DUBLIN SCENES AND STORIES FROM THE SPANISH STAGE.-No. V. CALDERON'S THE MEMOIRS OF ROYAL AND ILLUSTRIOUS LADIES. SECOND NOTICE THE HEIRS OF RANDOLPH ABBEY, CHAPTER I-THE MEETING IN THE STORM. CHAPTER IL-THE OLD MAN'S REVENGE ON THE Dead. CHAPTER IIL-THE JAMES MCGLASHAN, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE-ST. SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS, THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. No. CCXXIX. JANUARY, 1852. VOL. XXXIX. SCENE. A Studio in NEW- -YEAR'S EVE. A SCENE IN THE CITY. street, Dublin. Time, the last Night of December, 1851. POPLAR, SLINGSBY, and BISHOP sitting round the fire. POPLAR Smoking sedulously. BISHOP_turning over the leaves of a new song, and SLINGSBY in "a brown study." Profound silence. At length the pendule strikes. POPLAR remits his smoking to count. POPLAR.-One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. BISHOP.-A very original observation. SLINGSBY.-A very unheeded one at all events. POPLAR (Yawning.) Haw, aw-au-suppose we sit up to see the new year in. What say you, Jack? BISHOP.Yawning.) A cap-(haw)-cap-i-tal idea (haw). Put the kettle on the fire, will you? and just rake the bars; the grate is looking as black as a wolf's mouth. Come, Jonathan, your glass is empty. Rum or brandy? SLINGSBY. No, Sir. I shall take no more this night. The new year shall find me in a fitting frame, watchful and sober. BISHOP.-Whispers Poplar.) Whew! There he is now in one of his tantrems. He'll be as moody and sententious as an owl at midnight. Well come, old boy, you and I'll have a taste of something warm, just to keep off the infection. SLINGSBY.-Walks to the window and draws back the curtain.) How silent and tranquilly the night wears on. See the clouds drifting athwart the dark sky, and over the thin crescent of the young moon. The gas lamps fling their dreary, ghastly light at long intervals on the lonely streets. There is scarce a soul abroad. Two or three revellers are returning home well coated against the night air. A shivering, houseless wretch sits huddled up in her scanty rags upon the steps, before the door of yonder mansion. BISHOP. (In mock heroic.) The measured tread of the caped policeman resounds upon the vacant flagway as, stiff and straight, he walks his beat, in solemn, surly majesty, the tyrant of the night, the terror of those who prowl about in the hours of darkness, the arrester of the drunkard, the propeller of the loiterer, who is forced to obey the stern mandate "keep moving," the inquisitor of tippling houses, the corregidor of street morals. POPLAR.Joining them.) Look at those lights gleaming from out the windows in the upper story of that dingy-looking house. SLINGSBY.-Ay, one might fancy them to be stars hung midway between the upper and nether worlds. Spirits that repented as they fell, and so remain suspended in their downward course, too good for earth, yet unmeet again to enter the heaven from which they were ejected. POPLAR.-Well may be so, Jonathan. I can't exactly undertake to say how that is; but stars they are, indeed, that give illumination to the world, whose rays shine far and wide on the earth's region. Beneath those lights, palefaced and languid-looking men, with green shades on their foreheads to guard their over VOL. XXXIX.-NO. CCXXIX. B wrought eyes from the glare and heat of the gas, bend over their desks and ply fast and silently their toilful work; that wondrous art which multiplies a thousand fold the thoughts of men, and gives ubiquity to the human spirit. That is the printing-room of one of our morning papers. Do you see that solitary light from the window of the story below? Within that room sits the editor, thoughtful and absorbed in his engrossing occupation. He is, it may be, at this moment reading a few curt sentences, which have just arrived, announcing the state of Paris this morning, and then his pen dashes along the slips of paper fast, almost as fast as the thoughts grow up in his brain; and in the morning you will read, as you sit at your breakfast, the lucubrations of that midnight student; full of knowledge and power, sagacious, lucid, vigorous, and profound, or sparkling with wit, redolent of genius, scholarly and tasteful. From time to time young men bring in manuscripts and lay them before him. These are reports, some from the provinces, some from the city. A critique on the performance at the theatre that has just terminated. A review of a concert which the auditors are only just leaving, or a notice of a debutante singer, or some instrumental wonder, whose tones are yet ringing in the ears of those who heard them. And all this heterogeneous matter will be, ere many hours pass over our heads, reduced to fair order, composed in print, placed in the forms, laid upon the platform of the steam press, and passing to and fro beneath the revolving drums will transfer to the broad sheet that which to-morrow will form the intellectual food of thousands; bringing into every homestead its multiform intelligence, to some joy, to some sorrow, to one instruction, to another amusement, to all knowledge. SLINGSBY.-Wonderful-wonderful, indeed! And while they are thus employed, time moves silently on, and a new year will soon surprise them at their labours. Yet nothing in the material world around us gives warning when one more cycle is completed. Smooth and silently the orbs move ever in their pathways; the earth, as she swings round, emerges from the old year and enters the new without a hitch; not a click in the mighty machinery by which old Time registers his transits, tells that the great wheel has gone round once again ;—the stream flows evenly over the boundary without murmur or ripple; one wave more of the great ocean rolls in upon the shore of eternity, sinking as noiselessly upon it as the swell of the tide subsides upon the velvet sands of some sheltered bay. Ah! how awful is this stealthy pace of Time—a thousand fold more awful than if he entered upon each new stage with a sound or a shock that, like a trumpet-blast, would wake us, or, as an earthquake, make us start to our feet. If the wheel, when its revolution was completed, sent forth its sound to the ends of the earth, if the stream fell over the ledge down-down with the thundering roar of a cataract, if the billow broke upon the shore with the boom of mighty waters, then, indeed, it might be "that men would number their days, and apply their hearts to wisdom." BISHOP.-My dear Jonathan, I beseech you spare our nerves. Is this the way you mean to wish us a merry new-year? Why, man, you will have us howling and weeping at the birth of the babe, like the ancient Egyptians. SLINGSBY.-Ah, Jack, you must not forget that we have first to lay our old friend in the grave. "Yes the year is growing old, And his eye is pale and bleared! BISHOP.-Well, well, first before we bury him, that's all very true, Jonathan; but we must wake him and a wake, you know, is no wake in Ireland unless there's a dash of fun it. Let me tell you, 'tis the best philosophy in the world to cheat sorrow of his gloom, and make him smile in the midst of his tears. now I knock you down for a song or a story. SLINGSBY.-Well, then, I will tell you a story. So An old man lay dying: his last moment was come, for he had lived the full time allotted to all his race; and his friends gathered around him, for he had many friends who had enjoyed him throughout life, who had feasted with him, |