immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault, tell me if Catholic Ireland, with less heroic valour than the natives of your own glorious country, precipitated herself upon the foe. The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland flowed in the same stream and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together; in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate? And shall we be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?

The Speeches of the Right Honourable Richard Lalor Sheil, M.P., were edited in 1845, with a Memoir, by Thomas MacNevin; Sketches, Legal and Political, were edited, with notes, in 1855, by M. W. Savage (2 vols.); Memoirs of Richard Lalor Sheil, by W. Torrens McCullagh, were published in the latter year.

William Carleton (1794-1869) was the son of a small farmer in Tyrone, and the youngest of fourteen children. His origin was of a kind well suited to equip the future story-teller for his task; for Carleton's father, though of humble position, was a man of considerable native power, and acquainted with the Irish as well as the English tongue. Carleton got most of his early education in one of those hedge-schools which he was afterwards to describe so inimitably. Born a Roman Catholic, he was intended by his parents for the priesthood; but conscientious scruples interfered with this prospect, and eventually Carleton became a Protestant. Having somehow acquired a fair education, he became a tutor to a farmer's family in Louth, whence he removed to Dublin. After some time spent in the drudgery of teaching, he succeeded in getting appointed to a school in Mullingar, where he settled for a time, contributing articles on literary subjects to the local newspaper. From Mullingar he went to Carlow, but in 1828 returned to the capital, where, becoming acquainted with the Rev. Cæsar Otway, the editor of the Christian Examiner, he was invited to become a contributor, and began his literary career.

From 1828 to 1834 Carleton contributed to the periodical just named the series of sketches which form his principal contribution to literature. His Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry were drawn from life, and in part, indeed, embalmed the actual experiences of the writer. For minute observation, and for the insight into the character of the Irish peasantry which they display, Carleton's stories have never been surpassed. The first collected series appeared in 1830, and a second in 1833; while Tales of Ireland were issued in 1834. The Traits and Stories soon won their way to public favour, and for the next few years Carleton was a constant contributor to Irish periodicals of every kind. In 1837 he commenced in the Dublin University Magazine his first sustained novel,

Fardorougha the Miser. Though this work, by far the best of his more elaborate efforts, more than sufficed to refute the criticism that Carleton could only write short tales, its importance is not comparable with that of the Traits; nor, indeed, can it be said that the author achieves in any of his novels the success of his shorter stories. Far dorougha was followed in 1841 by The Misfortunes of Barney Branagan, another series of tales, and in 1845 by Tales and Stories of the Irish Peasantry. Valentine M Clutchy (1845), Rody the Rover (1847), and The Tithe Proctor (1848) are all novels in which various phases of the Irish land war supply the colouring matter; while The Black Prophet (1847) is occupied with the Potato Famine. Others of Carleton's novels are The Red Hall, or the Baronet's Daughter (1852); The Squanders of Castle Squander (1854); Willy Reilly and his dear Colleen Bawn (1855); and Redmond, Count O'Hanlon (1862). Interspersed between these were written a vast quantity of short tales. In 1848 the merit of Carleton's work was acknowledged by the grant of a Civil List pension of £200 a year. The last months of his life were occupied with a long-contemplated, but constantly postponed, autobiography, which was left unfinished.

It is by his Traits and Stories rather than by his novels that Carleton lives and deserves to live. Of the many writers who in the second quarter of the nineteenth century sought to illustrate the manners and character of the Irish peasant, none used so realistic a brush and none produced so vivid an impression. His verse is not a very considerable part of Carleton's work; but Sir Turlough, or the Churchyard Bride, has a weird impressiveness, and has been praised by Sir Theodore Martin as 'the most successful legendary ballad of modern times.'

An Irish Village.

The village of Findramore was situated at the foot of a long green hill, the outline of which formed a low arch as it rose in the eye against the horizon. This hill was studded with clumps of beeches, and sometimes enclosed as a meadow. In the month of July, when the grass on it was long, many an hour have I spent in solitary enjoyment, watching the wavy motion produced upon its pliant surface by the sunny winds, or the flight of the cloud-shadows, like gigantic phantoms, as they swept rapidly over it; whilst the murmur of the rocking trees, and the glancing of their bright leaves in the sun, produced a heartfelt pleasure, the very memory of which rises in my imagination like some fading recollection of a brighter world.

At the foot of this hill ran a clear, deep-banked river, bounded on one side by a slip of rich level meadow, and on the other by a kind of common for the village geese, whose white feathers, during the summer season, lay scattered over its green surface. It was also the playground for the boys of the village-school; for there ran that part of the river which, with very correct judgment, the urchins had selected as their bathing-place. A little slope, or watering ground in the bank, brought them to the edge of the stream, where the bottom fell away into

the fearful depths of the whirlpool, under the hanging oak on the other bank. Well do I remember the first time that I ventured to swim across it, and even yet do I see, in imagination, the two bunches of water flaggons on which the inexperienced swimmers trusted themselves in the

water.

