel," said Mr. De Goslyn, a lively young man, who having written much nonsense verse at Eton, and read much nonsense prose at Oxford, aspired on the strength of his academic attainment, supported by the dazzling whiteness of his waistcoats, to represent the borough of High-Cocking, on D'Israelitish or Young England principles.

"I fear," observed Charles Bompas, the pleader, "this coxcombry has no pretensions to antiquity: the old Greeks were directed by their gray-beards, Nestor and Ulysses; they had a rude notion of some connexion between ripeness of years and maturity of judgment."

"Had there been a Young Greece," said Moore, "Telemachus would have been president of the council, or one of the little Agamemnons; Nestor and Ulysses might have played push-pin."

"The principle, however," said Mr. De Goslyn, "may be seen clearly enough in the Grecian mythology; there you find all the moving powers of the world re-presented by the stripling gods, Mercury, Cupid, Apollo, Bacchus-eloquence, love, music, wine-Young Olympus!"

"There was evidently no Young Italy in the palmy days of Rome," said Mr. Bompas, "for the senate was composed of fathers."

"Maxima debetur puero reverentia," said De Goslyn. "I have quoted that line in my address to the electors of High-Cocking."

"But we are forgetting Ireland," said Mr. Bompas, "and your expedition, Mr. Falcon-Mr. Moore will be happy, I have no doubt, to give you a hint or two." "I ought to visit the round towers, I presume," said Falcon, to commence the conversation. "They were fire-temples, were they not? said De Goslyn. "No, belfries, I'm told," said Chatworth. "My belief is," said Moore, "they were some enormous job of the day, like the Martello-towers

of later times; every age in Ireland had its character­istic job. To inquire into the use of those towers is idle:-however, I trust they belong to a pagan era, for it is rather hard to assign all the abuses of Ireland to the ages of Christianity."

"I mean to pay great attention to the picturesque," said Falcon, "Ireland abounds with it, does it not?"

"Yes," replied Moore, "if you are fond of lakes and mountains, torrents and waterfalls, you will find a great deal to charm you in Kerry, Wicklow, and many parts of Connaught; but the moral scenery of Ireland is the thing that will interest an enlightened traveller, Mr. Falcon, like you."

"The moral scenery!"

"Our ecclesiastical Switzerland, for instance-there you will see the awful solitudes, and the lordly heights, a chain of dignities, peak above peak, from canonry to prebend, from prebend to deanery, until you reach the region of the Hautes Alpes, and gaze on the mitred top of primacy itself. That is the Alpine prospect for me: I think very little of Killarney and Connemara."

"A dangerous country to live in, your eccle­siastical Switzerland," said Mr. Bompas.

"Yes; subject to political thunder-storms," conti­nued Moore, "and the fall of a moral avalanche occa­sionally; but if nations will have picturesque institutions, they must run the risks, and pay the price of them."

Mr. Falcon's next inquiry was about the Irish jaunt­ing cars. "Travel by the jaunting-cars," said Moore, "by all means; but let me give you the same advice that Archbishop Whately is said to have given to Earl

De Grey. Always secure the box-seat; the advantage is that you see all round you, and both sides of the landscape; otherwise you only observe the side upon which you happen to be seated, and that is the reason why people in Ireland have such a habit of one-sided views. There is the Whig side of the country, and the Tory side;-if you sit on the Whig side, you can't see the Tory side, and if you sit on the Tory side, you can't see the Whig side;- do you sit in the middle, and take an impartial survey; see both sides. You will find the rule a good one, both, in the figure and the letter."

"Lord De Grey did not act upon it, I believe," said Mr. Bompas.

"No; he took a drive through the estates of the Church, for example, with a few mitres in his pocket to distribute to men of piety and worth; but he only saw the worthies on the Tory side of the road, just because he would not sit on the box-seat, although it was the proper place for a Chief Governor."

Meanwhile, Mrs. Falcon was transacting business in the drawing-room; she was as full of ways and means as a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and not much more conscientious than a French farmer-general under the old regime, or an Irish county-treasurer down to a very recent period.

The kind interest which the gipsy took in the education and accomplishments of Mrs. Bompas's daughters won the heart of that excellent lady, who considered Mrs. Falcon a high authority on all matters of fashion and taste.

"Your girls are perfectly charming, my dear Mrs.

Bompas: I never saw girls so much improved; Do­rothy is getting quite a distinguished air, and Lydia has your own soyez-tranquille manner that I do so much admire."

This compliment to Miss Lydia Bompas was well deserved; and her fond mother found no fault with the French in which it was so felicitously couched. If ever a pair of young ladies was made of vegetable marrow, it was Dorothy and Lydia Bompas; and if, as mathematicians say, the sphere is the most perfect of figures, neither of them need have shrank from com­parison with the Venus de Medicis herself.

"I am delighted to see they are still paying atten­tion to their music," resumed the gipsy, glancing at the open piano, littered with ballads and sonatas.

"Oh! no, indeed-my girls have no taste for music. Dorothy has no voice, and Lydia hates playing. I sometimes think her fingers are too fat. Lydia, love, show Mrs. Falcon your fingers."

And Lydia held up a nice little bunch of short stumpy parsnips, in admirable keeping with her form of vegetable marrow.

"What a pretty hand!" exclaimed Mrs. Falcon: "but I won't hear of their neglecting their music: they have such Italian voices,"-then she paused, and seemed struck by a sudden thought-"I wish you had Signor Vocalini for a few lessons; but he is so full, in such demand-do you know, I think, through Lady Middleton, I could manage it; and perhaps I May also be able to get Mr. Skipton to give you an hour occa­sionally in the Polka-it might be only once a-week."

"My dear Mrs. Falcon, it is very good of you to think of it, but it would be no use: my poor girls are too fat to dance; and they are going mad, you must know, about geology."

"Geology!-nonsense-what good will geology do them at Almack's, or when they begin to go to the Queen's drawing-room? And, as for being too fat to dance, fat girls, my dear Mrs. Bompas, always dance best-they step so lightly. There are the Puddicomes-I never saw such a fat family-but it is the prettiest thing in the world to see them dancing: they gave a soiree dansante one morning the season before last-don't you remember, Emily?"

"The idea of any of us going to Almack's, or the Queen's drawing-rooms!" exclaimed poor Mrs. Bompas, expressing her sincere unambitious feeling, and believing Mrs. Falcon to be perfectly serious.

"Of course you will, with your fortune and your daughters' figures; at all events, music and, dancing are absolutely indispensable-but here comes Mr. Bompas; I must interest him in Signor Vocalini."

"What is he?" asked Bompas, planting himself gallantly beside the most unscrupulous of fine women.

"I'll tell you what he is," replied the gipsy, putting on all her blandishments; a "liberal-a patriot-a man after your own heart. I am not sure that he did not stab somebody at Bologna. At all events, he is the best singing-master in London; such a delicious basso-relievo! Now you must promise me to engage him for your charming daughters."

Bompas's eyes met Chatworth's instinctively.

"An Italian, a patriot, an assassin, and a basso-relievo-come, Bompas, you must patronise him."

"I never shut my door in the face of an exile," said the liberal and benevolent ex-legislator, warmed by his wine, and more than commonly genial and pliant; "but when Italian patriotism comes introduced by English beauty-"

"Ah, Mr. Bompas!-you are a dangerous man!" exclaimed Mrs. Falcon, having secured a first-rate Italian music-master for her little daughter, and now looking and simpering as if a conquest had been made of herself.

"But, papa, we are going to the Rhine, remember," exclaimed Miss Dorothy Bompas, rolling up tenderly to her benevolent father, and kissing him with might and main.

"That's true, Bompas," said Chatworth, recollecting the conversation of a previous day, and a certain pro­phecy he had ventured to make in the course of it. "Take my advice: take your tour first, and your lessons in singing and dancing afterwards."

"We'll think of it," said the ex-senator, with a hesitation that evidently augured nothing adverse to his daughter's wishes.

"How important the German language is at the present day!" said Chatworth, addressing himself to Mrs. Falcon, who assented drily, evidently disconcerted at a change of arrangement which looked so unfavourable to her daughter's education.

"Then the tales of the Rhine are so enchanting,"

continued Chatworth, now addressing the young lady herself, "so romantic, beyond any thing in the 'Arabian Nights,' or the 'Fairy Tales.' You will be as happy as the day is long."

"Oh, but, sir, I am not going," said little Paulina, sorrowfully.

"Not going! Yes, you are going! Why not? What would your young friends do without you?"

"That's true, indeed," cried both the Bompas girls, with one accord.

"She would like to go well enough, I dare say," said the gipsy; "but we cannot always do what we like, Mr. Chatworth."

"Oh, mamma, I would like to go of all things," ex­claimed Paulina, with enthusiasm.

Mr. Bompas looked thoughtful, but benevolent.

"You will see Hatto's Tower. Hatto was the wicked bishop that was eaten up by the rats and mice, you know," resumed Chatworth.

"What did he do?" cried Willy, suspending opera­tions on a plumcake, to which he had been paying his addresses most assiduously.

"He wouldn't pay his poor-rate."

"Mamma," said Willy, "will the rats eat papa?"

"No, my love, I hope not. Why do you ask such a foolish question?"

"Because, ma, papa said the other day that he never paid poor-rate in his life."

Master Willy Falcon was what the French call an "enfant terrible."

"Oh," cried Paulina, in a low pathetic tone to her

new friend and ally, "oh, I should so like to see Hatto's Tower."

"Ask Mr. Bompas to take you," said Chatworth, under his breath.

The little girl took his advice without hesitation.

Mrs. Falcon made a show of opposition, for she thought it decent. She managed this kind of thing inimitably; you would almost have thought she was distressed at the arrangement, and conferring a favour upon the Bompases, instead of accepting one.

Chatworth edged over to the side of Bompas, and said in his ear-

"I told you the other day you would take the young Falcon touring with you."

"So you did," said the bounteous Bompas. "You can't do better than come along with us; you are fond of Rhenish."

"I understand it," replied Chatworth.

"Do you speak it, sir?" asked Mrs. Falcon.

"I never heard of the Rhenish language," said Mr. De Goslyn, stolidly.

"Dear me!" exclaimed the gipsy.

"The Jonannisberg dialect is the best," said Chatworth.

"Remember that, Paulina," said her mother.

Chatworth now began to chat with Mrs. Bompas and her globular daughters upon the attractions of their meditated trip.

"I do not think the girls care much about the scen­ery," said their mother.

"I do not, at any rate," said Miss Dorothy.

"Nor I," said her sister Lydia.

"Have you any books about the Rhine, sir?" inquired Miss Bompas.

"I have Victor Hugo," said Chatworth.

"Does he describe the formation of the Delta?" asked one geological girl.

"Does he agree with Mr. Lyell," asked the other "on the extinct volcanoes on the left bank? Mr. Lyell observed quartz pebbles mixed with scoriae in the wall of the crater." "And regular strata of graywacke-sandstone," added her sister.

"No, Lydia, conglomerate."

"Graywacke-sandstone, I am positive, Dorothy."

"How can you say so, Lydia dear?" said Dorothy, kissing her opponent in her graceful, girlish way.

"Because I know it, Dorothy."

"I appeal to Mr. Chatworth who has been there himself. Now didn't you see the conglomerate, sir, at Roderberg and Mosenberg?"

"I can't say that I observed it," said Chatworth.

"There now, Lydia, you see."

"But Mr. Chatworth is not a geologist; I appeal to Mr. Falcon."

But Mr. Falcon had disappeared, and so had the little Waddiloves and Mr. William Falcon.

"Where can they have vanished to?" asked several voices.

"I know," said Miss Lydia Bompas, "Mr. Falcon is gone up to the laboratory with my cousins, to make a volcano in a geranium-pot."

"Dear, dear!" exclaimed poor Mrs. Bompas, "now do go up, Mr. Bompas, and forbid the volcano."

"Do, do, Mr. Bompas-I'm nobody, since the chil­dren learned natural philosophy," cried Mrs. Waddi-love, still more imploringly.

"There's no fear," said Bompas, who, having com­fortably deposited himself in the downy depths of the easiest chair in the house, next to that which his wife occupied, was almost as little disposed to undertake a journey to the laboratory as that serene lady was herself. "There's no fear-no fear-Mr. Falcon's a scientific man-fit to be president of the Royal-"

Before he could pronounce the word "Society," crack went something in an upper room, with a noise about the loudness of a musket-shot.

"There it goes," cried Chatworth, "and a very good imitation of Vesuvius, I have no doubt."

The explosion was instantly succeeded by the scream­ing of children, barking of lap-dogs, and a precipitate rush of the minute philosophers down stairs; upon which similar outcries were raised in the drawing-room, accompanied by a corresponding movement of old people, the violence of which may be conjectured by the facts that Mr. Bompas got about half way to the door, and Mrs. Bompas was actually on her legs for a few seconds. It was soon found, however, that the only harm done was to the carpet and furniture of the laboratory, where the ingenious Mr. Falcon had illustrated Vesuvius so prettily, that he had also made a very lively representation of the fate of Pompeii, for the room was found covered with dust and ashes to the depth of

an inch, and there was enough of broken china and glass to enable the little Waddiloves to open a museum of volcanic remains the next day.

Poor Mr. Falcon was so confused by this untoward event, that he decamped with an umbrella belonging to Mr. Bompas; and the gipsy was perhaps thrown off her centre also, for she begged Mr. De Goslyn (whose mother's coach was in attendance upon him) to drop herself and her daughters "at home" "on his way to Kensington," where old Lady De Goslyn resided.

The reader unacquainted with the topography of London, has only to imagine a voyage from London to New York touching at Constantinople, and he will have a fair idea of a drive from Bryanstone-square to Kensington, taking Portland Place on the way.

"This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening, nips his root."

King Henry VIII.

THE CELTIC HERO IN AFFLICTION-ATROCIOUS MISCONDUCT OF HIS UNCLE-TIERNA REFUSES TO FALL IN LOVE-MOORE RE-CEIVES A NOTE FROM THE GIPSY, AND ACCEPTS HER INVITATION TO THE SEAT OF SIR FREDERIC CROZIER-GIVES MR. FALCON AN INTRODUCTION TO THE VERNON SHARPES, AND FEELS A STRONG VOCATION TO THE STATE OF CELIBACY-THE FLIGHT OF THE FALONS FROM LONDON-MISTAKE ABOUT A BLACK SILK CLOAK-EMILY A MONOPOLIST OF THE FAMILY CONSCIENCE.

on the ensuing morning Dominick Moore was seated at breakfast in his chambers, encouraging the efforts of the sun with the help of a candle (which was the brighter luminary of the two), and pondering in his mind in what fresh political freak Mac Morris might be engaged, or what new wild-goose he might then be chasing, when the door flew open, and Tierna stalked into the dusky apartment, wrapped in his cloak, looking as wild, woe-begone, and ghastly, as if he had just made his escape from Spenser's cave of Despair. Dominick dropped his knife and beheld his associate with alarm, for it was evident that his distress was unaffected, and his excitement genuine.

"Good God, Tierna, what has happened?-what ails you?-you look ill-you have not slept!"

"No!" said Mac Morris, with a hollow voice. "Do-minick, read that!"

And he put a letter into Moore's hand, which he instantly recognised to "be the hand-writing of old Mac-Ever-Boy.

Moore read it with as much haste as the chirography admitted of, for the despatch was written in a style of penmanship that indicated a writer more familiar with warlike tools than with literary weapons. The purport, however, was as follows.

Mr. Vincent Mac Morris, the old chief's brother, and a retired merchant of large fortune, alarmed by rumours of violent political movements which had reached him, and with which his nephew's name was publicly connected, had formally announced his reso­lution to leave every shilling of his wealth to a distant branch of the family, in case his nephew should be so misguided as to mix himself up with the dangerous proceedings in contemplation, particularly with those of that extreme section, whose opinions were pro­mulgated in the columns of the "Sunburst," and which had assumed the title of Young Ireland. As the best security against the political infection of the time, Mr. Vincent Mac Morris, wielding the influence with which his riches had invested him, had further stipulated that Tierna should remain two years longer in Eng­land, prosecuting his legal studies. Upon these con­ditions and upon these alone, a considerable sum of money was to be advanced to, discharge a weighty

incumbrance on the Connaught estate, a further sum contributed to repair the family residence (an attention that Knock-na-Greenagh Castle had not received for many a blustry season), and ultimately every farthing of the property acquired by the labours of the counting-house was to be bequeathed to our hero, who would thus, between his father's mountains and his uncle's money, enjoy one of the handsomest fortunes between the Atlantic and the Shannon.

When Dominick had read thus far, he dropped the letter, and exclaimed with vehemence, starting up as he spoke, "Good Heaven, and has your father the mad­ness to reject these princely offers, to say nothing of their prudence?"

"Reject!" cried Tierna,-"he has basely accepted them."

"Basely!-basely accepted wealth and-"

"Infamy!" roared young Mac Morris.

Moore resumed his seat in silence.

"My father has sacrificed honour-virtue-Ireland -to redeem a mortgage, for the sake of some paltry thirty thousand pounds."

"Ireland!" repeated Dominick, coolly, having been wonderfully relieved by the knowledge of the facts. "Truly, I know not which more to commiserate, you who are to gain your uncle's wealth, a man of sixty, or Ireland, which is to lose the nephew's services, a boy of twenty."

"Man or boy, I am lost," said the pale enthusiast, now speaking in a low tone that testified the extremity of disappointment and despondency. Moore, who

knew his temperament and his ambition, who knew also how near Mac Morris had just fancied himself to the realisation of his dreams of glory and popularity, could not regard him without compassion, although there was something almost ludicrous in the infatuation that took deliverance for destruction, and saw the depth of distress in the pinnacle of fortune. He contemplated his friend with the mingled satisfaction and regret with which a parent contemplates a child crossed in love of some unworthy object, or the pursuit of some fatal scheme.

"Ruined-blasted," gasped Mac Morris, uttering his grief almost inarticulately.

"Ruined by your redemption," answered Moore, also speaking in the lowest audible tone, as if rather com­menting in soliloquy upon Tierna's expressions than replying to them conversationally; "blasted by a gale from Araby-ruin takes fantastic shapes. Tierna," he then added, speaking in still gentler accents, "I am grieved that you are distressed, but, I frankly tell you, I do not lament your disappointment. I rejoice that you have no more serious cause for dejection than the contents of this letter. Since the path of ambition is stopped up, you must strike into another road; there is law-there is literature-there is love-"

" Love!" repeated Mac Morris, with bitter scorn.

"Ay, love!" cried Moore; "not an un-Irish pas­sion, is it?"

"My only love was Ireland; it has been crossed, and I am desolate."

"Extend your love for Ireland to those who love

her-to-" And Moore was about to launch out into new praises of Miss Falcon; but Mac Morris interrupted him impatiently, and dashing his hand fiercely through his curls, (which had now by dint of culture, and at much vain expense of bear's-grease and Ma­cassar, attained the maturity of a full-grown Celtic coiffure,*) rushed from the chambers.

Moore gazed after him compassionately for a moment, but recollecting the account which Giraldus Cambrensis gives of the Celtic character, that it is "constant only in inconsistency,"** he rapidly made up his mind to support his friend's misfortune with Christian patience; and taking up the old chief's letter which had fallen on the floor, he found upon glancing over the scrawl a second time, a passage which was enough of itself to dissipate every melancholy feeling. The strenuous old gentleman, by way of administering some consolation to his son, announced his intention, of immediately giving in his own adhesion to the Young Ireland party, and taking his place in their little senate as the representative of Tigernach; feeling, no doubt that although sixty years had gone over his head, he was still as bold a hobby-horseman as the youngest amongst them.

While Moore was democritizing upon this pleasant

*Called the "glybbe," and defined by Spenser, "A thick curled bush of hair hanging down over the eyes, and monstrously disguising them." It was probably more protective in battle, than graceful in the bower. Yet Campion says: "They are proud of long crisped glybbes, and doe nourish the same with all their cunning; to crop the front thereof, they take for a notable piece of villainy."

** "Constantes in levitate."

addition to the amusing diableries of the day, his servant entered and handed him a note.

"Ha! my buxom Egyptian's hand,-if these are not commissariat characters, I have no skill in chiromancy; here is the hand of a woman educated in the boarding-school, or I should rather say the boarding-house of the world;-who could mistake these pot-hooks?"

"Portland-place, Tuesday morning.

"dear mr. moore,

"Mr. Falcon leaves town to-night for Dublin, and it just occurs to me that you would perhaps be so kind as to give him one or two introductions to useful people, as he is anxious to see as much as possible of Irish domestic manners, in fact to see your interesting countrymen and charming countrywomen at home as much as possible. He would be glad to know some of your rich merchants and bankers, a few dignitaries of the church, and any of the judges or aldermen you happen to be intimate with; now just such people as the Bompases, you know; plain, substantial, hospitable families, where he would get a full insight into the state of the country, with a view to his forthcoming travels, which he is so full of that he has commenced them already; but he does every thing de haut en bas, as I often tell him. Now do pray excuse the liberty I take, for the sake of my poor, dear, scatter-brained husband, who never thinks of any thing for himself, and believe me,

"Dear Mr. Moore, yours sincerely,

"georgiana falcon.

"P.S. I go down to-morrow, with my son and daughters, to Sir Frederick Crozier's, St. Ronald's, Herts, when I hope to be quiet and comfortable for a few weeks, until I hear satisfactory accounts from Mr. Falcon. It would give me great pleasure to receive you at St. Ronald's, if you could come down for a day or two; I have no inducements to offer you but a pretty place and a very hearty welcome. I would ask your friend, Mr. Tiger Mac Morris, to accompany you, but Emily tells me he is on the point of starting for Ireland."

"St. Ronald's!" exclaimed Moore, "why that's the seat of my Puseyitical and monastic acquaintance, St. John Crozier! Now, I recollect, he invited me some time since to join a little experimental party there this sum­mer, on the vocation-to-celibacy principle, in opposition to Mr. Ward. Spirits of anarchy and confusion! what a sensation the appearance of two such women as Mrs. Falcon's daughters will make amongst the bachelor monks! I never felt the vocation to celibacy so power­fully as I do this moment; I'll write to my medieval friend this very day, and bespeak a cell in the convent and a chair in the refectory. If we could but get our 'Apocalyptic' to join us!*-who knows?-at any rate, there is promise of a merry summer, between Young Ireland, Young England, and Young Egypt, personi­fied by Mac Morris, Crozier, and the Miss Falcons."

Moore attended next to the body of the gipsy's note, and remarked with admiration her nice discernment of

*"The Apocalyptic" was an appellation borne by the fierce and fanatical St. Just.

the houses into which she desired to gain admission for her ravenous and roving husband; rich bankers, alder­men, and dignitaries of the church; hospitable people keeping family hotels, like the Bompases! But, then, it was all to enable Mr. Falcon to get "an insight into the state of the country;" the gipsy phrase, thought Dominick, for a gastronomic investigation of the state of our Irish larders. Civility and good-nature, however, required Moore to comply, to a certain extent, with Mrs. Falcon's modest request, and he set himself accordingly to think how far he could, with a clear conscience, abet the designs of Mr. Peregrine Falcon.

"I'll give him letters to Fitz-Fidgett and the Vernon Sharpes, at all events," he said, after some consideration; "Vernon has a fancy for men with odd characters, odd pursuits, odd names, and odd noses; and should my friend Peregrine settle in Dublin eventually with his wife and daughters, Mrs. Sharpe would be enchanted to know Emily, and just as happy as I should be myself to see her make a conquest of Mac Morris, an event which I do not despair of witnessing, sooner or later, amongst Vernon Sharpe, as well as her husband, and tell her the pleasant vagaries of the day. I'll write to Mrs. the whole story of Emily, Tigernach, and Fag-a-bealac."

