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THE OLD BRIDGE OF MILTOWN, COUNTY OF DUBLIN. WE have aiready taken occasion more than once to express our admiration of the beautiful and varied scenery which surrounds our city on all sides, and which presents such an endless variety in its general character and individual features as no other city that we are acquainted with in the empire possesses in any thing like an equal degree. Other cities may have scenery in their immediate vicinity of some one or two classes of higher beauty or grandeur than we can boast of; but it is the proud distinction of our metropolis that there is no class of scenery whatsoever of which its citizens have not the most characteristic examples within their reach of enjoyment by a walk or drive of an hour or two; and yet, strange to say, they are not enjoyed or even appreciated. Some suburb of fashionable resort is indeed visited by them, but not on account of any picturesque beauty it may possess, but simply because it is fashionable, and allows us to get into a crowd as our delightful Musard concerts are attended by the multitude less for the music than to see and be seen, and where we too often show our want of good taste by being listless or silent when we ought to applaud, and express loudly our approbation at some capricious extravagance of the performer that we ought to condemn. The truth is, that in every thing appertaining to taste we are as yet like children, and have very much to learn before we can emancipate ourselves from the trammels of vulgar fashion, and become qualified to enjoy those pure and refined pleasures

consequent upon a just perception of the beautiful in art and nature. Till this power is acquired, our green pastoral vallies, our rocky cliffs, mountain glens, and shining rivers, as well as our exhibitions of the Fine Arts, and that pure portion of our literature which disdains to pander to the prejudices of sect or party, must remain less appreciated at home than abroad, and be less known to ourselves than to strangers who visit us, and who in this respect are often infinitely our superiors. It is no fault of ours, however, that we are thus defective in the cultivation of those higher qualities of mind which would so much conduce to our happiness; the causes which have produced such a result are sufficiently obvious to every reflecting mind, and do not require that we should name or more distinetly allude to them. But we have reason to be inspired with cheerful hope that they will not very long continue in operation. Temperance and education are making giant strides amongst us; and when we look at our various institutions for the promotion of science, art, and mechanics, all in active operation, and aided by the growth of a national literature, we can scarcely hesitate to feel assured that the arts of civilized life are taking a firm root in our country, and will be followed by their attendant blessings.

But it may be asked, What have these remarks to do with Miltown Bridge, the subject of our prefixed woodcut? Our answer is, that in presenting our readers with one of the

innumerable picturesque scenes which are found along the courses of our three rivers, the Liffey, the Dodder, and the Tolka, all of which abound in features of the most beautiful pastoral landscapes, we have naturally been led into such a train of thought by the fact that we hold their charms in little esteem, and that few amongst us have the taste to appreciate their beauties, and the consequent desire to enjoy them. The Liffey may perhaps be known to a certain extent to many of our Dublin readers, but we greatly doubt that the Tolka or the Dodder are equally familiar to them; and yet the great poet of nature, Mr Wordsworth, on his visit to our city, made himself most intimately acquainted with the scenery of the former, and thought it not inferior to that of his own Duddon, which his genius has immortalized.

In like manner, the scenery of the Dodder, though so little known to the mass of our fellow citizens, has been often explored by many British as well as native artists, who have filled their portfolios with its picturesque treasures, and have spoken of them with rapturous enthusiasm. Thus, for example, it was, as we well know, from this fount that much of the inspiration of our great self-taught imaginative painter Danby was drawn; and though we could not point to a higher name, we could, if it were necessary, give many other little less illustrious examples of talent cultivated in the same school of

nature.