About two hundred yards above this, the boreen [a little road or by-road] which led from the village to the main road crossed the river by one of those old narrow bridges whose arches rise like round ditches across the road. an almost impassable barrier to horse and car. On passing the bridge, in a northern direction, you found a range of low thatched houses on each side of the road; and if one o'clock, the hour of dinner, drew near, you might observe columns of blue smoke curling up from a row of chimneys, some made of wicker creels plastered over with a thick coat of mud; some of old, narrow, bottomless tubs; and others, with a greater appearance of taste, ornamented with thick circular ropes of straw, secured together like bees' skeps with the peel of a brier; and many having nothing but the open vent above. But the smoke by no means escaped by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it bursting out by the doors and windows; the panes of the latter, being mostly stopped at other times with old hats and rags, were now left entirely open for the purpose of giving it a free escape.

Before the doors, on right and left, was a series of dunghills, each with its concomitant sink of green, rotten water; and if it happened that a stout-looking woman, with watery eyes, and a yellow cap hung loosely upon her matted locks, came, with a chubby urchin on one arm, and a pot of dirty water in her hand, its unceremonious ejection in the aforesaid sink would be apt to send you up the village with your finger and thumb (for what purpose you would yourself perfectly understand) closely, but not knowingly, applied to your nostrils. But independently of this, you would be apt to have other reasons for giving your horse, whose heels are by this time surrounded by a dozen of barking curs, and the same number of shouting urchins, a pretty sharp touch of the spurs, as well as for complaining bitterly of the odour of the atmosphere. It is no landscape without figures, and you might notice, if you are, as I suppose you to be, a man of observation, in every sink as you pass along, a 'slip of a pig' stretched in the middle of the mud, the very beau ideal of luxury, giving occasionally a long luxuriant grunt, highly expressive of his enjoyment; or, perhaps, an old farrower, lying in indolent repose, with half-a-dozen young ones jostling each other for their draught, and punching her belly with their little snouts, reckless of the fumes they are creating; whilst the loud crow of the cock, as he confidently flaps his wings on his own dunghill, gives the warning note for the hour of dinner. (From 'The Hedge School' in Traits and Stories.) C. LITTON FALKINER.

Michael Banim (1796 – 1874) and John Banim (1798-1842), two brothers who are best known as the authors of Tales of the O'Hara Family, represent a remarkably successful instance of literary collaboration. It has never been possible to assign correctly the respective shares of the two brothers in the fame collectively acquired. But it seems as though the higher reputation

enjoyed by the younger was due rather to the resolute self-abnegation of his senior than to his superior merit. The Banims were born in Kilkenny, where their father kept what Moore in his Diary describes as 'a little powder and shot shop,' much resorted to by local sportsmen. They were educated together at Kilkenny College; but John, evincing a taste for painting, was in 1813 sent to Dublin to study drawing. After some years devoted to art John turned to literature, and quickly produced two dramas, Turgesius and Damon and Pythias, of which the latter was produced at Covent Garden by Macready and Charles Kemble in 1821. He also wrote an elaborate poem, The Celt's Paradise. In the following year-John having settled in London, where he contributed to the Literary Register the brothers commenced the publication of the O'Hara series. The tales at once became popular, and as a result of their success the next work published by them, Boyne Water (1825), found a numerous audience. These stories were mostly conceived on historical lines, and they did much, as was intended, to interest the English public in Irish questions and to lead to a fuller comprehension of certain phases of Irish character. A further series of Tales appeared in 1826, and included The Nowlans, for which Colburn gave a large sum. This work failed, however, to sustain the reputation of its predecessors, a failure due probably to the breakdown of John Banim's health. The brothers, however, continued to collaborate, John's intellectual activity being maintained in spite of bodily failure, and in 1829 a final series of O'Hara Tales appeared. John had meantime produced independently a set of essays, Reflections on the Dead-Alive (1824), and Sylla, a tragedy, besides numerous contributions to magazines. In 1836 he became paralysed in the lower limbs, and received a pension of £150 from the Civil List, together with a further grant of £40 yearly for his daughter. His strength thenceforward ebbed away, and though he survived six years longer, he had ceased to work. A Life by P. J. Murray appeared in 1857.