As soon as Moore had written his letters he des-patched them with a short note to the gipsy, in which he thanked her politely for her kind invitation to Sir Frederick Crozier's country-seat, and accepted it in the gayest and heartiest manner. His next step was to write to Mr. St. John Crozier, which he did in another style, as devout and monkish as he could adopt,

saying that he had been maturely reflecting upon the importance of reviving monastic establishments, par­ticularly with a view to the promotion and encourage­ment of celibacy, and requesting permission to join the experimental party, if all the cells were not already ensued.

On the same evening, a hackney-coach might have been seen standing at a door in Portland-place, destined to convey the Falcon family to the London terminus of the Grand Junction Railway, which was to a certain extent the common route of the male Falcon, winging his way to Ireland, and the female bird, proposing to seize a comfortable nest about twenty miles from the metropolis. The luggage was secured, the travellers were seated, and the coachman was directed to proceed.

"Stop!" cried a female domestic, and running up to the door of the carriage, she inquired, with respectful timidity, if by any chance Mrs. Falcon could have taken a black silk cloak lined with furs, belonging to Mrs. Jenkinson, in place of one of her own.

The gipsy coolly examined a spacious mantilla an­swering the maid's description, in which she had com­fortably wrapped herself, and it certainly did turn out that one of those unaccountable mistakes had been com­mitted which Mrs. Falcon had been in the habit of committing all her life.

"I positively had a black silk cloak, very like that, once; had I not, Emily?" demanded the gipsy sternly, as the coach drove off.

"I don't remember, mamma," replied her daughter, who had all the conscience of the family.

The one was a large, bony, fierce man, with a fiery face, bushy red hair, overgrown whiskers of the same igneous hue, pugnacious eyes (reddish also), shaggy brows, a vivid green coat with enormous buttons, em­bossed with harps and shamrocks, coarse, loose, white corderoys, and a pair of top-boots, which told an unvar­nished tale of a hard day's ride, or perhaps a steeple­chase. The appearance of his companion was so very different, that it was not easy to conceive by what acci­dent he could have been thrown into such rough society. He was sedate and solemn, with something of the air of an ecclesiastic; partly, perhaps, because he was attired in black, partly because his carriage was severe and dig­nified, his complexion very pale, and his hair, which had once been black, just slightly touched with silver. The former was the father, the latter the uncle, of our Celtic hero.

"Shane, have you heard from Tierna?" asked Vin­cent, with a slow, distinct voice, but in a hollow tone, which, coupled with the delicacy of his complexion, argued a weak, perhaps a declining state of health.

"No! I have not," replied Shane, with a husky, convulsive, gutteral delivery, the agreeable elocution of a man with a harsh voice, improved by a heavy cold.

"I entertain high hopes, Mac Morris, of that boy; believe me he is where, all things considered, it is most for his advantage that he should be; expanding and in­vigorating his mind, with examples of industrious and practical men before his eyes; for, you must admit, Shane-"

"I don't admit," coughed the red man, "I know

what you are driving at, Vincent; I know how you talk of us-buffoons and maniacs; I'm one of the buf­foons and maniacs myself, perhaps," and he pulled down a handful of his wild, red locks over his eyes, and began to contemplate with surly satisfaction the lumpish repeal buttons upon the sleeve of his green coat.

"I did not mean, Shane," replied Vincent, evidently indisposed to conflict, "to say a word disrespectful to you or any other repealer. No, I referred only to the insane proceedings and the violent spirit of the extreme party-that modest and rational clique of young gentlemen who style themselves Young Ire­land."

"By this hand, I'm one of that modest and rational clique myself."

"You, Shane!" cried Vincent, in astonishment, and a slight twinkle of humour in his calm, gray eye.

"By the powers, I am; make the most of it," repeated Shane, with the dogged air of a man conscious of some prodigious extravagance, but determined and prepared to brazen it out.

"I can make nothing of it," returned Vincent, "ex­cept that every pantomime requires a Pantaloon; but it is rather late, is it not, to turn your back on old Ireland at sixty-three?"

"Only sixty."

"Pardon me, sixty-three. I shall be sixty-two next month; my old age is not a green one, like yours, Mac Ever-Boy."

"I suppose I'm free to think and act as I please," grumbled old Young Ireland, growing surlier.

"Free! there can be no question about your free­dom; there may be a question about mine. I some­times fear that I shall end my days in an asylum opened by lunatics for people of sane mind; confined in the common-sense ward of a madhouse for reasonable people. I suppose it is full moon, for I am such a maniac this moment, that I think you out of your wits."

"You have it all your own way with Tierna, Vin­cent; leave me alone, I know what I'm about."

"I rejoice," said Vincent, "that your interest, Shane, coincides with my wishes on one important point. Whatever Tierna's views may now be, young and raw as he is, I trust the progress of time will ripen his judgment, instead of making it greener; and as there is as much propriety in a boy siding with a gray-beard, as in a gray-beard deserting to the boys, I shall cherish the hope that my nephew, when he appears in public life, will take the part of Old Ireland, and prove a good Whig Catholic gentleman."

"God forbid!" grumbled the old red chief. "But a bargain's a bargain, so let him stay in England; I have made up my mind to take his place; I only hope he'll not be after falling in love with any of your pale-faced Saxon dolls. I hate the Saxons, by this hand, as I do the seven mortal sins."

"More, perhaps," said Vincent, quietly.

"Perhaps I do, then," growled his brother.

"Well, Tierna will mind his studies; he is not think­ing of matrimony."

"By the sun in heaven, if he were to bring over a Saxon wife with him, and she was as lovely as the

Vanus in green marble, at the exhibition of Celtic arts, I'd break every stick on my property on him, and disinherit him afterwards."

"You will find a little difficulty in executing that threat, Shane, owing to the fact, that there has not been a stick upon the land of Knock-na-Greenagh within the memory of the oldest man living."

"There are sticks in the county-there are sticks in Ireland."

"Don't excite yourself, there's no fear of Tierna's going astray; he'll keep his heart for a wild Irish girl, if the race is not extinct. I suppose you have some specimens left in those woods of yours, Shane, eh ?"

Old Mac Ever-Boy would probably have returned a blustering answer, if his attention had not been solicited by a gentleman who now entered the coffee-room, with a white hat, an umbrella in his hand, a great coat on his arm, and followed by a waiter carrying a carpet-bag.

"An arrival from England!" said Vincent, per­ceiving, by the few words which the gentleman ad­dressed to the attendant, that his accent was English.

"One of our Saxon law-givers, for a thousand pounds!" muttered old Shane.

"He looks more like a poet," said Vincent; "or the next poorest thing, a curate."

"Look at his nose!-there's a Norman nose! Listen to him ordering dinner-Saxon all over-the first thing he thinks of before he sees the country,-before he sees our institutions."

"Come, Mac Morris, let him dine first, and see the

country and the institutions afterwards. It's a natural arrangement, I think. Saxon and Celt must dine; it is the common law of nations, tacitly admitted, if not expressly laid down by Vattel and Grotius."

"Trust the Sassenach dogs for dining! Zounds, Vincent, look at the miscreant's note-book !"

"Well, he's going-do be calm!" And the red-nosed stranger, having completed his directions to the waiter, rose, and going to a table where lay several hats, selected one, put it deliberately on his head, and advanced towards the door, Mac Ever-Boy all the time watching him like a bull-dog.

"That's my hat, sir," he cried, springing up with a roar, like a tiger out of a jungle, as poor Mr. Falcon (for the red nose and the note-book have, doubtless, already betrayed him) was passing within a yard of his chair.

"Shane, be quiet, the gentleman has made a mis­take, the commonest in the world," said Vincent, with some vehemence.

"That hat's mine, sir," roared Shane, a second time, for the Red Rover was stunned, and scarcely knew whether it was his hat or his Russia ducks, that he was called on to surrender, in the tones of Stentor with a bad cough. The second blast, however, brought him to his senses, and he was only too glad to restore old Mac Morris his hat, and make his escape from the coffee-room, leaving his own behind him too.

"Did you ever see such a cawbeen?" cried Shane, examining it. "We wouldn't glaze a cottage window

with it in the West.* So, Freeman is his name; he was making free enough with my hat, so he was, the Saxon scapegrace."

Shane next proceeded to scrutinize the stranger's umbrella, upon which he found the alias of Bompas, which certainly tended to warrant his suspicion that the design upon his hat had been of a felonious nature.

A waiter now entered with a huge parcel directed to Mr. Mac Morris, and deposited it, by his directions, on the table before him. Shane inquired who owned the white hat and the red nose, using, at the same time, some very opprobrious terms with reference to the Saxon and Norman races.

"He has entered himself, sir, in the book as a Mr. Falcon; but Boots says his real name is Duckworth, for that's the name on his portmanteau."

"Duckworth, Bompas, Freeman, Falcon!" cried old Mac Morris. "Why the fellow must be one of the swell-mob; take care of your forks and spoons, I advise you."

"I should say," said Vincent, "he is merely an eccentric, and an absent man."

Had Shane Mac Ever-Boy Mac Morris, but known or dreamed, that this same English adventurer (with the red nose, the note-book, and the four surnames, and who had, moreover, to crown his enormities, made so cool an attempt to purloin his hat) was the father of

* The Celts glazed the windows of their picturesque cottages with felt. Many traces of this civilised practice are still visible in the rural districts of Ireland, but the barbarous innovation of glass has made deplorable progress of late years.

a girl whose voice had bewitched his son in London, and laid the foundation of a sway destined to outlive the influences of ambition, and the prejudices of race and country, it is likely that Mr. Peregrine Falcon would have met that evening with signal discourage­ment to prolong his stay in the green isle, or at least at the Innisfallen hotel.

Mac Morris now opened the parcel which, had been laid on the table, and the eye of Vincent was imme­diately caught by an object of a violent yellow colour.

"Curtains, I presume, for your state apartments," he remarked; "the colour is too bright, I should say."

"Curtains!" growled Shane; "they're not curtains;" and as he spoke, he unfolded at full length one of the pieces receding from the table for a space of several yards; but Vincent, although he saw that the material was linen, and that the labour of the needle had been in requisition, was unable to form the remotest idea what such an enormous expanse of yellow stuff could be. Shane was examining the object minutely, and with manifest anxiety, as if he had his doubts of its answering its purpose, whatever that purpose was.

"What is it, Shane, if it's not a curtain?" inquired his brother.

"A shirt, to be sure; did you never see a shirt?"

"A shirt! that a shirt!-a yellow shirt! Explain."

"It's not yellow-it's saffron."

"Saffron! but a saffron shirt! What is it for?"

"What are shirts for?-'faith, Vincent, I think we must be after putting you up in airnest."

"But shirts of that size and colour! You are not the

Colossus of Rhodes; a set of shirts might be made out of one of those, and every shirt would support a commis­sion of lunacy-a yellow shirt! who ever wore shirts of that colour?"

"Your ancestors and mine, then, Vincent. Did you ever hear of one Harry the Eighth, and a law he made on the subject of shirts?"

"I did," replied Vincent, lowering his voice and throwing himself back resignedly in his chair, "I did; I was dull, but now I remember all about it," and he sat musing in profound silence for a minute or two, twirling his thumbs, and gazing fixedly at his brother, while the latter was occupied folding up his prodi­gious garment, and replacing it in the parcel. Vincent then said gravely, regarding Shane with a calm, steady eye, "You don't mean to appear in public with a shirt like that on your back?"

"By this hand that was never christened, but I do though!" replied the magnanimous Shane, "and what's more, I'll be the first man in Ireland to mount it; my mantle is not made, or by this hand, I'd appear to­morrow morning in the full-dress of my forefathers."

"Take care, Shane, that the mantle does not con­ceal too much of the shirt, and take care too, that your hat does not prevent the public from recognising in that forest of hair over your temples, the glories of the ancient glybbe. You see I know something about the Celtic toilet."*

* Spencer with his barbarous English notions has left a vivid description of what he calls the "three Scythian abuses" of the glybbe, the mantle, and the saffron shirt. See his "State of Ireland."

"Wait till you see it complete; stay in town a day or two longer and I'll astound you. I'll have the yel­lowest shirt, the biggest mantle, and the bravest glybbe in the party."

"No, Shane," said Vincent, now speaking with ani­mation and severity, while at the same time he rose to retire, "I shall not stay in Dublin, or in Ireland, to witness the frenzy and the shame of the head of our ancient family. Again, I thank God, your son is not here to witness your extravagance, and be ruined by your example. No, before you make day hideous with your gallowglass's shirt, your wood-kern's cloak, and that horse-boy's rug on your forehead, I shall be as far from the theatre of your antic tricks as wave and steam can bear me. I shall not remain to see white linen exploded along with common-sense, and a country which stands more in need of sage counsels and temperate direction than any other in the world, distracted and misguided by presuming boyhood and ridiculous dotage."

The shirt contained thirty ells of yard-wide linen, according to Moryson. The statute of Henry VIII. not only prohibited the use of the saffron dye, but restricted the quantity of stuff to seven yards. Campion tells us that in his time the Celtic gentlemen were begin­ning to wash their shirts.

contrary, had more of the character of young Mac Morris; he could colour revolution with the hues of poetry, and worship the Graces occasionally as well as the Furies. In person, too, he somewhat resembled our hero, while his Brehon associate was as Celtic in his features as his principles; his hair was as fiery as his politics, and he was proud of a nose that had nothing of the eagle and something of the cock.

On the same night, but some hours later than the scene recorded in the last chapter, Verdaunt and O'Harper met by agreement in College Green, under the shadow of that stately building which was once the Senate-House and is now the Bank of Ireland.

"We are now joint-leaders, Amyrald," said the Brehon, commencing the conversation.

"Ay!" replied the bard, "and it will need a stout heart and abold step to follow our leading, I promise you."

"Daring, not extravagant," said Verdaunt, "such should be the character of our policy. I shall raise the Stonehenge question in the Hall of Clamour, on the next day of meeting.''

"It will make a prodigious sensation," said Amy-raid. "Would that Mac Morris were here to proclaim it himself!"

"Mac Morris has some good points," said Verdaunt; "but he was always too practical a man for me."

"Well, I confess I think his idea of Stonehenge redeems him; you and I have been hunting for sentimental grievances for twelve months, and we never thought of Stonehenge."

"Oh, I had it on my list; but I thought it right to

exhaust our traditional wrongs, before we broached our historical grievances."

"Believe me, Brehon, the absence of Mac Morris imposes heavy responsibilities upon us."

"Believe me, Bard, we shall neither shrink from them, nor sink under them. For my part, I feel like Atlas."

"And I like Beelzebub."

"Tomorrow we constitute the committees. We have much to settle, and more to unsettle. I shall take the chair of the Committee of Disorganisation myself; will you preside in the other?"

"Organisation! No, I have no turn for it; leave it to Hurly O'Burly, or Sir Hurry Scurry."

"Well, let it be Hurly O'Burly. I'll keep an eye over the proceedings myself."

"Do you think the two committees necessary? Might they not be consolidated with advantage?"

"Not a bad notion, Amyrald; they have certainly a common object; let it be so. Remember we meet early to-morrow (you know where), to complete our military arrangements, and decide definitively on the costume. Let us now retire; those Saxon sentinels have their sanguinary eyes upon us; but ere six months elapse, I pledge myself to relieve their guard with a regiment of Heavy Gallow-glasses, or a corps of Light Wood-Kerns. Amyrald, good night! To­morrow!"

They separated; but in a moment Verdaunt returned on his steps, and called after his young comrade. "Amyrald, although I do not attach the same con-

sequence that you do to the absence of Tierna Mac Morris, believe me, I sympathise with him deeply, knowing his enthusiastic devotion to our cause; and besides, I cannot overlook the fact, that he is detained against his will in England, by the tyrannical inter­ference of his base Whig uncle. Were it merely to deter old Ireland from such despotic proceedings in. future, I am of opinion that the wrong of Tigernach ought to be revenged!"

"Revenge!" cried the excited minstrel, firing at the thought.

"Revenge!" was repeated, in a low hollow tone.

"An echo from yon portico," said Verdaunt.

"No!" cried Amyrald, with rapture, "it was no echo; it was the voice of the Spirit of the Cause; I am familiar with it, it often talks with me!"

"Think of what I have said."

"Revenge!" was the only answer the bard returned, and again either the echo from the vestibule of the Bank, or the voice of the spirit of the Celtic cause, reiterated, "Revenge!"

"The coxcomb!" exclaimed Verdaunt to himself, as he went his way; "the notion of any spirit talking with a drivelling rhymer like him! I'll make use of these bards, and then, by the four elements, I'll crush them without mercy."

"Moon and stars!" cried O'Harper, "but there goes a conscientious Brehon! He hates Mac Morris in his soul, but he has no objection to borrow his thunder; he wishes to punish old Vincent, out of sheer selfishness,

to intimidate his own father. Oh, these Brehons!- the Lord deliver us from these Brehons!"

Amyrald O'Harper dwelt, as became an aspiring son of song, as close to the stars as he well could, next door neighbour to Ursa Major, in a habitation by men called a garret, but known to Celtic spirits by the poetical designation of the Eagle's Nest. It was situ­ated in a street of historical celebrity, an ancient thoroughfare of Dublin city, named after St. James, the apostle; and what the residence wanted in fashion and elegance, was amply repaid to its ambitious tenant, in the glorious insurrectionary recollections of 1803.

Two or three chairs, crazy as the cause in which he was embarked-a table out of joint, like the times-a cupboard that held a few green books, and a book­case containing some relics of shattered glass and dilapidated porcelain, constituted the principal furni­ture of the main apartment. Carpet there was none, although many a bold design had there been on the tapis; but, to compensate this deficiency, the room was thickly and classically curtained by the labours of Arachne, time out of mind the bard's upholsterer. There was stained glass, too, in abundance, the work of the wind and rain, which had deeply crusted the windows with dust, teaching light to counterfeit a gloom as effectually, if not as beautifully, as the most delicious coloured panes that ever the hand of puritanic Vandalism demolished. Over the fire-place, or rather the place for a fire, (for Amyrald warmed himself oftener at the shrines of Apollo than at the

fanes of Vulcan), was hung a full-length portrait of the desperate and hapless Robert Emmet, with smaller pictures of the two Sheares's gibbeted, one upon each side, not for a warning, however, but a model to the enterprising youth of Ireland. The naked walls of the chamber were adorned in other places with prints of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Wolfe Tone, and several more illustrious patterns for the juvenile patriots of the day, who had been too long debased and corrupted by the drivelling doctrine of moral force, and were now to be imbued with the nobler lesson of faith in the armed hand, and contempt for unbloody laurels. No doubt it was to make the contrast between the two principles more impressive, that a bust of the Liberator had been deposed from a pedestal which still retained his name, and flung upon the floor in a corner, amongst bundles of old "Sun­bursts," reams of abortive ballads, the despicable works of Hume and Eobertson, a mouse-trap, a tinder-box, a sprig of shillelagh, and an article of cutlery that might have been a poker, or might have been a pike. In another corner (deposited with the care and respect due to the emblem of the country, and, next to the sword, the great instrument of her deliverance from Saxon thraldom,) stood the rude harp or clarshech, of the states­man-bard, evidently not disused, though wanting a chord or two, as if in some fit of poetic frenzy, or transport of political indignation, he had torn asunder the wires, like his frantic prototype in Moore's me­lody.

It was to this rude and wind-rocked retreat that O'Harper now returned, scarcely expecting to find his single attendant, Caravat Shanavest, awake, or suffi-ciently uninfluenced by usquebaugh, or the fumes of some other Celtic liquor, to admit him; but Caravat upon this occasion agreeably disappointed his master, and the bard had scarcely thrice thundered at the door of his lodging, before it was opened to receive him by as wild a figure in a white shirt as ever presided in an agrarian court of Common Pleas, or delivered a practical lecture upon the law of Landlord and Tenant.

Caravat Shanavest was to Amyrald partly what Ralpho was to Hudibras, and partly what the "orphan boy" was to the last of the minstrels in Scott's romantic lay. He groomed the bard's hobby, when he went cam­paigning with his party, and he carried his wild harp before him when Amyrald attended a musical festival at Tara of the Kings, or went straying or coshering through the Wicklow mountains, or the passes of the Galtees, making hill and valley vocal with the sorrows and glories of his country. In addition to these func­tions, Caravat held the offices of valet, butler, and se­cretary in the bardic establishment; in the capacity of valet, having the custody of one suit of clothes and twice that number of shirts; as butler, charged with a choice cellaret of pure usquebaugh and generous Benecarlo; while in the third and highest character, he registered the poet's correspondence, corrected the proofs of his countless works in prose and rhyme, and occasionally did a little poetical journey-work himself,

when it was his lord's turn to sacrifice to Bacchus, of his humour led him to prefer sporting with his Ama­ryllis to toying with the muse.

All these various and onerous duties, in a descending scale from the composition of a lyric to the cleaning of a pair of boots, were discharged by the enterprising Caravat with far less view to present emolument than to future reward. His services were to be compensated by a clerkship to the restored House of Commons, and Queen Mab had been actually tickling his fancy with the profit and dignity of that office, when the repeated applications of the bard's knuckles to the door of the attic, broke the chain of slumber, and dispersed the golden dream.

It was but a moment's intermission-but the draw­ing of a bolt-and the drowsy squire was again in the arms of Morpheus, thrusting huge imaginary rolls of parchment into visionary green bags, and occasionally draining a flask of Irish aqua-vitae under the table of the House, so as to elude the eye of Mr. Speaker, who sometimes wore the features of his master, and some­times those of Virus Verdaunt. Caravat Shanavest, like Sancho Panza, did a great deal of hard work for the wages of hope, paid in the coin of fairyland.

"Light!" cried the poet, now in his eyrie, and not content with the few lunar rays which struggled through the weather-stained windows of the crazy tenement. A snore from his retainer's pallet was the only answer he received.

"Light and my harp!" he exclaimed again, and the same notes again replied, intimating the expediency of

ministering to his necessities with his own hands. Groping for his candlestick, he stumbled over the bust of O'Connell.

"A stumbling-block for ever in Young Ireland's path!" he cried, impatiently; "what's this?-a lucifer-box!-no, a mouse-trap! What have bards to do with mouse-traps? Ah! I remember-the mice nibbled my 'Ode to Patriotic Frenzy'-their old trick-divina rodebant carmina, though I say it myself. What books are these?-probably some of the Saxon historians- historians, forsooth! Compare Hume or Robertson with the Four Masters-in history we excel Greece her­self. No light to-night, but what my lady, the moon, vouchsafes me. "Well, I have sung by moonlight ere now. Come, old harp!-oracle never consulted in vain; ah!-unstrung!-Caravat arise! Up, Caravat!- harp-strings!-up I say! I am on fire-the spirit of song rushes on. me-I feel the god. Caravat, Ca­ravat!"

But Amyrald might as well have invoked the spirits of Caravat's ancestors, the mouldering Whiteboys of a thousand years. The probability is, however, that the call was heard distinctly enough, for the snoring from the pallet became more sonorous and energetic, manifesting a dogged determination on the part of the sleeper not to have his repose troubled in the dead of night by his master's rhyming frenzies. Amyrald having bellowed for some time in vain, at length re­tired in despair, and sought his own cubiculum in an adjacent closet. As he disengaged himself, however, from his bardic accoutrements (no arduous matter, for

few were the ties that held them together, and from several articles there were more ways of egress than one,) he continued to soliloquise, full of the design of avenging the wrongs of Tigernach, and his memory teeming with instances of the terrible potency of vin­dictive rhyme.

