angels, being struck with the beauty of the daughters of earth, descended to the material world, and forfeited their right to inhabit heaven again.

The poem thus opens:

'Twas when the world was in its prime,
When the fresh stars had just begun
Their race of glory, and young Time
Told his first birthdays by the sun;
When in the light of nature's dawn,
Rejoicing men and angels met,
On the high hill and sunny lawn,
Ere sorrow came, or sin had drawn
"Twixt man and heaven her curtain yet.

One evening in that time of bloom,
On a hill's side, where hung the ray
Of sunset, sleeping in perfume,

Three noble youths conversing lay;
And as they look'd, from time to time,

To the far sky, where Daylight furl'd
His radiant wing, their brows sublime
Bespoke them of that distant world;
Creatures of light, such as still play,
Like motes in sunshine, round the Lord;
And through their infinite array,
Transmit each moment, night and day,
The echo of His luminous word.

CAPTAIN ROCK.

At the time when the Catholic Association was beginning to attract attention, when the eloquence of O'Connell, Shiel, and other champions of religious freedom, was awakening mankind to a sense of the fact that misgovernment was the real cause of Irish discontent, Moore produced his memorable

"Captain Rock." Under this name the writer presented a forcible picture of the destructive career which misrule had run in Ireland. Taking Captain Rock" as the type of that spirit of insubordination which continued oppression naturally generates, Moore drew, with a powerful pen, a life-like representation of the strong feelings which the conduct of England towards this country had caused to be so rife amongst our people. The volume is written in a style which proved at once the command with which Moore could wield his pen in prose as well as poetry. Humour and pathos are exquisitely combined, and all the varied powers of a mind which could range over every topic are lavishly displayed. By the passing of the Emancipation and Disestablishment Acts the interest of the volume has partly ceased, but there is much of "Captain Rock" which is well worthy of being preserved. The volume contains in a small space a striking narrative of the sufferings which the Catholics of Ireland endured for

ages. The following beautiful passage will afford an illustration of the style of the work. The author alludes to the hopes which '82 kindled-hopes which were not allowed to be realized, because that revolution, great as it was, retained the fatal error of still leaving in Catholic inferiority a wound to fester, which eventually led to the ruinous events with which the eighteenth century closed :

"I was in my twentieth year at that memorable period, when the light that had arisen in America found its way to the shores of Ireland-when the Irish Parliament, in the very grave of its corruption, for the first time heard the sacred voice of

Liberty, saying, 'Come forth;' and the same warning voice said to England, 'Loose him, and let him go.'

"Powerful as England had always been in oppressing, she was now too weak to protect us, when menaced with invasion by France; and the Volunteers of Ireland took the defence of our coasts upon themselves. From being the defenders of their country's shores, they soon rose to be the asserters of her rights; and with swords in their hands and the voice of Grattan sounding in their van-'my lightning thou, and thou my thunder'achieved that bloodless conquest over the policy of England, whose results were Freedom to our Trade and Independence to our Parliament.

"And here as a free confession of weakness constitutes the chief charm and use of biographyI will candidly own that the dawn of prosperity and concord, which I now saw breaking over the fortunes of my country, so dazzled and deceived my youthful eyes, and so unsettled every hereditary notion of what I owed to my name and family, that shall I confess it?-I even hailed with pleasure the prospects of peace and freedom that seemed opening around me ; nay, was ready, in the boyish enthusiasm of the moment, to sacrifice all my own personal interest in all future riots and rebellions, to the one bright, seducing object of my country's liberty and repose.

"This, I own, was weakness-but it was a weakness plus fort que moi. I ought to have learned better from the example of my revered father, who, too proud and shrewd to cheat himself with hope, had resolved to make the best of his only inheri

tance, despair. I might have learned better, too, even from the example of our rulers-who not only have never indulged in any castle-building for Ireland themselves, but have done their best to dispel, as soon as formed, the bright dreams into the future' of others. But I was young and enthusiastic, and this must be my excuse.

"When I contemplated such a man as the venerable Charlemont, whose nobility was to the people like a fort over a valley-elevated above them solely for their defence; who introduced the polish of the courtier into the camp of the freeman, and served his country with all that pure Platonic devotion which a true knight in the times of chivalry proffered to his mistress ;-when I listened to the eloquence of Grattan, the very music of freedom-her first, fresh matin song, after a long night of slavery, degradation, and sorrow ;-when I saw the bright offerings which he brought to the shrine of his country, wisdom, genius, courage, and patience, invigorated and embellished by all those social and domestic virtues, without which the loftiest talents stand isolated in the moral waste around them, like the pillars of Palmyra towering in a wilderness ;-when I reflected on all this, it not only disheartened me for the mission of discord which I had undertaken, but made me secretly hope that it might be rendered unnecessary; and that a country, which could produce such men and achieve such a revolution, might yet-in spite of the joint efforts of the Government and my family -take her rank in the scale of nations and be happy.

My father, however, who saw the momentary

!

dazzle by which I was affected, soon drew me out of this false light of hope in which I lay basking, and set the truth before me in a way but too convincing and ominous.

"Be not deceived, boy,' he would say, 'by the fallacious appearances before you. Eminently great and good as is the man to whom Ireland owes this short era of glory, and long as his name will live among her most cherished recollections, yet is all that he hath now done but a baseless vision of the moment-like one of those structures raised by the Genii of fable, to show the power of the spirit that called it up, and vanish!'

"Our work, believe me, will last longer than his. We have a power on our side that "will not willingly let us die ;" and, long after Grattan shall have disappeared from earth-like that arrow shot into the clouds by Acestes-effecting nothing, but leaving a long train of light behind him, the family of the ROCKS will continue to flourish in all their native glory, upheld by the ever-watchful care of the legislature, and fostered by that 'nursing mother of liberty, the Church.'

"Let me draw aside for a moment the curtain that hangs between us and reality, and show you what are the actual features of the country, in this hour of national jubilee and triumph :

"A Parliament, emancipated indeed from Poyning's law, but rotten to the heart with long habits of corruption, and ready to fall at the first touch of the tempter-a conspiracy against the very existence of this Parliament, meditated even now in the birth-hour of her independence, and only reserved, like Meleager's billet, till the fit moment of her