was-but it is quite sufficient, nevertheless, to prove that the author has enough of dramatic skill to write an amusing book upon any country, with the manners and characteristics of which he was familiar, which is, most certainly, not the case in regard of Ireland. The first time, he admits, he ever mixed with the natives of this country was, upon his passage over to Dublin in one of the old sailing packets which plied from thence to Liverpool, and in describing his passage, he takes the opportunity of describing also his strange sensations upon feeling himself suddenly cut off from all other civilized people, and plunged wholly amongst demi-savages. Was there ever such a piece of cool impertinence? Who, on earth, cares for his sensations? He was, most probably, in a dreadful fright, gave himself up for a "gone coon, and heartily wished himself back behind the counter in some "Tag-rag's" establishment, or in the dingy lodgings north of Oxford-road, whence he had emerged to see the Irish lions. Mark how the selfish wretch proceeds-he was the first passenger on board, he says, and he took care also to secure the best berth in the vessel-of course he did. Ob.. serve the consequences-the weather grew threatening, the wind freshened, the Cockney began to feel uneasy sensations, and thought he would turn in-but, great was his surprise, on going below, "to find in that berth which he had marked off as his own peculiar property, two huge blackwhiskered fellows, snoring with upturned noses, while a third was standing in shirt and drawers, meditating how he might best insinuate his own person between them." He got but little satisfaction from the captain, who looked placidly at the sleepers, and shook his head. "That," says he, "is O'Byrne; it's from the O'Byrnes of the mountains he comes, and they're a hard set to deal with. By my sowl, you might as well try to drag whiskey out of punch, as get him out of that and t'other's Conroy, the distillerhe's drunk-and, by the same token, it wasn't his own sperrits he got; you're better out of this; it will blow fresh presently, and a fine state they'll be in. Get your big-coat, and I've a pea-jacket for you you're better on deck, and if it rains towards morning,

there's my own dog-hole you can go into. I'll not turn in myself."

Towards the close of the day, a general row took place, which broke out between two rival factions, and eventually terminated in a regular fight. His description of this is tolerably graphic. First, there was a bustling in the centre, then the sticks began to rise above the mass, and finally, such a whacking upon heads and shoulders-such a screeching, and tearing and jumping, as the poor little animal had never seen in all his life before the whole deck, from stem to stern, was presently covered by a wild mob, fighting, apparently without aim or object, except that every individual seemed to be trying his utmost to get down every other individual, and when down, to tramp him to death-what an amiable portrait of our national mode of warfare ! And yet, strange to say, our Irish soldiers have never evinced, in the stricken field of fight," any of those cowardly propensities with which it has pleased this long-eared twaddler to endow them. We have rather prided ourselves upon the reputation, which, may we long continue to enjoy, of entertaining no objection to a fair stand-up fightand in it bearing ourselves so, that our opponents would rather avoid us in future. We feel no disposition to abandon our pretensions to gentlemanly boldness because this and other writers seek to exhibit us as pugnacious blackguards. But fighting is not our pastime; though we well believe that if the Irish be irritated into conflict, it will be found no pastime to their enemies. To return, however, to our author: let us glance, for a moment, at his description of an Irish village, ere we conclude our notice of this portion of his commentaries :—

"Before every house was a dunghill; beside every dunghill a filthy pool, in which they washed the potatoes; at almost every door, propped against the wall, was a man in a huge grey greatcoat, in the sleeves of which his hands were buried a short pipe in his mouth, his breeches knees unbuttoned, and his stockings wrinkled down to the ancles; then, there was a bustling, sore-footed, bare-headed woman, generally coming with a swarm of all but naked children, and a most independent pig-this last was, perhaps, the busiest of all, now giving a curious little eye to the potato

washing, then walking indoors, as if to see how the turf burned, rudely scraping against the bare legs of the females, or rooting a baby out of his way with a toss of his snout, as he passed backwards and forwards, and all the while keeping up a smart, querulous, maddening cry, that seemed to come from his lower stomach-and, doubtless, in his language, meant cupboard."

