will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend-who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan-and veers, like a weathercock, to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows-can never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and more probably retrograde, in all. It is only the man who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker spirit that can advance to eminence in any line. Let us take, by way of illustration, the case of a student. He commences the study of the dead languages; but presently a friend comes, and tells him that he is wasting his time, and that, instead of obsolete words, he had much better employ himself in acquiring new ideas. He changes his plan, and sets to work at the mathematics. Then comes another friend, who asks him, with a grave and sapient face, whether he intends to become a professor in a college; because, if he does not, he is misemploying his time; and that, for the business of life, common mathemathics is quite enough of mathematical science. He throws up his Euclid, and addresses himself to some other study, which in its turn is again relinquished, on some equally wise suggestion: and thus life is spent in changing his plans. You cannot but perceive the folly of this course; and the worse effect of it is, the fixing on your mind a habit of indecision, sufficient of itself to blast the fairest prospects. No-take your course wisely, but firmly: and having taken it, hold upon it with heroic resolution; and the Alps and Pyrenees will sink before you the whole empire of learning will lie at your feet; while those who set out with you, but stopped to change their plans, are yet employed in the very profitable business of changing their plans. Let your motto be Perseverance. Practise upon it, and you will be convinced of its value by the distinguished eminence to which it will conduct you. Wirt's Essays. ILL TEMPER.-Mankind are ignorant enough, both in the mass, about general interests, and individually, about the things which belong to their peace; but of all mortals none perhaps are so awfully self-deluded as the unamiable. They do not, any more than others, sin for the sake of sinning; but the amount of woe caused by their selfish unconsciousness is such as may well make their weakness an equivalent for other men's gravest crimes. There are great diversities of hidingplaces for their consciences-many mansions in the dim prison of discontent; but it may be doubted whether, in the hour when all shall be uncovered to the eternal day, there will be revealed a lower deep than the hell which they have made. They perhaps are the only order of evil ones who suffer hell without seeing and knowing that it is hell. But they are under a heavier curse even than this; they inflict torments, second only to their own, with an unconsciousness almost worthy of spirits of light. While they complacently conclude themselves the victims of others, or pronounce that they are too singular, or too refined, for common appreciation, they are putting in motion an enginery of torture whose aspect will one day blast their minds' sight. The dumb groans of their victims will sooner or later return upon their ears from the heights of the heaven to which the sorrows of men daily ascend. The spirit sinks under the prospect of the retribution of the unamiable; if there be indeed an eternal record an impress on some one or other human spirit of every chilling frown, of every querulous tone, of every bitter jest, of every insulting word-of all abuses of that tremendous power which mind has over mind. The throbbing pulses, the quivering nerves, the wrung hearts, that surround the unamiable-what "a cloud of witnesses" is here! and what plea shall avail against them? The terror of innocents who should know no fear-the vindictive emotions of dependents who dare not complain-the faintness of heart of life-long companions-the anguish of those who love the unholy exultation of those who hate what an array of judges is here! and where can an appeal be lodged against their sentence? Is pride of singularity a rational plea? Is super-refinement, or circumstance from God, or uncongeniality in man, a sufficient ground of appeal, when the refinement of one is a grace granted for the luxury of all, when circumstance is given to be conquered, and uncongeniality is appointed for discipline? The sensualist has brutified the seraphic nature with which he was endowed-the depredator has intercepted the rewards of toil, marred the image of justice, and dimmed the lustre of faith in men's minds -the imperial tyrant has invoked a whirlwind to lay waste, for an hour of God's eternal year, some region of society. But the unamiable the domestic torturer has heaped wrong on wrong and woe on woe, through the