used to it-they do not feel it a disgrace; and many a fine man and woman is reared that way after all.”

"To what purpose?"-I almost unconsciously inquired.

"Purpose," she repeated-as the Irish generally do when they hear a word whose import they do not clearly comprehend—“ why, as to purpose, the boys, in the time of the war, used to make fine soldiersI don't exactly see what all the little garsoons' who are growing up now are to do-go to America, I suppose, or beg, or

"Starve!" I added.

"Ay, indeed!" she replied, but without any emotion; "so they do starve by dozens and dozens, up the country; and my husband says its a sin to send so many pigs and things to England, and the poor craythurs here without food."

"And yet your provisions are so cheap; I saw fine chickens to-day for eightpence a couple."

"Is it eightpence?" exclaimed the landlady in amazement, "Ah, lady dear, they knew you were a stranger-catch them asking me eightpence! I could get the finest chicks in the market for sixpence-halfpenny a couple-eightpence indeed! Oysters are up to tenpence a hundred, and potatoes to twopence a stone-and more shame, now that the country is poorer than ever-but what signifies the price, when the poor have not it to give?"

"But why do they not work?"

"Who stays in the country, except one here and there, to give them work?-Ah! it's easy for the fine English folk to make laws for us," she added, her broad, good-humoured face assuming a more animated expression; "it's easy for them to make laws-they who have never been with us, and know nothing of us, except from what's on the papers, which are done up by this party or that party, without any regard to truth; only all for party. Sure myself and my husband were burnt to ashes in the Independent,'-and all, they said, through a mistakeand we here quiet and happy-more than many wished. But there's Mrs. Lanagan, I ask yer pardon, but may I just inquire how she is? She came to me for a bad pain she had on her chest, and I gave her a blister to put on."-I requested Mrs. Lanagan might walk in, and in she came, a delicate-looking woman, with a harsh deep cough.

"Well, Mrs. Lanagan," commenced the hostess, "how are you to day?"

cr

Oh, then, thank you kindly for asking, sorra a boillah on me at all at all. I was pure and hearty yesterday, but I'm entirely overcome to-day. I've been out among the Christians, looking for a trifle; but the regular ones gets the better of me; and the farmers' wives have little pity for us, as long as we're able to keep the roof over our head.” "But your chest, Mrs. Lanagan; did you put the blister on your chest as you promised, and did it rise?" inquired the landlady.

The poor woman looked up, with an expression of simplicity I shall never forget, while she replied

re

Why, thin, mistress dear, the niver a chest had I to put it on, but I have a little bit of a box, and I put it upon that, but sorra a rise it

* I cannot translate this literally, but it means, I am not at all better,

rose; and if ye don't believe me, come and see, for it's stickin' there still!"

This affected my gravity, or rather destroyed it; but the landlady commenced a regular lecture upon the stupidity of ignorance, which she intended me to understand as the evidence of her superiority. She assured Mrs. Lanagan that she was ashamed of her, and that it was such as her who brought shame and disgrace upon the country.

"Why, thin," replied the woman, as to disgrace, mistress honey, it is not our faut if we're not taught better, for no one can call us stupid, barrin they're stupid themselves."

It will scarcely be believed, yet it is true, that I was tempted once more to ascend a "jaunting car :" it is a weakness to be overcome by persuasion, a desperate weakness, and yet I could not help it. The car was new, handsome, and the property of a kind friend: there were many things I must see-Johnstown Castle and the lower portion of the Barony of Forth, celebrated for fresh eggs, "sweet" butter, and pretty girls. I esteem fresh eggs as a rarity, and I dearly love pretty girls. I cannot understand how a person can ever look without a smile into a pretty face; it is a sentiment, a point of feeling with me. And certainly the girls of the Barony of Forth, or, as they call it, Barny Fort, are very, very pretty, well worth going even ten miles, but not on a jaunting car, to look at; their eyes are so bright and black, their hair superb, and their manners so shy, so winning,-so-I hardly know how to define it, except from their being so un-English, so unstarched. Nor do I know a prettier sight than three or four dozen of those nice, clean, smiling, blushing girls drawn up at either side of a dirty, hilly, ugly street in ugly Wexford on market-day. Their clean willow-baskets hanging from their well-turned arms, their green or crimson silk neckerchiefs carefully pinned, and the ends in front drawn beneath their neat chequered aprons, while, at every step you take, you are saluted with— "New laid eggs, my lady, three a penny,"- "Sweet fresh butter," "Beautiful lily-white chickens, my own rearing,"-" I'm sellin' these bran new turkey eggs for a song, for I'm distressed for the money to make up the price of the cotton to weave in with my own yarn.' "I'll sing you five songs for them, Patty!" exclaimed a wag. "Oh, let us alone, Peter, and don't make us forfit our manners by breaking your head before the quality; it's a bad market we'd be bringing our eggs to if we let you have them!"