There is a touch of comic humour in this sketch which might have disturbed our gravity, had not our bile been raised to a pitch of exasperation by the stupid and malicious slanders_to_which we have already adverted. From what cause we know not, possibly from kindred sympathies, the author of " Paddiana," is singularly felicitous in his descriptions of the pig-he seems to have made him the peculiar object of his study-for there are two or three chapters devoted to an elucidation of his tastes and habits; for instance, the author is hospitably entertained by a farmer, who finds him freezing with cold, after a sudden immersion in the river, while in pursuit of ducks-he is fetched home to his humble cabin, hospitably entertained at a supper of stewed duck, new bread, sweet buttermilk, fresh butter, roast eggs, and every other dainty which the humble larder of the peasant could afford-clothed in a complete suit, consisting of a clean homespun shirt, corduroy breeches, frieze-coat and waistcoat, probably, the best in the farmer's wardrobe and, before presenting to our notice a single member of this hospitable family, he proceeds to introduce us to the "pig":

"He had (says he) a tenement to himself, near the door, which he used apparently only as a sleeping apartment, or occasional boudoir, preferring to bestow the greater part of his leisure upon the family in the house.

Poor

fellow, he was in happy ignorance of the coming rent-day, perhaps the near approach of this anniversary might have accounted for the favour with which he was treated, his fat and jovial condition, and the indulgence extended to all his little whims. But, in spite of all entreaty and remonstrance, they turned him out on the sportsman's entrance, though the expulsion was not effected without a great many hard words in Irish, and the cuffs and pushings of the whole family. In vain did I protest

that I desired to be made no stranger of that I wanted to take pot-luck with the pig-it was of no avail, out he must go. It is so invariably: they disown their old chum, as we cut a seedy friend when a grand acquaintance comes upit is the way of this bad world. At once they all rise upon him, as if he were an intruder: Go-'long out of this, what the divil brings ye here?' as if he ever was anywhere else! they open upon him at full cry; and even the todling children, who have been at bed and board with him all their lives, give him a dig in his fat ribs as he passes. But, nature has armed him for passive resistance, he has nothing about him to lay hold of his ears are out of the way, and his tail is a mere tailet, affording the assailant little or no help in the scuffle. Besides, he has a voice that few nerves can stand; he is, moreover, the father of artful dodgers-to shew him the door is a fruitless courtesy, into the bedroom he will go with pleasure; or to the closet; or under the table; or to the dresser; but he has no eye for the doorway; neither can his snout be steered for it, by any combination of ingenuity.

"In this instance he did not belie his race, but the allies were too many for him-so, making up his mind for a dash, he charged under the table, and between Miss Geoghegan's legs, taking both defiles gallantly, and effected his retreat, leaving the young lady in an unseemly position on the floor."

What a pity it is that our author did not paint all his portraits with the same felicitous pencil he uses when describing this interesting variety of Irish character! No reasonable critic could have then entertained the least objection to his book.

His colours, however, are, in some instances, applied, not in the most workmanlike manner; frequent are his blunders and mistakes in the most common principles of construction and grammar. Were we to take the trouble of hunting through his pages, we could point to fifty of them; but opening, at random, the paper entitled "Mr. Smith's Irish love," the following meets our eye, which is an average specimen of the careless and slovenly manner in which he writes. In page twenty-eight, describing the heroine, he takes occasion to allude to the interesting fact, that her mother, Mrs. Casey, had eloped with a field-officer, "Mr. Casey having previously set her the example." Set her what example,

in the name of common sense? Does he mean to assert that it is the fashion in the Emerald Isle for gentlemen to elope with field-officers? We have some faint, uncertain gleam of what he meant to say; but as he was too clumsy to express it properly, we shall not demean ourselves by becoming his commentator. But does it not speak volumes for the credulous gullibility of John Bull, that he can swallow whole pages of stuff written in such a manner, merely because it possesses the palatable ingre dient of abuse of Ireland? But, besides being ungrammatical and scurrilous, and occasionally indecent, this book has the merit of being also profane. One example, from the chapter entitled "The Last Pigtail," may suffice to show what we mean. There was in a certain Irish village, a saturnine man, of bilious complexion, never known to smile, but was fond withal of a practical joke; and in the church where he was in the habit of offering up his orisons, there attended also a brown gentleman of eccentric habits, who was never heard to utter more than the brief salutation he was in the daily habit of addressing to a certain black-muzzled general dealer, of "It's cruel cowld, Mr. Caffin." No mortal man ever heard him go beyond or fall short of this phrase it was the alpha and the omega of his conversational powers.