whole portion of time that was given him, until it would be rash to say that there are any others more guilty than he. If there be hope or solace for the domestic torturer, it is that there may have been tempers about him the opposite of his own. It is matter of humiliating gratitude that there were some which he could not ruin, and that he was the medium of discipline by which they were exercised in forbearance, in divine forgiveness and love. If there be solace in such an occasional result, let it be made the most of by those who need it; for it is the only possible alleviation to their remorse. Let them accept it as the free gift of a mercy which they have insulted, and a longsuffering which they have defied. From Deerbrook, a Tale, by Harriet Martineau. Wher SLANDER AND VINDICATION.-Vindication in some cases partakes of the same qualities that Homer ascribes to prayer. Slander, "strong, and sound of wing, flies through the world, afflicting men;" but Vindication, lame, wrinkled, and imbecile, for ever seeking its object, and never obtaining it, follows after, only to make the person in whose behalf it is employed more completely the scorn of mankind. The charge against him is heard by thousands, the vindication by few. ever Vindication comes, is not the first thing it tells of the unhappy subject of it, that his character has been tarnished, his integrity suspected that base motives and vile actions have been imputed to him that he has been scoffed at by some, reviled by others, and looked at askance by all? Yes; the worst thing I would wish to my worst enemy is, that his character should be the subject of vindication. And what is the well-known disposition of mankind in this particular? All love the scandal. It constitutes a tale that seizes upon the curiosity of our species; it has something deep and obscure, and mysterious in it; it has been whispered from man to man, and communicated by winks, and nods, and shrugs, the shaking of the head, and the speaking motion of the finger. But Vindication is poor, and dry, and cold, and repulsive. rests in detections and distinctions, explanations to be given to the meaning of a hundred phrases, and the setting right whatever belongs to the circumstances of time and place. What bystander will bend himself to the drudgery of thoroughly appreciating it? Add to which, that all men are endowed with the levelling principle, as with an instinct. Scandal includes in it, as an element, that change of fortune which is required by the critic from the writer of an epic poem or a tragedy. The person respecting whom a scandal is propagated is of sufficient importance, at least in the eyes of the propagator and the listener, to be made a subject for censure. He is found, or he is erected into, an adequate centre of attack; he is first set up as a statue to be gazed at, that he may afterwards be thrown down and broken to pieces, crumbled into dust, and made the prey of all the winds of heaven. Godwin's Mandeville. It The weather is not a safe topic of discourse; your company may be hippish: nor is health; your associate may be a hypochondriac: nor is money; you may be suspected as a borrower.-Zimmerman. When all is done, human life is at the best but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over. Sir W. Temple. Time runs on, and when youth and beauty vanish, a fine lady who had never entertained a thought into which an admirer did not enter, finds in herself a lamentable void. The poorest of all family goods are indolent females. If a wife knows nothing of domestic duties beyond the parlour or the boudoir, she is a dangerous partner in these times of pecuniary uncertainty. Friendship, love, and piety, ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence-to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought— many more to be spoken. Printed and published every Saturday by GUNN and CAMERON, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.Agents:-R. GROOMBRIDGE, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; SIMMS and DINHAM, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. DAVIES, North John Street, Liverpool; J. DRAKE, Birmingham; SLOCOMBE & SIMMS, Leeds; FRASER and CRAWFORD, George Street, Edinburgh; and DAVID ROBERTSON, Trongate, Glasgow. THE subject of our prefixed illustration is one of no small interest, whether considered as a fine example for Irelandof the domestic architecture of the reign of James I, or as an historical memorial of the fortunes of the illustrious family whose name it bears--the noble house of Charlemont, of which it was the original residence. It is situated near the village of the same name, in the parish of Donaghmore, barony of Dungannon, and about three miles west of Dungannon, the county town. Castle-Caulfield owes its erection to