I have seen many more superb market-places, but I never saw so many pretty girls as in the ugly town of Wexford. Having agreed once more to perform dos a dos upon the aforenamed car, I made up my mind to suffer more than ever from the beggars, but I found that they always assembled in proportion to what they considered the greatness of the equipage. Thus a car would attract less attention amongst these knighterrants of poverty than a carriage; and as two carriages were standing at the door of the principal inn, we passed comparatively free. The Irish have an idea that upon those dos a dos you see the country better than from any other machine-heaven help them! they have strange ideas on many subjects, and are a most odd compound altogether. We passed through the town with not more than a score of beggars dangling after us, and repeating their petitions in every variety of tone-thrusting their idiot and half-starved children almost into our arms, making us

・ exceedingly angry at one minute by their importunity and noise, and the next amusing us so much by their wit and good temper, that we could bestow upon them half, nay, all our money with good will-at one time provoked by their dirt and indolence, and again sympathizing most sincerely with their poverty and distress. You are perpetually excited either by displeasure, pain, or amusement, and you can hardly tell which preponderates.

After much jolting and delay, we passed the suburbs, and there, beneath the trunk of a blasted tree, her entire figure shrouded in her cloak, sat the girl whose appearance had attracted me amongst the crowd on a former occasion. I could not see her face, even her hair was concealed by the hood which fell unto her knees; but I felt assured I could not be mistaken, the rounded shoulder, the graceful sweep of the back, all convinced me I was right.

I ordered the servant to stop,-I called to her, there was no reply,— I sprang off the car,-I drew back the hood of her cloak, still she moved not, and her black hair had fallen like a shroud over her features, and upon the baby which was pressed to her bosom,-I threw back her hair, and laid my hand upon her forehead; it was clammy and cold as with the damps of death! I attempted to move her head back, and, sinking on my knees, looked into her face-it was as the face of a corpse before the features have been decently composed by the hand of the living; the purple lips were parted, the teeth clenched, the eye fixed, the hollow cheek white as marble. I saw that the infant moved, and I tried to unclasp her arms from around it-I even succeeded in pulling the little creature in some degree from her embrace; but the mother's love was stronger than death; rigid, lifeless as she appeared, she felt what I was doing; her arms tightened round her baby, and her lips moved as if in speech; the child cried, and clung to the breast from which it could draw no sustenance, and the miserable parent grasped it with an earnestness which almost made me tremble lest she should crush out its little life. The cloak had fallen from her; but I quickly drew it over her shoulders, for I perceived that she was entirely destitute of any other covering, except some tattered flannel that had been wound round her waist; the case was sufficiently plain-mother and child were dying of starvation.

In a few minutes I succeeded in conveying them to the nearest cottage, a perfectly Irish dwelling, a little away from the road; and it was really heart-cheering to witness the eagerness which the inhabitants evinced to restore the poor creature to existence. Big and little, old and young, hastened to do their best. It is not at any time difficult to draw the Irish from their employment, but now that they had an object worthy of their energy, they exerted it heart and soul. One wanted to force raw whisky down the throats of mother and child; but the more rational poured the water off some boiling potatoes to prepare a warm bath. While the old deaf mother of the family mixed some spirits in milk and gave it spoonful by spoonful to the young woman, a pretty girl, (one of my market beauties, who, like myself, was accidentally passing,) to whom the mother had resigned it, fed the little infant with new milk.

"It's poor Milly Kane,-God break hard fortune!" said one, who was shaking a quantity of barley-straw in "the warm corner" for her visiters

to lie upon. "It's poor Milly Kane, sure enough! And had you seen her this time two years, Madam, when she was the lily-the pride of the whole parish-it's little you'd fancy to see her there now!"

"Has she known better days ?" I inquired, when about to leave the cottage.

"Better," repeated the old crone, shaking her head;-"ay sure ;you see how finely she's come to, and indeed I'll mind what you say, and only give her a sup or a bit now and agin;-it was a mercy you seen her when you did, for half an hour more would have finished them both."

"But you say that she has received food and clothing from many well-disposed individuals; how is it then that she is so dreadfully reduced ?"