"Did not Nial O'Higgins cause the death of Sir John Stanley, the lord-deputy, in the beginning of the fifteenth century by the poison of his verse-poison- so says the chronicler. And again, did not the same O'Higgins satirise the Lagenians, and for a whole year there grew neither corn in the field, nor leaf on the tree, all Leinster over? Such is the power of our art! Then what do I find written of Teague Mac Dairhe, a bard of Thomond? What a weapon was his, against which neither the solitude of glens, the depths of woods, or the strength of castles could prevail?-rhyme-mortal, immortal rhyme! Did not the poet, Neidhe, rhyme the nose from the face of the King of Coanaught? Old Vincent Mac Morris, you shall learn that the venom of song is not extinct. By my harp and by my sword, by hell and bachal, I'll rhyme him to death!"

In the next number of the "Sun-Burst," appeared the murderous melody which Amyrald O'Harper composed to revenge the wrongs of Tigernach Mac Morris. Whe­ther it operated like arsenic, or like opium, is uncertain; but it will be seen, hereafter, that Vincent did not long survive the potion.

"Nulli major fuit usus edendi Tempestate mea."

Juvenal.

"You needs must know him, He's eminent for his eating."

Massinger.

MR. FITZ FIDGETT-LADY PAMELA FITZ FIDGETT-HER SPIRITUAL TENDERNESS FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL-THE VERNON SHARPES-- MR. FALCON IN OFFICE-DINNER AT MR. SHARPE'S-THE PROFLI­GACY OF AN OLD IRISH MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT-TABLE-TALK UPON COLOURS-MEDICAL THEORY OF THE POLITICAL STATE OF IRELAND-THE STATE KITCHEN-TRUTH AND ERROR-THE DRAWING-ROOM-MR. SHARPE POKES THE FIRE WHILE MRS. SHARPE TALKS NONSENSE.

the career of Mr. Peregrine Falcon in Dublin, is only important as it was connected with the fortunes of other personages, in whom a deeper interest will pro­bably be taken. It need hardly be stated that he rarely breakfasted, lunched, or dined during his so­journ in Ireland, at his own costs and charges, when he could dine, lunch, or breakfast at the expence and outgoings of another party. Indeed, had he done so, he would not have known how to face his incom­parable wife, from whom he did not expect to be long separated.

His first care was to discover his friend Mr. Scat-terseed, to whose kindness he was indebted for the

office into whose dignities and emoluments he was about to enter. Mr. Scatterseed had sailed the clay before for Hong Kong. He next called on Mr. Fitz Fidgett, but he might just as well have called at the Seraglio of Constantinople, and requested to see the Ottoman Porte. See Mr. Fitz Fidgett!-if ever there was an Ubiquitarian and an In-every-thing-arian, every­where and nowhere, he was the man.

"Can I see Mr. Fitz Fidgett?"

"No, sir; my master is laying the first stone of a Musical Loan Fund Association."

"To-morrow?" inquired Falcon.

"To-morrow, sir, my master takes the chair at the great meeting of the Orange Operative anti-Maynooth Society at the Rotundo."

"Well-I'll call on him the day after."

"The day after he leaves town to attend the anni­versary meeting of the Patriotic Harrowing and Drain­ing Institution, held yearly at Athlone regularly every twelvemonth."

"Can I see Lady Pamela Fitz Fidgett?" was the Red Rover's next interrogatory.

"May I ask your name, sir?"

"Mr. Peregrine Falcon-Secretary to the Irish Branch Society for the Conversion of the Polish Jews."

The servant shook his head, and gave him to un­derstand that his seeing Lady Pamela was altogether out of the question. Her ladyship had as many irons in the fire as her husband. Falcon could not recollect the moiety of her spiritual engagements. He only remembered a bazaar for the relief of Protestant Orphan

Tigers, a Tulip and Hyacinth Free Trade Association, and a prayer-meeting for the conversion and illumina-tion of Sir Robert Peel.

The Red Rover put one or two questions more, with a view to obtain some information as to the hours of dining and breakfasting in Mr. Fitz Fidgett's es­tablishment, but finding the servant reserved upon those points, he left his card and retired, a little cast down at the results of his first visits. In fact, he had calculated on dining with his patron, or at all events, with Mr. Fitz Fidgett, and now the calamity of a din­ner at his hotel, stared him full in the face, aggravated by the prospect of another encounter with the furious old gentleman, who had scared him out of his senses the night before.

To avoid, if possible, this unpleasant alternative, he proceeded instantly in quest of Mr. Vernon Sharpe, and the hospitable reception he met with from that gentle­man, soon obliterated the recollection of his previous failure.

Vernon Sharpe was a barrister by profession, rather than practice, and an agreeable, clever, social, and wor­thy man, although he wore neither green coat nor yellow shirt, utterly disbelieved in a Celtic age of gold, and had no desire to see the health of Ireland restored by the hazardous process of "regeneration." He was an intimate friend of Mr. Vincent Mac Morris, although much his junior in point of years, and had a very sincere regard for our young hero, the perversion of whose talents, and the violence of whose opinions, he lamented deeply. Mr. Sharpe was married to a lady

of some beauty, but more wit, Irish in her cordiality, French in her sprightliness, and Italian in her talents for diplomacy. Moore could not have communicated his design upon the heart of his friend to a woman more capable of aiding him in it.

Mr. Falcon, having consented to dine with this clever and amiable couple, proceeded to take possession of his official residence; and a single glance was enough to satisfy him that his wife would prefer taking up her quarters either with the Fitz Fidgetts or the Vernon Sharpes. The apartments were neither spacious nor handsome; not sufficiently comfortable for the gipsy's middle-class habits, or sufficiently fashionable for her patrician tastes.

His own bureau, indeed, was a little snuggery, with a plump arm-chair to doze in, a pigeon-hole scrutoire stocked with gilt paper, a directory in red morocco, a map of Poland on brass rollers, a pen-knife with an amber handle, and a clerk in an adjacent closet to assist him in doing nothing. It was one o'clock p. m., when Mr. Secretary Falcon took possession of his office and apartments.

"At what hour do you close for the day?" he asked the clerk.

"At two o'clock precisely," replied that functionary.

"Let it be half-past one, in future," said Falcon, with the decision of a chief; and dismissing his yawning assistant, he sat down like a duteous husband, but with a little official state, to report progress to his cara sposa. When his letter was finished, he enclosed it in the largest envelope he could lay his hands on; sealed it

with the broad seal of his office, bearing the letters I. B. S. C. P. J. (which must have sorely puzzled the authorities at the post-office); wrote his name with ministerial formality in the left-hand corner; and rose from his desk, thinking more of his dinner than of all the Jews in Christendom, and having really done as much for his salary as many a public man ten times as handsomely paid.

The dinner answered his expectations; the Dublin haddock was delicious, the Wicklow mutton perfect, the Belfast ham exquisite, and Mrs. Sharpe (when Falcon had time to think of her) also charming in her way. The only guests besides the Red Rover, were a Doctor Proby, old Mr. Verdaunt (a member of par­liament, and father of the young statesman whom the reader is already acquainted with), and a female friend of the family, one of those formidable cousins that Chatworth had such a rational dread of. Mr Verdaunt senior, was a humdrum practical old gentleman, for whom Young Ireland generally, and his son in particu­lar, entertained a proper Celtic scorn. He was always driving at dull feasible ameliorations of society; indeed the more unromantic a scheme was, the more it pleased him: he would grovel on the earth, when he had the clouds to soar in; deliberately preferred the sub­stantial interests of the country to her visionary glories; he was loyal to the queen, disrespectful to his son, and attentive to his parliamentary duties; in short, it was painful to contemplate an elderly gentleman so thoroughly lost to all sense of public and private virtue.

"I hope, Mr. Falcon," said Sharpe, addressing his

English guest, "I hope Ireland has made a favourable impression on you, as far as a day's experience of us warrants you in giving an opinion. You find us very green, do you not?"

"And very yellow, too," said Falcon.

"Oh, then, you have seen the volunteer uniform," said Mrs. Sharpe.

"No," said Falcon, "but I saw a gentleman this morning, at my hotel, in a yellow shirt."

"That must have been old Mac Morris," said Vernon Sharpe, looking at Mr. Verdaunt.

"My venerable son is about to assume the saffron, too, I am told," replied the practical old gentleman, shaking his idle head.

"Green and yellow-the very livery of melancholy-confess the truth, Mr. Falcon," said Sharpe, "do you not think us a nation of lunatics?"

"Well, indeed," said Falcon, hesitatingly-"I never saw a yellow shirt until I came to Dublin."

"You will see twenty madder things, if you remain a little while in Ireland," rejoined his host.

"Pray why is Ireland called the green isle?" asked Mr. Falcon.

"Some say in compliment to the verdure of our fields," said Mrs Sharpe; "but I fear it is more a satire upon the greenness of our intellects." "I sincerely wish we had less vert and more venison," said the dull, practical senator, expressing one of his vapid political opinions.

"Less babbling of green fields," said Sharpe, and "more tilling of them."

"Ploughing by the tail is to be revived, I hear," said old Verdaunt, "amongst the other enviable usages of our Celtic fathers." *

"And pulling the wool from the backs of our sheep, instead of shearing them," said Dr. Proby; "but I find in Hippocrates a mode of accounting for our insane ten­dencies, which occurs to me as being very satisfactory."

"What is it, Proby?" said Sharpe.

"Why, Hippocrates reckons not eating amongst the causes of lunacy, and it is a notorious fact, that the great majority of people in this island eat so little, that they may fairly be considered as not eating at all. Then, what they do eat (when they depart from the general rule), is the very description of food which the ancient physicians condemn as a windy diet; they feed upon roots exclusively. I have no doubt it is to this- to the use of the potato-we may ascribe our vapouring habits, our love of bluster, and our fondness for castles in the air."

"I recollect," said Sharpe, "that Burton enume­rates roots amongst the articles of melancholy diet, and also pork, so that our pigs have to answer for some of our perversities."

Falcon, who was accustomed to eat a great deal, found it difficult to comprehend how a whole nation could live in the manner described by Dr. Proby.

"The truth, perhaps, is," said Sharpe, "that the Irish do eat like other nations; but eat by proxy."

* The Irish Statute-book is disgraced by barbarous enactments prohibiting ploughing by the tail and plucking the wool from the sheep's back. Is it wonderful that the young blood of Ireland boils over? "The flesh will quiver when the pincers tear."

Falcon inquired whether that pleasing duty devolved upon the Irish members of parliament; thinking, per­haps, what a good Irish representative he would make himself, tinder the dining-by-proxy system.

"No," said Sharpe, "we have an establishment expressly for the purpose, which we call our State Kitchen."

"Now, Vernon, pray let the church alone," said Mrs. Sharpe.

"We hear nothing of church reform now," said Dr. Proby.

"Because the church, as it exists at present," said old Verdaunt, "is no visionary grievance, but a real and tangible injustice. "We do not touch for real evils. Stonehenge restitution is the cry, not church reform, or any other practical proposition. It is just as if a country were infested with foxes, and instead of try­ing to extirpate them, we were to make hunting parties to clear it of griffons, or any other chimerical beast in the menagerie of Ulster King-at-Arms."

"Now, dear Mr. Verdaunt, do let our poor church alone; you are quite as bad as Vernon," said Mrs. Sharpe again, imploringly; for gown is sure to support gown, whenever an attack is made upon ecclesiastical abuses.

"I am no abolitionist, I assure you, Mrs. Sharpe," said the practical senator, "nor is Vernon one either; we merely desire to see religious as well as civil equality established in Ireland."

"Which I believe, said Dr. Proby, "would be much more for the benefit of Protestantism than of Popery.

I must say, Mr. Verdaunt, you, who are a Catholic, are very ungrateful to the established church."

"I must join you in that attack," said Sharpe.

"I neither desire to see your religion depressed, nor mine exalted, by any immoral influence," replied Mr. Verdaunt, senior; "I wish to see them both alike endowed, alike protected, enjoying equal liberty and equal veneration."

"The present system," said Proby, "places both religions in a false position. The principle I have al­ways urged upon my fellow-Protestants is this, that Truth never looks so like Error as when it enjoys a monopoly of public favour, and Error never looks so like Truth as when it is either proscribed by law, or discouraged or disowned by government. There are two ways of establishing a level; one is by raising the valley, the other by depressing the hill. The former is the course I would take with the ecclesiastical institu­tions of this country, and it is obvious that the proposal of endowing the Catholic priesthood can no longer be resisted on principle by any party in the state."

"But the Catholic priesthood, I am told," said Mr. Falcon, "would not accept of a state-provision."

"Fudge!"-said old Mr. Verdaunt.

When Falcon joined the ladies in the drawing-room, Mrs. Sharpe engaged him in conversation about his family; he was flattered to find that Emily was already an object of interest with so accomplished and hospitable a woman, and only too happy to expatiate on her talents and relate all the little points of her history, about which Mrs. Sharpe seemed to be curious.

"Mary Talbot!" she exclaimed, with considerable surprise, when Falcon mentioned the name of the ill-fated girl, with whom his daughter had been acquainted in Scotland, under the painful circumstances above re­corded. Mrs. Sharpe, however, controlled her feelings, and suddenly changed the conversation by asking-

"Mr. Falcon, did you ever meet a Mr. Mac Morris in company with Mr. Moore?"

"No," replied Falcon; "but I heard a great deal about him, and I think Emily and I saw him one day in one of the parks; a handsome but wild young man, long black hair, dark flashing eyes, very pale, as if he studied excessively. Emily thought him like the French revolutionary hero St. Just; I am sure it was Mr. Mac Morris; at all events, we have called him Emily's St. Just ever since."

"I am positive it was my old friend Tierna, from your lively portrait," said Mrs. Sharpe, "but it is very well for his heart, Mr. Falcon, that he is not better ac­quainted with your charming daughter. I presume you and Mrs. Falcon would not trust her to the care of so very wild an Irishman."

Falcon declared his total freedom from national anti­pathies, made the same protestation on the part of his queen-consort, and took his leave, well satisfied with the day he had spent, particularly as it seemed likely to be followed by others equally agreeable. He had no doubt Mrs. Falcon would place the Vernon Sharpes in the column of "useful people."

As soon as Mrs. Sharpe was alone with her husband, she drew her chair close to his at the fire-side, and

said: "Vernon, do you recollect the name of Mary Talbot?"

"Talbot! yes, to be sure, the daughter of the lady to whom Vincent Mac Morris was so devotedly attached early in life."

"Yes," said Mrs. Sharpe, "But don't interrupt me; her name was either Maxwell or Montgomery."

"It was either one or the other, one of those orange families in the north who are now in open insurrection, because the students of Maynooth are in future to have beds apiece."

"Now, Vernon, do listen; the match, you may remember was broken off on political and religious grounds, and Miss Montgomery-"

"I think it was Maxwell."

"Well, no matter which; she subsequently married,' indeed she was forced to marry a worthless and profli­gate Mr. Talbot, who made her unhappy while he lived, and when he died left her and one daughter utterly destitute. The mother, however, did not long survive, and the daughter was thrown upon some rela­tives of her father in Scotland, who were just a tittle more humane than her mother's relations in Ireland."

"I remember poor Vincent's anxiety to discover what had become of her, and how acutely it distressed him, when, on his return from the continent, in 1837, he made the discovery too late."

"Do you recollect his account of the little English girl who attended Miss Talbot in her last moments, and whom he met in the mountain church-yard at the side of her grave?"

"I do; he spoke of her the last time he was here."

"Only think, Vernon, of that girl being Mr. Falcon's daughter-the girl that Dominick Moore describes in his letter as so lovely and accomplished."

"The newspapers would call it a curious coincidence," said Sharpe, gently poking the fire.

"She must be a very fascinating girl," continued Mrs. Sharpe, "by all accounts."

"Moore is not particularly susceptible," said her husband, laying down the poker and taking up the tongs, entirely engrossed by a hot cinder which kid just dropped from the bars.

"But Tierna Mac Morris is" said the lady.

"All the beauty in England would not give Tierna the heartach," said her husband, considering maturely whether the shovel would not be more effectual than the tongs to deal with, the refractory cinder.

"Humph!" said Mrs. Sharpe, "I know Tierna better than you do, Vernon."

Sharpe now perceived that he was expected to take up a controversial position in the colloquy, so he turned about on his chair, confronted his wife, and putting one of his legs domestically across the other, said to her-

"You don't want him to fall in love with Miss Falcon, do you, Helen? I hope Tierna will have better luck in a wife than the daughter of that skipping Jack-of-all-trades, who dined with us-by the by, Helen, how he did dine!"

"I wish him no better luck, Vernon, than an amiable, accomplished, and beautiful Englishwoman; as to for-

tune, he need not think of it; and Moore tells me that Mrs. Falcon's family is a very good one."

"But, Helen, to say nothing of his own antipathies, you forget his father's."

"No, Vernon, but I know the feelings of his uncle, and I am satisfied nothing would please him more than to see Tierna married to an amiable Englishwoman, par­ticularly the girl we are speaking of. It would cure him, too, of his political extravagance and Celtic non­sense, and there is nothing, you know very well, that Mr. Vincent Mac Morris is so anxious to do."

"Excuse me, Helen, but you are talking a prodigious deal of absurdity. Vincent would never sanction his nephew's marriage in the teeth of his father's wishes."

"Dominick Moore, who knows Miss Falcon, is anx­ious for the match."

"Moore is a very good authority, I dare say, on a point of law."

"I should so like to humble this detestable anti-Eng­lish feeling."

"At the expence of our friend Tierna."

"Now, you would like to see the Norman falcon truss up the Irish eaglet, as well as any man living, Vernon."

"Nonsense, girl-go to bed."

Perhaps the scheme deserved the character that Mr. Sharpe gave of it, but certain it is that his wife did not prosecute it with the less ardour upon that account. In the course of a day or two, she was engaged in an active correspondence with several parties interested more or less nearly in the fortunes of our hero, amongst others

with the fair Emily herself. The Red Rover was highly flattered when the charming Mrs. Sharpe begged per­mission to commence an epistolary acquaintance with his daughter; and he was still more gratified to learn that she proposed to accompany her first despatch with a little present of books and a dress of Irish tabinet. One of the books, adroitly selected for this purpose, was a recent publication by the Archaeological Society of Ireland, entitled, "the annals of tigernach," a work held by the Celtic critics to be vastly superior to the "Annals of Tacitus."

nounced, which the Celtic mineralogists are said to have made of emerald mines in the province of Con-naught."

"These are extraordinary days," said Mr. Falcon.

"Our Irish days resemble Arabian Nights," said Sharpe.

They reached the hall, and Falcon had the pleasure of hearing the unrivalled burst of oratory which appro­priately introduced the topic of the restoration of Stonehenge. Ah, Tigernach Mac Morris, that any voice but yours should have raised that huge, that romantic question!

Sharpe acquainted Falcon with its parentage, which he had learned from Moore, and Falcon only the more regretted that his daughter Emily was not present to enjoy and sympathise in the tumultuous enthusiasm of the meeting; for no sooner did Virus Verdaunt sit down, after proclaiming the right of Ireland to the magnificent hypaethral temple of Salisbury plain, than

---"Such a noise arose
As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest,
As loud, and to as many tunes. Hats, cloaks,
(Doublets, I think,) flew up."

"Now, Mr. Falcon," said Sharpe, when the ap­plause subsided-" do you perceive all the merit of the new topic of agitation which you have just heard started?"

Falcon evinced a becoming thirst for information.

"This Stonehenge question," continued Sharpe, "is, you will observe, not merely a vital, but an immortal one. Its beauty is, that it will be as good this day twelvemonth, ay, this day twenty years to come, as it is at the present moment."

"Indeed," said Falcon, "I do not think the Eng­lish will ever surrender Stonehenge."

"Never," said Sharpe; "nor will they ever repeal the Union; and the certainty that they will not do so, constitutes the beauty of that question also."

The motion of Mr. Virus Verdaunt was in the shapes of a resolution, and was seconded by Sir Hurry Scurry, deputy for the town of Higgledy-piggledy. When Sir Hurry was done, Sharpe asked Falcon what he thought of the eloquence of Young Ireland.

"Why, I think," said Falcon, "that the young gentlemen have a great deal of animal fury."

"You are quite right," said Sharpe, "they consider passion the soul of rhetoric, as Demosthenes considered action. Oratory and bluster are with them synonimous terms, and Aeolus, not Mercury, is their god of elo­quence. You recollect Dr. Proby's remarks on potato diet."

"It's a strange country," said Mr. Falcon; "but pray who are those young gentlemen with the harps on their knees on that bench yonder?"

"The bards, our national poets."

"And the opposite bench, by whom is it occupied? Who are those boys with the portfolios?"

"The statesmen; the ministry, in fact, that is to be. That pale youth, who looks so domestic, is probably to have the Home Office."

"A very young minister," said Falcon.

"That young gentleman whom you see counting his fingers with such consummate ability, will be our chancellor of the exchequer," continued Sharpe; "and the boy next to him, examining the map, is probably

destined for foreign affairs; the paper in his hand is a report on the state of the Indian empire."

"Upon my word," said Falcon, "it is a very pre­cocious country."

A gentleman now rose to speak, and Falcon asked his name.

"Mr. Fling Mire-represents Mud Island-a very popular speaker; his art consists in incessantly repeating a certain class of words; now will you, Mr. Falcon count the miscreants, and I'll count the caitiffs."

Falcon was delighted at this employment, being as great an arithmetician as Michael Cassio. He told off the miscreants on the thumb of his left hand with the first finger of his right, and felt a little fatigued before Mr. Fling Mire came to the peroration of his speech.

"How many miscreants?" asked Sharpe.

"Sixty-three."

"Sixty-one caitiffs."

"A very odd method of reasoning," said Falcon.

"As old as the Socratic," said Sharpe; "we call it the method of Xantippe."

"Hush!" cried a voice behind, "the Mineralogical Committee is about to report!"

The Celtic Mineralogical Committee consisted of Messrs. Sindbad Mac Quarry, Shafto Lynch, and Ada­mant Pierce. They had been commissioned to take a mineralogical survey of the island, with a view to dis­cover gold mines, detect formations of rock diamond, and make subterraneous researches after primitive rubies, and strata of old emerald, topaz, or jasper, on the plain and obvious ground, that it would be monstrous to suppose a country like Celtic Ireland was not, at least,

as rich in the precious stones and metals as Peru and Mexico, Golconda, or Eldorado. This brilliant com­mittee now delivered in their first report, which was xead to the meeting by Mr. Sindbad Mac Quarry; and as it appealed to the avarice as well as the ambition of the assembly, it was heard with the profoundest atten­tion, and received with the most vociferous applause.

The committee had come to the conclusion, that there did exist a formation of emeralds in the west of Ireland, of amazing extent and splendour. The details of their discovery were not yet in a state for publica­tion; but they were preparing a memoir and a map, which would put the country in possession of the pre­cise ramifications of the immense veins of wealth which had been ascertained to exist unsuspected under its magic soil. Meanwhile, the committee recommended, as a matter of common prudence, a total discontinuance of operations in all such vulgar mines as coal, lead, copper, and iron.

Mr. Vernon Sharpe could not help smiling at all this, and Mr. Falcon, of course, smiled along with him. But on the report of this committee, absurd as those wise gentlemen conceived it to be, hung the fate of the hero and heroine of this story.

Mr. Virus Verdaunt now rose again.

"See," said Sharpe, "we are going to have another gale,-hold your hat, Mr. Falcon, the orators are in full blow to-day."