Sir Toby Caulfield, afterwards Lord Charlemont-a distinguished English soldier who had fought in Spain and the Low Countries in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and commanded a company of one hundred and fifty men in Ireland in the war with O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, at the close of her reign. For these services he was rewarded by the Queen with a grant of part of Tyrone's estate, and other lands in the province of Ulster; and on King James's accession to the British crown, was honoured with knighthood, and made governor of the fort of Charlemont, and of the counties of Tyrone and Armagh. At the plantation of Ulster he received further grants of lands, and among them 1000 acres called Ballydonnelly, or O'Donnelly's town, in the barony of Dungannon, on which, in 1614, he commenced the erection of the mansion subsequently called Castle-Caulfield. This mansion is described by Pynnar in his Survey of Ulster in 1618-19, in the following words : was certified by Sir Josias Bodley, a fair house or castle, the front whereof is eighty feet in length and twenty-eight feet in breadth from outside to outside, two cross ends fifty feet in length and twenty-eight feet in breadth: the walls are five feet thick at the bottom, and four at the top, very good cellars under ground, and all the windows are of hewn stone. Between the two cross ends there goeth a wall, which is eighteen feet high, and maketh a small court within the building. This work at this time is but thirteen feet high, and a number of men at work for the sudden finishing of it. There is also a strong bridge over the river, which is of lime and stone, with strong buttresses for the supporting of it. And to this is joined a good water-mill for corn, all built of lime and stone. This is at this time the fairest building I have seen. Near unto this Bawne there is built a town, in which there is fifteen English families, who are able to make twenty men with arms.' The ruins of this celebrated mansion seem to justify the opinion expressed by Pynnar, that it was the fairest building he had seen, that is, in the counties of the plantation, for there are no existing remains of any house erected by the English or Scottish undertakers equal to it in architectural style. It received, however, from the second Lord Charlemont, the addition of a large gate-house with towers, and also of a strong keep or donjon. From the ancient maps of Ulster of Queen Elizabeth's time, "Sir Toby Caulfield hath one thousand acres called Bally-preserved in the State Paper Office, Castle-Caulfield appears donnell [recte Ballydonnelly], whereunto is added beside what to have been erected on the site of a more ancient castle or fort, called Fort O'Donallie, from the chief of the ancient Irish family of O'Donghaile or O'Donnelly, whose residence it was, previously to the confiscation of the northern counties; and the small lake in its vicinity was called Lough O'Donallie. This family of O'Donnelly were a distinguished branch of the Kinel-Owen, or northern Hy-Niall race, of which the O'Neills were the chiefs in the sixteenth century; and it was by one of the former that the celebrated Shane or John O'Neill, surnamed the proud, and who also bore the cognomen of Donghailach, or the Donnellian, was fostered, as appears from the following entry in the Annals of the Four Masters, at the year 1531: "Ballydonnelly was assaulted by Niall Oge, the son of Art, who was the son of Con O'Neill. He demolished the castle, and having made a prisoner of the son of O'Neill, who was the foster-son of O'Donnelly, he carried him off, together with several horses and the other spoils of the place." We have felt it necessary to state the preceding facts relative to the ancient history of Ballydonnelly, or Castle-Caulfield, as it is now denominated, because an error of Pynnar's, in writing the ancient name as Ballydonnell. not Ballydonnelly, as it should have been-has been copied by Lodge, Archdall, and all subsequent writers; some of whom have fallen into a still more serious mistake, by translating the name as "the town of O'Donnell," thus attributing the ancient possession of the locality to a family to whom it never belonged. That Ballydonnelly was truly, as we have stated, the ancient name of the place, and that it was the patrimonial residence of the chief of that ancient family, previously to the plantation of Ulster, must be sufficiently indicated by the authorities we have already adduced; but if any doubt on this fact could exist, it would be removed by the following passage in an unpublished Irish MS. Journal of the Rebellion of 1641, in our own possession, from which it appears that, as usual with the representatives of the dispossessed Irish families on the breaking out of that unhappy