and which in its present state, clothed with ivy and hastening to decay, cheats the imagination with its appearance of age, and looks an arch of triumph of old Rome. We would then lead them into this noble abandoned park, still in its desolation rich in the magnificence of art and nature; then we would take a meditative look at its general features and at those of the grim yet grand and characteristic castellated mansion which with so much cost it was formed to adorn; and we should ask our companions, why has so much beauty and magnificence been thus abandoned? Here in its silent hall we could still show them original marble busts of Pope and Newton by Roubilliae; and, in the drawing-room, pictures painted expressly for it on the spot by the fair and accomplished hand of Angelica Kaufmann. But the interest of those objects would after all be somewhat a saddening one, and we should return to our cheerful river with renewed pleasure, to relieve our spirits with a view of objects more enlivening. Such an object would be that old mill near Rathfarnham, where paper was first manufactured in Ireland about two centuries since. It was on the paper so made that Usher's Primordia was printed, and the Annals of the Four Masters were written. The manufacturer was a Dutchman-but what matter? At the Bridge of Templeoge we should probably make another short divergence, to take a look at the old park and mansion of the Talbots and Domvilles; and here, beneath a majestic Amongst the many picturesque objects which this little grove of ancient forest trees, we should show our companions mountain river presents, the Old Bridge of Miltown has the largest bank of violets that ever came under our obalways been with those children of genius an especial favour-servation. But the limits allotted to this article will not ite, and many an elaborate study has been made of its stained permit us to describe or even name a twentieth part of the and timeworn walls. It is indeed just such a scene as objects or scenes of interest and beauty that would present the lover of the picturesque would delight in ;-quiet and themselves in quick succession; and we shall only say a few sombre in its colour, harmonious in its accompanying features words on one more the glorious Glanasmole, or the Valley of of old buildings, rocks, water, and mountain background; the Thrush, in which the Dodder has its source. Reader, and, as a whole, impressed with a poetical sentiment approach- have you ever seen this noble valley? Most probably you have ing to melancholy, derived from its pervading expression of not, for we know but few that ever even heard of it; and yet neglect and ruin. It is for these reasons that we have given this glen, situated within some six or seven miles of Dublin, old Miltown bridge a place in our topographical collections; presents mountain scenery as romantic, wild, and almost as and though many of our Dublin readers, for whom, on this oc- inagnificent, as any to be found in Ireland. In this majestic casion, we write especially, may not fully understand our solitude, with the lovely Dodder sparkling at our feet, and the language, or participate in our feelings, the fault is not ours: gloomy Kippure mountain with his head shrouded in the our object in writing is a kind one. We would desire that clouds two thousand four hundred feet above us, we have a they should all acquire the power of enjoying the beautiful in realization of the scenery of the Ossianic poetry. It is innature, and, as a consequence, in art; knowing as we do deed the very locality in which the scenes of some of these that such power is productive of the sweetest as well as the legends are laid, as in the well-known Ossianic romance called purest of intellectual pleasures of which we are susceptible, the Hunt of Glanasmole; and monuments commemorative of and makes us not only happier, but better men. the celebrated Fin and his heroes, "tall grey stones," are still to be seen in the glen and on its surrounding mountains. We could conduct our readers to the well of Ossian, and the tomb of Fin's celebrated dog Bran, in which, perhaps, the naturalist might find and determine his species by his remains. The monument of Fin himself is on a mountain in the neighbourhood, and that of his wife Finane, according to the legends of the place, gives name to a mountain over the glen, called See-Finane. But there are objects of even greater interest to the antiquary and naturalist than those to be seen in Glanasmole, namely, the three things for which, according to some of these old bardic poems, the glen was anciently remarkable, and which were peculiar to it: these were the large breed of thrushes from which the valley derived its name, the great size of the ivy leaves found on its rocks, and the large berries of the rowan or mountain ash, which formerly adorned its sides. The ash woods indeed no longer exist, having been destroyed to make charcoal above eighty years since, but shoots bearing the large berries are still be seen, while the thrush continues in his original haunt in the little dell at the source of the river on the side of Kippure, undisturbed and undiminished in size, and the giant ivy clings to the rocks as large as ever; we have seen leaves of it from seven to ten inches diameter. We should also state, that to the geologist Glanasmole is as interesting as to the painter, antiquary, or naturalist, as our friend Dr Schouler will show our readers in some future number of our Journal.