Verdaunt commenced his second speech by referring to a report which, he said, had reached him, that it was in the contemplation of the queen of a neighbouring kingdom to visit Ireland in the course of the

present summer. (Murmurs.) It was the custom of Irishmen to receive strangers with hospitality. (Applause.) He was sure that under ordinary circum­stances no Celtic nobleman or gentleman who heard him would refuse even the Queen of England the reception due of courtesy to an illustrious female foreigner. (Approbation.) But there were circum­stances at the present juncture-(Hear, hear, hear) which might give hospitality the air of homage; and he called upon them to beware of admitting an invader in the guise of a visiter, and acknowledging an usurper when they only meant to entertain a guest. For his part, he would not so much as invite her Britannic Majesty to breakfast, if he could not do so without compromising the principle of national independence, He would receive her as one independent gentleman receives another. (A laugh.) The meeting knew what he meant, (cheers,) in fact, he doubted whether con­sistently with the great cause in which they were all embarked, they ought not positively to decline the honour which the rambling Saxon princess in question proposed to do them. He hoped she would not be advised to intrude herself into a country where she might be assured the only welcome that awaited her was the indignant whoop of Nationality. (Peals of applause.) It would make her coursers start under her chariot; it would burst upon her revels like a bomb­shell; it would invade her levee in Celtic costume; ring through her drawing-room in Scythian war-cries; nay, it would shake her regal couch at midnight like the eruption of a volcano, or the reeling of an earthquake."

The orator sat down in a tornado of cheers, and

under a cloud of hats, which for a moment darkened the hall. He was seconded by Amyrald O'Harper, in a short harangue something between an ode and a phillipic, in the course of which he declared that no true son of song would welcome the Saxon queen, were she even to come like the wife of Nuadha, King of Leinster, with her arms sparkling with rings of gold, to bestow upon the bards.

"Hurrah!" shouted Hurly O'Burly, chairman of the Committee of Organisation, and again the hubbub was renewed, and again a cloud of hats overshadowed the meeting.

"This will alter the queen's arrangements for the vacation," said Falcon to his friend.

Sharpe nodded.

"At all events," continued Falcon, "if her majesty does persist in her intention of visiting you, after that young gentleman's alarming speech, she will be under the necessity of coming over at the head of a great army."

"If the queen would take my advice," said Sharpe, "the only army she would take with her, would be a few stout Eton pedagogues and half-a-dozen ushers from Harrow and Winchester. That's the force to put down an insurgent boyocracy. But perhaps Mr. Falcoa you have had enough of the Hall of Clamour for one day, come along, you must dine with me."

Falcon was a little coy.

"Now you must."

Falcon yielded.

"Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, When honour is at stake."

Hamlet.

A BARDIC COSTUME-THE GREAT BEAR QUESTION-THE YOUNG IRELAND DOCTRINE OF GRIEVANCE-THE BLUE MAN AND THE GREEN MAN-HOW POETS PAY THEIR RENTS-A YOUNG IRELAND SYMPOSIAC-IRISH NECTAR-CELTIC MORAL OF THE FABLE OF THE DOG AND SHADOW-WHO FEARS TO TALK OF NINETY-EIGHT?-IRONMONGERY AND BALLAD-MONGERY-CARAVAT SHANAVEST'S WAR SONG.

amyrald o'harper and Virus Verdaunt walked away together from the Hall of Clamour, communing as they went upon the transactions of the day. Every thing was green about Verdaunt but his hair. Amy-raid's dress (although he had not yet assumed the full costume of ancient Ireland) exhibited the six colours, which it was the prerogative of the bards to wear; being only one colour less than the number allowed to princes, so great was the bardic dignity in Celtic times. The poet now exercised his rainbow privi­lege by wearing a coat vert, a waistcoat gules, panta­loons azure, cravat sable, buttons or, and a shirt of chastened argent.

"Stonehenge told tremendously," said the Brehon.

"O'Connell will be frantic," replied the Bard.

"Where is he?" said Verdaunt.

"Hare-hunting in Kerry, I presume."

"Hare-hunting!-When he ought to be hunting the miscreant Saxon, and chasing the antlered Norman from the land!"

"Stonehenge will gall him to the quick!-He never had an eye for a grievance."

"Never-but what shall we have next?-The pub­lic appetite was never so keen;-it must be fed, or we may give up the game."

"A thought struck me last night," said Amyrald, "I sometimes fancy I am wiser dreaming than waking. Sir Thomas Browne says, he had the same peculiar­ity.* But to the point-you know how much the strength and splendour of our ancestors consisted in the profusion of hair they wore in their glybbes, and moustaches, or crommeals?"

"Of course-are we not reviving those heroic and hirsute ornaments for that reason?"

"Well-and you know, too, how much the growth and beauty of the hair depends upon the use of various unguents, more particularly upon the fat of mighty bears."

"No doubt."

"Now, are you acquainted with the works of the illustrious geographer, Ortelius?"

"I never heard of them."

" Well, Ortelius published a map and a geographical memoir of Ireland, at Antwerp, in 1572, and he states

* See the Religio Medici.

there expressly, that in no part of the earth had he seen so many bears."*

"And what became of them?"

"What became of them?-I intend to put that question to our Saxon invaders. I shall ask the Norman banditti what became of them? They robbed us of our bears as they stripped us of our monuments. They saw that from the abundance of our bears'-grease, we derived the matchless vigour of our locks, and that to those locks we owed our strength in fight, and our wisdom in council. They exterminated our bears with the same deep and malignant policy, which they have uniformly pursued towards Ireland, and, let others pursue what course they may, I am determined to make the country resound from the centre to the sea, with the cry of-Restore our bears!' "

"But do you think it feasible to restore them?"- asked Verdaunt, with considerable simplicity.

"Dull soul!" cried Amyrald-" of course I do not. No more than I think the restoration of Stonehenge, or-(to tell you the truth)-the restoration of other things feasible. A grievance capable of being re­dressed is no grievance."

"I don't think much of your bear-question," said Verdaunt, after some pause, and bursting with envy of his companion's superior fertility of invention.

"What would you think of offering a reward for a fine, fresh, plausible, thumping grievance, that no human being in Ireland-although groaning under it

* See the curious account of Ireland, in the days of Elizabeth, by Fynes Moryson.

for a thousand years-ever before heard, thought, or dreamed of? I don't think the bear-restoration question will be easily surpassed, but I have no objection to ad­vertising for a better, if a better is to be found. What shall the prize be?-a copy of my poems?"

"Or my speeches?" said Verdaunt.

"Well, I must dine," said the Bard."

"So must I, too," said the Brehon.

"Come along with me, then, to the Eagle's Nest; you shall have true Celtic fare, shamroots, white-meats, and usquebaugh, if that tipsy Caravat has left me a flask to treat you with."*

"Agreed!"

As the juvenile statesmen approached the threshold of the bardic residence above described, Amyrald, with the quick eye of a poet, discovered his landlord (a petty chandler, bearing the appropriate name of Wickham), posted before the door; and if he could have borrowed an eagle's wing, or a swan's pinions, he would have mounted to his nest by a directer path than he was tinder the necessity of taking to reach it. Wickham, who wore the blue habit of his craft, touched his hat re­spectfully, but alluded without much circumlocution to the rent due for the wind-rocked dwelling of the im­mortal bard.

"Now, Wickham-conscience!" said Amyrald, "you have had some of the grandest productions of my

* Campion gives a list of Celtic delicacies, including those men­tioned above. The white-meats were an Irish blanc-manger, com­posed of curds and oatmeal. Alas, Apicius, that you were not a Celt!

harp, and you know that nobody but yourself will have the physical illumination of the Parliament-house in College-green. Wickham! be a good citizen; remember you are a son of light, and exalt your thoughts above sordid considerations, unworthy of the great age and the great country in which it is your privilege to live."

"The country is great enough," said the pro­spective chandler to the Irish Parliament, "but I'm not so clear, Mr. O'Harper, how a poor man is to live in the country if he can't collect his lawful rints on a Saturday night."

''Money is dirt," said Verdaunt, supporting his friend; but stamping his foot as he spoke, a portion of the Cla­mour-Rent jingled in his pocket, so as slightly to damage, the moral effect of the observation.

It seemed to strike the blue man in that light, for he pressed his suit to the green man with renewed urgency for one quarter's rent out of three, which he affirmed that he was entitled to by both laws, Brehon as well as Saxon.

"Wickham," said Amyrald, in a calm, argumentative tone, "you are my landlord and I am your tenant."

The man in blue seemed a little proud of the superior ground in which the statement placed him.

"You are not the man, Wickham," continued the poet in the same strain, "to exterminate your tenantry for a sordid arrear of rent."

"But when a man, Mr. O'Harper, has a bit o' pro­perty-"

"I perfectly understand you, Wickham; no man knows better than you that property has its duties as

well as its rights; that though it may be a landlord's right to ask his tenant for his rent, his duty requires him to leave his tenant to fix his own time for pay­ing it."

"I am not so clear about that doctrine," replied the man in blue, getting a little confused in the dis­cussion.

"Well, my respected landlord," said O'Harper, putting the importunate proprietor of the tenement gently aside, and passing into the house, followed by his Brehon comrade, "I'll send you down a copy of Mr. Drummond's letter to the landlords of Tipperary, and we'll settle this miserable matter as soon as the affairs of the empire give me leisure to think of it."

As they sat sipping their usquebaugh after the discussion of the Celtic dainties, the party was increased by the dropping in of Magnus Moonshine, Hurly O'Burly, and a bard named Mac Flecknoe, lineally descended from the illustrious contemporary of that frivolous Saxon rhymer, John Dryden.

"Caravat!-goblets!" cried the host; "more us­quebaugh! and brew us a jar of nectar,-let us have a Celtic symposiac!"*

Hurly O'Burly rubbed his hands with glee, for he

* For the materials of Irish nectar, and the art of compounding them, see the work of "Dr. Ledwich on the Antiquities of Ireland." Saffron was an ingredient in the nectar as well as in the usquebaugh. It was not only a favourite dye with the Irish drapers, but a popular flavour and perfume with the distillers, as it still continues to be with the pastry-cooks of Young Ireland, who are always supplied with cakes of Saffron for Celtic childhood, while (not without some laxity of principle) they cater for Saxon infancy with Bath buns, Shrews­bury cakes, and Wellington biscuit.

loved usquebaugh with all his heart, and had a god-like taste for nectar.

"Fill!" cried O'Harper, pushing the flask, redo­lent of saffron, to Virus Verdaunt, who filled his beaker to the brim; and the example was followed with zeal by O'Burly and Mac Flecknoe.

"Moonshine," said Amyrald, to open the conver­sation; "you know the fable of the dog and the shadow,-have you remarked how false and vulgar is the moral commonly deduced from it?"

"The dog did right," said Moonshine promptly; "what we should have done ourselves;-preferred a glorious hope to a sordid certainty-dropped the paltry reality, and snatched at the glorious vision."

"Hurrah!" cried Hurly O'Burly, Chairman of the Committee of Organisation.

"Better dream with Emmet and Fitzgerald, than wake with the practical dunces of the day," resumed O'Harper.

"A hundred times," said Verdaunt.

"A thousand times," said Moonshine.

"Hurrah!" shouted Hurly O'Burly.

"My thoughts," said the statesman-bard, "have been running on fables. There is the common one of the bundle of twigs-is the principle that union is strength, a sound one?"

"Absurd," said Moonshine.

"Nonsense," said Mac Flecknoe.

"Ridiculous," said Verdaunt.

"Hurrah!" roared Hurly O'Burly.

"The health of Sindbad Mac Quarry, and the Mi-

neralogical Committee," said Amyrald, rising, and recommending the Celtic nectar of which his cup­bearer had just set a mighty jar upon the board.

The toast was duly honoured, and Mac Flecknoe having been called upon for a song, chaunted an ap­propriate national hymn, commencing,

"Green-vested land with emeralds strown,"

which none of the company had heard before, and which was rapturously applauded, and tempestuously encored.

"Fill, Verdaunt!-a bumper, O'Burly!-to the brim, Mac Flecknoe! Let us drink to one who is as great absent as present; to the natural leader of the youth of Ireland, the patriotic and persecuted Tiger-nach Mac Morris."

"There is a rumour to-night," said Mac Flecknoe, "that should the emerald formation be traced through the Mac Morris property in Galway, old Shane will snap his fingers at his brother Vincent, and recall his son to Ireland."

There was then a pause, which was first interrupted by Amyrald asking Verdaunt when he would be ready with his opinion upon the legality of the Celtic costume.

"To-morrow," said the Brehon.

"Our ladies are not idle," said Mac Flecknoe.

"Song shall reward them," said O'Harper. "I'll sing them such a lay as the ear of beauty has not heard since the nightingale warbled to the rose."

"Sad that Ireland breeds no nightingales!" said Mac Flecknoe, plaintively.

"It is more lamentable," cried Verdaunt, "to think that it breeds the rose, the hateful emblem of the Norman sway. I would root the odious flower out of Ireland."

"Not a word against the rose," said O'Harper, "in the presence of two bards. Spare us our roses; we wont make beds for our rulers of them."

"It is only by carrying out our principle to the uttermost length," said Verdaunt, "that we can heal the blood of Ireland sufficiently."

"Up to Ninety-Eight!" cried Mac Flecknoe.

"Hurrah!" shouted Hurly O'Burly.

"Who fears to talk of Ninety-Eight?" demanded Amyrald, his eye flashing revolutionary fire.

"What a line to commence one of your Celtic war-songs!" cried Verdaunt.

And there did subsequently appear an ode, which opened with that stirring interrogatory; whether the production of O'Harper, Mac Flecknoe, or some other rhymer of the bardic college, was never fully ascer­tained. There can be little doubt, however, of its having been inspired by Celtic nectar, at one of the symposiacs of La Jeune Irlande.

O'Burly now hinted at another flask of usquebaugh, and Amyrald called repeatedly to his butler, who was distinctly heard in a sort of anti-room, that served as both kitchen and pantry, vociferating a savage melody to the clank and rattle of sundry pieces of old iron, such as chains and pike-heads, which lay huddled in a corner, seemingly never intended for harmonious uses, or to assist in musical composition.

"More usquebaugh, gallowglass! and stop jangling those pikes and fetters!"

"Who is your Ganymede?" inquired Yerdaunt.

"More of a Vulcan," replied the Bard, "than a Ganymede; he's a smart blade of a blacksmith's appren­tice, whom I picked up some time ago at Thurles; and may this hand never sweep the harp again, if he's not as good a national poet as half the bards in our order; no offence to my friend Mac Flecknoe there. Caravat's fancy, you see, is stored with the iron imagery we want."

There was still a delay of a few moments, and then Mr. Caravat Shanavest reeled into the banquet-room, his face glowing with his private libations, and a flask of the Celtic fire-water in each hand; he had thrown a coarse yellow shirt over his ordinary habiliments, and flung back his formidable glybbe of nearly the same agreeable colour, else the company would have missed the glare of his eyes, which resembled two red-hot balls flashing with poetry and punch.

As he slapped down the flasks upon the board, Amy-rald demanded the cause of the din that had been so painfully audible.

"Composing," said the young Cyclops.

"What?" returned his master.

"A battle-piece," replied Caravat.

"Let us have it," said O'Harper; and the black­smith-bard, seizing the ambiguous implement between a poker and a pike, which has been already noticed, and pulling his glybbe down over his eyes, jumped into the midst of the floor, and in notes as iron as his

imagery, chanted or yelled the following indignant strain,

"Lo, Freedom again hath appear'd on our hills,
Already the isle her divinity fills;
The harp wakes-the sword rattles-"*

"You hear the cutlery, Verdaunt," said Amyrald, calling his friend's attention to the beauties of Caravat.

"-the sword rattles, and kindles the brand,
While the breeze of her wings passes over the land."

"How can the sword kindle the brand, caitiff?" de­manded O'Harper.

"The sword's supposed red-hot," said Caravat, pre­pared to defend his composition.

"Go on!"

"When the foul fetter clanks on the son of the hills,
His frame with the rage of a chafed tiger thrills,
With clench'd hand, iron sinews, and fiercely knit brow,
Could a harness of adamant baffle him now. "

"Bravo, song-smith! there's metal in that, Mac Flecknoe!"

But Mac Flecknoe made no answer save a contemp­tuous growl, perhaps being a little envious of the success of his untaught rival in the art of poetry. Verdaunt, however, did honour to the journeyman-ballad-monger, and tipped him a small antique brass coin of Thomyris, Queen of Scythia. "It was a capital idea, Amyrald," he added, "to secure that fellow's services."

Verdaunt now rose to retire, pleading that he had a Report to prepare upon the Financial Condition of the

* The Western War-Song. A.D. 1642. See 'Spirit of the Nation'

Empire of Morocco, in his capacity as Chairman of the Select Committee on African Affairs. Mac Flecknoe and Moonshine recollected an engagement to a Green Tea and Saffron-Cake party, at Sir Hurry and Lady Scurry's, Galloping Green, where two distinguished French sympathizers, M. Le Comte Vaurien and Le Marquis De Faineant, were expected.

"Let us drink to La Jeune France before we part," cried O'Harper, crowning his goblet and passing the flask.

"La Jeune France!" cried Verdaunt, Moonshine, and Mac Flecknoe.

"Hurrah!" roared Hurly O'Burly.

"Men's apparel is commonly made according to their conditions; and their conditions are oftentimes governed by their garments. But be these which you have described the fashion of the Irish weeds?"-Spenser's State of Ireland

on the following day, the opinion of Mr. Verdaunt, junior, on the legality of the proposed revival of the ancient costume of Ireland, appeared in the columns of the Sun-Burst, under the title of

"young ireland's dressing case."

"Case on behalf of Young Ireland and the Un­bounded Nationality Association, for the opinion of Mr. V. Verdaunt, Doctor of Brehon Law."

"The statute of 28th Henry VIII., chap. 15, entitled, 'An Act for the English Habit, Order, and Language,' enacts, &c. &c. Counsel will please to advise generally upon the following queries:"

"1. May glybbes, crommeals, kirchers, cotes tucked up, hoods, and mantles, be lawfully worn by the people of Ireland, male and female, notwithstanding the said statute, expressly prohibiting the same?"

" 'They may.-V. V.' "

"2. Does the provision of said statute, that no shirt or smock shall be dyed saffron, or contain above seven yards of cloth, operate so as to make it illegal to wear

shirts or smocks containing a greater quantity-say twenty yards-and of the said saffron colour?"

'' 'I think not.-V. V.' "

"3. Though no woman may wear her cotes tucked up according to the form of the statute, may she tuck them up in any other form, or without form? And what is tucking up at law?

" 'It is the right of my countrywomen at Brehon law, to tuck up their cotes, non obstante the statute cited. Tucking up at law means hanging.-V. V.' "

"The Statute does not specify the colours of the cotes, kirchers, hoods, and kirtles therein prohibited, Counsel will please to give colour."

" 'Cotes saffron, kirtles green, stockings blue; gene­rally, the more green the better.-V. V.' "

The above case had been drawn up by Mr. Patrick Gosoftly, solicitor to the club; and on the back of the original paper might have been seen the following note:

"Fee, Three Guineas. Not sent. Mr. Gosoftly will meet Mr. Verdaunt in the lobby of the House of Com­mons, in College Green, on the first night of the next session."

"Oh, my lord, When you went onward, on this ended action, I look'd upon, her with a soldier's eye, That liked, but had a rougher task in hand, Than to drive liking to the name of love, But now I am return'd, and that war-thoughts Have left their places vacant, in their rooms Come thronging soft and delicate desires, All prompting me how fair young Hero is."

PROGRESS FROM MELANCHOLY TO METAPHYSICS-TIGERNACH GROWS TRANSCENDENTAL-WHERE HE LOOKED FOR CENTRAL TRUTHS--FRATERNISES WITH YOUNG ENGLAND-MR. ST. CRISPIN'S ODE TO YOUNG EUROPE-WHETHER THE HERO FORGOT THE HEROINE OR REMEMBERED HER-DELICATE NATURE OF PREJUDICE-A SIMILE FOR THE SECRET GROWTH OF LOVE-TIERNA DETERMINES TO AGITATE THE CHANNEL ISLANDS-WHAT DETERMINED HIM TO LET THEM ALONE-HIS INVECTIVE AGAINST THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND.

we left the ambitious Tigernach in the uttermost dejection, believing himself ruined, and refusing to be comforted. He resembled a caged eaglet, or young bear in a pit; England was his prison and London his narrow cell. His lot was indeed hard; he had sown the wind and he was forbidden to reap the whirlwind; he had planted groves of laurels and he was prohibited from plucking a solitary leaf to adorn his own brow. When the storm of grief and indignation first subsided, he fell into a state of mental torpor, during which the axis of the earth might have cracked without his con­cerning himself about the matter.

Moore watched the course of his distemper with affectionate curiosity, proffering no idle consolations depending more upon the old chirurgeon with the scythe and hour-glass, than upon any of the vulgar receipts in the moral pharmacopoeia.

The mind of Tierna had always been metaphysical and mystic, and now that it was clouded by disappoint­ment, it became a still apter receptacle for dreamy pro­jects, nebulous theories, and fantastic systems; he grew sublimely transcendental and awfully germanesque, saw "deep meanings" in every thing about him; spirits in the stars, and "central truths" in the cups of flowers. In this unfathomable vein, he began, for the first time, not only to tolerate but to relish the company of Young England. His acquaintances of that party were Mr. Hilary De Goslyn, whom we have seen at Mr. Bom-pas's; the solemn Skiddaw, who idolised Wordsworth; St. Crispin, the finest head of hair at Oriel; and Cyprian Palmer, so deeply enamoured of mediaeval literature and feudal institutions, that he protested the splen­dour of the dark ages actually struck him blind. The society of these men was morally of use to Tierna, for by communing with the Saxon and the Norman, he insensibly became less intensely Celtic, and it was now that he conceived the first vague idea of a league with the white waistcoats, which, combined with his prin­ciple, that the "Age of Unions is past," led him subsequently to contemplate and propose a revival of the Saxon Heptarchy.

Palmer and St. Crispin were both poets: Palmer entered into the scheme of a confederacy with Young

Ireland so warmly, that he produced a poetical address to that party, which appeared in the printed collection of Celtic melodies * St. Crispin had a more sportive muse: he was the author of the following spirited stanzas, entitled

YOUNG EUROPE.

Brethren!-'tis a holy thing,
When a nation's youth comes forth,
In its fresh and glorious spring,
Truth and verdure, might and worth.

Old men shall bear sway no more;
We have found a sager plan;
Youth is wisdom, age a bore,
The Boy is father to the Man.

Gray-beards go!-at push-pin play,
Or of cards make mimic troops;
Beardless boys the state shall sway,-
Boys who never trundled hoops!

Statesmen have been tried, and found
Wanting when they're wanted most;
Statesboys now the world around
Shall henceforward rule the roast.

The brilliant success of the Stonehenge question agitated and depressed Mac Morris: but the effect was not lasting: the generosity of his disposition exempted him from envy, and he recollected, too, that he had friends in Ireland, particularly O'Harper, in whose hands his reputation was secure. On the whole, he was rapidly regaining the "tranquil mind," to which he had so lately bid farewell; submitting to the fate, which, but the other day seemed utterly intolerable;

* The song, commencing "Brothers arise!-the hour is come!"-entitled "Address of Young England to Young Ireland," and stated to be the production of an English Puseyite, "representing the sen­timents of many of that great party."

and more disposed to weave new projects of ambition, compatible with his private circumstances, than to mourn over the wreck of prospects not to be reconciled with them.

