THE WOES OF WEALTH.

PEOPLE in general are unwilling to suppose that wealth has any woes: on the contrary, they are apt to conclude that it abounds with advantages, comforts, pleasures, and luxuries. Mr. Croly has written an amusing tale on this subject. He introduces to our notice a retired barrister, who, when he was living happily on a small patrimony, was so unfortunate as to have a large fortune left him. On receiving intelligence of this event, he hastened to the metropolis. "I plunged (he says) into the tiresome details of legateeship; and after a fortnight's toil, infinite weariness, and longings to breathe in any atmosphere unchoked by a million of chimneys, to sleep where no eternal rolling of equipages should disturb my rest, and to enjoy society without being trampled on by dowagers fifty deep, I saw my cottage roof once more. But where was the cheerfulness that once made it more than a palace to me? The remittances that I had made from London were already conspiring against my quiet. I could scarcely get a kiss from either of my girls; they were in such merciless haste to make their dinner toilette. My kind and comely wife was actually not to be seen; and her apology, delivered by a coxcomb in silver lace to the full as deep as any in the sugar baker's service, was, that his lady would have the honour of waiting on me as soon as she was dressed.' This was of course the puppy's own version of the message; but its meaning was clear, and it was ominous. Dinner came at last; the table was loaded with awkward profusion; but it was as close an imitation as we could yet contrive of our opulent neighbour's display. No less than four footmen, discharged as splendid superfluities from the household of a duke, waited behind our four chairs, to make their remarks on our style of eating in contrast with the polished performances at their late master's. But Mrs. Molasses had exactly four. The argument was unanswerable. Silence and sullenness reigned through the banquet; but, on the retreat of the four gentlemen who did us the honour of attending, the whole tale of evil burst forth. What is the popularity of man? The whole family had already dropped from the highest favouritism into the most angry disrepute. A kind of little rebellion raged against us in the village: we were hated, scorned, and libeled on all sides. My unlucky remittances had done the deed.

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"The village milliner, a cankered old earle, who had made caps and bonnets for the vicinage during the last forty years, led the battle. The wife and daughters of a man of East-Indian wealth were not to be clothed like meaner souls; and the sight of three London bonnets in my pew had set the old seamstress in a blaze. The flame was easily propagated. The builder of my chaise-cart was irritated at the handsome barouche in which my family now moved above the heads of mankind. The rumour that champagne had appeared at the cottage roused the indignation of the honest vintner who had so long supplied me with port: and professional insinuations of the modified nature of this London luxury were employed to set the sneerers of the village against me and mine. four footmen had been instantly discovered by the eye of our opulent neighbour; and the competition was at once laughed at as folly, and resented as an insult. Every hour saw some of my old friends falling away from me. An unlucky cold, which seised one of my daughters a week before my return, had cut away my twenty years' acquaintance, the village-doctor, from my cause; for the illness of an "heiress" was not to be cured by less than the first medical authority of the province. The supreme Esculapius was accordingly called in; and his humbler brother swore, in the bitterness of his soul, that he would never forget the affront on this side of death's door. The inevitable increase of dignity which communicated itself to the manners of my whole household did the rest; and, if my wife held her head high, never was pride more peevishly retorted. Like the performers in a pillory, we seemed to have been elevated only for the benefit of a general pelting.

"Those were the women's shares of the mischief; but I was not long without administering in person to our unpopularity. The report of my fortune had, as usual, been enormously exaggerated; and every man who had a debt to pay, or a purchase to make, conceived himself

bound to apply first to his old and excellent friend, to whom the accommodation for a month or two must be such a trifle.' If I had listened to a tenth of those compliments, their old and excellent friend' would have only preceded them to a prison. In some instances I complied, and so far only showed my folly; for who loves his creditor? My refusal of course increased the host of my enemies; and I was pronounced purse

