action of taking with the hand. (Solom. Deylingii Obs. Sacr." --Vall.) The entire expression is a manifest "corruption of the Hebrew shalam lack, the ordinary salutation of the Jews, and which is used by our Saviour, in the Gospel, to his disciples. The root in Hebrew is shalum, he was perfected, or made perfect; the Irish slan has the same signification."

VI. "The Irish," says Vallencey, "have another salutation at parting, of great antiquity, and not to be explained without the assistance of the oriental languages; it is this, slan leat gan basc gan barn, i. e. health and happiness to you without basc or barn," two words now obsolete in Irish. When basc and barn are imprecated on any individual it is considered a great curse. For the origin of these words we must refer to the oriental tongues; Vallencey gives the following collation :

"Hebrew-Bazack illusio, derisio, ludibrium; buz, contemptio; bazah des

picere.

66

Syriac-Basjna despectio, contemptio; basa, contemnare.

"Arabic-Baskat, prælinm & periculum; baskh in adversa incidit. Al-basky stultus, vecors. (Qui Arabica ignorat.) Barm molestiam & mororem animi inde concepit, bazah vir depressit se, gibbus pectoris, timor.

"Persic-Buran, cutting, beran-dakhten to scatter, beran-gikhten to extirpate, bering torment, berwend, perwend a cut-throat, a murderer."

In addition to the notice already taken of the expression slan leat, we may abserve that it is sometimes exchanged for the kindred form of benediction sith-leat, or si-leat, peace be with you. "This is the Hebrew selati; the burial service of the Jews is thus, "Let his soul be bound in the garden of Eden. Amen, amen, amen.—selati.”

VII. I believe I may venture to follow Vallancey in the egregious Irishism of noticing a frightful curse under the same head with the salutation of friendship. As the Irish, I fear, have too frequently greeted their real friends with maledictions instead of blessings, we may imitate the example of the General, especially as I mean to present you with his own words:

"The most bitter curse of the Irish is croidhe cradhta dhuit, signifying the fluttering of the heart to you. This conveys every idea of the Hebrew chradat, that is, to tremble or flutter as the heart in a fright, or through care and solicitude, or as the ground in an earthquake. (Bates Crit. Hebr.) In Irish Cratha Talmhain is an earthquake: thus is Exodus xix. 18, it is said, the whole mountain (charad) quaked greatly, and in 1 Sam. iv. 13, his heart (charad) was trembling for the ark of God, and in Hosea xi. 10, it is said, the children shall (charad) from the west; they shall (charad) flutter as a bird from Egypt, and as a pidgeon from Assyria. The Versions (says Bates) have none of them hit upon the sense of the passage but the Vulgate.

"The Jews used this word also to denote their fear and awful obedience to the Almighty, as le chradath aleim in trepidationem Dei (Castellus) hence it is the Syrian name of the crocodile, the sight of this devouring animal causing the heart to flutter."* J. D. S.

(To be continued.)

• Vall. Coll. Vol. III. p. 551.

FATHER BUTLER.

I do not know where I would rather direct my solitary walk, on a quiet serene summer's evening, than to the church-yard of our parish. It lies low in a secluded valley; a range of copse-covered hills surrounds it on all sides, except where a lake, the parent of a clear sparkling stream, opens its bosom to the setting-sun, and reflects in its mirror the ivied belfry and picturesque walls and windows of a ruined chapelry. An old crab-tree, gnarled and shivered by time, but still huge in its compass and luxuriant in its branches, spreads its shade over a great part of the cemetery; and from thence the cuckoo loves to repeat its constant call, and the ring-dove to murmur forth its complaint. I often seek the solitariness of this place as congenial to my mood; and, when desirous to look back on time or forward to eternity, my seat is the tombstone, and my bower the ivy, beneath which the

"Rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."

There, looking forth on the broad disk of the setting sun, methought that this was the hour and the place when I might comtemplate with deeper and more tranquil devotion the reposing glories of nature—when my soul going abroad throughout creation, and traversing the universe, came home fraught with the intensity of silent worship to its great Creator.

There, as I often sat, I have enquired what were to me the passions, the pursuits, the turmoils of life? and spurned them as clouds beneath my ascending foot. And the cry of bigotry, the shouts of party, the congratulations of successful policy, the joy-bells of gratified ambition,-what were they to me?-The hum of the beehive, or the busy industry of an emmet's nest, were to me as interesting, in the abstraction of the moment; perhaps more so, for they were not associated with the misery and devastation produced among mankind by the licence of unrestrained passion, and the bitter consequences of a fallen nature.