We are aware also that some of our Dublin readers, whose tastes are not uncultivated, but who have taken less trouble than ourselves to make themselves familiar with our suburban localities, may think that we speak too enthusiastically of the scenery of the Dodder river and its accompanying features. But if such readers would meet us at Miltown some sunny morning in May or June next, and accompany us along the Dodder till we reach its source among the mountains-a moderate walkwe are satisfied that we should be able to remove their scepticism, and give them an enjoyment more delightful than they could anticipate, and for which they would thank us warmly. We could show them not only a varied succession of scenes of picturesque or romantic beauty on the way, but also many contiguous objects of historic interest, on which we would discourse them much legendary lore, and which we should lead them to examine, offering as an excuse for our temporary divergence the beautiful sonnet of Wordsworth to his favourite

Duddon:

Who swerves from innocence, who makes divorce
Of that serene companion-a good name,
Recovers not his loss, but walks with shame,
With doubt, with fear, and haply with remorse.
And oft-times he, who, yielding to the force
Of chance-temptation, ere his journey end,
From chosen comrade turns, or faithful friend,
In vain shall rue the broken intercourse.

Not so with such as loosely wear the chain,
That binds them, pleasant River! to thy side:-
Through the rough copse wheel thou with hasty stride,
I choose to saunter o'er the grassy plain,
Sure, when the separation has been tried,

That we, who part in love, shall meet again.

Thus, as we approached towards Rathfarnham, we should ask them to admire that noble classic gateway on the river's side, which leads into the deserted park of the Loftus family,

But we must bring our walk and our gossip to a conclusion, or our friends will tire of both, if they are not so already. Let us, then, rest at the little primitive Irish Christian church of Killmosantan, now ignorantly called St Anne's, seated on the bank of the river amongst the mountains; and having refreshed ourselves with a drink from the pure fountain of the saint, we shall return in silence to the place from which we started, and bid our kind companions a warm farewell, P.

NOTICE OF A SINGULAR BOOK ON FOSSIL

REMAINS.

Most of our readers must have heard of the wonderful discoveries of Cuvier respecting the extinct animals of a former world, and of the sagacity with which that profound anatomist disclosed the history of races, of whose existence the only evidence we possess depends upon the preservation of a few bones or fragments of skeletons. The same subject, which in the hands of genius has afforded such brilliant discoveries, has also afforded wide scope for credulity, and even imposture. The bones of the larger races of extinct animals were formerly believed alike by the learned and the vulgar to be those of giants. Even as late as the seventeenth century, learned anatomists believed that the bones of the extinct elephant belonged to a gigantic race of men. In the year 1577, some bones of the elephant were disinterred near the town of Lucerne, in Switzerland; the magistrates sent them to a professor of anatomy, who decided that they belonged to the skeleton of a giant, and the citizens were so delighted with the discovery that they adopted a giant as the supporter of the arms of their town, an honour which he still retains. In the same century, some bones of the elephant found in Dauphiny were exhibited in different parts of Europe as the remains of the general of the Cimbri who invaded Rome, and who was defeated by the consul Marius some time before the commencement of the Christian era. In this case, however, the mistake was not allowed to pass unnoticed, and the surgeons and physicians of Paris entered into a lengthened discussion respecting the nature of the bones; and the works written on this subject, if collected, would form a small library.

As soon as M. Deckard, a brother professor, who was probably in the plot, was aware of this ridiculous publication, he expressed great regret that the mystification had been pushed so far, and informed M. Berenger of the hoax that had been played upon him. The unfortunate author was now as anxious to recall his work as he had formerly been to give it to the public. Some copies, however, found their way into the libraries of the curious.