proud, beggarly, and unworthy of the notice of the true gentlemen, who knew how to spend their money.' Yet, though I was to be thus abandoned by my foxhunting friends, I was by no means to feel myself the inhabitant of a solitary world. If the sudden discovery of kindred could cheer me under my calamities, no man might have passed a gayer life. For a long succession of years I had not seen a single relative; not that they altogether disdained even the humble hospitalities of my cottage, or the humble help of my purse; on the contrary, they liked both exceedingly, and would have exhibited their affection in enjoying them as often as I pleased. But I had early adopted a resolution, which I recommend to all men. I made use of no disguise on the subject of our mutual tendencies. I knew my relatives to be selfish, beggarly in the midst of wealth, and artificial in the fullness of protestation. I disdained to play the farce of civility with them. I neither kissed nor quarreled with them; but I quietly shut my door, and at last allowed no foot of their generation inside of it. They hated me mortally in consequence, and I knew it. I despised them, and I conclude they knew that too. But I was resolved that they should not despise me; and I secured that point by not suffering them to feel that they had made me their dupe. The nabob's will had not soothed their tempers; and I was honoured with their most smiling animosity. But now, as if they were hidden in the ground like weeds only waiting for the shower, a new and boundless crop of relationship sprang up. Within the first fortnight after my return, I was overwhelmed with congratulations from east, west, north, and south, and every postscript was pointed with a request for my interest with boards and public offices of all kinds; with India presidents, treasury secretaries, and colonial patrons, for the provision of sons, nephews, and cousins, to the third and fourth generations. My positive declarations that I had no influence with ministers were received with resolute scepticism. I was charged with old obligations conferred on my grandfathers and grandmothers, and, finally, had the certain knowlege that my gentlest denials were looked upon as a compound of selfishness and hypocrisy. Before a month was out, I had extended my sources of hostility to three-fourths of the kingdom, and contrived to plant in every corner some individual

who looked on himself as bound to say the worst he could of his heartless, purseproud, and abjured kinsman.

"I should have sturdily borne up against all this while I could keep the warfare out of my own county. But what man can abide a daily skirmish round his house? I began to think of retreating while I was yet able to show my head; for, in truth, I was sick of this perpetual belligerency. I loved to see happy human faces. I loved the meeting of those old and humble friends to whose faces, rugged as they were, I was accustomed. I liked to stop and hear the odd news of the village, and the still odder versions of London news that transpired through the lips of our established politicians. I liked an occasional visit to our little club, where the exciseman, of fifty years' standing, was our oracle in politics; the attorney, of about the same duration, gave us opinions on the drama, philosophy, and poetry, all equally unindebted to Aristotle; and my mild and excellent father-in-law, the curate, shook his silver locks in gentle laughter at the discussion. I loved a supper in my snug parlour with the choice half dozen, a song from my girls, and a bottle after they were gone to dream of bow-knots and bargains for the next day. But my delights were now all crushed. Another Midas, all I touched had turned to gold; and I believe in my soul that, with his gold, I got credit for his ass's ears. However, I had long felt that contempt for popular opinion which every man feels who knows of what miserable materials it is made-how much of it is mere absurdity-how much malice -how much more the frothy foolery and maudlin gossip of the empty of this empty generation. What was it to me if the grown children of our idle community, the male babblers, and the female cuttersup of character, voted me, in their common-place souls, the blackest of black sheep? I was still strong in the solid respect of a few worth them all. Let no man smile when I say that, on reckoning up this Theban band of sound judgement and inestimable fidelity, I found my muster reduced to three, and those three of so unromantic a class as the grey-headed exciseman, the equally grey-headed solicitor, and the curate. But let it be remembered that a man must take his friends as fortune wills; that he who can even imagine that he has three is under rare circumstances; and that time, which mellows and mollifies so many things, may so far extract the

professional virus out of an exciseman and a solicitor, as to leave them both not incapable of entering into the ranks of humanity."

THE COLLEGIANS, 3 vols. 1829.

THE writer of this novel may justly laugh at the eccentricities of the Hiber nian character, and at the ludicrous inconsistencies into which red-hot Irishmen fall; but he ought at the same time to laugh at himself for his choice of a title which appears to be unconnected with his subject. To begin with a misnomer, indeed, is like stumbling at the threshold; but, in look ing at the body of the work, we soon forget the bevue amidst the interest which the narrative excites.

