When, like a diadem, Eileen aroon ! Is it the laughing eye? Eileen aroon ! Is it the timid sigh? Eileen aroon ! Is it the tender tone, Soft as the stringed heart's moan? Oh! it is truth alone, Eileen aroon ! When, like the rising day, Eileen aroon ! Love sends the early lay, Eileen aroon! What makes his dawning glow I know a valley fair, I knew a cottage there, Far in that valley's shade Eileen aroon! Who in the song so sweet? Who in the dance so fleet? Dear were her charms to me, Eileen aroon ! Youth must with time decay, Eileen aroon! Beauty must fade away, Eileen aroon ! Castles are sacked in war, Chieftains are scattered far, Truth is a fixed star, Eileen aroon ! The Life of Gerald Griffin, by his Brother (1842), is the main authority. The novels were published in Duffy's Popular Library (1854), and have often been reprinted. The poetical works were collected in 1854, and reprinted with the dramas in 1857. James Clarence Mangan (1803-49) was born in Dublin, and was the son of a small grocer in that city. His youth was passed in very straitened circumstances, and he owed his education to the benevolence of a priest. But through the kindness of this clergyman he acquired a knowledge of Spanish, French, and Italian, which subsequently stood him in good stead, leading to his employment in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. His earliest occupation was that of a clerk in a scrivener's office; but irregular habits and a craving for drink always prevented him from attaining to any responsible position, and he was all his life something between a pariah and a Bohemian. Mangan's earliest poetical efforts, apart from a few occasional contributions to the daily press, were made in the pages of the Comet, the journal of coterie called the Comet Club, of which he became a member in 1831. To this journal he contributed pretty frequently over the signature 'Clarence,' which he adopted as a Christian name. He also contributed to the Dublin Penny Journal, a periodical of great importance in its day, as well as to a less reputable publication, the Dublin Penny Satirist. In 1834 he began a long series of translations from the German in the Dublin University Magazine, with articles on German poetry. These were republished in 1845 as a German Anthology. For this magazine Mangan wrote much and frequently for the next few years, until in 1842 he joined the staff of the Nation. To this journal and to the United Irishman he was thenceforward as constant a contributor as his hopelessly irregular habits permitted, writing over the signature of ‘A Yankee' and other pseudonyms. In 1849 he fell a victim to cholera, a disease to which his enfeebled constitution left him an easy prey. It is extremely difficult to gauge the true powers of Mangan. He has been praised by critics of insight, if not of very balanced judgment, as the greatest poet in the Irish literature of the nineteenth century. Unquestionably he had great poetic possibilities, and is among the great might-have-beens of literature. His best work is mainly that which was inspired by patriotism, and betokens a temperament intensely sensitive to the tragic elements of life. The themes he preferred were those which gave the fullest scope to his dreamy delight in the emotions of sorrow and the sense of magnificent gloom with which the history of his country filled him. His most striking pieces are a strange blend of dirge and pæan. But his work, as was inevitable from the weak nature of the man, is most uneven; and while some of the lyrics are of a very high order of excellence, his flights are always short, and he was incapable of exhibiting sustained power. His Life, which has lately been written with sympathy (by D. J. O'Donoghue, 1897), is as depressing a chronicle as any in the annals of literature. No complete edition of his poetry has been published. Dark Rosaleen. O, my dark Rosaleen, Do not sigh, do not weep! Upon the ocean green; And Spanish ale shall give you hope, My dark Rosaleen ! My own Rosaleen ! Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, Shall give you health, and help, and hope, My dark Rosaleen! Over hills, and through dales, Have I roamed for your sake; All yesterday I sailed with sails, On river and on lake. The Erne at its highest flood, I dashed across unseen, For there was lightning in my blood, My dark Rosaleen ! My own Rosaleen ! Oh! there was lightning in my blood, All day long in unrest, To and fro, do I move; The very soul within my breast To think of you, my queen, My own Rosaleen ! To hear your sweet and sad complaints, Woe and pain, pain and woe, Are my lot, night and noon, To see your bright face clouded so, 'Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone, My own Rosaleen ! 