On a lovely evening in June, 182-, I was taking my usual walk to the church-yard; the balmy air wafted on its scarcely perceptible breeze, the odours of the honey-suckle and the meadow-sweet; the sun was just hanging over the blue and fine peak of Knockmany. What noble breadths of light and shadow diversified the whole scenery-what a resplendent beam of golden light, bursting through the ivy foliage and Gothic tracery of the western window, lit up the interior of the little chapelry! And abroad upon the lake the white mist was rising under the shadow of the impending crag that shaded it from the horizontal rays of the setting sun.The red-breast upon the highest top of the old crab-tree was pouring forth its soft and modulated song-then the distant peeweet of the lapwing came to my ear, as, ascending from the meadow, it circled in graceful evolutions, or shot angularly from its course, emitting from its wings that peculiar sound from which it has its name: the

sand-snipe, too, rising and falling in the clear blue air, uttered, at measured intervals that strange and quavering hum, which is so much in character with lonely places. As I pursued my walk, I overtook a young man whose appearance was not only respectable but genteel. He was dressed in black, his form was tall and slender, his countenance expressive and intelligent, but pale, and shaded as I thought with an air of melancholy: he had a book in his hand in which he occasionally looked, but his pace and his manner appeared to be those of a man whose attention was fixed upon some object the remembrance of which was associated with pain and suffering. He was not reading, but musing. It was when I passed over from a path-way that led from a little triangular field toward the churchyard, that I first perceived him. He was some perches before me when I got under the trees, so that, without any inclination on my part to gratify an improper curiosity, I had an opportunity of witnessing those involuntary motions which inward sorrow, unchecked by the gaze of observation, will frequently occasion. He walked on for some time, until he came to a break in the trees, where a vista opened upon the narrow houses of the dead in the churchyard he then stopped, and stood with the book between his hands which were clasped: he was at this time about ten yards before me, with his side towards the direction in which I stood; I could therefore at that distance, mark the varied shades of feeling as they passed over his countenance. The disk of the setting sun was just sinking behind the mountains. He looked for some time towards the grave-yard, so much in the silent abstraction of sorrow, that I could not help concluding, that some one who had been dear to his heart, now slept within its precincts. He then raised his eyes to heaven, and fixing them on the setting sun, exclaimed in the emotion of the moment, "Here is a prospect from which the man of grief may draw a moral, capable at once of exciting and allaying the severity of his suffering: here is death" said he, pointing involuntarily to the cemetery, "and there is life," he continued, looking towards the sun : "here is despair, there is hope-here is mortality, there is immortality-here is sorrow, there is joy. In that grave on which my eye rests, lies the mortal part of her, on whom this heart was so irrevocably fixed-in that grave sleeps Ellen-Ellen-who would have been; but in yonder sky-behind those palaces of beauty, her spirit, guiltless and innocent- ." He here checked himself, and recoiled like a man who finds his foot on the edge of a precipice. "No, no, no," said he, flinging the book to the ground, and clasping his hands in bitterness of soul, "there is the impassable limitation there is the line drawn, beyond which, neither the charity of the Christian, nor the affection of the heart can go.There has the Almighty said, so far shall my mercy go but no farther there has the dark and stern decree of his unfathomable will interposed; and this heart must contemplate the spirit of her who was young, beautiful and virtuous; of her whose hand fed the hungry mouth, whose lips instructed the young mind, or consoled the helpless in the hour of affliction- of her whose charity was so