Did other thoughts ever occupy him now? How that an Irish career was hopeless-that the motive was taken away for persevering in the rigour of Celtic principles-did memory ever take the opportunity of bringing back an admired shape, or reviving a strain which had before pleased him? Did Mab ever tickle his sleeping fancy with a sprig of myrtle, or love ever address a shaft to his heart inscribed with the name of Emily? Interpreting his mind by his conduct, there is reason to think that Memory, Mab, and Cupid, all did as we have supposed. Perhaps the softening in­fluence of his associations with Young England, mitigated his scorn of the British fair;-wild friend­ships might well suggest ideas of wild loves;-ah, Mac Morris, you forgot that it is with prejudice as with virtue-one step aside is fatal-we must guard the outworks, or soon be driven from the citadel!

If any fair reader of this tale, addicted to drawing-room horticulture, has ever marked the root of tulip or hyacinth in its blue or rosy glass, and watched it gra­dually throwing out its fine white fibres, multiplying every day, and twining and lengthening as they mul­tiply, until the entire space is crowded with a maze of delicate ramifications, it will help her (if help be want­ing) to conceive how the idea of Emily Falcon having once planted itself in the heart of young Mac Morris may have grown and fastened there, with a fibre for

every charm, her youth, her beauty, her voice, her en­thusiasm, her sympathies with, the pursuits of heroes. This may be all a theory, for the breast of the most open-hearted Irishman is not transparent like a flower-glass, but it will soon appear whether it is, or is not a probable account of transactions invisible to human eyes.

Moore received an answer from Mrs. Vernon Sharpe and instantly went in search of Tierna, whom he found recovered and tranquil to a degree that not a little sur­prised him.

"Tierna," he said, after a, little previous conversation, "I am going down with some common friends of ours to spend a few days in Hertfordshire, and enjoy the humours of monastic life with St. John Crozier (a devout celibataire of my acquaintance), at his father's seat. What say you; are you too deep in English law, or German mysticism, to join us?"

"No," said Mac Morris, with gravity, "but I have other avocations; I have already declined a pressing in­vitation from Palmer to join the same party."

"For the benefit of your health-"

"Health is of no value now."

"Would beauty tempt you from town?"

"No."

"Beauty and music together?"

"They have lost their power."

"A dark-haired soprano?"

"No."

"The lady, I mean, whose voice you heard in Portland-place?"

"She had auburn hair, and her voice was not a soprano," said Tierna, quickly.

"Ha!" exclaimed Moore, smiling, "I am not sorry Mac Morris, to find you have a memory for other things as well as sentimental wrongs and Celtic barbarisms."

"It is not so difficult to remember a particular style of beauty and voice, is it?" said Tierna, in some con­fusion. "There are beauties and voices, on the contrary," said Moore, "which it is very difficult to forget.

'Oh, there are looks and tones that dart A sudden sunshine through the heart, As if the soul that moment caught Some treasure it through life had sought.'

But I am sorry we cannot have you with us; well, au revoir," and Dominick rose and moved towards the door.

"But, Dominick, the Falcons cannot possibly be at St. Ronald's," said Tierna, by no means disposed to let Moore go.

"I have reason to think they are in the neighbour­hood; I know they are somewhere in Herts, for Mrs. Falcon invited me to visit her; by the by, her invitation included you."

"I was meditating an excursion to the Channel Islands;-in fact, the truth is, Dominick, I do find that my health requires renovation."

"The Channel Islands!-to agitate Alderney-to fra­ternise with young Sark! Never mind the Channel Islands; at least, let us rusticate for a week together in Hertfordshire."

"When do you go down?"

"To-morrow."

"I will follow you on the next day, or the day after. I feel that I require the air of the mountains."

"Mountains in Hertfordshire! You would tear a Saxon to pieces who should betray the same topogra­phical ignorance of Connaught, and talk of the sylvan shades of Connemara! No, you will see neither heath nor mountain, but the glorious old oaks of England, those venerable forests where, as Montesquieu finely says: 'the beautiful system of British liberty was first invented.' "

"I detest forest scenery," said Tierna, "it is essen­tially Saxon."

the books belonged to the light troops of literature, and the flowers in the vases, the elegant lumber on the small tables, a piano, a harp, and other details of the furniture, led irresistibly to that conclusion. Amongst the books in glittering bindings which littered the central table might have been observed the novels of D'Israeli, the poetry of Milnes, the theology of Pusey, and a certain little work as bright and green as a live emerald, with the Irish harp refulgent on the cover. A few pictures of the Italian school (believed ordinals, probably only good copies) glowed upon the walls; ahead of St. Augustine by Guido, a cave by Rosa, and a bridge in Venice by Canaletti. There were also scattered about in graceful anarchy a few bronzes and alabasters, small, but after the antique; and on a fragile little table inlaid with ivory, and upon a prie-dieu beside it, might have been remarked the materials and machinery of dilettanti needlework, which betrayed upon close inspection the labours of tractarian fingers; a long, narrow scarf, seemingly intended for a stole, or orarium, (one of the most ancient vestments of the Christian clergy), had the Greek word Ayios (holy) thrice embroidered on it; and a purse of silknet-work was partially wrought in old English characters, with the monkish word ELEEMOSYNARIA, upon a hint taken from a passage in Mr. Maitland's work on the Dark Ages, which had evidently been recently consulted, for it lay open on the prie-dieu at the place in question.*

*Page 80-"Super altare ipsius ecclesiae eleemosynarium (a beautiful name for a purse) meam, lapidem beryllum intus habentem, propria manu impsui."

The windows of the apartment, which reached to the ground, stood open as well as the glass door; and their curtains of rose-coloured silk, blended with white gauze contributed not only to mellow the light, but to freshen the atmosphere by fanning it. There was a delicious incense floating about, a compound of a dozen perfumes, proceeding from no Sabasan caskets, but wafted into the octagon from an outer wilderness of shrubs and flowers, into which you might step directly by more than one place of egress. At the side of one window hung a cage of gilt wire, tenanted by a certain canary, who was just then mute, either out of his birdly caprice, or because the sultry hour indisposed him to vocal exertion. At intervals, however, some brisk linnet, or gayer goldfinch, perhaps seeking cooler re­treat, would come fluttering in, hop on a vase, or the finger of a marble nymph, and try with, more or less success to open a moment's flirtation with the captive songster in the saffron plumes. A particular goldfinch, indeed, seemed to have a Celtic predilection for that colour, for he repeated the experiment twice or thrice, but each time did the slight rustling of the silk or muslin (which seemed to be in the Saxon interest), repel the intruder, who hopped forth again into the garden, with a small twittering note, scarce louder than the flutter of his tiny pinions. But the birds were not the only interlopers; some jessamines and woodbines came creeping and prying with their long inquisitive branches, laden with odorous blossoms, into the myste­ries of the interior; and these were sometimes but the precursors of bees and butterflies which took the same

liberties, and seemed by their unrestrained hummings and flutterings, to consider themselves freeholders of the place.

So, at any rate, did the next visiter who entered who was no other than our blooming Zinganee, in all her midsummer glory, and looking as much at home, as if St. Ronald's had been the Falcons' nest for a hundred years. She halted before the little work-table, exa­mined with feminine curiosity the scarf broidered with ecclesiastical devices, and threw it over her shoulders, perhaps out of the force of habit, perhaps to see how she would look in a canonical garb.

"I wonder where Miss Spriggs can be," she then observed, audibly, and taking up a parasol that lay on a sofa, she opened it, and proceeded under its shelter into the garden upon which the room opened, as if she there expected to find her convenient protegee-the finishing governess.

She had scarce disappeared behind a clump of acacias, when two other ladies entered; one was Emily Falcon, the other was Anastasia Crozier, a girl of about Emily's age, with features whose animation atoned for their irre­gularity; nobody called her handsome, yet she pos­sessed a good temper, a good complexion, and a good figure, three most important ingredients of beauty. It was evident she was the Puseyitical semptress, for she missed the orarium at a glance, and after looking for it in vain, she took her seat on the prie-dieu, and pro­ceeded to complete the purse.

"Only St. John has been so impatient for his scarf," she said, to her companion, "I should have finished

your purse long ago. I positively will finish it before! begin the cover for the fald-stool."*

"No, indeed, you shall not, Anastasia," said Emily, "we have been sadly in your brother's way, it has really made us very unhappy."

"Nonsense, you are not more in his way than my sister and I are; St. John had no notion that any of us would be here this summer. My father changed his plans quite suddenly."

"But your brother was so bent on his experiment."

"A nice experiment indeed!-Oh, no, I go with St. John a great way, but I can't go the length of mo­nasteries at this time of day. I quite agree with poor Miss Spriggs upon that point."

"Poor Miss Spriggs!" repeated Emily.

"Poor thing! she is perfectly miserable; she won't pass the door of St. John's Oratory; I'm certain it was she who broke the nose of Dr. Pusey's statue in the hall."

"I was afraid it was Willy," said Emily, "but indeed, Anastasia, your sister teases Miss Spriggs too much. She makes her maid keep ringing the bells, and talks as solemnly of the Chapel of Loretto and the Holy Coat at Treves, as if she went quite as far as your brother and Mr. Cyprian Palmer."

"Mr. Palmer left us this morning, on a pilgrimage to Treves," said Miss Crozier. "I think he was even more disappointed than my brother."

"It is all our fault," said Miss Falcon, seriously dis-

* A small desk in the middle of the choir, at which the litany is said or sung in churches medievally adjusted.

tressed at being partly the innocent cause of interrupting Mr. Crozier's plans.

"Now, you must not tease yourself about it, Emily; the house is large enough, after all, for us women, and St. John's monks. He expects Mr. de Goslyn, Lord Lodore, and Mr. Moore this evening."

"What Mr. Moore?"

"One of the most enthusiastic of them all, an Irish gentleman-a lawyer-I believe."

"Dear me!-I know a Mr. Moore,-an Irish gentle­man, and a lawyer in the Temple."

"A friend of Mr. Mac Morris, the young man they call the Irish Coningsby."

Emily coloured, she knew not why, but quickly recovered herself, and said that Mr. Moore was the last man in the world she would suppose to be se­riously given to monastic tastes.

"Do you know Mr. Mac Morris?"

Emily blushed again.

"I know you admire him," Miss Crozier maliciously continued; "you are such a hero-worshipper, Emily; I have found that out, my dear girl, short as our ac­quaintance has been."

"I take a great interest, Anastasia, in Ireland, and of course I respect those who are enthusiastic in her cause," replied Miss Falcon.

"Respect!" repeated Miss Crozier.

"And admire, to a certain extent, I admit," said Emily, with an embarrassment which she tried in vain to hide.

"I should like to know Mr. Mac Morris, from what

I hear of him. Our Young England men are so solemn and formal, don't you think so?"

"They are so wise and learned, Anastasia." "Humph," said Miss Crozier, as if she thought not very highly of the white-waistcoats of her acquaintance. "But, Emily, have you seen the Oratory?* Come, and I'll show it to you, St. John is busy preparing the dor­mitory; he is miserable because he has not got a hair-shirt for Mr. Moore."

The Oratory, or chapel, at St. Eonald's, was an oc­tagon corresponding to that which has already been described, and the shape gave Mr. St. John Crozier not a little uneasiness, for it was not a recognised figure in church architecture, a subject in which he was deeply and, perhaps, somewhat extravagantly interested. The room had been fitted up, however, and altered in some particulars, so as to give it as much of an eccle­siastical air as possible. The windows and doors had been narrowed and gothicised, and the former were of richly-stained glass, displaying lambs, crosses, mitres, cherubs, and many other ecclesiastical emblems, one small scarlet pane in the centre of each, exhibiting the celebrated number XC. in golden characters. It was evident that the painting had been executed by an artist minutely acquainted with the heraldry of the church. St. Mark was there with his winged lion, St. Luke with his winged ox, St. John with his eagle and chalice, and St. Matthew with his cup and hatchet. The dra-

* An Oratory is a private chapel for the convenience of a private family.-See Dr. Hook's Church Dictionary. Oratories are not en­dowed, but they ought to be consecrated.-See Burns's Ecclesiastical Law.

peries were of dark purple velvet, fringed deeply with gold lace, and were executed in the most sombre and gorgeous style of Puseyitical upholstery. At intervals were a few pictures by the old masters, a Madonna a St. Bernard, and the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian. Opposite to the St. Sebastian, was a portrait of Arch­bishop Laud, by a painter of the Flemish school. The general effect was rich and solemn, while the minute arrangements of the crypt might have made a tractarian duchess covet it for a boudoir. A small but ponderous marble table represented an altar, or was one in reality. It supported an object covered with a little cloud of silvery gauze which, when Miss Crozier raised it reve­rentially, revealed the awful Roman Catholic symbol of the Christian faith. Two gigantic and massive gold candlesticks flanked the crucifix, and bore equally tall wax candles, which were lighted, although at that hour there was no need of artificial illumination. In front of the crucifix was placed a richly sculptured gold box, protected by a velvet case, adorned by Miss Crozier's needle. She opened the box, which was a reliquary, to exhibit its divine contents, and Emily had the ex­treme gratification of seeing a tooth of St. Munchin, and several dry fragments of bones, alleged to have long ago formed part of the personal property of St. Ronald himself, the patron and godfather of the villa.

Emily observed that the altar or stone table was strewn with flowers: roses, pinks, passion-flowers, vine-leaves, and some of the loveliest and rarest productions of the conservatory.

"Part of my duty," said Anastasia, "I bring fresh

ones every day;-when the heat has subsided, you will come with me to the garden to renew these."

"The custom is a very beautiful one," said Emily.

"It descends to us from beautiful times," said Anas-tasia, upon whom the ecclesiastical institutions of the middle ages had exercised that poetical sway which is so near akin to religious influence. "These things," says St. Jerome, "are trifling in themselves, but a pious mind is intent upon small things, as well as great."

Miss Falcon next remarked, nearly in the centre of the chapel, a large gilt eagle, whose outspread wings sup­ported a volume of great size, bound with extraordinary splendour. She was much surprised when her friend informed her that the covers of the book were hollow, and contained some relics nearly as sacred, and possess­ing as much miraculous virtue as those in the gold box.

"Miss Spriggs wont be persuaded that we don't worship this eagle," said Miss Crozier; "it makes a very beautiful reading-desk, does it not?"

"Is it an idea of your brother's?"

"Oh, no; it is very antique; the eagle was the crest of one of the Apostles. My brother is wild upon ecclesiastical heraldry. Now let us take a peep into the Scriptorium."*

This was the latest of St. John's little monastic ar­rangements, and was a very small closet, or study, communicating, by an invisible door and a small dark winding stair, with the Oratory. It was solidly and aus-

* Maitland describes the Scriptorium of the Monastery of Montier-la-Celle, near Troyes, as a little writing-room, shut in and concealed on every side by the various parts of the Monastery.

terely furnished; there was no fireplace, and the chairs which were oaken, seemed made on the greatest-possible-discomfort-to-the-sitter principle. Emily ob­served several articles of monastic dress scattered about the cell, a cowl, an alb, or surplice, and a hair shirt made, Miss Crozier assured her, by the first conventual haberdasher of Oxford.

Descending from the Scriptorium, they had to cross the Oratory again, and a strong beam of sunshine hap­pening just at the instant to strike through the central pane in one of the windows, the mysterious XC. ap­peared blazoned thrice in burnished gold, set in bright scarlet, upon the polished oaken floor. Mr. St. John Crazier (who meanwhile had entered the chapel) stood with his eyes riveted upon the Roman numeral and golden number. Had he been educated at secular and scientific Cambridge, he would have seen nothing in the phenomenon but a familiar optical effect; but, leaving been nurtured at spiritual and believing Ox­ford, he gazed upon the glowing letters with holy rapture, and considered them fully as miraculous an inscription as the writing on the wall of Belshazzar's banquet-room.

"Tantaene animis celestibus irae?"

Virgil.

"In woman's breast can anger dwell, Or haunt the still monastic cell?"

Anon's Translation.

A SULLEN CALM FOLLOWED BY A ROARING STORM-PORTRAIT OF A LOW-CHURCH GOVERNESS-WHAT PART OF THE DIVINA COMEDIA MISS SPRIGGS WAS MOST PARTIAL TO--METHOD OF XANTIPPE ILLUSTRATED-THREE FRIARS ARRIVE AT ST. RONALD'S-SEVERE ANIMADVERSIONS ON MR. ST. JOHN CROZIER-THE GAME OF MONKERY-PARTICULAR INDIGNATION OF MR. THOMAS SKIDDAW.

meanwhile the gipsy, looking reverend and very reverend In St. John Crozier's stole, had found her friend and ally, Miss Spriggs, in a deep recess of a shrub­bery, where she had retired to be removed as far as possi­ble from the tinkling of bells and the other popish abominations of the villa. She was sitting alone and in dudgeon, engaged in repairing a white stocking which ought to have been a blue one. Mrs. Falcon seated herself beside her, and inquired in her blandest tones, but still with the air of a patroness, "How she liked her pupils, and what progress they were making?"

But Miss Spriggs must first sit for her picture. She was as lean as a church mouse, and as tall as a church steeple, with an orange complexion, anti-Maynooth eyes, no-popery lips, an Exeter Hall tongue, and a

Protestant ascendancy gait of going. She had two points about her, and only two, in keeping with the religious character of the house into which Mrs. Falcon had so daringly introduced her; she belonged to the remotest of the middle ages, and was so starched and parched, adust and bony, that had there been a dearth of genuine canonised remains, her person could have supplied all the reliquaries in Oxford with exceedingly plausible substitutes for them. Voila, Rebecca Spriggs!

The reply she made as to the progress of her pupils not having been very satisfactory, Mrs. Falcon hoped "the other girls" did not distract their attention.

"I should not allow it," said Miss Spriggs, pragma­tically and pedagogically.

"Oh, indeed, Miss Spriggs, I am sure you would not, you know your duty too well," said the gipsy.

"I ought to know it, and I hope I do know it, madam," replied the puritanical preceptress, with more pepper than politeness.

"They must pick up a good deal," continued Mrs. Falcon, with unabated courtesy, "by merely sitting in the room during school hours and hearing your remarks and conversations."

"It must be their own fault if they do not," said the finishing governess, with vanity and vinegar, confidence and cayenne.

"I hope they are attending particularly to their Italian and German, my dear Miss Spriggs."

"They are reading Dante, at present, and the 'Pur-gatorio' is, of course, the favourite part, but I am de­termined they shall not read it:"-with Exeter Hall

emphasis on the word "Purgatorio," and ascendancy stress on the word "determined."

"Oh, dear Miss Spriggs, they must read what you please, and nothing else-of course, they must!"

"They shall only read the 'Inferno,' " said the puri­tanical preceptress, with brimstone enough for a congregation of Roundheads, and looking (as she pronounced the word "Inferno") qualified to fill the office of nursery governess in the family of Apollyon, or Mephistopheles.

"And you don't allow them to neglect their singing, I hope and trust," continued the gipsy.

"Their singing! they have no voices-wretched fal­settos" said Miss Spriggs.

"No voices! Emily!-wretched falsetto?"

"No, but the Misses Crozier, my pupils, madam!"

How that "madam" was delivered!

"Oh!" said Mrs. Falcon, rising, and looking lofty and resentful, "I see how it is, Miss Spriggs." And there, then, ensued a short but acrimonious and impas­sioned altercation between the two ladies, in the course of which the word "ingratitude" was heard from one mouth, and the word "conscience" from the other. Then Miss Spriggs repeated the word "ingratitude," with indignation, and Mrs. Falcon re-echoed the word "conscience," with disdain. The maiden then charged the matron with Puseyism, and the matron retorted with the accusation of Bigotry. The next missile at the gipsy was an indictment for Popery, which was promptly retaliated with one for Intolerance. This provoked Miss Spriggs to throw the bones of St. Ronald in Mrs. Fal­con's teeth, and the latter lady reiterated the word

bones in so personal a tone, and with such a pointed look, that Miss Spriggs felt her own bones were the subject of sarcasm. To what further ladylike lengths the controversy might have proceeded, it is hard to say, but just at this interesting crisis it was interrupted by the sudden approach of Moore, Skiddaw, and De Goslyn, who had just arrived at the convent.

The gipsy and the governess abruptly withdrew by different paths; both, perhaps, feeling too excited after their wordy war to receive company. Moore prodigi­ously enjoyed the surprise and dismay of his compa­nions at seeing two ladies seemingly established (one of them looking perfectly at home) in a place where they understood that the presence of a woman was "direct against the laws of the foundation."

"Crozier has been hoaxing us," said De Goslyn, in­dignantly.

"Can he have apostatised to "Wardism?" asked Sldddaw.

"It would seem so," said Moore; "he fancied he had a vocation, and found he had none."

"I am bitterly disappointed," said De Goslyn.

"It's revolting," said Skiddaw.

"Perhaps," said Moore, "we do him injustice. May not the fat lady be the cook of the monastery, or the house-keeper, and the other perhaps the laundress?"

"Moore," said De Goslyn, "the fat lady is very like the buxom brunette you and I met some time since at Bompas's, in Bryanston-square, the family hotel, you know. By the by, she had not only the modesty to ask me that night to drop her at Portland-place, on my

way to Kensington, but she borrowed my mother's carriage for the next day, and sent home the horses so jaded, that they were not worth a farthing for a week. If I am right, her name is Falcon, and she can't be either cook or housekeeper; nay, what's still worse, she has two very beautiful daughters."

"There is something about it that I can't under­stand," said Moore, "it looks very like what Maitland calls 'playing at monkery.'* But why were you so green as to lend Mrs. Falcon the carriage?"

"Why, she talked so much of the influence of her family, the Hawkes, in High-Cocking (the place, you know, that I am up for), that I really believed she could command votes enough there to turn the elec­tion; but she no sooner secured the loan of the coach, than she suddenly discovered that she meant Cocker-mouth. But see!-more womankind, I protest!"

"Another and another!" exclaimed Skiddaw, highly incensed, as two pretty girls made their appearance.

The two pretty girls were Miss Lucy Falcon and the second Miss Crozier. The former graciously re­cognised Moore and De Goslyn, as she tripped by, playing coquettishly with an Italian greyhound.

"It is positively abominable," said Skiddaw, with a retrospective glance at Egyptian Lucy, excusable enough if he had not just used such a strong word, and laid such emphasis upon it.

* Preface to the "Dark Ages," where the learned librarian of Lambeth seriously discusses a proposition to revive monastic institu­tions iu England. Maitland does not name the authors of the pro­position for various reasons, but there can be little doubt that "the lively young men" he alludes to, are Mr. St. John Crozier and the Monks of St. Ronald's.

"Consider what you first did swear unto; To fast, to study, and to see no woman; Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth. Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young; And abstinence engenders maladies. Then, when would you, my lord, or you, or you, Have found the ground of study's excellence, Without the beauty of a woman's face."

Love's Labour Lost.

the monastery and harem-st. ronald's made a thelemite abbey-st. munchin's eve-the stolen stole-an accurate coquinarius-the heroine hears the hero talked of- moore receives an important letter-midnight meeting of the two nineteenth century monks-the thelemite abbey changed into a gilbertine house.

"Now, not a word, my dear Crozier; make no apology," said Moore, to the unfortunate St. John, who met his guests in great tribulation at the failure of the project on which he had set his heart.

"Tell us candidly, Crozier, has Ward been with you?" asked Lord Lodore, who had just arrived.

"No, upon my honour," said Crozier, with energy and solemnity.

"Or Milnes?" asked De Goslyn. "Deal frankly with us."

"Milnes!"

"Yes, your monastery is so very oriental, that I

cannot help asking the question-Has Milnes made you a convert to his Hareem system?" *

"No, by the rood!" protested Crozier.

"Crozier, my dear fellow," said Moore, "your failure, as far as you have failed, only proves the truth of what Maitland has strenuously urged. It is easy to say, 'I will be a monk of the fourth century, or a monk of the twelfth;' but when we come to try the experiment, it ends in our being monks of the nine­teenth century, to which era of the world I consider the monastery of St. Ronalds to belong; and I, there­fore, propose that we put our heads together, and or­ganise it on hodierno-mediaeval principles."