'Tis you shall have the golden throne, 'Tis you shall reign and reign alone, My dark Rosaleen! Over dews, over sands, Will I fly for your weal; You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers, My own Rosaleen ! You'll think of me through daylight's hours, I could scale the blue air, I could plough the high hills, Oh! I could kneel all night in prayer, Would float like light between My fond Rosaleen ! O, the Erne shall run red With redundance of blood, The earth shall rock beneath our tread, Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, My own Rosaleen ! The Judgment Hour must first be nigh, Charles James Lever (1806-72), unquestionably the most vivacious and perhaps the most eminent of Irish novelists, was born in Dublin. He was the son of an Englishman who had settled in Ireland as a builder and architect, and of an Irish mother. He was privately educated at home, until in 1822 he entered Trinity College, Dublin. His collegiate course suffered some interruption, and he did not graduate until 1827. After taking his degree Lever proceeded to Germany, and studied medicine at Göttingen. Returning to Ireland, he took a medical degree at his university in 1831, and practised for some years in various parts of Ireland. In 1837 he entered the ranks of literature as a novelist, and achieved an instantaneous success. Harry Lorrequer, contributed to the Dublin University Magazine, was an assured triumph from the publication of the first number. It was followed in the same periodical by Charles O'Malley (1840), unquestionably the most enduringly popular of Lever's works, and by Jack Hinton the Guardsman (1842). In the midst of his success as a novelist Lever had gone abroad, and had settled down to the practice of his profession in Brussels. But an invitation to undertake the editorship of the magazine in which his stories had appeared, at a salary of £1200 a year, recalled him to Ireland. For the next three years he held the editorial chair, and during this period produced with ready fertility Tom Burke of Ours, Arthur O'Leary, and The O'Donoghue. In 1845 Lever, whose tenure of the position had been marked by some unpleasant disputes, one of which nearly ended in a duel, resigned the editorship of the magazine and once more betook himself to the Continent. He had previously written The Knight of Gwynne, in which he chose an historical subject, and this work appeared in 1847. Having settled at Florence, he wrote in that city The Martins of Cro' Martin (1848); Con Cregan (1849), which was published anonymously; Roland Cashel (1850); and several other works, of which Maurice Tierney (1852) and The Daltons (1852) may be mentioned. In 1857, being appointed British Consul at Spezzia, Lever removed from Florence. Here he remained until in 1867 he received the consulship of Trieste, which he held until his death. During the Spezzia period his productiveness was maintained at a high rate, and Davenport Dunn (1859), Barrington (1862), A Campaigner at Home (1865), and Sir Brooke Fosbrooke (1866) are only a few among the many works which marked these years. Cornelius O'Dowd upon Men, Women, and other Things in General (1864), a series of essays originally published in Blackwood's Magazine, was hardly in his happiest vein. At Trieste, though the quality of his work had much declined, the quantity was well maintained, in spite of failing health. The Bramleighs appeared in 1868, That Boy of Norcotts in 1869, and Lord Kilgobbin, the author's last work, in 1872. In the last-named year, not long after his return from a visit to Ireland, he died suddenly at Trieste. For a great part of the nineteenth century, it may be said without much exaggeration that Englishmen knew Ireland mainly through Lever's novels. He was himself the incarnation of the high spirits, careless fun, and love of sport which he attributed to most of his heroes; and though the standard of manners which he depicts was really more characteristic of the generation preceding his own than of that to which he belonged, the picture he drew of Ireland and the Irish was not untrue to life and certainly not unduly flattering. No successful novelist was ever less indebted than Lever to the devices of art. He wrote out of the abundance of his heart rather than of his head, and, in his earliest and best novels at any rate, never troubled himself about plot, construction, or form. A quick eye, a graphic pen, and boundless good humour were his sufficient equipment; and it is remarkable how long they sufficed. No writer was ever less of a poet than the author of Harry Lorrequer. But the author had a distinct talent for humorous verse, and the songs which are scattered through his novels are racy and bright, thoroughly characteristic of the man and his books. The Man for Galway. To drink a toast, A proctor roast, Or bailiff as the case is; To kiss your wife, Or take your life At ten or fifteen paces; To keep game-cocks, to hunt the fox, The king of Oude Is mighty proud, And so were once the Caysars, But ould Giles Eyre Would make them stare, An' he had them with the Blazers ;' And knows nothing at all of a 'six-foot wall;' Ye think the Blakes Are no great shakes,' They're all his blood relations; And the Bodkins sneeze At the grim Chinese, For they come from the Phenaycians : So fill the brim, and here 's to him Who'd drink in punch the Solway; With debts galore, but fun far more, Oh! that's the man for Galway.' Chorus-With debts galore, &c. 