them by the thought that the discipline of the repealers is so admirable, the authority of the commanders so absolute, and the obedience of the associates so submissive, that until all things are ready for a successful movement, they will not imbrue their hands in blood. To be relieved from the sharp importunity of present fear only by considerations arising out of a belief in the excellence of the discipline in which the armies of repeal are trained, and in the strength of their military patience, is to purchase the remission on hard terms, terms very distressing to the individual, and which may prove very prejudicial to the nation. - We wish the reader could "realize" the condition of a Protestant in any of those Irish districts where the repeal cause is most flourishing. On all sides round him he witnesses the most unsuspicious assurances that "the people" expect success. Even in the unaffected good humour of some he discerns the presence of a lively hope, no less than in the insolent and menacing demeanour of "the baser sort." Such newspaper intelligence as he receives is of the kind which increases his uneasiness the conversation, wherever he turns, has but one subject and one drift, repeal and its likelihood of success. When good natured acquaintances, who take a part in the movement, encourage him not to be east down through fear of any sudden tumult, such as vast assemblages and most vehement speeches might seem to threaten, they confirm their assurances of present safety by descriptions of the plans, the power, and the confident expectations of their party; and as the peaceful termination of meeting after meeting proves their predictions true and disposes to further credence, they become bold enough to show how security, ample and real, may be won, after the great success has been attained as well as during the struggle for it, by espousing now, either secretly or openly, the cause of the stronger, or at least the more determined, party. We can assure the reader that his imagination must be very prolific if it can present to him the variety of insidious artifices by which, according to their circumstances and character, the loyalty of Protestants in Ireland is thus tempted. It seems now settled that in this alarming condition Ireland must remain for some time longer. We earnestly entreat Protestants to endure steadfastly their severe trials, and to look for protection in union among themselves and in those habits which will ensure them the fraternal sympathies of the British people. We further entreat them to be careful for their reputation as well as for the defence of their properties and persons; and while they are forming confederations by which their physical strength is rendered most available, we trust that they will not neglect the important duty of making manifest the justice of their cause. At this moment, repealers have no pretext or excuse for their disaffection in the intemperance of any class of Protestants. It is important that this characteristic of the repeal movement be preserved. Pretexts are invented against the landed aristocracy, as if through their unfairness or uncharitableness the people are suffering and discontented. Where these pretexts are untrue, their falsehood should be effectually shown-where there is a foundation for them, the grievance out of which they arise should be redressed. We earnestly recommend to the gentry favourable to British connection, when they meet together, that they give diligent heed to all that concerns the relation between landlord and tenant, a relation of the deepest interest, whether it be considered in its influence on society in Ireland, or for the consequence ascribed to it wherever there is a public opinion throughout Europe. We do not think a Protestant confederation will produce permanent good if the condition of the Irish tenantry be overlooked. Repealers offer, among their bribes,” the stimulating promise of low rent and fixity of tenure. What will the Protestant aristocracy offer? How will they disconcert the insidious device of their opponents? Will they content themselves with affirming that the repeal party is not to be believed or trusted? If they do, they leave half their work undone-the half they have chosen is not the best, although it may seem the most pressing-and, left imperfect because alone, will soon lose its influence. We know how difficult it is to discharge fully the duties which in a time like this devolve on the landed proprietors of Ireland; but we do not think that difficulties ought to deter them. We think they have deferred too long the searching inquiry which charges against them, mischievous although false, have for some time rendered necessary. We think that there has been too little concert between them. We wish much, while yet there is time, to see these neglects and these errors corrected and repaired. We regret the delays of the government and legislature in repressing agitation; and scarcely less regret that the landlords of Ireland, as a body, had not made the justice of their case so conspicuous that they could challenge with authority the prompt interposition of government to suppress disorders which were wholly without excuse. We remember that, in various instances, when individual landlords have been aspersed, they have compelled even prejudice to admit that the charges against them were foul calumnies. Why will not the proprietors, as a body, enable themselves to make a defence equally effective? Why will they not acquire evidence to establish the justice of their cause; or why will not the upright and benevolent separate their case from that of the oppressor? Alleged grievances should never be heedlessly overlooked; if real they demand redress; if imaginary, explanation. The landlords of Ireland should put themselves in a condition to meet the charges against them by showing in one case their ability to explain, and in the other, their willingness to redress. It would be our earnest prayer that a principle like that we recommend to the landed proprietors were adopted by the government. It should do justice, should communicate true notions respecting justice; and while discouraging the agitator, whose trade is to irritate the public mind, should remove or explain away all topics of irritation. The