A young man, named Hardress Cregan, secretly marries Eily O'Connor, who, in a low class of life, has fascinated him by her innocence and beauty; he takes her to a cottage in a mountainous spot, where she remains a sort of Irish Meg Merrilies. From this part of the novel we extract a scene, truly Irish, between Lowry Looby, a peasant, and Poll Naughten, the mistress of the cottage. Poll is a drunk ard and blasphemer, and, when Eily was in a boat on the night of her elopement, her guardian passed her off on Lowry as Poll, covered up drunk in a mantle; on which occasion it was added, as an excuse for her silence, that she had made a vow never to curse or drink. When Lowry meets Poll soon after, the following dialogue occurs.

Well, Mrs. Naughten, if I was to hear a person swear this upon a book, I'd say 'twas a lie he was telling me, if I didn't see it with my own eyes.'-'What is it you see?'—'Oh, then, nothing but what I'm well pleased to see. Well, I thought one that once gave themselves a bad habit, could never be broke of it again, no more than a horse could be broke of starting.'At this the virago fixed upon him a kindling and suspicious eye. And tell me now, Mrs. Naughten,' continued Lowry, not perceiving the indication of incipient wrath, how did it come on you first, when you dropt the cursing that way entirely? I think I'd feel a great loss for the first week or fortnight.'-'Folly on! Mister Looby, folly on! You're welcome to your sport this evening.'-Sport? Faiks it's no sport to me, only an admiration. All the people that ever I heard of making a vow o' the kind wor sure to

break it again if they didn't get inside of it, one way or another by skaming. Sure there was, to my own knowlege, John O'Reilly, the blacksmith, near CastleChute, made as many vows as I have fingers and toes again' the drink, and there isn't one of 'em but what he got the advantage of. First he med a Vow he would'nt drink a drop for six months to come, any way, either in a house or out of a house. An' sure 'tis where I found him the fortnight after was at Mick Normile's, and he drinkin' as if it was for bets, and he sitting in a chair upon the threshold o' the door with a leg at this side and a leg at that. Is that the way you're keeping your vow, Mister O'Reilly?' says I, when I seen him. "Tis,' says he, 'what else? sure I can drink here,' says he, an' no thanks, while I'm neither in the house nor out of it.' And sure 'twas true for him. Well, there's no use in talking, but some people would live where a fox would starve. Sure of another time he med a vow he would'nt drink upon Ireland ground, and where do you think did I get him after only sitting cross legs upon a branch o' the big beech tree near Normile's, and he still at the ould work, drinking away! Wisha, long life to you, says I, if that's the way; a purty fruit the tree bears in you, says I, this morning. People o' that kind, Mrs. Naughten, has no business making vows at all, again' the drink, or the cursing either. I'm hearing to you, Lowry,' said Fighting Poll, with an ominous sharpness in her accent. And do you hould to the same plan, still, ma'am ?'- What plan do you mane?'-'The same plan as when I met you that night at the Dairy Cottage; not to be talking, nor drinking, nor curs. ing, nor swearing, nor fighting, nor —— Oh, murther, Mrs. Naughten, sure you'.e not going to strike me inside your own door?'-To be sure I would, when I see you daar make a hand o' me!'-' Me make a hand o' you, woman! What hand am I making?'- Every hand!' exclaimed the Penthesilea, raising her voice. So saying, with the accustomed yell of onset, she flourished her short stick, and discharged a blow at Lowry's little head, which, if it had not been warded off by a dexterous interposition of the chair on which he had been sitting, would have left him something to think of for a week to come. The scuffle waxed hot, and would doubtless have terminated in some serious bodily injury to the party assailed, but that the sudden entrance of Phil, with

his brother-in-law, Danny Mann, brought it to a premature termination.-Poll! Poll, ayeh! Mister Looby! What's the matter? Wor'nt ye as thick as cousins this moment?'-'A' Lowry, is dat you? What's all dis about?- Don't hould me, Phil, and I'll bate him while bating is good for him! and that's from this till morning. Here's usage, Mr. Naughten! Mr. Mann, here's tratement! Gi' me my ould hat, and let me be off, I was a fool to come at all! And after my civility eastwards, when you come dripping wet into the cottage! Well, it's all one.'Whisht eroo!' said Danny, in a conciliating tone, 'Come dis way, Lowry, I want to talk to you.' And he led him out of the cottage."

