and elfs, are not so generally peopled by superstitious individuals as the Emerald Isle. Alas! when will the benefit of education be extended to this wretched land? and when shall its denizens partake of the advantages which poor-laws and charitable institutions have conferred upon their brethren of England?

But to the tale. Speaking of the religious firmness with which Mrs. O'Donovan supported the terrible afflictions which false friendship had entailed upon her son, Mr. Carleton says,

"Ireland, however, abounds with such instances of female piety and fortitude - not indeed, as they would be made to appear in the unfeminine violence of political turmoil, in which a truly pious female would not embroil herself; but in the quietness of domestic life—in the hard struggles against poverty-and in those cruel visitations where the godly mother is forced to see her innocent son corrupted by the dark influence of political crime, drawn within the vortex of secret confederacy, and subsequently yielding up his life to the outraged laws of that country which he assisted to distract. It is in scenes like these that the unostentatious magnanimity of the pious Irish wife or mother may be discovered; and it is here where as the night and storms of life darken her path, the holy fortitude of her heart shines with a lustre proportioned to the depth of the gloom around her."

Bartle Flanagan, having now succeeded in ridding himself of Connor O'Donovan, determined to make Una O'Brien his own. He loved her with the passion of lust—not with the chaste fervour that characterised the sentiment of Connor; and he moreover burned to enjoy her worldly possessions. To gain her hand by fair means was impossible: he therefore resolved upon carrying her off by force. To effect this aim, he endeavoured to enlist Biddy, Una's maid, in his service; and one night, aided by a number of his confederate Ribbon-men, he assailed the Bodagh's house, robbed Una's desk, and seized the fainting form of a female in his arms. Laden with his prey and his booty, and protected by his accomplices, he succeeded in escaping from the house: but what pen can depict his confusion and rage when he found that he had been guilty of the abduction of Biddy instead of Una-her mistress? The faithful girl had only feigned to listen to his wiles and lend herself to his plans, in order the more effectually to protect her mistress, and defeat the schemes of the enemy. Flanagan was taken prisoner, tried, and condemned to death for robbery and abduction. On the morning of his execution he confessed the conspiracy of which he had been guilty against Connor, and revealed the motives that induced him to perpetrate the crime. A senti- · ment of revenge directed against the old miser for the ruin brought by him on Bartle's family, and the young man's love for Una, were the incentives to the nefarious deed. The following is the description of Flanagan's last moments:

"At length his hands were tied, and they attempted to get him up to the platform of death, but to their amazement he was once more loose, and flying to the priest, he clasped him with the graspe of Hercules.

Save me-save me,' he shouted, 'Let me live. I can't die. You're puttin' me into hell's fire. Nor can I face God? No-it's terrible, it's terrible, its damnable. Life-life-life-only life! Oh! only life!'

"As he spoke, he strained the reverend gentleman to his breast and kissed him, and shouted with a wildness of entreaty which far transcended in terror the most outrageous paroxysms of insanity.

"I will not leave the priest,' shrieked he; so long as I stay with him I'll be so long out of the punishment of eternity-out of hell's fire! I will stick to you. Don't-don't put me away, but have pity on me. No,

-I'll not go I'll not go!'

"Again he kissed the priest's lips, cheeks, and forehead, and still clung to him with fearful violence, until at last his hands were finally secured beyond the possibility of his again getting them loose. He then threw himself upon the ground, and still resisted, with a degree of muscular strength altogether unaccountable in a person even of his compact and rather athletic form. His appearance upon the platform will long be. remembered by those who had the questionable gratification of witnessing it. It was the struggle of strong men dragging a strong man to the most frightful of all precipices-Death.