"Did I say so? Why then more shame for me; may be it's into trouble I'd be getting her," replied the woman hastily; and I could draw forth no further information. There are circumstances and people which occupy so much of one's attention in this world that it is impossible to banish them from the mind; and yet, to all outward seeming, they are in no way different from twenty other things or persons we encounter. When I returned from our ride, we were surrounded by all the beggars, who, now that the carriages were gone, had no other object to attract their attention; yet there was one figure my imagination conjured up, which remained before me far more palpably than those who, with strength of voice and energy of action, called aloud for charity.

As the evening drew in, I borrowed a rough rug cloak, and, taking a few trifles with me that I thought would be useful to poor Milly Kane, I was soon at the door of the cottage in which I had been so hospitably received. The door was fastened, carefully fastened, on the inside; it had neither lock nor bolt, but a chest and table had been placed against it; and they were not removed until my voice had been remembered. "Do you shut up so early ?"

Sure, then, we wouldn't have shut up at all, had we known the good luck that was coming to us, my lady," replied the woman, curtseying. "Well, how is your patient? better, I hope? Where is she ?' "She's better, my lady, and she's gone."

"Gone!" I repeated in astonishment, perceiving that the woman had spoken truly, in one sense, at all events; for she had quitted the "warm corner. ""Gone! Where ?"

"Oh, myself knows nothing at all about Milly Kane and her goings; only one came for her."

"One! Who ?"

"Oh, some boy or another. Maybe it was her father, only he's dead, poor man."

I sat down, believing from my heart that there was some mystery, some concealment about Milly's disappearance, which I could not discover, and which, of course, I desired to fathom.

"Where is your husband ?"

"The never a know I know where he is, or if he is at all. He left me as good as five years now, to go to Newfoundland; and, God help me! I never heard-to say heard-of him since; and I live by the help of good neighbours and good Christians-like many more."

I looked round the room and perceived that a quantity of what are called "wattles" were placed so as to conceal a door at the upper end of the room: indeed, I do not think I should have perceived it, had I not fancied that I saw a gleam as if of candle-light stream through a chink; the woman perceived it also, and with the ready wit of her sex and country anticipated my question.

"It's a bit of a shed we put up for the pigs, because the quality lately have been very angry with us for letting the craythurs have the run of the house; and my Padeen's in there making 'em eat; they're but delicate lately, owing to the measles."

"Indeed!" I replied; "then that is a healthy one, I suppose, that I see lying under the shadow of the wall ?"

The old woman's keen eye glittered upon me for a moment, with an expression I did not at all like; but she quickly answered

Troth no, that's a sick one entirely; that's not fit to be put out. Bonneen gra," she continued, addressing the animal, " Bonneen gra, how's every bit o' ye? Bonneen was a heart's joy, a Cushla!" The brute grunted, but moved not.

"I am so sorry poor Milly is gone," I said, producing what I had brought for her from a little basket, which a gentleman of my acquaintance very disrespectfully calls " a smuggler."

"Maybe I'd see her to-morrow; or if you'd lave the things with me, I'd send the childre to hunt her out in the morning, Madam."

"How can you expect me to leave them with a person I know so little of ?"

The woman became heated in a moment; one would have thought her temper had hardly time to ignite when it blazed out with all the energy of her country.

"And ye wouldn't trust me with them bits o' rags for fear I'd keep 'em!" she exclaimed. “Me! Oh, murder, how we are belied to the furriners entirely! or a lady like you would never think sich a thing. Keep from Milly Kane what was given to her! I, who many a day have taken the whole bit out of my own, and the half bit out of my children's mouths to keep her from starvin'! and if I chose to say what I know, I could fill this hand with goold, if t'other would consint to crush her heart. I'm standin' on my own flure, lady, or I'd tell ye my mind more plainly. All Wexford knows I'm poor, but the Almighty knows I'm honest!"

At this instant, the wail of a child came from what I had been told was the pig-shed; at first loud and shrill, then low and suffocated, with a murmur of words in different voices; at last I heard a weak female voice exclaim, "Let it cry out, Michael; don't smother my babby, let it breathe," and then the infant's voice rose higher than at first. Suddenly the door I had noticed was opened-the wattles fell to the ground-and a tall man issued from out the chamber, with a bold, firm step. "Oh Michaelawn! Michaelawn! you're ruined entirely now; couldn't ye keep back!" exclaimed the woman.

and

"I'm ashamed that you kept me back so long," he replied; the lady here—sure, only for her, where would Milly and my child be now? Stretched could corpses upon that table, instead of lying in that bed." I had never seen a more ruffianly, nor yet a finer-looking fellow; his head was so well set, his brow so bold, his bearing so