This inscrutable, brown man, occupied the pew immediately in front of that tenanted by the practical joker. But we shall give the author the advantage of detailing the incident in his own words:

"The tail occupied a conspicuous place in the centre of the front pew, and immediately behind it sat the practical joker, the intrusive tuft looking him straight in the eyes; and ever and anon it would pertly whisk from side to side, and then settle down again to its former bearing upon the mournful countenance of the practical joker. But of all the congregation there was not one apparently more edified with the service than the proprietor of that doleful and expressive face: its oblong outline was gently inclined to an attentive angle; its dove-like eyes fixed in meek atten tion upon the eloquent reader; the scanty hair was smoothed down upon that pallid forehead; and the corners of that expressive mouth solemnly drawn down-that mouth in which a casual

observer might have fancied that never butter would have remained unmelted.

"There are times when we feel an oppressive consciousness that something is about to happen: it is like a weight upon us; we hold our breath; the shadow of the coming event casts a chill upon us. There may be something mesmeric in this; the tail was making passes at the joker; I trembled for the consequences.

"Stuffing a bandana into my mouth, as a precaution against the worst that might happen, I leaned my forehead on my hand, and followed the sonorous voice of the clergyman.

"The lesson was being read impres sively; the church otherwise silent as death. It was the story of Balaam and the ass; and I marvelled at the nerves of Balaam, who could keep his seat upon a talking donkey. We came to this unreasonable question

"What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me these three times?' "And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in my hand, for now would I kill thee.'

"And the ass said unto Balaam.

666

'BLOOD-AN-OUNS, WILL YE LAVE GO O' MY TAIL!!!'

"The man in brown was on his legs, looking angrily round, but confronted only the placid and composed face of assumed innocence, with, perhaps, a shade of severity on the features, as scandalized at the strange interruption. One fact, however, was clearly established by this event, viz., that the owner of the last pigtail could vary the eternal sentence he was wont to bestow upon Caffin-a truth which up to that day had been very generally doubted."

We are not sufficiently read in that receptacle of jokes known by the name of "Joe Miller," to ascertain whether this joke is drawn from its learned archives or not; but it, beyond all question, besides divulging the loquacious powers of the owner of the pigtail, establishes another fact also, that if this itinerant scribe went to church for no other purpose than to gain fa cilities for the more accurate investigation of pigtails, and for the purpose of collecting rubbish to fill the pages of his stupid book, he had much better have staid at home, solacing himself with that whiskey-toddy in which he delights so much; and we may also add, that if he came to Ireland for no other purpose than libelling the characteristics, the national habits, and

abusing the hospitality of its inmates, he had much better have remained in his own country. But he is not contented with spouting out his miserable venom in this petty way, but towards the conclusion he winds up with what he doubtless considers a learned commentary upon Irish history; and a strange jumble it is. Not satisfied with stating that in modern times our priests are leading on a rabble to roast hundreds of Protestants alive, to hang up by the hair and disembowel pregnant women, he ransacks ancient history, and makes copious extracts from Froissart and Spencer, to enliven the picture he draws of the past. He attempts to prove we were formerly not only savage and treacherous, and given to all these other failings which it is the pleasure of malignant enemies to ascribe to us, but what do you think-cannibals; having an amiable propensity for eating the hearts of our enemies in battle, and a predilection for human rump-steaks, which amiable weakness he establishes by an extract from Speed, who says that the Irish used to feed on the buttocks of boies and women's paps, as their most dainty and delicate dish. Then he becomes libellous in regard of the fair sex, on the authority of the lying Spencer; "the women loved," he says, "to do little work, and thought it handsome to lye in and sleepe, or louse themselves in the sunshine."