'Oh! I perceive.' 'You're quite out there,' said my companion, misinterpreting my meaning. It wasn't anything of that kind. I don't owe sixpence. I was laughed out of Ireland-that's all, though that same is bad enough.' 'Laughed out of it!' 'Just so. And little you know of Ireland if that surprises you.' After acknowledging that such an event was perfectly possible, from what I had myself seen of that country, I obtained the following very brief account of my companion's reasons for foreign travel. 'Well, sir,' began he, it is about four months since I brought up to Dublin from Galway a little chestnut mare, with cropped ears and a short tail, square-jointed and rather low-just what you'd call a smart hack for going to cover with a lively thing on the road with a light weight. Nobody ever disputed that she was a cleanbred thing-own sister to Jenny that won the Corinthians, and ran second to Giles for the Riddlesworth-but so she was, and a better-bred mare never leaped the pound in Ballinasloe. Well, I brought her to Dublin, and used to ride her out two or three times a week, making little matches sometimes to trot-and for a thoroughbred she was a clipper at trotting-to trot a mile or so on the grass; another day to gallop the length of the Nine Acres opposite the Lodge; and then sometimes back her for a ten-pound note to jump the biggest furze bush that could be found-all of which she could do with ease, nobody thinking all the while that the cocktailed pony was out of Scroggins by a "Lamplighter" mare. As every fellow that was beat to-day was sure to come back to-morrow with something better, either of his own or a friend's, I had matches booked for every day in the week-for I always made my little boy that rode win by half a neck, or a nostril, and so we kept on day after day pocketing from ten to thirty pounds or thereabouts. 'It was mighty pleasant while it lasted, for besides winning the money, I had my own fun laughing at the spoonies that never could book my bets fast enough. Your infantry. officers and the junior bar-they were for the most part mighty men to look at, but very raw about racing. How long I might have gone on in this way I can't say; but one morning I fell in with a fat elderly gentleman, in shorts and gaiters, mounted on a dun cob pony that was very fidgety and hot-tempered, and appeared to give his rider a great deal of uneasiness. "He's a spicy hack you 're on, sir," said I, "and has a go in him, I'll be bound." 666 "I rayther think he has," said the old gentleman, half testily. "And can trot a bit, too?" "Twelve Irish miles in fifty minutes with my weight." Here he looked down at a paunch like a sugar hogs. head. 666 Maybe he's not bad across country," said I, rather to humour the old fellow, who, I saw, was proud of his pony. "I'd like to see his match, that's all." Here he gave a rather contemptuous look at my hack. In con 'Well, one word led to another, and it ended in our booking a match, with which one party was no less pleased than the other. It was this: each was to ride his own horse, starting from the school in the Park, round the Fifteen Acres, outside the Monument, and back to the start-just one heat, about a mile and a half, the ground good, and only soft enough. sideration, however, of his greater weight, I was to give odds in the start; and, as we could not well agree on how much, it was at length decided that he was to get away first, and I to follow as fast as I could after drinking a pewter quart of Guinness's double stoutdroll odds, you'll say, but it was the fellow's own thought; and, as the match was a soft one, I let him have his way. 