Azure flag, its bright filver Cross-flory untarnished, as erst had been the trophies of his ancestors.

And there were glad greetings in the porch, and tears of joy fell faft. Sir Thomas, having experience, had dreaded the climate, and Dame Elizabeth remembered tales of Salvage maffacres. Fond Helen! Fond Helen! Who but a wife can ken those throbs which her forlorn breast sustained? But all was peace now! And, with a thankfulness for mercies which matched their patience under grief, the pious family again knelt together.

And the pretty fweetings-thofe little love-knots that tie the parents to each other-thofe flowering creepers, which in one affection bind up generations, the hard old oak and the tender fapling-thofe little visible cherubim of God, which ever perch upon that dreary ladder which refts on Earth, but hath its top in Heaven: your Robin, Tom, and Nell, how they did frolick, and cheer, and nestle around their happy father! But, oh! you must have come back to your own home, ere you fhall know the motions of William's heart; and you must have had fome anxious cares for those afar, ere you shall feel what the good folk of Chenies felt that day!

And William, as time ferved, would tell of his ways in Ireland; but none cared for fkirmishings and fights. Sir Thomas, he had done with those things; and gentle ladies would shudder at their own imaginings. But they listened to stories of the rude natives, and of their wilder lords, laughing over the ftrange confufions of the degenerate, their mixed humours, their vehement change from civil* bearing to ferocious favagery. Yet how the true nobility of some shone forth as bright particular stars between the rent clouds of a dark and stormy night!

Then would he tell of ruined monafteries and broken baronial keeps, of dreary bogs and gloomy forests, of sheen hills and sparkling streams, of solemn old mountains and of beautiful bays.

After the Munster progress, having leifure, he and Squire Beronfaw, and the Hampshire Efquire, all took horse, a little meiny at their heels. Thoro' the Pale they rode. They pilgrimaged as far as Trim of Saints, and Tara of the Kings. Here were deferted abbeys without number, scattered about a golden vale; mud hovels and pelting farms eked out with their cut stone and broken monuments. The first Church, too, of Holy Patrick!

But, alas, how defolate! Altar and Font, with Effigies

and Inscriptions, where were they? but a few sculptured coats of the earliest settlers had furvived! Yet here was

not the daily facrifice taken away, for a very Reverend Vicar, the fenachy, or chronicler of those parts, was faithful -rest his memory! There a barren hill, no vestige of its *boasted royalty remaining. Yet fome have ftill faith in Tara! "The Irish harp founded fweetly on our ears," quoth the Captain of a foot company, for he was musical, and had harkened to it; "but it was not on the Hill o' Tara!"

Another while they skirred about to spy out those queer round Towers, built only to amaze pofterity: for to that ufe alone have they been applied, and that end 'tis certain have they fully answered. Generally they be in churchyards, or there have been raised religious places by their fide. From fixty feet to twice that height: from twelve to fifteen feet in breadth : round, flightly tapering: a small door fome ten feet from the ground, looped windows here and there four open vents from the compafs at the top, and covered with a cone: fuch are they all. A volume would not defcribe them better. But, oh the fhamelessness

Ancestors-in Ireland.

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of those Irishers-their irreverence! From a broken Altar-tomb, lo! a beaftly Pig carrieth in his mouth the thighbone of a noble late deceased! No let? None; for what can one expect from a dead ancestor?-So they argue in their acts. And among them you shall find fo fmall a refpecting of the past, that were there not fome other means than their ungrateful memories of chronicling their descents and titles, there would fcarcely be a lawful 'heritance among them, or a peer in Parliament. No man knoweth or careth for his Grandfather, or for his coatarmour. ""Tis monftrous!" quoth Sir Thomas.

And our Efquire noted well how in those parts they built fquare Caftles fome three or four stories high, by about eight paces wide, looped and battlemented, with a spiral stair in an angle tower thereof; in the which he was shewn how the Lord inhabited (his herdsmen in the base-court) for the protection of his Kine: for by night and on alarums they yet drive their cattle into krails, as in the time of the Danes' invafion; and in very truth these fettlers live like the Jews of old among the Canaanites; for even in the Pale there be enow mere Irish to keep up conftant ftirs-God help the English people!

Then would good Parfon Homily hearken to matters of the state o' the Church, demanding how 'twas allowed— in which thefe friends had informed themselves for his fake-how with their confciences it stood-whether there was no respect of God or truth in such and fuch? For the grave Vicar was overcome by the accounts he heard, and doubted if the folk in Ireland were yet in Christian bands. And William fhewed him how the clergy lived, not often on their glebes, but in the fafe warm towns, haply in England, roaming about for pleasure or difplay; and how their feely flocks were conftantly falling off to Rome or, per cafe, fliding farther still.

"They be no fhepherds," quoth the parfon bitterly, "but ravening wolves, I trow !"

"Yet, 'twas once, and truly, called the Ifle of Saints," faid Dame Elizabeth.

"Out-alas!" quod Vicar. "Alas! an Island of finful lufts, of unclean violence! A land of treachery and fraud ! A land of lies! A land of fhams! Where there be clergy but no churches-preachers who bring no glad tidingsand a people without worship!" fo the good man fell a weeping.