BRALLAGHAN. CHAPTER I. A LETTHER FROM MR. BARNEY BRALLAGHAN, PIPKR AT THE PADDY'S GOOSE PUBLIC-HOUSE, RATCLIFFE HIGHWAY, TO OLIVER YORKE, ESQUIRE; CONTAINING A DIVARTING ACCOUNT OF THE LATE RICHARD ALFRED MILLIKIN, AUTHOR O'" THE GROVES OF BLARNEY,' AND SOME OF HIS KINTEMPORARIES. ups Paddy's Goose, Ratcliffe Highway, 2 in the mornin, Dec. 27, 1841. DEAR SIR,-There is something exthramely affecting in the and downs and revolutions of the world we lives in. One man sets out in life as a gintleman, and ends his career in the workhouse or maybe, in Botany Bay with the wild Injuns. Another begins as a sweep, or a prize-fither, a dog's mate man, or a poet (which 2 purfessions is nearly the saim, though the first is reckoned the most profitable,) and finishes his days in Parlament, dinin, and coortin, and duellin, and rakin, and gamblin, and braykin knockers, and in fact enjoyin all the refined pleasures of existence with Lords, and Dooks, and Markisses, and the rest of the curled darlints that has plinty o' money and nothin to do. A third commincis by being like my cozen Fargus O'Connor, one o' them spoutin counsellors that is cault O'Connell's Tail; and 'tis all a toss of a brass farden whether he conkludes his coorse in the House of Commons, Norfolk island, or the Fleet prison. So that the whole of this life is but unsartenty; and whin we seems most firmly fixed in health, or rank, or stayshun, begad it's then we may be nearest to our downfall bein as Lushan finely sez, like bubbles on the wather that is portly and well-lookin for a few moments, but soon goes to the wind; or forrest leaves that falls at the fust blast of autumn which is the butyful kimparison of Homer. I hav been led into these moral reflexions on the instability of hewman things, by conthrastin my present condishun as a poor piper, with my former rank as own man to my late masther, Mr. Millikin-one of the dacentest, darlintest, and thruest gintlemen that ever supped butthermilk, shot a tithe-prockther, or throd in shoe leather. Well may I say, Tempora mutanthur,—the times is althered with me since I left the Emrald Ile, and sweet Saint Pathrick's Key, in the sweet city of Cork, in one of Martin Konway's steam-packets that thravels 5 knots a-day. Then I was light and gay like a butterfly whose only occupation is ramblin' about in the sunshine from rose to rose, and thought myself as great as ould Cupid Palmerston, though his parquisits was larger than mine, and his sham-pain may be betther than the mountain Jew of Munsther. I was a spring-heeld chap too, and could clear a 5 bar-gate, or a mill-pond, when flyin from a bum or a gager, as easily as I could say thrapstick. I had 15 goolden soverins in my breeches pocket, neatly stiched into my fob; and my wife was not a whole month married, so that av coorse the thraykle-moon, as Lord Byrom sneeringly cauld it, hadn't been quite exhausted; and we had no childher, only one a coming. At present I have 9 small babbies, (which Judy tells me is railly my own,) to support; hard enuff be gogsty I finds it to stop their mouths for they're always bawlin for food like young crows; and my helpmate, though she helps me to ate the mate, I'm sorry to say never helps me to get it: so that we are all like the late ministhry, livin from hand to mouth; and badly off we'd be only that Lord Milbourn sometimes gives my wife a thrifle ov change, for he and she was once acquainted, whin his lordship were in Ireland as Misther Lamb. However, Needs must whin the Ould Boy dhrives; and if I am poorer in pocket than whin I left the butyful city, I'm wondherfooly emprooved in larning; and I can argufy in meataphysics, doxology, theology. kronology, jomethry, and the classicks, and in logicks, kraniology, mythology, asthronomy, fillosophy, jography, et omne quod exit in phy, (inkluding pugilizm,) as well as most of the Stinkomalee jugglers, or cruel Charley Porther, the flogging schoolmasther : ΡΟΔεης κοιρανε τέχνης.----ANACREON. Od. 28. as that wit, Tom Hood, once christened him in Cork. Nothin improves a rale Irishman so much as takin a tower. Shakspeare himself tells us that "Home keeping youths have ever homely wits," and Homer who is thought to have known something of hewman natur makes his haro Ulysses a grate traveller, seeing that there was no other way be which he could acquire that amazin knollidge of men and manners and people which he possessed. For my part, bearin in mind this reflexion, I never had any great likin' for stayin' stuck like a blew-faced monkey in Cork; and to my praydillixshun for thravellin I atthributes much of the larnin, wit, and poethree I possesses. Hence it is that I haz distinkished myself so highly in the litthery world and roved at will inter numerosque chorosque Musarum, atque adytus sacros Heliconis amoeni. bairin away the palm in larnin from Dockther Bloomfield, in poethry from Billy Wordsworth, in wit from Tom. Moore, and in boxin from Tom Spring. What 'ud I be if I had remained at home? Bedad little betther than a barefooted gorsoon, set to dig prayties, or frighten crows from the corn fields with a loud clapper, or usherin' maybe with ould Paddy Fagan the hedge schoolmaster instead of bein' as now hed piper of "The Goose," and principal rither for the "Foreign Quartherly." To be |