"But in no century," said Lord Lodore, "do I see how monastic rule is to be reconciled with the presence of so great a number of the fair sex, and very fair too, as Crozier has assembled upon the present occasion."

"That is my difficulty, too," said Sldddaw.

"In fact," said De Groslyn, "if Crozier had meditated a heavy blow and a great discouragement to celibacy, he could not have taken his measures with more address."

"I believe there are precedents in conventual his­tory," said Moore, deliberatively, "for the reunion of the sexes under the same monastic roof; at all events, there

* The work of Mr. Monkton Milnes, entitled, "Palm Leaves," contains the germ of a project for orientalizing the relations of the sexes. It is gratifying to think that the zeal of our "lively young men" for Eastern travel is one according to knowledge; and that one of their objects is to exalt woman from the degraded position she holds in England, to the state of dignity and importance she enjoys in Turkey!

is the memorable example of the Abbey of Theleme which we cannot do better than adopt provisionally for our model."

"I don't remember to have heard of that abbey," said Lord Lodore; "under what rule was it, and by whom founded?"

"It was founded by Gargantua the Great, and the rule had only one clause-'DO what thou wilt.' Now, can we adopt a more agreeable or a more commo­dious one, under existing circumstances? I, therefore, move that this be constituted a Gargantuan abbey, and that the blooming Mrs. Falcon be appointed Abbess of Theleme." *

Looks were interchanged, and murmurs uttered; but in cases of this kind the man of mercurial temperament and voluble discourse, when he is good-natured and popular, commonly carries his proposition; and it was generally but tacitly agreed (Skiddaw being the chief objector), that the principle of the Thelemite monastery should be acted upon provisionally, at least so far as meeting the women in the refectory, and re­laxing conventual strictness in a few other minor mat­ters, out of compliment to them.

In the drawing-room they found the ladies assem­bled, and also two more arrivals from Oxford, Mr. Monk and Mr. St. Crispin, looking as much amazed and disconcerted as if they had been suddenly dropped into a coterie of mermaids in some sub-marine bower.

The hour now suggested carnivorous ideas, and Moore discoursed of the refectories of convents, with great

* Life of the Great Gargantua. Book I., chap. 52.

unction, and more learning than it was supposed he possessed on monastic affairs.

"Would you take a crust of our panis monachalis or a few parched peas and a cup of water?" said Cra­zier, perceiving in what channel Dominick's thoughts were running.

Moore alluded to the time of the day, which was verging towards six o'clock, and declined to forestal the hour of refection.

"You forget," said Crozier, "that this is the eve of St. Munchin."

"No such saint recognised in the Abbey of Theleme," replied Moore; "do you fast on St. Munchin's eve, Mrs. Falcon?"

The gipsy had never done that honour to St. Munchin, or any other saint in the calendar.

"Moore, be rational!-this is a fast, and a very strict one."

"Come, Lord Abbot, be serious, and order dinner."

"I am perfectly serious. I am not an Abbot of Misrule." "But minor matters, you know--"

"Do you call feasting a minor matter?"

"No, but fasting is."

Several of the monks were with Moore in their hearts, although they venerated St. Munchin nearly as much as if he had been an evangelist, or one of the apostles.

"Come, Crozier, order dinner," said Moore again, uncertain whether his Puseyitical friends were in jest or earnest.

"Moore's idea of the monastic system is a little too secular," said St. Crispin, who was not severe in his language, as he was very hungry.

"Were I to paint the Genius of the monastic system," said Moore, "I would represent it fair and festive, comely and convivial, social and free, boun­tifully giving, aye, and bountifully taking and en­joying, too:-let it be mediaeval, if you like; nay, I have no objection to a touch of the dark ages, just enough to give it a gipsy bloom:-in fact I would petition our Mother Abbess to sit for the picture. Ah!-what do I see?" he continued in the same strain of pleasant personality (the gaiety of his manner redeeming what was objectionable in it), "have I forgotten my Greek, or do I not recognise in that embroidered scarf she wears, one of the most ancient and imposing of our ecclesiastical vestments? I think, Crozier, you call it the stole."

The name was certainly appropriate; and Miss Cro­zier was happy to recover in so pleasant a way, her brother's orarium, which was indentified beyond all doubt by the word Ayios in her own needle-work upon the border. The incident caused some amusement, and Mrs. Falcon enjoyed the conviction of her sacrile­gious theft as heartily as any of the company.

"I was always called the Magpie," she said, "when I was a girl."

Just at this moment a bell was heard, and Mr. St. John Crozier started, looked at Monk, and then at his sister.

"Why that's the refectory bell!" all three exclaimed together.

"I knew the fast was a jest," cried Moore.

"It must be a mistake of the refectionarius," said Crozier, aghast at the prospect of a dinner.

"Or the coquinarius," said Monk.

"A mistake for which I am not sorry," said De Goslyn aside to Lodore.

"My coquinarius is generally accurate," said Crozier.

"Can the mistake have been ours?" said Skiddaw, looking at his pocket calendar, or compotus, as he called it. "I protest," he exclaimed, "your coquinarius is right,-this is St. Munchin's Day!"

"Come, Lord Abbot!-to the refectory!" cried Moore, and Mr. St. John Crozier (his confusion in­creased by this fresh instance of conventional irregu­larity) conducted our magnificent marauder to that important apartment of the monastery. Miss Crozier fell to Dominick Moore; Lord Lodore led out our heroine; Tom Skiddaw secured her sister Lucy; St. Crispin and Mr. Monk escorted Miss Spriggs and the second Miss Crozier. Mr. Hilary De Goslyn brought up the rear in solitary state, looking in his vast expanse of white-waistcoat, which his coat was thrown open to exhibit to its full extent, not unlike the bird whose name he bore.

If the praise of young Mac Morris was sweet to the ear of Emily Falcon, she was gratified that day.

Lord Lodore asked whether our hero's tastes were mediaeval.

"His ideas range much further back," said Moore; "he is for stone altars, like us; but the altar must be a cromlech."

"I suspect," said Monk, "he has a little hankering after the worship of the sun."

"One of his bright dreams-no more," said Domi-nick.

"Yet," said St. Crispin, "I wish he would consent to have his hand christened."

"He would sooner consent to have it cut off," re­plied Moore.

"How absurd to call those ages dark!" said Lori Lodore.

"Dusky as night, but night with all her stars," said St. Crispin.

"Of all ages the most luminous, in my opinion," said Clement Monk.

"Luminous enough for me," said De Goslyn.

"But you must admit, Mr. De Goslyn," said the gipsy, fearlessly mixing in the conversation, "that the introduction of gas was a great improvement."

"I wanted Mac Morris to join us here this summer," said Crozier, observing that Mrs. Falcon had exhausted the topic of the Dark Ages.

"And I hope," said Moore, "you have his cell pre­pared, for he is coming down; I expect him in a day or two."

He glanced at Emily as he spoke, and so did Miss Crozier, who almost instantly said to Moore in a low tone-"You have given a friend of yours a very agree­able piece of information."

"I was conscious of it," said Dominick, and he had a conversation with his fair neighbour, on the subject of Miss Falcon's feelings, which satisfied him that Mrs.

Vernon Sharpe had not been idle. He did not reflect how much he had done himself to possess our heroine's fancy with, a romantic admiration for his friend.

"Mac Morris proposed to me," said St. Crispin, "to wear the white-waistcoat, if I would assume the saffron shirt; but I did not consider the bargain fair."

"No," said Moore, "he ought to wear a white surplice, to make it a fair one; the old Irish shirt was in fact a surplice, only that it was yellow."

"Don't talk of surplices!" said Miss Spriggs, speak­ing gall, and looking wormwood. "I hate a surplice, and I don't know why."

"You have no objection to white, abbess," said Moore to the gipsy, well knowing the liberality of that incomparable woman's opinions.

"None in the world," she answered with a jolly laugh, " I see no harm in white."

"Some people see no harm in scarlet," said Miss Spriggs, thinking of a certain Italian lady of theo­logical celebrity in Christendom.

"I do not, for one," said the gipsy, "though I always wear black myself."

"But to return to Mac Morris," said Mr. Crozier, sadly, "it is not fair to give him the trouble of coming down here, with expectations which it is but too evident it is not in our power to realise; I shall write to him, and acquaint him with the change that circumstances have made in our original plan."

"I think you ought," said Moore, maliciously, knowing that he was wounding a lady in the company, but looking at the same time at another lady, by

whom perhaps he thought the wound would be soon healed.

"No, indeed, you shall not, St. John," said Miss Crozier; "perhaps Mr. Mac Morris will make as good a monk, of the nineteenth century as any of you."

"Why, I do think," said Moore, "he is better disposed as well as better fitted to be a Thelemite than a Benedictine."

"I never saw a man so much changed in a short time," said St. Crispin, "his political martyrdom seems to have quite softened him; he makes anagrams of ladies' names, and he showed me a sonnet, a very pretty one, too, to an Unseen Songstress."

"Now," said Moore to himself, not venturing to look at Emily, "if my Machiavellian friend in Dublin Is only playing the game well with Mr. Vincent Mac Morris, this celibacy party will have a very droll and a very important termination."

On that same night, while the camerarius was con­ducting the Thelemite monks to the dormitory, he presented Father Moore with a letter from, our hero's uncle, bearing the Bath post-mark. It was addressed to Dominick as the friend of Tigernach, and ran as follows:

"dear mr. moore,"

"My knowledge of your intimacy with my nephew, and the respect I feel for your character and judg­ment will excuse me for employing you as the medium of a communication which I am desirous of making to him. I have heard with equal surprise and pleasure

that he is not indisposed to form an attachment to an Englishwoman, of beauty and worth more than enough to compensate her want of fortune. In fact I know something personally of the lady I allude to, and the union of my nephew with her would cheer the few days that I have yet to live. You will easily understand that the motives must be strong indeed to make me urge or even sanction a step which must inevitably produce a temporary estrangement between Tierna and his father. But the times alarm me, and I see no other way to save my nephew but to commit him irreconcileably with his rash and mischievous associates. This would infallibly be the result of his marriage with an English lady; a proceeding, therefore, in which I have made up my mind, after much anxious reflection, to sup­port him with every farthing of my property; and he might also reckon upon the exertion of all my influ­ence with my brother (if any I have) to reconcile him to the horrors of a Saxon daughter-in-law. Having thus put you in possession of my views and intentions, I leave it to your own discretion to break them to my nephew in whatever manner you may think most likely to pro­mote an object in which I have heard with satisfaction that I have your concurrence,

"I remain, dear Mr. Moore,"

"Yours very sincerely,"

"vincent mac morris."

"How skillfully she put the case to him!" said Dominick, when he finished this important letter. "I question if any other consideration but that of actual

danger would nave induced Vincent to take the course he proposes. He thinks it better that Tierna should lose his little emerald diadem in Connaught, than in­herit the crown of martyrdom from the Tones and Emmets; so do I, too, and now to bed until the bell rings for matins. De Goslyn may rise for nocturns if he likes."

Neither Crozier nor Monk slept canonically that night, so much were they both perplexed about the "order" or rather the "disorder" proposed by Moore, for they could not consider Francis Rabelais as an orthodox authority on monastic affairs. They sat in the scriptorium upon two very hard chairs, with long faces, and making long speeches alternately upon the abstruse question which had been so very suddenly started for their wise heads to solve. Crozier would sometimes rise and consult the Monasticon, and Monk would sometimes rise too, to refer to his friend Palmer's great work on the "Intolerable Splendour of the Dark Ages."

"All this is very unfortunate," said Crozier.

"Yes," said Monk, "the first attempt to re-establish monastic establishments in this country; what a triumph to Maitland, and all who prophesied our failure!"

"I am not to be blamed," said Crozier, "yet I shall be accused of having mismanaged the revival. I feel that I can never show myself at Oxford-at least, at Oriel-again."

"And if," said Monk, "any thing untoward should happen-"

"Untoward! Clement, what do you mean? Can

there be any thing more untoward than what has oc­curred already ?"

"I mean any thing matrimonial," said Monk.

"Matrimonial!" repeated Crozier, with alarm.

"Why, St. John, with so many pretty women as­sembled, and our monastic rule so imperfect, we can­not shut our eyes to the likelihood, or at least the chance, that things may happen here as they happen elsewhere, and some event occur of the disastrous nature to which I allude."

"A marriage resulting from this experiment would be fatal to the cause of monachism for a century," said Crozier, in great affliction at the thought.

"It certainly would," said Monk; "what would you think of exacting a vow of celibacy from the whole party to-morrow ?"

"It would be no use. Some would take it in a non-natural sense," said Crozier, "as Ward and the men of Baliol subscribe the articles, meaning to repudiate the doctrines of the Church of England."*

"What do you think of Skiddaw?" said Monk.

"I think he has a hankering after Wardism."

"So do I," said Clement Monk, "and I think he has a hankering, too, after that pretty brown Miss Falcon!"

"Our Ladye forbid!" cried St. John, "you heard Moore say to-day, at refection, that Mac Morris, an ex­travagant young Irishman at the Temple, was coming down in a day or two to join us."

* It is to be hoped the printers will not substitute Belial for Baliol in the text.

"Yes; and it would be desirable, that in his presence every thing should be conducted in the gravest manner and with the utmost solemnity."

"My dear Monk, my sister tells me that there is every likelihood in the world of a match between him and the other Miss Falcon."

"Two matches!" said Monk, aghast.

They looked down, and then they looked at one another, and then they looked down again, and, had Maitland been present, he would have addressed them, and said-

"Why this, gentlemen of Oxford, is what I told you all along; it is easy to talk of the fourth century, or of the twelfth century, but try to go back to them, and you will not find it so easy."

After sitting for some time in silence, with a hundred blue devils flitting about, and the lamp very blue also, they thought it time to face the immediate diffi­culty before them; and shortly before first nocturns, after sundry consultations of the Monasticon, and numerous references to Palmer's work, Crozier made the happy discovery, that the Gilbertines, established by St. Gil­bert at Sempringham, in Lincolnshire, had an order which admitted both nuns and monks in the same abbey, although in different apartments, and he found that at the dissolution of the monasteries there were no fewer than nine such houses in different parts of Eng­land.

"A better precedent than the Abbey of Theleme," said Monk. "Trim the lamp, St. John."

"But," said Crozier, "we have still to inquire

whether, in a Gilbertine house, the sexes may meet in the refectory, as Father Dominick (who is a little secular in his views, I fear me) proposes that they should."

"Upon that point," said Monk, "we had better not decide rashly ; postpone it until to-morrow, and in the meantime you and I will consider it maturely."

"Let it be so," said Crozier; "shall we have the bell rung for first nocturns?"

"The hour is past," said Monk, "and besides, I doubt if any body will attend nocturns, but ourselves."

"I can accommodate you with a discipline," said Crozier to his friend, as the latter now rose to retire; and he presented Monk, as he spoke, with a small whip of twisted cords very temptingly knotted, which he wore at his girdle for his private penitential uses.

"Thanks," said Monk, as he kindled his lamp and moved to the door, declining the proffered scourge.

"Strange!" soliloquised Crozier, "I have offered my discipline to St. Crispin, De Goslyn, Lodore, and Monk, and they have all rejected it-even Monk! We are a great way yet, I fear, from the wholesome practice of flagellation."

They separated until the hour of lauds, when Skid-daw and St. Crispin made their appearance, and shortly afterwards the devout sister Lucy, accompanied by the godly gipsy herself, who had exchanged her black velvet for a white dishabille-de-matin, to show how well she understood the immense importance of white rai­ment in the performance of religious offices.

"There will certainly be one untoward event, St. John," said Monk, when the congregation had dispersed."

"Well," said Crozier, "we can only do our best; if we fail, it will be the fault of a secular age, not of the genius of monastic institutions."

"But we shall be fearfully ridiculed on the banks of Isis."

"Be it so! If we are not to enjoy the sweets of suc­cess, we must only console ourselves with the pleasures of persecution. We meet again at prime."

"Hail old patrician trees, so great and good! Hail ye plebeian underwood! Where the poetic birds rejoice, And for their quiet nests and plenteous food, Pay, with their grateful voice."

Cowley.

SCENERY OF ST. RONALD'S-ARRIVAL OF A CELTIC PILGRIM-SER­MONS IN TREES-TYPES OF UNION-A WELL-KNOWN VOICE-HOW IT INFLUENCED TIERNA'S TASTE IN IRISH LYRIC POETRY-MUTILATION OF THE GREEN-BOOK-THE PILGRIM MEETS A MONK OF HIS OWN COUNTRY-OBSERVATIONS ON ENTERING THE MONASTERY.

the grounds, to which the glass-door of the octagon drawing-room, above described, opened so pleasant a communication, were spacious and undulating, and the true poetry of gardening had transformed them long ago from a series of formal alleys and geo­metrical parterres, into a labyrinth, where it was easy to lose one's way amongst rosy thickets and a wilderness of shrubs. Still, in the abundance it pos­sessed of flowers of all hues (cultivated with as much care as if they bloomed in circles and parallelo­grams), it was evident that, with all its seeming negligence, it owed its chief attractions to horticul­tural attention. But the character changed almost insensibly as the distance from the villa increased, becoming more of a copse than a garden; an under­wood of birch and hazel taking the place of acacias and rododendrons, and here and there a stately ash,

or still more majestic oak, towering with placid dignity above the plants of the middle and lower-classes. The extent of this copse was very consi­derable; many devious paths intersected it; and it broke now and then, at sharp turns, into open, spaces, carpeted with heaths, interspersed sometimes with masses of lichened rock, on which the lizards raced, the wagtails hopped, or the linnets and finches "paid their quit-rent with a song." Beyond this region, again, the rover of the wilderness was tempted by winding ways of green velvet, broidered with the wild flowers of the season, into a tract of ancient forest, which had like­wise its avenues and thoroughfares, one of which, more trodden than the rest (but not robbed of its verdure by the feet of passengers), communicated, at the distance of about a mile from the mansion, with the outer enclosure of St. Ronald's, and opened into a green lane, which you had only to follow for about two furlongs, to arrive at a village of the same name, which was part of the estate of Sir Frederick Crozier.

At this village, about the hour of four in the after­noon, on the second day after Moore's arrival, a hand­some young man, with a pale cheek, an extravagant profusion of black hair, wrapped in a cloak of immense size, and provided with no luggage but a small port­manteau, might have been seen inquiring his nearest road to the residence of the Croziers. But few words passed between him and his informant. He left his portman­teau at the inn, to be forwarded by a conveyance that passed daily between the village and the mansion, and entering the grounds through a wicket, was soon lost sight of in the wood.

Now was our Celtic hero's first opportunity (save in the parks of London) of comparing Irish scenery with English, and we have seen that, faithful to the anti­pathies of his party, he was strongly prejudiced against the Saxon woods. Perhaps, au fond, there was more of affectation than of reality in this as in some of his other prejudices, in the vitality of which those who best knew him were much disposed to disbelieve. Perhaps other thoughts that day had smoothed down his Celtic fierceness; certain it is, that as he paced the sylvan track which he had been directed to pursue, the stillness, the solitude, the wildness, the verdure, and beauty of the scene gradually won upon his fancy, and at length began to excite his admiration. He was now for the first time in the august society of the monarch-trees of England. Now first did the druidical genius of the country appear, as It were, visibly before him, and touch him with its wand of mistletoe. Could he regard those sacred oaks with the feelings of a partisan ? He stood beneath the gnarled boughs of one mightier and more aged than the rest, gazed up through its hundred ancient but unwithered arms, and standing there alone, in the silence of the dark-bright sanctuary of the forest, face to face with one of nature's grandest works, he felt like the awe-stricken Gaul of the classic legend, confronted in the forum with the speechless senator of Rome. Not for an empire could young Mac Morris have addressed that majestic tree and cried-"Down with the Saxon!"

Not vainly did the priests of the old religions raise their altars in the groves, and consecrate to their demon-gods those leafy crypts of nature; for thus they

made truth the minister of error, and enshrined false creeds in eternal poetry.

Such were more the feelings than the reflections of the susceptible young Irishman, as he proceeded on his way, unconsciously slackening his pace as he ad­vanced, so much did the novel charm of the scene court him to linger amongst its beauties. Sometimes the antiquity, sometimes the stature, sometimes the fantastic forms of the trees arrested his attention. Now a flash of golden sunshine, darting through an oriel, formed of opaque branches high in air, fell on the green floor of the natural temple, illustrating the flowers that enamelled it, and covering the small round tables of the chivalry of faery-land with cloth of woven light. Anon, a murmur, far above his head, would attract the attention of another sense; and pur­suing with his eye the line in which the plaintive sound seemed to have descended, dimly in the maze of foliage would he perceive the waving of a silver plume or two, detecting the mid-day retreat of a pair of ring-doves, old emblems of constancy, perennial types of union. The judgment of Tierna was not so healthy as his feelings; the poetry of his mind was morbid-the poetry of his heart was true. Not vainly, with her painted flowers, her regal oaks, and her united birds, did Nature moralise that day to the understanding and affections of her casual, and almost reluctant votary!

He now emerged from the obscurity of the wood, and was on the point of entering the adjoining copse, when a bank cushioned with mosses, small ferns, and the wild strawberry, solicited him for a moment to sit

and muse; but he had sufficiently indulged in sylvan contemplations, and it was time to encourage sterner thoughts. As he drew from beneath his mantle the mutinous little green song-book, which has already been alluded to more than once in this history, his ear again caught the whisper of the reposing doves, drop­ping from the heights of the forest; and again he paused to enjoy that exemplary sound, those musical and spousal murmurs. He opened the green book at random; it was at the song of "English and Irish Eyes," a Celtic invective upon Saxon beauty, com­mencing-

"The world's worth should not buy, lady,
My heart for thee to wear."

Scarcely had he glanced at the rude words, when a note, diviner ten thousand times than the whisper of the doves, or any bird's warbling, gently smote upon his sense-a short melodious peal of faery thunder.

Starting on his feet, with an exclamation of delight and astonishment, he stood motionless as a statue of Silence for some minutes (just as he had been seen stand­ing six weeks before in Portland-place), mutely awaiting a repetition of the magic note, his eye strained as intently as his ear in the direction from which the bewildering sound came.

But it came no more-all was still again, as "sum­mer's noon-tide air"-save when a fly wound his horn, a leaf stirred, or the pigeons continued to coo.

Tierna sprang into the copse, to pursue a strain like that of Ariel's, "played by the picture of Nobody." Never did huntsman so beat a cover. He overran and

ransacked the whole underwood, examined and cross-examined (for he was a lawyer) every "lane and alley green, dingle, and bushy dell of that wild wood." The songster,-spirit, woman, or bird,-eluded his research. He started a hare or two, a few linnets, and a chaffinch; but no nymph was to be found, not so much as a Dryad asleep, or a faery either awake or napping. Had he dreamed? He was, no doubt, given to dreaming-to night-dreams and to day­dreams, too-but of one thing there was no doubt: whether he had heard the voice with the ear of sense, or the organ of imagination, it was the same he had once heard before, gushing from the window of a never-to-be-forgotten house in London.

He stopped at length, not wearied, but in despair. The small green book was in his hand, still open at the tirade against the bright eyes of the daughters of England;-he glanced at it again, commenced, read it, came to the stanza-

"Then turn thine eyes away, lady,
On others let them roam,
My young heart cannot stray, lady,
From our sweet eyes at home."

A second time he perused the lines, with the corner of the page between his finger and thumb, while his eye flashed, but no longer with anti-Saxon frenzy-a se­cond time-then rent the page out of the book, and flung it indignantly from him upon the turf, under the Saxon oaks of St. Ronald's.