It may not be known to the public to whose vicious tastes this author

panders, that all the historians and annalists here cited, and upon whose authority he endeavours to establish that we always were savages, and that nothing will ever change our nature, were the emissaries of a hostile country, selected for the purpose of vilifying our national character, and thus affording to the conqueror a decent pretext for all the atrocities committed in former times upon our countrymen. But we avail ourselves of the present opportunity of stating that such was, nevertheless, the case. We, therefore, treat these garbled extracts with the most profound contempt; and as for the scurrilous and libellous picture which the author draws of our habits and manners of the present day, thank heaven we can afford to wait until more intelligent men, actuated by a more candid spirit of inquiry, can discover that we are no longer a nation of fools, spendthrifts, and duellists; but of this the public may feel assured, that we shall omit no opportunity of exposing to contempt, and of visiting with due punishment, every such attempt of obscure and venal scribes to lie away the character of a generous and intelligent people.

As we began, we will conclude, by asking a question which we expect the Quarterly Review will not shrink from answering; and that is this-what people of Europe have conducted themselves so wisely, so peaceably, or so resolutely during the events of the present spring, as the Irish?

DR. Danvers, save by rumour and conjecture, knew nothing of Marston and his abandoned companion. He had, more than once, felt a strong disposition to visit Dunoran, and expostulate, face to face, with its guilty proprietors. This idea, however, he had, upon consideration, dismissed; not on account of any shrinking from the possible repulses and affronts to which the attempt might subject him-but from a thorough conviction that the endeavour would be utterly fruitless for good, while it might, very obviously, expose him to painful misinterpretation and suspicion-leaving it to be imagined that he had been influenced, if by no meaner motive, at least by the promptings of an idle and prying curiosity, in thus pushing his way within the proscribed precincts of Dunoran.

Meanwhile, he maintained a correspondence with Mrs. Marston, and had even once or twice since her departure visited her, when business had called him to the capital, at her new place of abode. Latterly, however, this correspondence had been a good deal interrupted, and its intervals had been supplied occasionally by Rhoda; whose letters, although she herself appeared unconscious of the mournful event whose approach they too plainly indicated, were painful records of the manifest and rapid progress of mortal decay.

He had just received one of those ominous letters, at the little postoffice in the town we have already mentioned, and full of the melancholy news it contained, Dr. Danvers was riding slowly towards his home.

As

he rode into a lonely road, traversing a hilly tract of some three miles in length, the singularity, it may be, of his costume attracted the eye

of another passenger, who was, as it turned out, no other than Marston himself. For two or three miles of this desolate road, their ways happened to lie together. Marston's first impulse was to avoid the clergyman; his second-which he obeyed-was to join company, and ride along with him, at all events, for so long as would show that he shrunk from no encounter which fortune or accident presented. There was a spirit of bitter defiance in this, which cost him a painful effort.

"How do you do, Parson Danvers?" said Marston, touching his hat with the handle of his whip.

Danvers thought he had seldom seen a man so changed in so short a time. His face had grown sullen and wasted, and his figure slightly stooped, with an appearance of feebleness.

"Mr. Marston," said the clergyman, gravely, and with some embarrassment, "it is a long time since you and I have seen one another, and many and painful events have passed in the interval. I scarce know upon what terms we meet. I am prompted to speak to you, and in a tone, perhaps, which you will hardly brook; and yet, if we keep company, as it seems likely we may, I cannot, and I ought not, to be silent."

"Well, Mr. Danvers, I accept the condition-speak what you will,” said Marston, gloomily. "If you exceed your privilege, and grow uncivil, I need but use my spurs, and leave you behind me preaching to the winds."

"Ah! Mr. Marston," said Doctor Danvers, almost sadly, after a considerable pause; "when I saw you close beside me, my heart was troubled within me."

"You looked on me as something from the nether world, and expected to see the cloven hoof," said Marston,