Michael Banim long survived his younger brother, but like him was all his life in straitened circumstances. In 1853, however, he was appointed postmaster of Kilkenny, and on his retirement twenty years later received an allowance from the Royal Literary Fund. His chief works after his brother's death were Clough Fionn (1852) and The Town of the Cascades (1864). The O'Hara Tales have often been compared to the Waverley Novels, and no doubt they, like Miss Edgeworth's and Gerald Griffin's works, served in a great degree to do for Ireland what the 'Waverley' series did for Scotland. But the Banims lacked the broad sanity and kindly humour of Scott, while they were without the wholesome cheerfulness of Maria Edgeworth. They moved, especially the younger, on a more tragic plane, and it is the more gloomy elements in the Celtic temperament that they most success

Soggarth aroon.

Why not her poorest man,

Soggarth aroon, Try and do all he can,

Soggarth aroon,

Her commands to fulfil
Of his own heart and will,
Side by side with you still,
Soggarth aroon?

Loyal and brave to you,

Soggarth aroon,

Yet be not slave to you,
Soggarth aroon,

Nor out of fear to you-
Stand up so near to you—
Och! out of fear to you,
Soggarth aroon?

Who, in the winter's night,

Soggarth aroon,

When the cold blast did bite,
Soggarth aroon,
Came to my cabin-door,
And, on my earthen-floor,
Knelt by me, sick and poor,
Soggarth aroon?

Who, on the marriage-day,
Soggarth aroon,
Made the poor cabin gay,

Soggarth aroon?

And did both laugh and sing, Making our hearts to ring, At the poor christening,

Soggarth aroon?

Who, as friend only met,

Soggarth aroon, Never did flout me yet,

Soggarth aroon? And when my eye was dim, Gave, while his eye did brim, What I should give to him, Soggarth aroon?

Och! you and only you,

Soggarth aroon!

And for this I was true to you, Seggarth aroon;

In love they'll never shake, When for Ould Ireland's sake, We a true part did take, Soggarth aroon?

(By John Banim.)

Terence O'Brien.

During his term of sea-service Terence O'Brien had unconsciously contracted some characteristics which rendered him a puzzle to his present neighbours and, indeed, a contradiction to himself - or, at least, to Terence O'Brien that then was, and Terence O'Brien that used to be, once upon a time. For instance. In his more youthful days, he had engaged in some one of those many rustic combinations for which the Irish peasantry are celebrated, and which can best be ac counted for by considering that their wants make them discontented, and the injuries which often produce those wants, reckless of all consequences, when their object is vengeance on the nearest palpable aggressor. Terence and his associates violated the law of the land; rewards for their apprehension were offered; some of them were discovered, tried, and hanged; and he himself, to avoid the fate that seemed to await him, absconded from his native place, and never cried stop, nor let the grass grow under his feet,' till he had arrived in Cork's own town,' distant about one hundred miles (Irish) from his starting-point. There, scarce yet pausing to take breath, he entered on board a man-of-war, as his most secure hiding-place; and thus the wild Irishman, who, but a few hours before, had been denounced as almost a traitor to the State, became one of its sworn defenders; ay, and in a very short time, if not at that very moment, one of its most loyal and sincere defenders. This character grew upon him, and in it fully confirmed he returned home after a long absence, in peaceful and oblivious times, much to the non-edification of his stationary neighbours, as has been intimated. Further. As a Whiteboy, before going on his travels, Terence had mortally hated England, England's king, and the very name of everything English in the same ratio, had loved England's foes, of all denominations-the French, her natural enemies,' as they have been somewhat strangely called, above all others. But none of these youthful prejudices did Terence bring home with him. 'Long life and a long reign to King George!' was now his shout, while the hairs on his head bristled in enmity against 'parlywoos;' and good reason why for both sentimentssensations rather. During half his amphibious existence, Terence's grog had been sweetened by pouring it down his throat, among his ship-comrades, with a grateful mention of the name of his Britannic Majesty, and Terence's only thoughts and efforts constantly directed towards the discomfiture of the ill-wishers of that august personage. The loss of his arm, and of half his nose, with the disgraceful substitution of that half by the half of a Frenchman's 'snub,' gave him personal cause to detest the Gallic race. So that he might be said to loathe the French to the marrow of his bones-yea, even of those portions of his bones which had been severed from his body and cast to the sharks.

(From The Bit o' Writin'.)

The Pirate's Return.

'It was of a dreary night in December I first met your brother Collum, sir,' said Father Fenelly when he and Mr Felix M'Carty, as we are now obliged to call him, discoursed together shortly after the old pirate's story had been related, of a Saturday night, too; I remember it well; one of the last upon which my poor people crowd into the little chapel to prepare for their Christmas duty.