He blushed, trembled, clenched his hand, muttered he knew not what, and proceeded on his way at ran-

dom. A quick turn in the path round a bushy point led to a little nook, half in shade, half in sunshine, gracefully overhung and shadowed, by a few birches, a mountain-ash, and a laburnum. He doubled the woody cape, and beheld supine upon the sward, in a cool, green inlet, not the object of his search, but his trusty friend and fellow-student, Dominick Moore.

"Tierna!"

"Dominick!"

"I have been yielding to the drowsy influence of monastic life," said Moore, rising.

"How do you like it?" asked Mac Morris.

"Oh, modified to suit the nineteenth century, it is not so intolerable as I was prepared to find it."

"Celibacy thrives."

"Thrives!-you will judge for yourself."

"Many monks-many white-waistcoats?"

"Do you see that field yonder?" replied Moore, pointing to a large paddock, like a bleach-green, on the gentle slope of a hill to the left, and at no con­siderable distance from the spot where they stood.

"A very respectable display," said Mac Morris.

"Half-an-acre of Young-Englandism," said Moore, all white-waistcoats and surplices. Our fields in Ire­land are yellow, I presume, by this time; have you seen the saffron shirt?"

Mac Morris threw open his cumbrous mantle, and disclosed to the view of the astonished Moore the first specimen he had yet seen of that celebrated article of the Celtic toilet. Content, however, with the colour, our hero had prudently deviated from the antique

model as to the quantity of materials; and his shirt though of a fantastic hue, was of ordinary size and fashion.

"I hope you put up a few white ones in your port­manteau," said Moore.

"Not one," said Tigernach, "I shall not be ashamed to appear in the costume of my country."

"You make me feel very outlandish," said Moore "but the bell within me tolls the hour of refection;- let us to the convent."

"Is the rule strict?" asked Tierna, as they moved through the copse, Moore in advance.

"Rather so; I have not been in the refectory since luncheon."

"Who are the party?"

"St. Crispin, Lord Lodore, Skiddaw, the sapient Hilary De Goslyn, and a few more;-by the bye, Skiddaw is a deuced good-natured fellow, he found me unprovided with a hair-shirt, and he pressed his own on me in the friendliest manner. He would really have slept last night in linen or calico, if I had allowed him."

"Do you find the country agreeable?-do you like the neighbourhood?" now inquired Mac Morris, anxious to make Moore speak of the Falcons, the close proximity of whose encampment to the grounds of St. Ronald's, he had such good reason to suspect.

"Never stir beyond monastic bounds," said Moore; "but I should ask your opinion of the country. Do you think better than you did of the Saxon forests? Do you still maintain that Nature is a Celt?"

"I am disposed to consider her a Catholic," replied Tierna, pensively.

"You are right as to her religion, at all events," said Moore.

Tierna made several other vain attempts to lead his malicious companion to talk of one about whose charms he was thinking much more at that moment than of the beauties of any woodland. He spoke of music-of women-of blue eyes and auburn hair-of Syrens and Circes-of Cleopatras and Zinganees. At length he was forced to be more explicit.

"By the bye, Dominick, you have got your gipsy-queen not a thousand miles from your convent walls."

"Mrs. Falcon!-do you tell me so? How do you know?"

Tigernach gave his proofs.

"It was a cuckoo."

"A cuckoo!"

"Well, a nightingale."

"It was no bird but a Falcon."

"You must be mistaken."

"I am not mistaken; I cannot be.-There are no ladies in your party?"

"Why, there are a few. I was reluctant to tell you of it, lest it should enrage you, as it did me and some of the other men, when we found it out. There are Crozier's sisters, their governess, and one or two inter­lopers, people that you won't like. In fact, I am think­ing of returning to town to-morrow, and you will pro­bably be disposed to do the same thing."

"Probably. Who are the interlopers?"

"I never inquired. But step into that octagon-room-it's the parloir of the monastery. I'll go find our Lord Abbot, and acquaint him with the arrival of a Celtic pilgrim."

Mac Morris entered the little sunny salon, full of pictures, alabasters, birds, and flowers, and thought it looked marvellously bright and luxurious for the par-loir or parlatorio of a convent. A glance at the work-table, (upon which the implements of embroidery, and the purse that Miss Crozier was weaving for Emily, or one of the same pattern, lay in feminine confusion,) would have satisfied him of the presence of women in the establishment, even had Moore not told him of Mr. Crozier's sisters, and their governess. He inspected the embroidery with some curiosity, seeing that it was not the work of a profane needle; and then proceeded to another table, where he saw something that very much astonished him indeed-a small quarto, superbly bound, entitled the "annals of tigernach." It was open, and a little gold pencil-case beside it, a letter in a female hand, and a light silk shawl on the back of a small chair adjacent, indicated clearly enough that the student was not a monk.

While he was contemplating this singular pheno­menon, Mr. St. John Crozier entered, and having made a thousand apologies to his guest, and given the best explanation he could of the bouleversement of his monastic scheme, begged to conduct him to his cubi-culum, where he left him to dress for dinner.

"Probably. Who are the interlopers?"

"I never inquired. But step into that octagon-room-it's the parloir of the monastery. I'll go find our Lord Abbot, and acquaint him with the arrival of a Celtic pilgrim."

Mac Morris entered the little sunny salon, full of pictures, alabasters, birds, and flowers, and thought it looked marvellously bright and luxurious for the par-loir or parlatorio of a convent. A glance at the work-table, (upon which the implements of embroidery, and the purse that Miss Crozier was weaving for Emily, or one of the same pattern, lay in feminine confusion,) would have satisfied him of the presence of women in the establishment, even had Moore not told him of Mr. Crozier's sisters, and their governess. He inspected the embroidery with some curiosity, seeing that it was not the work of a profane needle; and then proceeded to another table, where he saw something that very much astonished him indeed-a small quarto, superbly bound, entitled the "annals of tigernach." It was open, and a little gold pencil-case beside it, a letter in a female hand, and a light silk shawl on the back of a small chair adjacent, indicated clearly enough that the student was not a monk.

While he was contemplating this singular pheno­menon, Mr. St. John Crozier entered, and having made a thousand apologies to his guest, and given the best explanation he could of the bouleversement of his monastic scheme, begged to conduct him to his cubi-culum, where he left him to dress for dinner.

302

CHAPTER XXXVI.

"A maiden never bold, Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blush'd at herself;-and she, in spite of country, To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on!" Othello. PARALLAEL BETWEEN THE GREAT SHANE O'NEILL AND THE GREAT TIGERNACH MAC MORRIS-CLASSICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SAFFRON DYE-AN OMINOUS ACCIDENT--THE HERO DAZZLES THE HEROINE-TRANSCENDENTAL TABLE-TALK-RESTORATION OF THE HEPTARCHY--YOUNG IRELAND PROPOSES TO COMBINE WITH YOUNG ENGLAND--TIGERNACH DECIDES A MONASTIC QUESTION-RUNIC CHAT.

when the great and terrible Shane O'Neill, who built a castle in Tyrone, which he called Foogh-ni-Gall, or "the hate of Englishmen," and who hanged one of his retainers for eating English biscuit, suddenly ap-peared in the court of Elizabeth in all the savage glories of glybbe and crommeal, wearing the Lenn-bhrat, or saffron shirt, containing thirty-ells of yard-wide linen, wielding a ponderous battle-axe, and fol-lowed by a retinue of gallowglasses and rug-headed kerne, attired as wildly as their chief, it is not to be supposed that he daunted the spirit of the lion-hearted queen; but it is highly probable that he gave a heart-quake to some of her majesty's less intrepid maids of honour, unaccustomed to the fashions of the Celtic chivalry.

Tigernach Mac Morris, however, without battle-axe

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in his hand, crommeal on his lip, or train of gallow-glasses at his heels, with nothing but his Scythian locks and his mitigated Celtic shirt, probably created full as lively a sensation at St. Ronald's as did Shane O'Neill in the Elizabethan halls.

When he re-appeared in the octagon parlatorio, all the inmates of the abbey were assembled there, except Miss Crozier and our heroine, who had returned late, encumbered with flowers, from the sylvan expedition, during which the latter, yielding to a sudden tuneful impulse, had made the woods resound with the long sweet note which had so electrified Tierna, sitting on the sunny bank.

As he entered, refulgent in yellow, the lively Hilary De Goslyn observed to St. Crispin,

"I have heard of friars of many colurs, gray, white, black, and blue, but Mac Morris has the honour of founding the order of yellow friars."

Lord Lodore remarked that Young Ireland had chosen the colour with classic judgement, for the chambers of Aurora were described by the poets as hung with saffron, which might therefore be considered typical of the dawn of Irish independence.

"Ay, but," said De Goslyn, "mythology tells us that saffron is also the hymeneal tint, and therefore an incorrect emblem for a party opposed to the Union, like Young Ireland."

"To all unions," said Mac Morris, loftily: "my principle is, that the Age of Unions is Past."

"And you preach that anti-matrimonial doctrine in

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the robes of Hymen," said Moore; "you only want a chaplet of roses and marjoram on your brows, and a lighted torch in your hand, to make you the perfect personification of the God of Marriage. I cannot conceive a more inapt costume for a convent of bachelors, or a more becoming one for the Abbey of Theleme."

"But here come two of our holy sisterhood," exclaimed De Goslyn, "Miss Crozier and Miss Emily Falcon."

Mac Morris started at the sound, and turned round so abruptly, that he overset a small alabaster statue of Minerva and shivered it to pieces. "More hymeneal demonstrations," said De Goslyn.

"There are a dozen married goddesses in the room, but he spares them all and demolishes the spinster." Crozier and Monk looked extremely blank; the former was much more annoyed at the allusions to matrimonial doings, than at the destruction of a trifling matter of vertu. However, in the midst of the little embarrassment produced by these ominous speeches and ominous mischances, was Tigernach Mac Morris, the Celtic Pilgrim and the Irish St. Just, presented to Emily Falcon, one of the loveliest daughters of England, although her father was a rover and her mother a gipsy.

It would be hard to say which was the more agitated or the more astonished of the two, as the yellow friar led the white-robed nun to the refectory.

Emily was still dressed in that pure, vestal white,

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than which no other robe so becomes maidenly beauty, so radiant, so nymph-like, so transparent,

Mysterious veil of brightness made,
That's both her lustre and her shade.

It was some time before Tierna took part in the con­versation, but when he did, his natural enthusiasm joined with an instinctive desire to shine in the presence of a beautiful girl to whom he knew he was an object of admiration, made him more than commonly brilliant. He took his loftiest flights, broached his most fanciful opinions, and expressed his ideas in more glowing lan­guage than he had ever before employed in his finest frenzies. The chiaro-obscuro of his diction heightened its effect wonderfully. When Moore was utterly at a loss to penetrate his meanings, Lord Lodore, De Goslyn, and Skiddaw were in raptures, and Emily concluded that she was altogether to blame herself for her total inability to fathom his depths. He was Ger­man, Runic, Ossianic; and politeness happily kept him from being too Celtic. We have seen, indeed, how his views of late had been widening, and how his politics had lost some of their virulence, if not their verdure. Still he was verdant enough in all conscience, and his conversation left no doubt on the mind of any of the company that he was intensely Irish and thoroughly devoted to the cause of "Unbounded Nationality." Emily soon discovered that the young statesman at her side was not a whit less romantic than his friend had painted him. Now, however, he propounded schemes to which the Repeal of the Union and the Restoration of Stonehenge were poor projects indeed.

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"Repeal the Union! Restore the Heptarchy!" said Lord Lodore, using the well-known argument of Mr. Canning.

"Why not restore the Heptarchy?" demanded Mac Morris, "that is my reply to Mr. Canning and to you." Lord Lodore was not prepared with an answer to this bold interrogatory; and De Goslyn was of opinion that Mac Morris was right, and that it was ridiculous to consider the Heptarchy sacred.

"Recollect," continued Tierna, "that the throne of Athelstane, the first monarch of united England, was founded on fratricide,-in the blood of his brother Edwin. My authority is your own historian, Turner."

"True," said De Goslyn.

"Undeniable," said Skiddaw. "But, Mr. Mac Morris," said Miss Crozier, "it is more than twelve hundred years ago since the event you allude to happened."

"Fratricide is still fratricide," replied Tierna; "in-dividuals may forget, nations never do, and never ought."

Emily recollected Moore's story of the hawk of Kildare, and his remarks upon the abuse of memory.

"But," continued Tierna, "there are many other reasons why you (I mean young Catholic England) should regard the Heptarchy with peculiar veneration; those were your great rude days-there were no poor-law commissioners, no power-looms, no pews, no wooden communion tables; your religion was primitive, your learning monkish, your polity rudimental. It was a huge dark, wild, monastic time, with a mighty spirit

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walking the gloomy tracts of it. Your feudal aspirations are noble; your mediaeval views are sound, as far as they reach; but go back a few centuries more, and Young Ireland and Young England may frater­nise. On the principle, that the age of unions is past, why should not a treaty be ratified-"

"Of political marriage between Celt and Saxon," said Moore. "Father Tierna, I'll take wine with you."

"I have long been of opinion that we ought to do something," said De Goslyn, with the gravity of Solon; and the other Young England-men as gravely agreed with him.

"We have done nothing hitherto but write sonnets, tracts, and novels," said St. Crispin.

"Our objects, I repeat," resumed Mac Morris, warm­ing, "are in principle the same; we are both for re­turning to the picturesque times! In our vocabulary Improvement is not Progress. If the march of ages has un-Celtified Ireland, has it not also unballadized and un-Chaucerized this country? Let inferior states advance to liberty, civilisation, and renown;-it is our illustrious distinction, the proud necessity of our com-mon cause, that we can only improve by going back,- that we must retrograde to glory."

The "lively young men" applauded this harangue with more than their usual fervour. But Mac Morris was not quite done.

"For the preliminaries," he added,-"do you join us to repeal the Union, replace Stonehenge, and one or two little things more, and we will combine heart and hand with you to feudalize and conventualize Eng-

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land-to bring back the great days of Robin Hood, and revive the Saxon Heptarchy."

"Then you can both unite with Young Spain," said Moore, "to reconstruct the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon."

"Moore, don't be extravagant," said St. Crispin.

"I shall always oppose the Repeal of the Union," said Moore, knowing that he was torturing Crozier, "upon connubial principles; for, although an un-marrying man myself, I advocate the state of holy wedlock in others. I would have nothing single in the world, not so much as an island. But as to the Heptarchy, a little difficulty occurs to me about reviving it; we should be at a loss to discover Mercia." "Moore will always be a mad-cap," said St. Crispin.

The ladies now rose to retire, and Moore proposed to rise along with them. Crozier looked at Monk, as much as to say: "Is it according to the usages of the Gilbertine houses?"

"What do you say, Mac Morris?" asked Moore. "You have been studying the Anglo-Saxon times; may we retire with the sisterhood?" "Unquestionably," said Mac Morris, highly pleased at being made the arbiter of the point; and he was strenuously supported by Skiddaw, who had the arm of Miss Lucy Falcon already within his own, to lead her to the music-room.

"You will find coffee there," said Crozier, resignedly.

"I never take coffee in Christendom," said De Goslyn.

Lord Lodore, St. Crispin, Monk, and De Goslyn,

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formed a little group before they left the refectory, and the genius and enthusiasm of our hero formed the subject of their conversation.

"This Mac Morris," said St. Crispin, using the jargon of a modem school, which has not clone much to improve our language,-"this Mac Morris, in his own semi-articulate way had a word to speak."

"A strong son of nature, he seems," said Monk, adopting the same style; "there is hero-stuff in the deep big heart of him."

"Discerning," said Lodore, with wild-flashing eye, "what to do, and with wild, lion-heart daring and doing it."

"So Norse!" said Monk.

"So Runic!" said De Goslyn.

"Ay, you marked that," said Lord Lodore, "a light kindled in the dark vortex of the Celt mind, a light waiting for light, which to me, Monk (whatever it may be to you), is the centre of the whole."

"How he worked in his obscure element!-me-thinks he talks as Novalis writes,-none of the Vulgar Comprehensible-a dim No-Meaning in his sentences. In fact, I consider him a sincere helpless man, like Cromwell, with a real speech lying hid in his tortuous utterances; I try to believe that he means something; I search for it lovingly, and I find it."

"Blockheads," said Monk, "are always looking for plain meanings. My creed is, that nothing intelligible is worth understanding."

"That is mine too," said De Goslyn, and the Runic conversation closed.

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CHAPTER XXXVII.

"An admirable musician!-Oh, she will sing the savageness out of a bear."-Othello.

MONASTIC OCCUPATIONS-LUCY FALCON TURNS TRAPPISTE-THE HERO FORMS A WISE RESOLUTION WHICH HIS FRIEND TEMPTS HIM TO BREAK-THE HERO PREFERS THE MYRTLE TO THE LAUREL-MEETS THE HEROINE IN THE ORATORY-THEIR OPTICAL OBSERVATIONS-TRAVELS OF A SUNBEAM-MOORE BALLADIZES.

the most active members of the monkish fraternity having retired to their respective cells for the monastic purpose of repose, the less strenuous part of the company assembled in the octagonal salon, where it was now the turn of the heroine to shine. She sang, and the charm and perfection of her voice were felt and applauded by the whole circle. As to Mac Morris, it was with extreme difficulty that he controlled his transports, so well as upon the whole he succeeded in doing; for he had still to enact the part of a statesman, and was particularly anxious to preserve a becoming dignity of demeanour in the presence of Young England.

Lord Lodore, De Goslyn, and St. Crispin, placed themselves near the piano, all agreeing that they had never heard in private society a voice so naturally fine and so highly cultivated as Miss Falcon's. Mac Morris stood for some time in one of his heroic attitudes behind her chair, a little apart from the white-waistcoats; then

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retired somewhat theatrically to a sofa, partly immersed in the drapery of a window, where he threw himself into a posture something between that of a prime mi­nister after a debate, and a lion couchant; the flashing of his eyes through his boisterous curls, aided by his tawny shirt, qualifying him to perform very respectably the latter tremendous character.

Moore had stationed himself near the tractarian work-table; Miss Crozier was occupied with the cover of the fald-stool; and Miss Lucy Falcon (with an ardour almost amounting to fanaticism) was completing a purse on the eleemosynary model; while the sentimental Skiddaw leaned on the back of her prie-dieu, taking a marvel-lous interest (for so enthusiastic a bachelor) in the ma­nufacture of what seemed a purse, but was in reality a trap, and one palpably intended for himself.

Perhaps it was at Moore's suggestion that Miss Cro­zier begged of Emily to sing the mischievous air of fag-a-bealac; but directly she complied, the young Celtic lion sprang from his lair, and perhaps Miss Falcon was slightly intimidated by his impetuosity, for she sang it with evident agitation, which, however, might have arisen from other circumstances connected with that particular melody.

She ceased, and Tierna having devoured the strain, again retired to his den in the curtained recess of the win­dow. Presently there arose a little dispute at the piano about the precise words of one of the Young Ireland melodies, which De Goslyn had requested Emily to sing, and which Lord Lodore criticised with severity, pronouncing them equally unpoetical and un-Irish.

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Tigernach, with his usual temerity, repelled the charge.

"Mac Morris," said De Goslyn, "you always carry a pocket-edition of your national songs, let us see it.” Tigernach rose, and handed his poetical vade mecum to St. Crispin, who was nearest to him. "Look for 'english and irish eyes,' " said Lord Lodore.

Tierna's cheek was scarlet, and he attempted to with­draw the book, denying with visible perplexity that there was any such song in the collection.

"I find the title in the index, at all events," said St. Crispin, "at page sixty-four."

Mac Morris retired to his nook, abashed at the im­pending detection of one of the few acts of his life (which, however, was not a long one), in which true feeling had triumphed over false sentiment. He is right," said St. Crispin, turning to page sixty-four, "it is not in his edition, for I find that the page has been torn out."

"And with violence," said Lord Lodore, looking over St. Crispin's shoulder.

Emily had joined Miss Crozier at the work-table. The latter handed a fragment of printed paper to Moore, saying that she and Miss Falcon had found it on the skirts of the forest, as they returned from their sylvan stroll shortly before refection. "Mac Morris, you are lucky to recover your stray leaf," said St. Crispin. But Mac Morris was not in the room; he had

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opened the window behind the curtain, and made his escape into the flower-ground.

"I expected," said Lord Lodore, "that Mac Morris would disown the virulent and unmanly spirit of tills attack upon English beauty, and I have not been dis­appointed."

"Music," replied Moore, "has even more power over him than beauty. He caught a snatch of a song in the wood yonder, on his way here to-day from the village, and I can only compare his transports to those of Comus hearing the lady's voice in nearly similar scenery."

Miss Crozier leaned over to Miss Falcon, and said in a low tone, "You were 'the lady?' "

"I think, Miss Crozier," said Moore, in the same tone, "that both you and I can conjecture the history of the torn leaf."

Emily coloured, and asked a little abruptly what was a fald-stool?

Moore followed our hero into the moonlight, think­ing the occasion a favourable one for communicating to him the letter he had received from his uncle, on the subject of his attachment to Miss Falcon.

He found that Tierna had for once in his life formed a wise determination, although one that most materially interfered with his own designs.

"I have made up my mind, Moore, not to remain another day here. I should only stay to feed a hope­less passion, or contract a desperate marriage. I shall positively return to London to-morrow."

"I cannot condemn the resolution you have come to,"

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said Moore, "it is not only a prudent, but a generous one; you are incapable of sporting with the affections of that lovely girl, and your stay here would (I now plainly perceive) be equally fatal to the peace of both." "Yes," said Tierna, "you see it in the same light that I do myself; there is but one course for me to pursue as a man of honour."

"To say nothing," said Moore, "of public principle and political consistency. By the bye, in connexion with this very subject, I received a letter from your uncle the other day, which I ought to have shown you be­fore, but it escaped my memory; here it is-cast your eye over it; the proposition it contains is extravagant -monstrous-but I am satisfied it is made with the kindest intentions towards you. Your uncle's heart is sound, whatever we may think of his understanding; we must not expect young heads upon old shoulders. At all events, it is my duty to hand you the letter; you will decide for yourself."

He put the paper into his hand, and left him to peruse it by the light of the yellow moon, amongst the myrtles; his ears still tingling with the notes of Emily's voice, and her picture before his eyes, as she looked when the mutilation of the green-book was detected by St. Crispin. The beams of the yellow moon illumining the letter in his hand, but faintly typified the golden lustre which its contents flung over the prospects of his love.

Moore returned in a few minutes;-it was just to re-mind him that it was late, and that he had preparations to make for starting in the morning.

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"I shall walk a little longer-how beautiful are those myrtles!" said Tierna, scarce knowing what he said.

Moore went and again came back.

"Tierna!-there is a laurel shade in that direction, -to the west! You will prefer it to the myrtles."

Mac Morris exhibited great impatience, and Moore once more withdrew, but once more remorselessly re­turned.

"Excuse me, Mac Morris, I want merely to restore you the loose leaf of your little hymn-book which Miss Falcon found in the forest. Oh! you reject it;-then, I suppose, I had better return it to her."

Mac Morris snatched the provoking page and now tore it into a hundred pieces.

"There goes the prejudice against English eyes!" exclaimed Moore, " you cannot leave this dangerous place too soon."

But the inconstant planet rose again, and found the equally inconstant Tigernach still one of the Gilbertine party. Nay, between music and beauty, the pastime of monkery and the diversions of Falconry, Tierna had passed at St. Ronald's a day ever to be registered with golden letters in the calendar.

One slight incident was important enough to deserve, record.