conflict, the chief of the O'Donnellys seized upon the Castle-Caulfield mansion as of right his The Lord Charlemont, with his family, was at this time absent from his home in command of the garrison of Charlemont, and it was not his fate ever to see it afterwards; he was treacherously captured in his fortress about the same period by the cruel Sir Phelim O'Neill, and was barbarously murdered while under his protection, if not, as seems the fact, by his direction, on the 1st of March following. Nor was this costly and fairest house of its kind in "the north" ever after inhabited by any of his family; it was burned in those unhappy "troubles," and left the melancholy, though picturesque memorial of sad events which we now see it. THE LAKE OF THE LOVERS, A LEGEND OF LEITRIM. P. How many lovely spots in this our beautiful country are never embraced within those pilgrimages after the picturesque, which numbers periodically undertake, rather to see what is known to many, and therefore should be so to them, than to visit nature, for her own sweet sake, in her more devious and undistinguished haunts! For my part, I am well pleased that the case stands thus. I love to think that I am treading upon ground unsullied by the footsteps of the now numerous tribe of mere professional peripatetics-that my eyes are wandering over scenery, the freshness of which has been impaired by no transfer to the portfolio of the artist or the tablets of the poetaster that, save the scattered rustic residents, there is no human link to connect its memorials with the days of old, and, save their traditionary legends, no story to tell of its fortunes in ancient times. The sentiment is no doubt selfish as wel as anti-utilitarian; but then I must add that it is only occasional, and will so far be pardoned by all who know how delightful it is to take refuge in the indulgent twilight of tradition from the rugged realities of recorded story. At all events, a rambler in any of our old, and especially mountainous tracts, will rarely lack abundant aliment for his thus modified sense of beauty, sublimity, or antiquarian fascination; and scenes have unexpectedly opened upon me in the solitudes of the hills and lakes of some almost untrodden and altogether unwritten districts, that have had more power to stir my spirit than the lauded and typographed, the versified and pictured magnificence of Killarney or of Cumberland, of Glendalough or of Lomond. It may have been perverseness of taste, or the fitness of mood, or the influence of circumstance, but I have been filled with a feeling of the beautiful when wandering among noteless and almost nameless localities to which I have been a stranger, when standing amid the most boasted beauties with the appliances of hand-book and of guide, with appetite prepared, and sensibilities on the alert. It is I suppose partly because the power of beauty being relative, a high pitch of expectancy requires a proportionate augmentation of excellence, and partly because the tincture of contrariety in our nature ever inclines us to enact the perverse critic, when called on to be the implicit votary. This in common with most others I have often felt, but rarely more so than during a casual residence some short time since among the little celebrated, and therefore perhaps a little more charming, mountain scenery of the county, which either has been, or might be, called Leitrim of the Lakes; for a tract more pleasantly diversified with well-set sheets of water, it would I think be difficult to name. Almost every hill you top has its still and solitary tarn, and almost every amphitheatre you enter, encompasses its wild and secluded lake-not seldom bearing on its placid bosom some little islet, linked with the generations past, by monastic or castellated ruins, as its seclusion or its strength may have invited the world-wearied anchorite to contemplation, or the predatory chieftain to defence. On such a remote and lonely spot I lately chanced to alight, in the course of a long summer day's ramble among the heights and hollows of that lofty range which for a considerable space abuts upon the borders of Sligo and Roscommon. The ground was previously unknown to me, and with all the zest which novelty and indefiniteness can impart, I started staff in hand with the early sun, and ere the mists had melted from the purple heather of their cloud-like summits, was drawing pure and balmy breath within the lonely magnificence of the hills. About noon, as I was casting about for some preeminently happy spot to fling my length for an hour or two's repose, I reached the crest of a long gradual ascent that had been some time tempting me to look what lay beyond; and surely enough I found beauty sufficient to dissolve my weariness, had it been tenfold multiplied, and