When the enthusiasm of his first love has subsided, Hardress begins to discover the deficiencies of his wife, whose education has necessarily been scanty and imperfect. This discovery is aggravated by the contrast forced on his mind by his mother, who urges him to a match with Miss Chute, whose accomplishments stand conspicuously opposed to the rustic merits of poor Eily. His marriage is unknown to his family; his only confident is Danny Mann, who, when a boy, received a hurt from Hardress, which deformed him for life. That deformity bound the injurer to the injured, and the kindness that followed produced devotion on the part of Danny. Hardress's conflicting feelings (for he becomes insensibly attached to Miss Chute) betray him into excesses; and one night, in a fit of delirious intoxication, he accedes to a second engagement of marriage. His manner to Eily at length becomes constrained, and finally outrageous. Under the pressure of this new calamity, Eily ventures on a journey to a priest, her uncle, to seek consolation in his advice. The appearance and manners of the priest are characteristically noticed.-'After a sharp and frosty morning, the cold sun of the Christmas noon found father Edward O'Connor seated in his little parlor, before a cheerful turf fire. A small table was laid before it, and decorated with a plain breakfast, which the fatigues of the forenoon rendered not a little acceptable. The sun shone directly in the window, dissolving slowly away the fantastic foliage of frost-work upon the window-panes, and flinging its shadow on the boarded floor. The reverend host himself sat in a meditative posture, near the fire, awaiting the arrival of some fresh eggs, over the cookery of which his clerk presided in the

kitchen. His head drooped a little; his eyes were fixed upon the burning fuel, his nether lip a little protruded, his feet stretched out and crossed, and the small bulky volume, in which he had been reading his daily office, half closed in his right hand, with a finger left between the leaves to mark the place. No longer a pale and secluded student, father Edward now presented the appearance of a healthy man, with a face hardened by frequent exposure to the winds of midnight and morn, and with a frame made firm and vigorous by unceasing exercise. His eye, moreover, had acquired a certain character of severity, which was more than qualified by a nature of the tenderest benevolence. On the table, close to the small tray which held his simple equipage, was placed a linen bag, containing in silver the amount of his Christmas offerings. They had been paid him on that morning, in crowns, half-crowns, and shillings, at the parish chapel; and on this occasion he had returned thanks to his parishioners for their liberality—the half-yearly compensation for all his toils and exertions, his sleepless nights and restless days, amounting to no less a sum than thirteen pounds, fourteen shillings." "Tis an admiration, Sir,' said the clerk, as he entered, clad in a suit of father Edward's rusty black, laid the eggs upon the tray, and moved back to a decorous distance from the table. "Tis an admiration what a sight o' people is abroad in the kitchen, money-hunting.'-'Didn't I tell 'em the last time, that I never would pay a bit upon a Christmas-day, again?'-'That's the very thing I said to 'em, Sir. But 'tis the answer they made me, that they come a long distance, and 'twould cost 'em a day more if they were obliged to be coming again to-morrow.""

It

"Father Edward, with a countenance of perplexity and chagrin, removed the top of the egg, while he cast a glance alternately at the bag and at his clerk. is a hard case,' he said at length, 'that they will not allow a man even the satisfaction of retaining so much money in his possession for a single day, and amusing himself by fancying it his own. I suspect I am doomed to be no more than a mere agent to this thirteen pound fourteen, after all; to receive and pay it away in a breath.' Just what I was thinking myself, Sir,' said the clerk. Well, I suppose I must not cost the poor fellows a day's work, however, if they have come such a distance. That would be a little Pharisaical,