Nothing can be imagined more strange than this book, whether we consider the opinions contained in it, or the manner in which they are stated. It deserves to be better known as a monument of the most extravagant credulity, and as an evidence of the follies at which the mind may arrive when it attempts to bend the laws of nature to its chimeras. Nothing can be more absurd than the allegoric engraving placed on the title-page. On the summit of a Parnassus, composed of an enormous accumulation of petrifactions, we observe an obelisk supporting the arms of the Prince-Bishop, and surrounded by Cupids and garlands of flowers. Above the pyramid there is a sun surmounted by the name of the Deity, in Hebrew characters. Different emblematic persons holding petrifactions in their hands are placed on the sides of the mountain. At its base we observe on the right a tonsured Apollo, who doubtless represents the Prince-Bishop, and on the left we see the professor himself demonstrating all these wonders; and also a genius, seated near the centre of the mountain, is writing down his words in Hebrew characters. In the dedication M. Berenger gives an explanation of these allegories. But what is still more remarkable, it appears that even the engraver has amused himself at the expense of the professor. What renders this probable is, that at the base of the engraving are figured pick-axes and spades necessary for extracting petrifactions, and along with them chisels, compass, and mallet, the emblems of sculpture; and what is still more wicked, a bell, the emblem of noise.

The most extraordinary instance of mystification and credulity upon record is to be found in the history of a book on Petrifactions, published by a German professor at the commencement of the last century. We quote the following notice of this very rare book from a French publication:It is related in the life of Father Kircher, one of the most eccentric of men, that some youths, desirous of amusing themselves at his expense, practised the following mystification upon him. They engraved a number of fantastic figures upon a stone, which they afterwards buried in a place where a house was about to be built. The stone was found by the workmen while digging the foundation, and of course found its way to the learned Father, who was quite delighted with the treasure; and after much labour and research, he gave such a translation of the inscription as might have been ex-ning of your reign, and has honoured a learned Prince, the pected from the whimsical disposition of the man. Kircher had been a professor at Wurzburg where this anecdote became well known, and led to another mystification of a much more serious nature, as it was pushed so far as to occasion the publication of a folio volume.

M. Berenger, physician to the Prince-Bishop of Warzburg, and a professor in the University, was an enthusiastic collector of natural curiosities. He collected without discrimination, and above all things valued those objects which by their strange forms seemed to contradict the laws of nature. This pursuit drew much ridicule upon M. Berenger, and induced a young man of the name of Rodrich to amuse himself at his expense. Rodrich cut upon stones the figures of different kinds of animals, and caused them to be brought to Berenger, who purchased them and encouraged the search for more. The success of the trick encouraged its author; he prepared new petrifactions, of the most absurd nature imaginable. They consisted of bats with the heads and wings of butterflies, winged crabs, frogs, Hebrew and other characters, snails, spiders with their webs, &c. When a sufficient number of them was prepared, boys who had been taught their lesson brought them to the professor, informing him that they had found them near the village of Eibelstadt, and caused him to pay dearly for the time they had employed in collecting them. Delighted with the ease with which he obtained so many wonders, he expressed a desire to visit the place where they had been found, and the boys conducted him to a locality where they had previously buried a number of specimens. At last, when he had formed an ample collection, he could no longer resist the inclination of making them known to the learned world. He thought he would be guilty of selfishness if he withheld from the public that knowledge which had afforded him so much delight. He exhibited his treasures to the admiration of the learned, in a work containing twentyone plates, with a Latin text explanatory of the figures.