to allay my pulse, had it throbbed with the vehemence of fever. An oblong valley girdled a lovely lake on every side; here with precipitous impending cliffs, and there with grassy slopes of freshest emerald that seemed to woo the dimpling waters to lave their loving margins, and, as if moved with a like impulse, the little wavelets met the call with the gentle dalliance of their ebb and flow. A small wooded island, with its fringe of willows trailing in the water, stood about a furlong from the hither side, and in the centre of its tangled brake, my elevation enabled me to descry what I may call the remnants of a ruin—for so far had it gone in its decay-here green, there grey, as the moss, the ivy, or the pallid stains of time, had happened to prevail. A wild duck, with its half-fledged clutch, floated fearless from its sedgy shore. More remote, a fishing heron stood motionless on a stone, intent on its expected prey; and the only other animated feature in the quiet scene was a fisherman who had just moored his little boat, and having settled his tackle, was slinging his basket on his arm and turning upward in the direction where I lay. I watched the old man toiling up the steep, and as he drew nigh, hailed him, as I could not suffer him to pass without learning at least the name, if it had one, of this miniature Amhara. He readily complied, and placing his fish-basket on the ground, seated himself beside it, not unwilling to recover his breath and recruit his scanty stock of strength almost expended in the ascent. "We call it," said he in answer to my query, "the Lake of the Ruin, or sometimes, to such as know the story, the Lake of the Lovers, after the two over whom the tombstone is placed inside yon mouldering walls. It is an old story. My grandfather told me, when a child, that he minded his grandfather telling it to him, and for anything he could say, it might have come down much farther. Had I time, I'd be proud to tell it to your honour, who seems a stranger in these parts, for it's not over long; but I have to go to the Hall, and that's five long miles off, with my fish for dinner, and little time you'll say I have to spare, though it be down hill nearly all the way." It would have been too bad to allow such a well-met chronicler to pass unpumped, and, putting more faith in the attractions of my pocket than of my person, I produced on the instant the youth had much to do both with legs and lungs to reach her in time to preserve her from the rough respects of his ungallant escort. Beautiful indignation lightened from the dark eyes and sat on the pouting lip of Norah M'Diarmod for it was the chieftain's daughter—as she turned disdainfully towards him. my luncheon-case and flask, and handing him a handsome dogs espied it, and, recking little of the spiritual in its appearhalf of the contents of the former, made pretty sure of his ance, bounded after it in pursuit. With a slight scream that company for a time, by keeping the latter in my own posses-proclaimed it feminine as well as human, the figure fled, and sion till I got him regularly launched in the story, when, to quicken at once his recollection and his elocution, I treated him to an inspiring draught. When he had told his tale, he left me with many thanks for the refection; and I descending to his boat, entered it, and with the aid of a broken oar contrived to scull myself over to the island, the scene of the final fortunes of Connor O'Rourke and Norah M'Diarmod, the faithful-hearted but evil-fated pair who were in some sort perpetuated in its name. There, in sooth, within the crumbled walls, was the gravestone which covered the dust of him the brave and her the beautiful; and seating myself on the fragment of a sculptured capital, that showed how elaborately reared the ruined edifice had been, I bethought me how poorly man's existence shows even beside the work of his own hands, and endeavoured for a time to make my thoughts run parallel with the history of this once-venerated but now forsaken, and, save by a few, forgotten structure; but finding myself fail in the attempt, settled my retrospect on that brief period wherein it was identified with the two departed lovers whose story I had just heard, and which, as I sat by their lowly sepulchre, I again repeated to myself. "Is it the bravery of an O'Rourke to hunt a woman with his dogs? Young chief, you stand upon the ground of M'Diarmod, and your name from the lips of her"-she stopped, for she had time to glance again upon his features, and had no longer heart to upbraid one who owned a countenance so handsome and so gallant, so eloquent of embarrassment as well as admiration. Her tone of asperity and wounded pride declined into a murmur of acquiescence as she hearkened to the apologies and de precations of the