state of Ireland demands imperatively an application of this principle. Its past and present condition may be thus briefly described: Protestants were once placed and supported here as a garrison against foreign invasion, and against that body which Whigs, in the earlier part of the last century, used to term the "common enemy," namely, the Roman Catholic people; and they manfully and loyally kept the country for or in conection with England. That "common enemy" has been since, agreeably to the statesmanship of Mr. Fox, taken in to the garrison in considerable force; and not unnaturally, they wish to keep or gain the country for themselves. In such a difficulty the State must either cast them out of the garrison, replacing them in their ancient estate of helplessness and hostility, or it must change their character and disposition so as that they will maintain their post and their engagements honourably. To succeed in this latter enterprise, the government must convince them that mutiny would be hopeless, and that good conduct and fidelity shall not go unrewarded. It must work this conviction in the minds of the people, not by entrusting them with franchises which may render them profitable servants to those who would use them, but by bestowing upon them benefits which prove its own desire to serve them; and by making this desire so evident that it shall be intelligible in the resistance of the state to the clamours of faction, no less than in its concessions to the claims of real expediency and justice. We are bold to say that a steadfast and consistent adherence to this simple principle will have the effect, even now, of reclaiming malcontents, or, at least, of reducing them to order. When they are thoroughly convinced that their ambitious dreams cannot be realized, and have good reason to hope that habits of industry and obedience to law will be most conducive to their personal good, such habits will be cultivated; and, as the cottage becomes a happy home, the visions which would disturb its peace, and tempt the the inmates to barter present good for a most precarious future, will lose their power, agitators will begin to find their vocation neither popular nor profitable, and England, felt in the benefits it imparts, will become respected and loved. A good understanding between the landed aristocracy of Ireland and the British government may enable a wise statesman to procure that deference for British law in Ireland which has already been achieved in India, and which was once, at a time of much peril, won for the aristocracy of ancient Rome; when, as the historian observes-" Nec quisquam unus malis artibus postea tam popularis esset, quam tum bene imperando universus senatus fuit." STRETCHED upon a large old-fashioned sofa, where a burgomaster might have reclined with "ample room and verge enough," in all the easy abandonment of dressing-gown and slippers-the cool breeze gently wafting the window-blind to and fro, and tempering the lulling sounds from wood and water-the buzzing of the summer insects, and the far-off carol of a peasant's song-I fell into one of those delicious sleeps in which dreams are so faintly marked, as to leave us no disappointment on waking: flitting, shadow-like, before the mind, they live only in a pleasant memory of something vague and undefined; and impart no touch of sorrow for expectations unfulfilled-for hopes that are not to be realized. I would that my dreams might always take this shape. It is a sad thing when they become tangible-when features and looks, eyes, hands, words, and sighs, live too strongly in our sleeping minds-and that we awake to the cold reality of our daily cares and crosses, tenfold less endurable from very contrast. No, give me rather the faint and waving outline-the shadowy perception of pleasure, than the vivid picture, to end only in the conviction that I am but Christopher Sly after all; or what comes pretty much to the same, nothing but Arthur O'Leary. Still I would not have you deem me discontented with my lot; far from it. I chose my path early in life, and never saw reason to regret the choice. How many of you can say as much! I felt that while the tender ties of home and family-the charities that grow up around the charmed circle of a wife and children-are the great prizes of life, there are also a thousand lesser ones in the wheel, in the kindly sympathies with which the world abounds; that to him who bears no ill will at his heart, nay, rather loving all things that are lovable, with warm attachments to all who have been kind to him, with strong sources of happiness in his own tranquil thoughts, the wandering life would offer many pleasures. Most men live, as it were, with one story of their lives, the traits of childhood maturing into manly features; their history consists of the development of early character in circumstances of good or evil fortune. They fall in love, they marry, they grow old, and they die-each incident of their existence bearing on that before and that after, like link upon link of some great chain. He, however, who throws himself like a plank upon the waters, to be washed hither and thither, as wind or tide might VOL. XXII.-No. 130., 2 c drive him, has a very different experience. To him life is a succession of episodes, each perfect in itself; the world is but a number of tableaux, changing with climate and country; his sorrows in France have no connexion with his joys in Italy; his delights in Spain live apart from his griefs on the Rhine. The past throws no shadow on the future-his philosophy is, to make the most of the present; and he never forgets La Bruyères' maxim-“Il faut rire avant d'être heureux, de peur de mourir sans avoir ri.” Now, if you don't like my philosophy, set it down as a dream, and here am I awake once more. And certainly I claim no great merit on the score of my vigilance; for the tantararara that awoke me, would have aroused the seven sleepers themselves. Words are weak to convey the most distant conception of the noise: it seemed as though ten thousand peacocks had congregated beneath my window, and with brazen throats were bent on giving me a hideous concert. The fiend-chorus in "Robert le Diable" was a psalmtune compared to it. I started up and rushed to the casement; and there, in the lawn