Emily had strayed into the pretty Oratory at an hour when she knew that Mr. Crozier and his friends were engaged in their conventual occupations out of doors, and she was intently admiring the painted glass,

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glowing with the grotesque devices of mediaeval art, and wondering what was intended by the fish which she found amongst the sacred hieroglyphics, when, suddenly turning, she saw Tierna at her side.* It was their first meeting, except in society, and mutual embarrassment kept them for some moments silent. At length Tierna spoke; it was only to call her attention to a gleam of sunshine, which, striking through a pane of rose-coloured glass, flung a long rippling line of that lovely tint across the floor and furniture of the crypt. They traced together, but in silence, the course of the beauteous ray. It fell first on a sculptured corner of the stone altar, then, tumbling on the ground, ran wavering along the fringe of the pede-cloth, from which, again seaming to ascend, it just tipped the wing of the eagle that formed the lectern, and traversed the open volume which lay upon it, suggesting to a fanciful mind the idea of an angel pointing with roseate finger to some words of peculiar sanctity and power. The book was that of Common Prayer, and the passage to which the eyes of Emily and Tierna were thus fantastically solicited, was one that contained the new and beautiful commandment of the Christian dispensation. They marked-they read (but not with their lips) those words divine, illumined with that

"Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue."

Their eyes met and mutely commented upon them.

*The fish is an heraldic symbol of a still more daring character than the armorial hearings of the apostles and evangelists.-See Hook's Church Dictionary.*

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Perhaps it was only a reflection from the Hushing page that tinged the cheeks of both, as they withdrew toge-ther from the Oratory.

Tierna shone no more in the political converse of the table. He was mute that day at the refectory, mar­velling that he had not availed himself of the incident in the chapel to make oral declaration of his love, and pondering when and where he should take that neces­sary, though now almost formal step.

Moore observed with but little surprise the suc­cessful working of Vincent's innocent corruption; his only astonishment was, that Tierna did not abandon his passion, on rinding it reconcileable with prudential con­siderations. However, he now felt perfectly secure of the issue, and wrote that evening to Mrs. Sharpe to report progress, and congratulate her on the triumph of their joint-scheme. He related the victory of Emily's charms in the following careless rhymes, seeing no reason why he should not balladize as well as the rest of mankind, in those balladizing days.

There came a Celtic knight
To a Saxon maiden's bower,
In shirt of saffron bright,
And glybbe, like me bower.

The maiden she was fair
As maidenhood may be;
But the knight he did declare
That too true a Celt was he-

-Too true a Celt to bow
At any Saxon shrine,
Or pay the lightest vow
To brightest Saxon eyne.

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The ladie she came forth,
In the splendour of her youth,
With her beauty and her worth,
Her tenderness and truth.

Her hair was sunny bright,
Her eye was sunny blue,
Her robe was spotless white,
Her mind was spotless too.

The Celtic knight did mark
Her glory and her grace;
And felt how cold and dark
Is the hate of race to race!

"Sweet maiden! wilt be mine?"
Exclaim'd the vanquish'd Celt;
And at the Saxon shrine
The Celtic pilgrim knelt.

On the same evening, did the enthusiastic Lucy Falcon finish her silk trap for a husband. So great was her haste, that she dropped one of the "e's" in ELEEMOSYNARIA, and left the "y" without a tail, like a Manx kitten. Skiddaw looked as if he thought he had improved the spelling by both omissions, and asked for whom the purse was intended, with a sigh like a south-wind over Windermere.

"For nobody," replied the nut-brown maid; explaining by her tone and by her looks, that "nobody" meant "somebody," and that "somebody" meant Mr. Skiddaw.

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CHAPTER XXXVIII.

"Chacun se trompe ici-bas: On voit courir apres l'ombre Tant en fous qu'on n'en sait pas, La plupart de temps, le nombre. Au chien dont parle Esope il faut les renvoyer."

La Fontaine.

AN ALARMING LETTER-THE VISIONARY RESOURCES OF IRELAND COM-PARED WITH THE INDUSTRIAL-DIALOGUE BETWEEN REASON AND EXTRAVAGANCE-EXTRAVAGANCE UNCON-VINCED-DREAM OF AN EMERALD CROWN-WHO IS TO BE QUEEN OF THE BEGGARS-FRIEND-SHIP SLEEPS WHILE LOVE IS UP AND STIRRING-A MONK AND A NUN ABSCOND FROM THE CONVENT-DISSOLUTION OF THE NINE-TEENTH-CENTURY MONASTERY-A PARTING SHOT AT THE PUSEYITES-FAMILY PAPERS OF IMPORTANCE.

never was security falser, or triumph more short-lived! Before moon-set that night, Moore was a baffled diplomatist, and his friend a ruined man. However, Tierna's was a brilliant bankruptcy, for his fortunes were wrecked upon a reef of emeralds.

The post at St. Ronald's arrived late in the evening. When Moore retired to his cell, as his chamber was affectedly called, he found a letter from Vernon Sharpe, at the purport of which he smiled, although there was something in it that slightly alarmed him. The letter was as follows:

"Merrion Square, Dublin."

"dear moore,"

"I am a late convert to the plans of my wife and

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you, respecting our young friend, Tierna Mac Morris. He has no longer a prospect of sixpence, except from his uncle. His infatuated father has flung the residue of his fortune into those chimerical emerald mines, discovered by the Celtic mineralogists, and there is a rumour abroad to-day, which alarms us very much, to the effect, that he has recalled his son, fancying that he can now afford to dispense with his expectations from his brother. My object in writing is to show you the necessity of pushing your scheme as fast as possible. Tierna's return now would be his total ruin.

"Yours truly,"

"vernon sharpe."

"Emerald mines!"-repeated Moore, smiling, as he traversed the corridor to reach his friend's apartment. But directly he opened the door, observed Tierna's excited looks, and met his fanatical eye, he saw with dismay that the emerald affair was a serious matter.

"Read that!" cried Mac Morris, throwing down a letter before Moore, and then ranging the room like an ecstatic dervish.

Moore, having glanced over it, just to satisfy himself that it was a despatch from his friend's father, and to the very purport that Vernon Sharpe apprehended, flung the paper aside with affected contempt, and said:

"Well, Tierna, do you persist in your intention of leaving St. Ronald's?"

"Yes, I leave it to-morrow."

"For London?"

"No, for Dublin."

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"Dublin!"

"Yes, Dublin-that letter leaves me no alternative."

"But to embrace your uncle's generous and benevo­lent offer."

"But to follow the magnificent career, which not only ambition and love, but now even avarice itself opens to my enchanted view!"

"What do you mean-are you gone mad?"

"I might well retort the question."

"Retort it!-do you believe in these emeralds?"

"Certainly."

"Emerald mines!"

"I have often told you, Moore, that my faith in the physical, as well as the moral glories of Celtic Ireland, is boundless."

"Celtic balderdash!-Emerald mines!-I have read the late excellent work on the Industrial Resources of Ireland,-a book of great research and accurate informa­tion,-it makes no mention of emerald mines."

"Which shows how ill it deserves the commendation you give it. The title of the book decides its character- it is the work of a poor practical plodder, with no eyes but those in his head-and no faith either in the golden age that is past, or the golden age that is to come."

"I thought," replied Moore, with his calmest ve­hemence, "I had fathomed the depths of your folly, but I now find it is deeper than I have plummet to sound. I fondly hoped that English beauty had cured you of Celtic extravagance, and now I find you pre­pared to fling, not only wealth, but love (what wealth cannot purchase), not only your uncle's favour, but

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the affections of a charming girl, into the ideal shaft of a visionary mine-a speculation to which the South Sea bubble was a sober undertaking!"

"No, Moore, I dispense with my uncle's generosity, but I am determined, even at the hazard of my father's resentment, to make Miss Falcon the companion of my career, and the partner of my triumphs."

"Your triumphs! Your beggary! As to your father's property, it no longer exists. This last mort­gage (to work these Arabian mines) must exhaust it utterly. Then, the moment you appear in the political arena, your uncle blots your name out of his will. I know his firmness in the right. Pause, Tierna, before you take a step pregnant with irretrievable destruction."

"You talk only of wealth; I think only of glory."

"Wealth is not wisdom, Tierna; but the contempt of wealth is folly. The highest authority assures us that 'riches are the crown of the wise.' "*

"Crown!" repeated Tierna, now dreaming with might and main,-"a crown of emeralds! With these hands I will place it on her brows."

"And make her Queen of the Beggars," cried Moore; and retiring in extreme vexation, he resolved, before he slept, that, if he could not arrest the desperate career of Mac Morris, he would at least save the in­nocent Emily from being involved in his fate.

Had the matin-bell awakened him the ensuing morn-in fact, had he been a holier friar-he might have succeeded in this design; but Love is an earlier riser than Friendship;-the lovers had exchanged their

* Proverbs, chap, xiv., verse 24.

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vows at prime; and when Moore sauntered into the refectory for the morning meal, the first intelligence he received was that Mac Morris had left St. Ronald's an hour before, en route for Ireland.

There was another elopement, too, that eventful morning; when a writ was issued to discover Mr. Thomas Skiddaw, the return of the Camerarius was "non est inventus;" and when a similar process went forth in the gynceceum for the apprehension of Miss Lucy Falcon, the female authorities of that part of the monastery were under the afflicting necessity of making the same reply. The elopement, in this case, was altogether to spare the feelings of Skiddaw. He was an excellent match for Lucy, for (foul traitor as he was to the cause of monachism and celibacy) he was heir to a pretty property in Cumberland, and a senti­mental seat at the Lakes.

The party that remained soon broke up. Mrs. Falcon had received encouragement to follow her husband to Ireland, and Emily's engagement to Mac Morris was an additional reason for hastening to that country. Moore took formal leave of the ill-starred Crozier, and pro­ceeded to Bath with the friendly view of mitigating as much as possible, the just resentment of Mr. Vincent Mac Morris at his nephew's ungrateful and frantic conduct.

Thus terminated the first attempt to revive monastic institutions in England. Mrs. Falcon had the glory of undesignedly defeating that sapient project, although no conduct could have been more exemplary than hers, either while she was Abbess of Theleme, or a simple

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sister of the Gilbertine House. To wind up the history of this memorable undertaking, it only remains to record the following exploit of one who seemed determined, at all personal risks, that the part of a Dowsing should not be wanting to complete the parallel between the present and past struggle of the High and Low Church parties. On the morning that succeeded the "dissolution," father St. John Crozier was sitting dolefully in the Oratory, ruminating upon his discomfiture, and meditating a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; his sister was ministering such comfort as the case admitted of, and strewing fresh flowers upon the altar; when the former accidentally raised his eyes to the picture of St. Sebastian, and after gazing at it for a moment, said:

"Anastasia, I never observed before that St. Sebastian had an arrow in his face."

"Nor I," said Anastasia, glancing at the painted martyr. "Why, it's a real arrow," she quickly added.

"You don't think it a miracle?" asked Crozier, solemnly.

"I think not," said Anastasia, "I should say it was rather Master Willy Falcon."

Whether the impious little archer ever repented of his parting shot at the Puseyites is questionable, but it is certain that he did not disclose it in confession to his Mother-Abbess.

The considerations which at length determined the gipsy to join her husband, will best be explained by the following correspondence, which had recently passed between them, and which will also acquaint the reader with the course of Mr. Falcon's life, his doings and

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dinings, since we had last the pleasure of being in his company.

"Dublin. Office of B. S. C. P. J.

"my dear georgina,

"Enclosed you will find a list, in the form, of a table, of the families and houses which appear to me most likely to be agreeable and useful here. My feel­ing is in favour of the Vernon Sharpes' town-house, which will soon be vacant, as they are in treaty for a marine villa. Town, of course, is the thing for us, until after your confinement, when if you like the marine villa, you might go there for a while to re­cruit your strength. You will see in the list the name of Mr. Benedick; he is a rich bachelor, with a very handsome house in one of the best streets, where I have repeatedly dined with him, and he has more than once been so kind as to say that there was a bedroom, at my service; perhaps you would prefer his house to the Sharpes'; it has the advantage, certainly, of being nearer to Doctor M'Couch, the vice-regal accoucheur. Did I tell you that I have managed at last to get my nose into Mr. Fitz Fidgett's? I made a very inge­nious toy for their children, (dear little enthusiasts,) representing a national school, with the schoolmaster mutilating the bible with a pair of scissors, and the Archbishop of Dublin and Bishop Murray clap­ping him on the back for encouragement. Lady Pa­mela was charmed with it, and I have dined there repeatedly since. I drive about a great deal on jaunt­ing-cars, and pray tell Mr. Moore that I always secure

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the box-seat, as he advised me, and I don't much mind being ridiculed for the sake of getting an impartial view of Irish affairs. I hope you read my letters in the 'Metropolitan Mercury.' They are making a prodigious sensation, and the best of it is that my travelling does not cost a shilling, for I never leave Dublin; nor have I any idea of doing so, until I have completed my 'Dashes at Irish Life.' I am now dashing at life in Connaught, and with a few blue books, an extract from Arthur Young, the Irish Flora, Moore's Melodies, a map of the Shannon, and the Report of the Railway Commissioners, I am confident my work on Ireland will be a very entertaining and I hope a useful publication. You may guess the rate I travel at, when I tell you that I was at Derrynane Abbey this morning at breakfast, and I am this moment sitting down to lunch with Mr. Martin, at Connemara Castle, in the county of Bally-nahinch, or Galway; I am not certain which it is, but one will do as well as the other for the English public. I am sorry to hear so bad an account of Rebecca Spriggs;-I understood that she accepted the appoint-in Sir F. Crozier's family expressly to instruct our girls; but husbands, after all, are much more im-portant than, accomplishments; indeed, I never wished them to be more accomplished than their charming mother.

"Your affectionate and obedient Husband,

"peregrine falcon."

"P.S. Where is little Paulina? Tell me something about her. What do you think of Mr. Tiger Mac

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Morris for Emily? Mrs. Sharpe assures me he is one of the best matches in Ireland."

To which business-like and respectful letter the gipsy returned the following brilliant and decisive answer.

"St. Ronald's, Herts.

"my dear peregrine,

"Mr. Benedick's house, by all means. Mention Doctor O'Couch in your letters on Ireland: call him the Irish Doctor Locock; it will flatter him greatly, and save us fees. Mr. Sharpe's villa will be convenient when I am recovering; she is very attentive to Emily, and we ought to be attentive to her, I think very well of Mr. Mac Morris for Emily; and she thinks very well of it herself, too; though she would like him better if he would get his hair cut, and wear white shirts like a Christian. By the bye, talking of Christians, you don't say a word about the Jews. Do you ever visit their demagogues? Don't be surprised if you hear of another girl of yours getting a good husband as well as Emily, all by following my ex­ample, doing at Rome as Romans do, making ele­mentary purses, and talking of lambs and violets to a Mr. Skiddaw here. Give my love to Mrs. Sharpe. I have a sincere regard for her, and won't neglect her after my confinement. Do you know anything of poor dear Pickever?

"Yours affectionately,"

"georgina falcon."

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"P. S.-You managed very well with those foolish Fitz Fidgetts, but take care you don't burn their house or blow it up with your ingenuity,-that is, if you think they are likely to be useful people."

"my dear georgina,"

"Come over as soon as you conveniently can after you have settled the important matters you have in hand. Mr. Benedick is going to Killarney for a fortnight-Verbum sap.

"Your obedient Husband,"

"P. F."

"St. Ronald's, Herts.

"my dear peregrine,"

"I shall leave this in a week's time, au courant, for Dublin. We shall probably spend the autumn at the lakes of Cumberland, with Mr. and Mrs. Tom Skiddaw.

"Bone jour,"

"G. f."

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CHAPTER XXXIX.

"How should'st thou, fair lady, love me, Whom thou know'st thy country's foe? All the harm I wish to thee, most courteous knight, God grant the same upon my head may fully light."

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry:

The Spanish Ladye's Love.

RETROSPECTIVE-A ROMANTIC MEETING IMPROVISED-TIERNA'S MISGIVINGS-APPARITION OF A WHITE LADY-THE HERO A PENI­TENT AND THE HEROINE A PREACHER-EMILY'S CONQUEST COM­PARED WITH CAESAR’S

the interview between Tierna and Emily, alluded to in the last chapter, had been improvised. Yielding to a common impulse, they had both repaired to the garden at an early hour, both, perhaps, in quest of refreshment after a night of feverish or broken slumber. As for Tierna he had scarcely slept; agitated by thoughts of the stormy but brilliant future that lay before him, startled by occasional flashes of common-sense, and vexed by misgivings, which he could not help enter­taining as to the ultimate acceptance of his addresses by Miss Falcon, when he recollected the violent lengths to which his friends in Ireland (with whom she might so justly identify him) had been so frequently transported against all that bore the English name, sparing not even Beauty in her bower. He recollected the time-not two months since-when he had even

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heard with impatience and disdain of Emily's exalted sympathies with the misfortunes of his country.

It seemed as in vengeance for such language and such feelings that the old Saxon incubus, Mara, or the Night-Mare, now rode on his breast and distracted his repose. He seemed to writhe, like the giants of old, under mountains of green diamond, and when he essayed to place a coronet of his native emeralds on the forehead of his fair, they became rocks in his hand, and crushed her to the earth.

As he roved the flowery labyrinth, heedless where his steps led him, quaffing the sweet air of morning, hearkening to the first twitterings of the birds, and bespangling his feet with the silver dew, suddenly, at a sharp turn from one green alley to another, a white object solicited his attention, and he supposed it at first to be a stately group of lilies. Another glance, however, showed him that it moved, and at the third he saw that it was a lady and-Miss Falcon! She was just stooping to smell, or pluck, or support a flower, and

"the roses blushing round
About her glow'd."

-those roses which young Verdaunt in his Celtic fury would have trodden under his clownish heel! When she perceived Tierna she would have retreated, but she had not time; he approached and accosted her; with mutual confusion and mutual delight they now conversed together, no longer by looks alone. She was artless and he was passionate; both were earnest, both tender, both romantic. After all, there is no music

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comparable to music spoken. As she murmured her applause and sympathy in return for his homage and devotion, it seemed to Tierna as if he heard her voice for the first time. It seemed, too, as if now first he beheld her charms, so much did the sweet stillness of the hour, the quiet loveliness of the spot, all the circumstances of the meeting, heighten every grace and increase the lustre of her beauty. Each had a narrative to give of the rise and progress of attachment. The events of Portland-place were minutely recalled; the incident of the torn leaf was related in detail; the rosy beam of sunshine was tracked over again, from its entrance at the window until it fell upon the holy text.

Tierna, however, was called upon to speak of the future, as well as of the past. He stated his views, unfolded his designs, related the magical change which his prospects had undergone within a few hours; dreamed his ambitious dreams once more-but talked of emeralds and gold only as the pavement of the road to glory. He then declared himself her admirer, lover, worshipper, idolater, and passionately asked her to become the partner of his fortunes-the bride of Ireland's boy-champion and Liberty's young apostle. When she hesitated (as well she might, with all her enthusiasm in hero-worship), he asked did she doubt his truth?

"No, Mr. Mac Morris," she said, with natural em­barrassment, "but the very assurance I entertain of the earnestness of your characters-the intensity of your principles-"

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"My principles are ambition and love-or rather only love-love of you and of my country."

"But with you-with your party-does not the love of Ireland mean the hate of England?-is not prejudice a principle?-do you not feel it a duty-a religion-to cherish animosity to all that is English?"

"There has been ground for the reproach, but here I swear--"

"No, I do not reproach you, but I feel that I could not, ought not, Mr. Mac Morris, to share your fortunes without sharing your feelings also; and I never could partake of your antipathies; I could never hate my kindred or my country."

"Hate could not dwell in your heart or in your presence, enchantress!" cried Mac Morris, vehemently.

"Why should your heart have a place for it?" she returned with mild earnestness; "you call me en­chantress-oh, that I could exorcise that demon!"

"You shall-you have-it haunts me no more,-for you I could love or hate anything, or everything on earth."

"I hate nothing, Mr. Mac Morris, but violence and hatred; if, indeed, you love me, you will renounce and abjure both."

"For you I would renounce and abjure Ireland her­self."

"No-oh, no; only the feelings that increase the distractions of that unhappy land. Why should we ever forget that beautiful commandment, which yesterday we saw written in the heavenliest light of Heaven?"

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"Sweet preacher-eloquent divine-behold your proselyte at your feet."

There was an interbreathing of vows, an interthrob-bing of hearts, "the joinder of hands and holy close of lips," and they were united in the eye of that Heaven which cares alike for Saxon, for Norman, and for Celt.

The victory of Emily resembled one of Caesar's in rapidity, but differed from it in another respect:-he came-he saw-she conquered!

Emily might have exacted more;-she might have pledged him against the extravagance as well as the antipathies of his faction,-and had she but known how perilous his position at that moment was-what a fear­ful leap he was on the point of taking-she possibly would have done so; but she knew neither of his father's infatuation, nor of his rejection of his uncle's liberality, until it was too late to save him from the consequences of both.

They parted before the matin-bell rang; Emily even urged him to hasten to his public post, and she had the less difficulty to induce him to do so, as she was soon to proceed to Ireland herself.

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CHAPTER XL.

"Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights, How oft unwearied have we spent the nights, Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love, Wonder'd at us from above! We spent them not in toys, or wine, But search of deep Philosophy, Wit, Eloquence, and Poetry." Cowley.

tierna practises what moonshine taught-a chimera some­times a dangerous animal-second celtic symposiac-the right of self-misrule proclaimed-the theban brothers, a boeotian precedent for young ireland-homer a connaught-man-the greek homer a feeble version of the original irish-a very articulate zephyr-the apparition of tiger-nach-how mr. falcon misread an irish inscription, and how he was spoken of in presence of his intended son-in-law-tierna appears in the hall of clamour-public INGRATITUDE.

it is worthy of remark, that Tigernach, in the course he took at this momentous crisis of his history, acted in strict conformity with the Young Ireland doctrine, as laid down by Mr. Magnus Moonshine when the fable of the Dog and the Shadow was the subject of con­versation, in a former chapter.

"The dog did right," said Moonshine, "preferred a splendid hope to a sordid certainty-dropped the paltry reality and snatched at the glorious vision."

So Tierna Mac Morris, having to choose between his uncle's solid guineas, and his father's imaginary gems, did not hesitate a moment to relinquish the former for the latter, having yet to learn that a chimera, which is so harmless an animal, when it is let alone, is as danger-

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ous a beast as any in the forest, when a man has the folly to go in chase of it. It was gratifying to Moore to ascertain (as he did from Miss Crozier, before he left St. Ronald's), that Emily, far from sanctioning or en­couraging her lover's extravagant resolution, had but very indistinctly comprehended its nature, regarding it in fact, more as a necessary compliance with his father's wishes, than as a gratuitous concurrence in his father's freaks.

Tierna's journey to Ireland was a slow one, consider­ing that he rode such a spirited hobby, but he made a characteristic deviation from the direct route, just to see what Rebecca and Cadwallader were doing in the Prin­cipality, and ascertain the revolutionary capabilities of Young Wales.

It was night when he arrived in Dublin, and his first visit was to the Eagle's Nest, where it happened, that Mac Flecknoe, Moonshine, and O'Burly were again assembled in solemn symposiac, quaffing O'Harper's nectar, and whiling away a Celtic hour. The night being cold and blustry, the party were glad to avail themselves of a huge Scythian mantle of their host's, which was spacious enough to envelope them all, as they sat round a small table, in conversational carouse.

"The first toast, gentlemen, is Self-Government," said O'Harper; "indeed, I hold it to be right of a nation to misgovern herself, if she be so disposed; so, if you please, let it be SELF-MISGOVERNM