youth, whose gallantry and feats had so often rung in her ears, though his person she had but casually seen, and his voice she had never before heard. The case stood similar with Connor. He had often listened to the praises of Norah's beauty; he had occasionally caught distant glimpses of her graceful figure; and the present sight, or after recollection, often mitigated his feelings to her hostile clan, and, to his advantage, the rugged old chief was generally associated with the lovely dark-eyed girl who was his only child. Such being their respective feelings, what could be the regenerous children of nature, with hearts fraught with the unhacknied feelings of youth and inexperience: they had drunk in sentiment with the sublimities of their mountain homes, and were fitted for higher things than the vulgar interchange of animosity and contempt. Of this they soon were conscious, and they did not separate until the stars began to burn above them, and not even then, before they had made arrangements for at least another-one more secret interview. The islet possessed a beautiful fitness for their trysting place, as being accessible from either side, and little obnoxious to observation; and many a moonlight meeting-for the one was inevitably multiplied-had these children of hostile fathers, perchance on the very spot on which my eyes now rested, and the unbroken stillness around had echoed to their gladsome greetings or their faltering farewells. Neither dared to divulge an intercourse that would have stirred to frenzy the treasured rancour of their respective parents, each of whom would doubtless have preferred a connexion with a blackamoor—if such were then in circulation to their doing such grievous despite to that ancient feud which as an heirloom had been transmitted from ancestors whose very names they scarcely knew. M'Diarmod the Dark-faced was at best but a gentle tiger even to his only child; and though his stern cast-iron countenance would now and then relax beneath her artless blandishments, yet even with the lovely vision at his side, he would often grimly deplore that she had not been a son, to uphold the name and inherit the headship of the clan, which on his demise would probably pass from its lineal course; and when he heard of the bold bearing of the heir of O'Rourke, he thought he read therein the downfall of the M'Diarmods when he their chief was gone. This lake, as my informant told me, once formed a part of the boundary between the possessions of O'Rourke the Lefthanded and M'Diarmod the Dark-faced, as they were respectively distinguished, two small rival chiefs, petty in property but pre-eminent in passion, to whom a most magnificent mu-sult of their romantic rencounter? They were both young, tual hatred had been from generations back "bequeathed from bleeding sire to son"-a legacy constantly swelled by accruing outrages, for their paramount pursuits were plotting each other's detriment or destruction, planning or parrying plundering inroads, inflicting or avenging injuries by open violence or secret subtlety, as seemed more likely to promote their purposes. At the name of an O'Rourke, M'Diarmod would clutch his battle-axe, and brandish it as if one of the detested clan were within its sweep: and his rival, nothing behind in hatred, would make the air echo to his deep-drawn imprecation on M'Diarmod and all his abominated breed when any thing like an opportunity was afforded him. Their retainers of course shared the same spirit of mutual abhorrence, exaggerated indeed, if that were possible, by their more frequent exposure to loss in cattle and in crops, for, as is wont to be the case, the cottage was incontinently ravaged when the stronghold was prudentially respected. O'Rourke had a son, an only one, who promised to sustain or even raise the reputation of the clan, for the youth knew not what it was to blench before flesh and blood-his feet were ever foremost in the wolf-hunt or the foray, and in agility, in valour, or in vigour, none within the compass of a long day's travel could stand in comparison with young Connor O'Rourke. Detestation of the M'Diarmods had been studiously instilled from infancy, of course; but although the youth's cheek would flush and his heart beat high when any perilous adventure was the theme, yet, so far at least, it sprang more from the love of prowess and applause than from the deadly hostility that thrilled in the pulses of his father and his followers. In the necessary intervals of forbearance, as in seed-time, harvest, or other brief breathing-spaces, he would follow the somewhat analogous and bracing pleasures of the chase; and often would the wolf or the stag-for shaggy forests then clothed these bare and desert hills-fall before his spear or his dogs, as he fleetly urged the sport