"When he was seen by the people in the act of being forced with such violence to the drop, they all moved, like a forest agitated by a sudden breeze, and uttered that strange murmur, composed of many passions, which can only be heard where a large number of persons are congregated together under the power of something that is deep and thrilling in its interest. At length, after a struggle for life, and a horror of death possibly unprecedented in the annals of crime, he was pushed upon the drop, the spring was touched, and the unhappy man passed, shrieking into that eternity which he dreaded so much. His death was instantaneous; and after hanging the usual time, his body was removed to the gaol: the crowd began to disperse; and in half an hour the streets and people presented nothing more than their ordinary aspect of indifference to everything but their own affairs."*

All that remains for us to say is, that Connor and his parents obtained a free passage back to their native land. The young man was immediately united to his beloved Una; and their grandchildren flourish in Lisnamona at the present day.

"We have only to say that W--m C-k, Esq., of L-sb-—e, Sheriff of the county of D--n, and those who officially attended, about four years ago, the execution of a man named M--y, at the gaol of D——up▬▬k, for a most heinous murder, will, should they happen to see this description, not hesitate to declare that it falls far-far short of what they themselves witnessed upon this terrible' occasion. There is nothing mentioned here which did not then occur, but there is much omitted."

In taking our leave of this work we have only to observe, that an attentive perusal will well repay the reader; and that of all the novels which have issued from the British or Irish press during the last season," Fardorougha" is decidedly one of the best.

ART. IX.- Tea; its Effects, Medicinal and Moral. By G. G. SIGMOND, M.D. F.S.A. F.L.S. Professor of Materia Medica to the Roval Medico-Botanical Society. London: Longman, Orme and Co. 1839. THERE are certain vegetables and plants, which although no immediate sustenance or stimulus to act beneficially upon the energies of the human body be discernibly derivable from them, that yet deserve to be ranked among the most bounteous gifts of the Author of Nature. Sugar is one of the extracts alluded to, the nutritive and wholesome qualities of which are so remarkable that it has be come one of the principal objects of domestic economy and national

commerce.

Sugar was known to the Greeks and Romans, only as a medicinal substance. They were ignorant of its value as food or a condiment. The Jews did not, in so far as can be gathered from their historians, possess any precise knowledge on the subject; although, according to a late traveller in Palestine, the honey so often mentioned in Scripture may not have been always, or purely, the produce of bees. Near the beginning of the Christian era, however, sugar came to receive a distinct name and form. Dioscorides says, that, "In India and Arabia Felix, a kind of concrete honey is called Saccharon; and that it is found in reeds, and resembles salt in solidity, and in friableness betwixt the teeth." Other writers allude to the substance, among whom is Pliny, who says, "It is used in medicine only:" and for centuries afterwards the article appears to have been regarded in this exclusive light.

The Saracens were the people who introduced the manufacture of sugar in the manner, or essentially such, that is to this day practised; and then it became an object of commercial enterprize. But at what date these improvements took place is not ascertained, although it is supposed to have been comparatively late. However, early in the twelfth century notice is made of the manufacturing process, and of instances of traffic to which it had led.

The Saracens cultivated the sugar-cane in Spain and Portugal; although Sicily is the spot in which we have the earliest mention of the article being of European growth; which island had been for nearly three centuries in the hands of the Eastern barbarians. After this the Normans again became possessors of the place and carried on the sugar culture. But still there is good reason for believing that conquest has been in this case, as in many others, the propagator of the invaluable article of which we are speaking.

Two of the most important Arabian improvements were, the use of alkalies, in the clarification of the juice of the cane, and the employment of conical earthen moulds, for crystallizing and curing the sugar. From the countries in the West, conquered and occupied by this people, the whole of Europe must have acquired the knowledge of the subject in question, that has since risen into the highest economical and commercial importance.

Still, it is not precisely ascertained at what time the use of sugar began in England; although, from certain recorded notices, it must have been familiar to authors as well as to officers of state, early in the fourteenth century. In 1643, our countrymen commenced the sugar business in Barbadoes. It is unnecessary to say anything, in this hurried and imperfect sketch, of the eminence to which it has since reached, or of the mighty interests concerned in the culture, manufacture, and commerce of cane-sugar, and the articles of which it is a main component. A vast amount of the wealth of Great Britain and her colonies, a more astounding amount of slavery and crime, are inseparably associated with this subject.