The work is dedicated to the Prince-Bishop of Wurzburg, on whom were bestowed the epithets of the New Apollo, Sacred Amulet of the country, the New Sun of Franconia, and others selected with equal taste. The most absurd flattery abounds in this dedication, of which the following may be taken as a sample. "The opinions of philosophers are still unsettled. They hesitate whether to ascribe the wonderful productions of this mountain to the admirable operations of nature, or to the art of the ancients; but, interpreted by the public gratitude, all unite with me in proclaiming that this useless and uncultivated hill has rendered illustrious by its wonders the beginprotector and support of learning, by a hecatomb of petrified plants, flowers, and animals. If it be permitted to attribute these marvels to the industry of antiquity, I can say that Franconia was once the rival of Egypt. By a usage unknown in Europe, Memphis covered her gigantic monuments with hieroglyphics, and I do not hazard an idle conjecture. Istate without fear of contradiction, that the obelisk which crowns this mountain exhibits in its petrifactions the emblems of your virtues." According to the author, the name of the Deity in Hebrew characters indicates the zeal of the Prince for religion. The sun, the moon, and the stars, his beneficence, justice, prudence, and indefatigable vigilance; the comets, contrary to the vulgar idea, which considers them signs of evil, foretell the happy events of his reign; and the fossil shells represent the hearts of his subjects.

It appears from the preface that M. Berenger had solicited and obtained permission from the Prince-Bishop to publish his work. He confesses that the greater number of philosophers and intelligent people he had consulted were of opinion that these petrifactions were the products of art; in opposition to this erroneous opinion, he asserts that he has convinced the sceptics by taking them to the spot where he found his curiosities. Their astonishment, he adds, and their unanimous and perfect conviction, had given him the utmost joy, and amply recompensed him for all his labour and expense.

This work was to have been followed by others. It is divided into fourteen chapters, each chapter being devoted to a single question. Most of these questions are so extraordinary and so singularly treated of, that one can scarcely believe that the author was in earnest. Thus, Chap. 4, The petrifactions of Wurzburg are not relics of Paganism, nor can they be attributed to the art and superstition of the Germans during heathen times.

Chap. 5. The ingenious conjecture which attributes their formation to the plastic power of light.

Chap. 6. The germs of shell-fish and marine animals, mixed with the vapours of the ocean, and scattered over the earth by the showers, are not the source of the fossils of Wurzburg. Chap. 12. Our petrifactions are not the products of modern art, as some persons have ventured to assert, throwing a cloud of doubts and fables over this subject.

Chap. 13. Grave reasons for considering our petrifactions as the work of nature, and not of art. The absurdity of the arguments employed in the discussion of these different propositions, exceeds all belief. For example, the author, to refute the opinion of those who attribute these petrifactions to the superstition of the Pagans, demonstrates that none of these specimens in his possession are described in the decrees of the German synods, which proscribed images and sorcery. Neither can they be considered as victims offered to idols, for who ever sacrificed figured stones instead of living animals? They are not amulets which Pagan parents hung around the necks of their children. to preserve them from the charms of witchcraft, for some of them are so heavy that they would strangle the poor infant, and there is no aperture in any of them through which a chain could be passed. Finally, what renders it impossible that these stones are the remains of Paganism, is, that many of them are inscribed with Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and German characters, expressing the name of the Deity.

This work, as we have stated, was suppressed when he discovered the cruel hoax that had been played upon him. The work, in its original state, is very rare, and is only known to the curious; but after the death of M. Berenger, the copies which he had retained were given to the public by a bookseller, but with a new title-page. S.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

THE POOR AUTHOR.*

How many a time do we take up the page of news, or the sheet of literary novelty, without reflecting upon the nameless sources whence their contents have been derived; and yet what a fruitful field do they afford for our deepest contemplation, and our holiest and purest sympathies! There may be there brought together, and to the general eye displayed in undistinguished union, contributions over which the jewelled brow of nobility hath been knitted into the frown of thoughtfulness, and side by side with these, chapters wearily traced out by the tremulous hand of unbefriended genius. Upon the former we do not mean to dwell, but we would wish for a few moments to contemplate the heart-trying condition of the latter.