afoot. It chanced one evening that in the ardour of pursuit he had followed a tough, long-winded stag into the dangerous territory of M'Diarmod. The chase had taken to the water of the lake, and he with his dogs had plunged in after in the hope of heading it; but having failed in this, and in the hot flush of a hunter's blood scorning to turn back, he pressed it till brought down within a few spearcasts of the M'Diarmod's dwelling. Proud of having killed his venison under the very nose of the latter, he turned home-shore for the same spot. Surprised, he crouched among the ward with rapid steps; for, the fire of the chase abated, he felt how fatal would be the discovery of his presence, and was thinking with complacency upon the wrath of the old chief on hearing of the contemptuous feat, when his eye was arrested by a white figure moving slowly in the shimmering mists of nightfall by the margin of the lake. Though insensible to the fear of what was carnal and of the earth, he was very far from being so to what savoured of the supernatural, and, with a slight ejaculation half of surprise and half of prayer, he was about changing his course to give it a wider berth, when his With such ill-smothered feelings of discontent he could not but in some measure repulse the filial regards of Norah, and thus the confiding submission that would have sprung to meet the endearments of his love, was gradually refused to the inconsistencies of his caprice; and the maiden in her intercourse with her proscribed lover rarely thought of her father, except as one from whom it should be diligently concealed. But unfortunately this was not to be. One of the night marauders of his clan chanced in an evil hour to see Connor O'Rourke guiding his coracle to the island, and at the same time a cloaked female push cautiously from the opposite fern till their landing and joyous greeting put all doubt of their friendly understanding to flight; and then, thinking only of revenge or ransom, the unsentimental scoundrel hurried round the lake to M'Diarmod, and informed him that the son of his mortal foe was within his reach. The old man leaped from his couch of rushes at the thrilling news, and, standing on his threshold, uttered a low gathering-cry, which speedily brought a dozen of his more immediate retainers to his presence. As he passed his daughter's apartment, he for the first time asked himself who can the woman be? and at the same moment almost casually glanced at Norah's chamber, to see that all there was quiet for the night. A shudder of vague terror ran through his sturdy frame as his eye fell on the low open window. He thrust in his head, but no sleeper drew breath within; he re-entered the house and called aloud upon his daughter, but the echo of her name was the only answer. A kern coming up put an end to the search, by telling that he had seen his young mistress walking down to the water's edge about an hour before, but that, as she had been in the habit of doing so by night for some time past, he had thought but little of it. The odious truth was now revealed, and, trembling with the sudden gust of fury, the old chief with difficulty rushed to the lake, and, filling a couple of boats with his men, told them to pull for the honour of their name and for the head of the O'Rourke's first-born. Her During this stormy prelude to a bloody drama, the doomed but unconscious Connor was sitting secure within the dilapidated chapel by the side of her whom he had won. quickened ear first caught the dip of an oar, and she told her lover; but he said it was the moaning of the night-breeze through the willows, or the ripple of the water among the stones, and went on with his gentle dalliance. A few minutes, however, and the shock of the keels upon the ground, the tread of many feet, and the no longer suppressed cries of the M'Diarmods, warned him to stand on his defence; and as he sprang from his seat to meet the call, the soft illumination of love was changed with fearful suddenness into the baleful fire of fierce hostility. "My Norah, leave me; you may by chance be rudely handled in the scuffle." The terrified but faithful girl fell upon his breast. "Connor, your fate is mine; hasten to your boat, if it be not yet too late." An iron-shod hunting pole was his only weapon; and using it with his right arm, while Norah hung upon his left, he sprang without further parley through an aperture in the wall, and made for the water. But his assailants were upon him, the M'Diarmod himself with upraised battle-axe at their head. "Spare my father," faltered Norah; and Connor, with a mercifully directed stroke, only dashed the weapon from the old man's hand, and then, clearing a passage with a vigorous sweep, accompanied with the well-known charging cry, before which they had so