" Here he

boundless, whose hope was so strong, whose faithstopped again; but apparently so much distracted by the conflict of his feelings, that he became unconscious of his own motions. He rushed immediately towards the church-yard, leaving the book which in the agitation of his mind he had flung on the ground, behind him. I walked on and lifted it, being determined to present it to him on looking at the title-page, I found it to be a Roman Breviary. I now approached the church-yard, and when I arrived there, he was sitting beside a tomb, apparently absorbed in profound grief. When he rose up he wiped away the tears which were fast falling, and frequently turned his eyes to heaven, like a man who would have addressed a prayer thither but could not. I stood at a distance with the book in my hand, and as soon as he turned round I approached him. When he saw me, he seemed to feel both mortification and embarrassment at my presence; but there was an air of modesty and diffidence in this young man, which prevented him from exhibiting impatience for what a man more conversant in society might have been disposed to consider an indelicate intrusion on the privacy of sorrow. "I believe, Sir, I said, this book which I have just found under the trees, is yours. I followed you with the intention of presenting it, but seeing you under the influence of strong feeling, I forbore to do so until I thought you were suffici ently calm not to be startled by the interruption." "You are very obliging, Sir," he said, "to take such trouble; the book is mine, and I thank you not less for your kindness than for your delicacy." He then, bowing, wished me a good evening, and in a hurried manner walked from the church-yard by a different path from that which led him to it. When he was gone, I went to the monument over which he had poured his sorrows; for I felt, I must confess, an indefinable curiosity to know who it was whom he had deplored so bitterly I read on the tomb-stone the following simple inscription:

This Tomb containeth the Remains of
ELLEN UPTON,

Who died on the 11th of May, 18-,
Aged 19 years;

Also of her Mother
ELIZABETH UPTON,

Who followed her on the 15th of August, 18-,
Aged 63.

"Alas!" thought I, as I ran my eye over the inscriptions," here lie perhaps all that life contained for him of that which constitutes the sweetest and most delightful enjoyments of the heart. Cut off as he is by the conditions of his office from the cultivation and exercise of the tenderer sympathies-deprived of all that fills the parent's eye with joy, and his soul with gratitude-shut out by the force of an ecclesiastical regulation from the sweetest sympathies of life-from the pure emotions, and privileged enjoyments of humanity-repulsed from the hallowed paradise of domestic life, which the sacred characters of father, mother, wife, and child are

permitted to enter;-is it any wonder that he should, concentrated as his affections must be by the nature of his situation, stand over the grave of a mother and a sister, and weep with the violence of a strong man's grief? How clearly can I fancy that sister, perhaps his only one-the beloved companion of his childhood and his youth, equal partaker of his joys and sorrows-pining away, day by day and hour by hour, until the lightness of her foot, the benignity of her smile, or the melody of her voice is heard or seen no more! When the final pang is over, and she lies stretched out in the stillness of death-fair picture of departed beauty, never again to turn the eye of tenderness upon a brother or a parentnever to wipe away with her own feeble hand the hopeless tears from her parent's cheeks; never again to affect the mirth of innocence in the langour of disease, that she might calm the agony of those who feared to lose her for ever; oh, never again to soothe with the strong consolations which, rich in faith, she could, and did give of meetings beyond the grave, where there is neither sorrow nor separation! And while she realized for herself those promises of the gospel that are yea and amen in Christ Jesus, she seemed to "allure to brighter worlds and lead the way." When I contemplate her still warm with the traces of departed life, silent to the wild cry of her mother's grief, calling upon her name-when that brother, perhaps an only one too, raises convulsively to his lips the tender hand that was so dear to him-and sees it fall down in utter lifelessness by her side-when I fancy the father's approach to make his morning enquiry after her, who, in the emphasis of affection was always called 'his' when I see him bring the black ribbon, to have the long grey locks which descended his shoulders, tied as usual by her hands, and when he hears that his flower is cut down, collecting all the Christian within him, and kneeling before the eternal throne, praying to be supported-when I see him struggle with his grief, his lip quiver, his voice become indistinct, and his whole frame shake, until at length, remembering that she was his only and his dearest, the tide of grief bursts forth with a violence which nothing can repress -when I then measure the short period that intervened between May and August, I can fancy the mother's disease to be that of a broken heart- 'she would not be comforted;' her complaint was that of Rachel-she gave way to lamentation and weeping because her child was NOT.

After having brooded over such melancholy images for some time, I turned towards home, as it was now near twilight-but in order to prolong the pleasure of the walk, and diversify the landscape, I took a more circuitous path on my return. I had not, however, advanced far, until I perceived him again a little before me, for he walked very slow he was in conversation with a peasant, but on noticing my approach he left him and walked on more quickly.The peasant proved to be one of my own labourers a very goodhumoured man, named Tom Garrett, whom I noticed once or twice for the neat and clean manner in which he kept himself clothed. "A fine night your honour :" said Tom, touching his hat-“ A fine