'The next morning the Phoenix was crowded, as if for a review. There were all the Dublin notorieties swarming in barouches and tilburies and outside jaunting-cars; smart clerks in the Post-Office, mounted upon kicking devils from Dycer's and Lalouette's stables; attorneys' wives and daughters from York Street; and a stray doctor or so on a hack that looked as if it had been lectured on for the six winter months at the College of Surgeons. My antagonist was half-an-hour late, which time I occupied in booking bets on every side of me-offering odds of ten, fifteen, and at last, to tempt the people, twenty-five to one against the dun. At last the fat gentleman came up on a jaunting-car, followed by a groom leading the cob. I wish you heard the cheer that greeted him on his arrival, for it appeared he was a well-known character in town, and much in favour with the mob. When he got off the car he bundled into a tent, followed by a few friends, where they remained for about five minutes, at the end of which time he came out in full racing costume-blue-and-yellow striped jacket, blue cap, and leathers-looking as funny a figure as ever you set eyes upon. I now thought it was time to throw off my white surtout and show out in pink and orange, the colours I had been winning in for two months past. While some of the party were sent on to station themselves at different places round the Fifteen Acres, to mark out the course, my fat friend was assisted into his saddle, and gave a short preliminary canter of a hundred yards or so that set us all a-laughing. The odds were now fifty to one in my favour, and I gave them wherever I could find takers. "With you, sir, if you please in pounds; and the gentleman in the red whiskers too, if he likes-very well, in half-sovereigns, if you prefer it?" So I went on, betting on every side till the bell rang to mount. As I knew I had plenty of time to spare, I took little notice, and merely giving a look to my girths, I continued leisurely booking my bets. At last the time came, and at the word " Away!" off went the fat gentleman on the dun, at a spluttering gallop, that flung the mud on every side of us, and once more threw us all a-laughing. I waited patiently till he got near the upper end of the park, taking bets every minute; and now that he was away every one offered to wager. At last, when I had let him get nearly half round, I called out to his friends for the porter, and, throwing myself into the saddle, gathered up the reins in my hand. The crowd fell back on each side, while from the tent I have already mentioned came out a thin fellow with one eye, with a pewter quart in his hand; he lifted it up towards me, and I took it; but what was my fright to find that the porter was boiling, and the vessel so hot that I could barely hold it. I endeavoured to drink, however; the first mouthful took all the skin off my lips and tongue, the second half choked, and the third nearly threw me into an apoplectic fit-the mob cheering all the time like devils. Meantime the old fellow had reached the furze, and was going along like fun. Again I tried the porter, and a fit of coughing came on that lasted five minutes. The pewter was now so hot that the edge of the quart took away a piece of my mouth at every effort. I ventured once more, and with the desperation of a madman I threw down the hot liquid to its last drop. My head reeled, my eyes glared, and my brain was on fire. I thought I beheld fifty fat gentlemen galloping on either side of me, and all the sky raining jackets in blue and yellow. Half mechanically I took the reins and put spurs to my horse; but before I got well away a loud cheer from the crowd assailed me. I turned and saw the dun coming in at a floundering gallop, covered with foam, and so dead blown that neither himself nor the rider could have got twenty yards farther. The race was, however, won. My odds were lost to every man on the field, and worse than all, I was so laughed at that I could not venture out in the street without hearing allusions to my misfortune. (From Harry Lorrequer.) Mickey Free. Whenever my uncle or Considine were not in the room, my companion was my own servant Michael, or, as he was better known, 'Mickey Free.' Now, had Mickey been left to his own free and unrestricted devices, the time would not have hung so heavily; for, among Mike's manifold gifts, he was possessed of a very great flow of gossiping conversation; he knew all that was doing in the country, and never was barren in his information wherever his imagination came into play. Mickey was the best hurler in the barony, no mean performer on the violin, could dance the national bolero of Father Jack Walsh' in a way that charmed more than one soft heart beneath a red wolsey bodice, and had, withal, the peculiar free-and-easy, devil-may-care kind of off-hand Irish way that never deserted him in the midst of his wiliest and most subtle moments, giving to a very deep and cunning fellow all the apparent frankness and openness of a country lad. He had attached himself to me as a kind of sporting companion, and, growing daily more and more useful, had been gradually admitted to the honours of the kitchen and the prerogative of cast clothes, without ever having been actually engaged as a servant, and while thus no warrant officer, as in fact he discharged all his duties well and punctually, was rated among the ship's company; though