often quailed, bounded through it to the water's brink. An instant, and with her who was now more than his second self, he was once more in his little boat; but, alas! it was aground, and so quickly fell the blows against him, that he dare not adventure to shove it off. Letting Norah slip from his hold, she sank backwards to the bottom of the boat; and then, with both arms free, he redoubled his efforts, and after a short but furious struggle succeeded in getting the little skiff afloat. Maddened at the sight, the old chief rushed breast-deep into the water; but his right arm had been disabled by a casual blow, and his disheartened followers feared, under the circumstances, to come within range of that well-wielded club. But a crafty one among them had already seized on a safer and surer plan. He had clambered up an adjacent tree, armed with a heavy stone, and now stood on one of the branches above the devoted boat, and summoned him to yield, if he would not perish. The young chief's renewed exertions were his only answer. "Let him escape, and your head shall pay for it," shouted the infuriated father. The fellow hesitated. "My young mistress?" "There are enough here to save her, if I will it. Down with the stone, or by the blood He needed not to finish the sentence, for down at the word it came, striking helpless the youth's right arm, and shivering the frail timber of the boat, which filled at once, and all went down. For an instant an arm re-appeared, feebly beating the water in vain-it was the young chief's broken one: the other held his Norah in its embrace, as was seen by her white dress flaunting for a few moments on and above the troubled surface. The lake at this point was deep, and though there was a rush of the M'Diarmods towards it, yet in their confusion they were but awkward aids, and the fluttering ensign that marked the fatal spot had sunk before they reached it. The strength of Connor, disabled as he was by his broken limb, and trammelled by her from whom even the final struggle could not dissever him, had failed; and with her he loved locked in his last embrace, they were after a time recovered from the water, and laid side by side upon the bank, in all their touching, though, alas, lifeless beauty! Remorse reached the rugged hearts even of those who had so ruthlessly dealt by them; and as they looked on their goodly forms, thus cold and senseless by a common fate, the rudest felt that it would be an impious and unpardonable deed to do violence to their memory, by the separation of that union which death itself had sanctified. Thus were they laid in one grave; and, strange as it may appear, their fathers, crushed and subdued, exhausted even of resentment by the overwhelming stroke for nothing can quell the stubborn spirit like the extremity of sorrow-crossed their arms in amity over their remains, and grief wrought the reconciliation which even centuries of time, that great pacificator, had failed to do. The westering sun now warning me that the day was on the wane, I gave but another look to the time-worn tombstone, another sigh to the early doom of those whom it enclosed, and then, with a feeling of regret, again left the little island to its still, unshared, and pensive loneliness. ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE-No. IV. THE composition which we have selected as our fourth specimen of the ancient literature of Ireland, is a poem, more remarkable, perhaps, for its antiquity and historical interest, than for its poetic merits, though we do not think it altogether deficient in those. It is ascribed, apparently with truth, to the celebrated poet Mac Liag, the secretary of the renowned monarch Brian Boru, who, as our readers are aware, fell at the battle of Clontarf in 1014; and the subject of it is a lamentation for the fallen condition of Kincora, the palace of that monarch, consequent on his death. The decease of Mac Liag, whose proper name was Muircheartach, is thus recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters, at the year 1015: "Mac Liag, i. e. Muirkeartach, son of Conkeartach, at this time laureate of Ireland, died." A great number of his productions are still in existence; but none of them have obtained a popularity so widely extended as the poem before us. Of the palace of Kincora, which was situated on the banks of the Shannon, near Killaloe, there are at present no vestiges. LAMENTATION OF MAC LIAG FOR KINCORA. Oh, where, Kincora! is Brian the Great? Oh, where, Kincora! are thy valorous lords? And where is Donogh, King Brian's worthy son? And where are the chiefs with whom Brian went forth, Oh, where is Duvlann of the Swiftfooted Steeds? And where is that youth of majestic height, Me, oh, Kincora ! Ccolg n-or, of the swords of gold, i. e. of the gold-hilted swords. |