Ere I entered the confessional I had observed a very remarkable man sauntering, or rather dodging, about the chapel-yard that was before the chapel-door. He wore a sailor's dress; one marking the degree above the common sailor, for aught I know; but his air, his face, his step, and the whole bearing of his tall, straight figure suggested, at all events, the idea of a superior person. Something wondering to see a stranger of his kind in such a place, and also recollecting that on one or two occasions before I had noticed him, at a distance, in the lonesome walks about the village, I passed into the chapel, sat down in my confession-box, and began the duties of the evening. A great number, as is usual on the approach of Christmas and Easter, were waiting on my ministry, or "to be heard," as we call it, in their turns; and I could not change fast enough in my box for them, and open the slide of the little round orifice at either side, to listen alternately to the varied avowals of human frailty that craved my advice, my control, and finally, through my mouth, a conditional promise of pardon from my God. An hour might have been thus spent, when, chancing to look out through the slit in the curtain of my box, I recognised the tall and almost sublime figure of the stranger, leaning against one of the little rude props that supported the thatched roof of my humble chapel. From another prop, the weak light of a tin sconce, or lamp, fell upon his features, and allowed me to see their expression; and I thought I read upon his cloudy brow, and his rolling eye, and in his half-open and contorted mouth the story of a bosom blackened with crime, torn with remorse, and just beginning to work in the terrible labour of a first repentance. I could perceive that he eyed askance the humble crowds that, in the twilight, knelt around him where he stood; and, now and then, that his agitated glance followed those who came, some moving on their knees, to confess their burden of sin; and those who, their ordeal over, returned from the confessional to the railing of the sanctuary to throw themselves there, in aspirations of thanks to God, and of promises of future virtue. Having remarked him for some time, I proceeded in my duty. About another hour elapsed before I thought I could properly spare time to pay him more attention, and a sweet little child of thirteen or fourteen, who went from me with permission to approach her first communion, had, accompanied by her father, also a penitent of the evening, gone to the sanctuary to complete their devotions; when I was alarmed by a sudden noise and outcry, that spread among all the people of the chapel, and hastily stepping out of my box, I found the poor stranger just after flinging himself prostrate by the side of the child, while his frame shook, groans and sobs broke from his manly breast, and the glorious tears of a true repentance ran down the backs of the hands with which he covered his face. Not unaffected myself, I raised him and held him in my arms, and whispered the words of sublime consolation my merciful and Almighty Master had commanded me to drop as so many drops of oil upon the torn heart of the remorseful sinner. My words seemed to overwhelm him with greater agony. He would have again fallen at my feet. I resisted his attempt. We retired from the wondering and sympathising crowd, into the little sacristy at the back of the altar. That night-that moment, Collum M'Carty first sued for peace with his God.'

(From Tales of the O'Hara Family-second series.)

Samuel Lover (1797-1868), one of the most versatile of Irish nineteenth-century writers, though hardly one of the greatest, was born in Dublin, and there received his education. The son of a stockbroker, he was intended to follow his father's calling; but the business instincts required for this career were foreign to a youth who early developed tastes for painting, music, and letters of a most marked kind. Leaving his parental roof, Lover devoted himself to the first of these arts; and at once achieving distinction as a portrait-painter, he in a few years took high rank among Dublin artists, and was elected a Royal Hibernian Academician. He was particularly successful with miniatures, and a portrait of Paganini won him much praise in 1832. Lover early became acquainted with Moore, who exercised a considerable influence on the development of the literary proclivities which he joined to his artistic aptitudes, and the character of his verse is largely imitative of the author of Irish Melodies. But his first published work belongs to a school in which Moore never studied. The Legends and Stories of Ireland (1831) at once announced that a clever artist was likely to be extinguished by a still more clever writer, and soon led to Lover's association with the distinguished group of literary Irishmen by whom the Dublin University Magazine was founded. To this periodical Lover remained for many years a constant contributor. While still busy as an artist he had won fame as a ballad writer with Rory O'More (1826), and no one could recite it so well as its author. Thus, when in 1835 he resolved to move to London, it was little wonder that with a reputation for versatility little short of marvellous Lover speedily became fashionable in the society of the capital. He painted Brougham, fraternised with Dickens, and was lionised everywhere.

In 1837 Lover came out as a novelist, expanding the theme of his ballad of Rory O'More into a popular romance. Shortly afterwards the same theme did duty for a play. This was the beginning of a considerable apprenticeship to the drama, and a succession of pieces, including a burlesque opera called Il Paddy Whack in Italia, were rapidly produced. He then fell back on his earlier parts, and Songs and Ballads (1839), Handy Andy, his principal work of fiction (1842), and Treasure Trove (1844)—first published by the title of L.S.D.-proclaimed that neither the song-writer nor the novelist had been lost in the dramatist or musician. Obliged by a failure of vision to abandon painting, which all this time had not ceased to be a source of income, Lover resolved to woo fame in a new character. An entertainment called 'Irish Evenings,' in which the items of the programme, whether musical or literary, were exclusively the composition of the reciter, testified to Lover's extraordinary adaptability. Repeated in America, the recitations were even more popular in New York than in London.