no one could ever say at what precise period he changed his caterpillar existence and became a gay butterfly, with cords and tops, a striped vest, and a most knowing prig hat, who stalked about the stableyard and bullied the helpers. Such was Mike; he had made his fortune, such as it was, and had a most becoming pride in the fact that he had made himself indispensable to an establishment which, before he entered it, never knew the want of him. As for me, he was everything to me: Mike informed me what horse was wrong, why the chestnut mare couldn't go out, and why the black horse could. He knew the arrival of a new covey of partridge quicker than the Morning Post does of a noble family from the Continent, and could tell their whereabouts twice as accurately; but his talents took a wider range than field sports afford, and he was the faithful chronicler of every wake, station, wedding, or christening for miles round, and, as I took no small pleasure in those very national pastimes, the information was of great value to me. To conclude this brief sketch, Mike was a devout Catholic, in the same sense that he was enthusiastic about everything—that is, he believed and obeyed exactly as far as suited his own peculiar notions of comfort and happiness; beyond that his scepticism stepped in and saved him from inconvenience, and though he might have been somewhat puzzled to reduce his faith to a rubric, still it answered his purpose, and that was all he wanted. Such in short was my valet, Mickey Free. (From Charles O'Malley.) The Life of Charles Lever, by W. J. Fitzpatrick (1879; new ed. 1896), the only formal biography of Lever, is not at all an adequate picture of the novelist. The principal novels have been collected and reprinted in a handsome and elaborate edition (18 vols. 1898-99). C. LITTON FALKINER. Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810–86) was born in Belfast of parents who were of Scottish extraction, and having received his school education at the Academical Institution in that city, passed to Trinity College, Dublin. His university studies were interrupted, however, and he never graduated, though in 1865 he received from the university the degree of LL.D. honoris causa. In 1838 he was called to the Irish Bar, at which he practised with success, becoming a Queen's Counsel in 1859, and remaining in the active pursuit of his profession until his appointment, in 1867, to the position of Deputy-keeper of the newly created Irish Record Office. In 1878, in recognition of his efficient service in this position as well as of his literary While eminence, he received a knighthood. Ferguson was thus far from leading the life of a mere man of letters, letters were in fact his constant interest, and, it may even be said, the main preoccupation of his thoughts. As early as 1832 he had made, in a visit to Edinburgh, the acquaintance of William Blackwood, Professor Wilson, and others. This was the beginning of an enduring connection with 'Maga,' to which he contributed the first and most popular of his poems, The Forging of the Anchor, written at one-and-twenty, as well as a humorous prose extravaganza called Father Tom and the Pope (1838), which won wide popularity. He was also a diligent contributor, both in prose and verse, to the Dublin University Magazine, drawing his subjects almost invariably from Celtic history and the bardic chronicles of Ireland. Ferguson's earlier poems, first published in this way, were collected by him in 1865 in Lays of the Western Gael, while his prose stories were posthumously republished in Hibernian Nights Entertainments (1887). In 1872 appeared Congal, an Epic Poem in Five Books; and in 1880 a further volume of Poems, which was really a second series of Lays of the Western Gael. Of the poems in this volume, 'Dairdre' and 'Conary' have been enthusiastically praised by Irish critics. Of the former, Allingham said that 'its peculiar form of unity is perfectly managed, while its general effect recalls nothing so much as a Greek play.' Of the latter, Aubrey de Vere wrote that it 'caught thoroughly that epic character so remarkable in the bardic legends of Ireland.' In 1882 Ferguson was elected President of the Royal Irish Academy, an institution largely concerned with fostering the studies in which he was most interested. Throughout his busy career he was a zealous promoter of the fame of Ireland in every department of intellectual effort, and did much to stimulate the intelligent study of her history and antiquities, her ancient laws and learning. In this respect he evinced throughout his career the ardent national spirit which in his earlier days had allied him temporarily with the Young Ireland' movement in politics, an alliance which had its best fruit in the noble Lament for Thomas Davis, in which he has |