But the cane is not the only plant, shrub, or tree from which sugar has been extracted. The stalks of maize will yield it, as does also the juice of the maple. There are other sources of the saccharine substance, out of which sugar may be manufactured; but we are not aware that any of these can promise to make a return that would be profitable, unless it be the beet-a vegetable that has been largely subjected to elaboration, for the purpose of maintaining a successful competition with the produce of the cane, especially in France. But in England, for obvious reasons, it has been discouraged; while among our Gallic neighbours, it has, owing to the French system of taxation, and protective and prohibitory regulations, as well as to the failure of many expensive experiments to render the manufacture perfect, and to prevent waste to the utmost, been hitherto, on the average, but an unprofitable speculation. The late bankruptcies of many of the French beetsugar manufacturers, according to the reports of the newspapers, cannot tend to raise confidence in behalf of this competing article of consumption. At the same time, if the manufacture were allowed fair or equal play with that of other products of the soil, there are good grounds for asserting that the sugar extracted from the beet-root would be excellent, in consequence of the improvements already made; while the uses to which the refuse, as concerns the saccharine substance, might be diverted to most interesting and advantageous purposes. Agriculture alone would hence derive, in the way of food for cattle and also of direct manure, important aids. But what is more remarkable, good paper can be manufactured out of beet-roots, after the juice has been expressed. If any one wishes to have suggested to him the existence of

another kind of vegetating substance, which can be made to yield a wonderful influence upon the wealth, the social, commercial, and moral condition of mankind, and which, while much less promising in its obvious qualities than the sugar-cane or the beet, is still more wonderful,-let us name to hin the tea-plant. In fact from use, as well as from importance, the one suggests the other with remarkable force and appropriateness. Let us follow Dr. Sigmond in some of his statements relative to the history, the commerce, the nourishment, and the solace with which the slender leaf of a simple shrub can be identified, and which has already produced immense effects among and upon nations, for "every circumstance connected with the growth, the cultivation, the preparation, and the exportation from its native soil, of the tea-leaf, must awaken the most lively interest."

This interest our author has clearly traced and well sustained in the present small volume, which contains, in a popular form, the substance of an Introductory Address, delivered at the opening of last session of the Royal Medico-Botanical Society, Dr. Sigmond being one of its Professors. The recent discovery in British India of the tea-plant, bearing not only as it does most vitally upon British interests, but offering the highest homage to botanical science, was well deserving of an elaborate dissertation, and also of condensation and attractive illustration for the benefit of the general reader.

The relation which the tea-plant, and other natural local productions of British India bears to this country as well as to that mighty empire, and other regions of the world, is forcibly glanced at in the following passage :

"At the present moment every circumstance which relates to the teaplant carries with it a deeper interest. A discovery has been made of no less importance than that the hand of Nature has planted the shrub within the bounds of the wide dominion of Great Britain: a discovery which must materially influence the destinies of nations; it must change the employment of a vast number of individuals; it must divert the tide of commerce, and awaken to agricultural industry the dormant energies of a mighty country, whose well-being must be the great aim of a paternal government. In a scientific as well as in a commercial point of view, the value of the inquiries that must follow upon this important discovery can scarcely be yet estimated. A close investigation, and a diligent research must elicit many facts relating to the produce of considerable regions of the East, in which, doubtless exist abundant materials, both known and unknown, for the uses of man they may diffuse still greater blessings over the human race than those that are now enjoyed. The resources of a magnificent empire are yet to be developed. India, has, within her bosom, the richest vegetable and mineral treasures, which are to be given to the rest of the world, to unite together in closer bonds of harmony two great nations, the one capable,