beneath, beheld some twenty persons costumed in hunting fashion-their horses foaming and splashed, their coats stained with marks of the forest; but the uproar was soon comprehensible, owing to some half dozen of the party who performed on that most diabolical of all human inventions, the cor de chasse. Imagine, if you can, and thank your stars that it is only a work of imagination, some twenty feet of brass pipe, worn belt-fashion over one shoulder, and under the opposite arm-one end of the aforesaid tube being a mouth-piece, and the other expanding itself into a huge trumpet-mouth; then conceive a Fleming-one of Rubens' cherubs, immensely magnified and decorated with beard and moustaches-blowing into this, with all the force of his lungs, perfectly unmindful of the five other performers, who, at five several and distinct parts of the melody, are blasting away also; treble and bass, contre alto and soprano, shake and sostenuto-all blending into one crash of hideous discord, to which the Scotch bagpipe, in a pibroch, is a soothing, melting melody. A deaf and dumb institution would capitulate in half an hour. Truly, the results of a hunting expedition ought to be of the most satisfactory kind to make the "retour de chasse"-it was this they were blowing-at all sufferable to those who were not engaged in the concert; as for the performers, I can readily believe they never heard a note of the whole. Even Dutch lungs grow tired at last; having blown the establishment into ecstasies, and myself into a furious headache, they gave in; and now an awful bell announced the time to dress for dinner. While I made my toilet I endeavoured, as well as my throbbing temples would permit me, to fancy the host's personal appearance, and to conjecture the style of the rest of the party. My preparations over, I took a parting look in the glass, as if to guess the probable impression I should make below stairs, and sallied forth. Cautiously stealing along over the well-waxed floors, slippery as ice itself, I descended the broad oak stair into a great hall, wainscotted with dark walnut, and decorated with antlers and stags' heads, cross-bows, and arquebusses, and, to my shuddering horror, various cors de chasse, now happily, however, silent on the walls. I entered the drawing-room, conning over to myself a little speech in French, and preparing myself to bow for the next fifteen minutes; but to my surprise, no one had yet appeared. All were still occupied dressing, and probably taking some well-merited repose after their exertions on the wind instruments. I had now time for a survey of the apartment; and, generally speaking, a drawing-room is no bad indication of the tastes and temperament of the owners of the establishment. The practised eye speedily detects in the character and arrangement of a chamber something of its occupant. In some houses, the absence of all decoration the simple puritanism of the furniture bespeak the life of quiet souls, whose days are as devoid of luxury as their dwellings. You read in the cold grey tints, the formal stiffness, the unrelieved regularity around, the Quaker-like flatness of their existence. In others there is an air of ill-done display, a straining after effect, which shows itself in costly, but ill-assorted details-a mingling of all styles and eras, without repose or keeping. The bad pretentious pictures, the faulty bronzes, meagre casts of poor originals, the gaudy china, are safe warrantry for the vulgarity of their owners, while the humble parlour of a village inn can be, as I have seen it, made to evidence the cultivated tastes and polished habits of those who have made it the halting-place of a day. We might go back and trace how much of our knowledge of the earliest ages is derivable from the study of the interior of their dwellings; what a rich volume of information is conveyed in a mosaic; what a treatise does not lie in a frescoed wall. The room in which I now found myself was a long, and for its length, narrow apartment; a range of tall windows, deeply sunk in the thick wall, occupied one side, opposite to which was a plain wall, covered with pictures from floor to cornice, save where, at a considerable distance from each other, were two splendidly-carved chimney-pieces of black oak, one representing "The Adoration of the Shepherds," and the other, "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes"-the latter done with a relief, a vigour, and a movement I have never seen equalled. Above these were some armorial trophies of an early date, in which, among the maces and battleaxes, I could recognise some weapons of eastern origin, which, by the family, I learned were ascribed to the period of the crusades. Between the windows were placed a succession of carved oak cabinets of the seventeenth century, beautiful specimens of art; and for all their quaintness, far handsomer objects of furniture than our modern luxury has introduced among us. Japan vases of dark blue and green were filled with rare flowers; here and there small tables of costly Buhl invited you to the window recesses, where the downy ottomans, pillowed with Flemish luxury, suggested rest if not sleep. The pictures, over which I could but throw a passing glance, were all by Flemish painters, and of that character which so essentially displays their chief merits, richness of colour and tone-Gerard Dow and Ostade, Cyp, Vander-Meer and Terburg; those admirable groupings of domestic life, where the nation is, as it were, miniatured before you; that perfection of domestic quiet, which bespeaks an heir-loom of tranquillity, derived whole centuries back. You see at once in those dark brown eyes and placid features, the traits that have taken ages to bring to such perfection; and you recognise the origin of those sturdy burgomasters and bold burghers, who were at the same time the thriftiest merchants and the haughtiest princes of Europe. Suddenly, and when I was almost on my knees to examine a picture by Memling, the door opened, and a small, sharp-looking man, dressed in the last extravagance of Paris mode, resplendent in waistcoat, and glistening in jewellery, tripped lightly forward. "Ah, mi Lor O'Leary," said he, advancing towards me with a bow and a slide. It was no time to discuss pedigree; so gulping the promotion, I made |