It is hard to conceive a situation more replete with wretchedness than that of the struggling man of letters of him who has offered his all before the shrine of long-looked-for fame; who has staked health, and peace, and happiness, that he may win her favour, and who nevertheless holds an uncertain tenure even of his " 'daily bread." He is poor and in misery, yet he lives in a world of boundless wealth; but in this very thing is to be found the exquisite agony of his condition. What though haggard want wave around him her lean and famished hands, what avails that? Write he must, if it be but to satisfy the cravings of a stinted nature; write he must, though his only reward be the scanty pittance that was greedily covenanted for, and when his due, but grudgingly presented him. And then he must delineate plenty and happiness; he must describe the short holiday of childhood,” the guileless period of maiden's modesty, the sunshine of the moment when we first hear that we are loved, the placid calm of peaceful resignation; or it may be, the charms that nature wears in England's happy vales, the beauty of her scenery, the splendour and wealth of her institutions, the protecting law for the poor man, her admirable code of jurisPrudence all all these may be the theme of his song, or the subject of his appointed task; but the hours will pass away, and the spirits he has called up will disappear, and his visions of happiness will leave him only, if it be possible, more fearfully alive to his own helplessness--they cannot wake their echo in his soul, and instead of their worthier office of healing and blessedness, they render his wound deeper, deadlier, and more rankling.

And who is there, think you, kind reader, that can feel more acutely the sting of neglect and poverty than the lonely man of genius? Of him how truly may it be said, “he cannot dig, to beg he is ashamed!" His intellect is his world; it is the glorious city in which he abides, the treasure-house wherein his very being is garnered; it is to cultivate it that he has lived; and when it fails him in his wintry hour, is not he indeed" of all men most miserable?"

But let us suppose that his prescribed duty is done, that the required article is written, and that this child of his sick and aching brain is at last dismissed; and can his thoughts follow it? Can his heart bear the reflection that it shall find admission where he durst not make his appearance? He knows that it will be laid on the gorgeous table of the rich and honourable. He knows, too, that it will find its way to the happy fireside, the home where sorrow hath not yet entered such as once was his own in the days of his childhood. He knows that the unnatural relation who spurned him from his door when he asked the bread of charity, may see it, and without at all knowing the writer, that even his scornful sneer may be thereby relaxed. He knows- -but why more? Of himself he knows that want and woe have been his companions, that they are yet encamped around him, and that they will only end their ministry" where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest!"

This is by no means-oh, would that it were so !-an ideal picture. In LONDON, amid her "wilderness of building," there are at this hour hundreds whose sufferings could corroborate it, and whose necessities could give the stamping conviction to its truth. We were ourselves cognizant of the history of one young man's life, his early and buoyant hopes, his subsequent misfortunes and miseries, and his early and unripe death, to all of which, anything that is painted above bears but a faint and indistinct resemblance. He was an

The writer, as will be seen, has had in view solely the literature of London.

Irishman, and gifted with the characteristics of his country-tain ash, and on their topmost peaks frisked the agile goat in a romantic genius, united with feelings the most tremulous, all the pride of unfettered liberty. and tender, and impassioned. Many years have since passed away, and over and over again have the wild flowers sprung up, and bloomed, and withered over his narrow resting place, no unmeet emblem of "The poor inhabitant below!"'

These men, each of whom led a Kerry pony that bore an empty sack along the difficult pathway, were as dissimilar in form and appearance as any two of Adam's descendants possibly could be. One was a low-sized, thickset man; his broad shoulders and muscular limbs gave indication of considerable

but never has the memory of his sad story faded from us strength; but the mild expression of his large blue eyes and never may it fade! His lot was unhappy, and he "perished in his pride." His reason eventually bowed before his intense sufferings; and excepting the few minutes just before his spirit passed away, his last hours were uncheered by the glimpse of that glorious intellect which had promised to crown him with a chaplet of undying fame. Even as it was, he had attracted notice; his writings were beginning to make for him a name; and the Prime Minister of England did not think it beneath him to visit his lonely lodging, and to endeavour to raise his sinking soul with the promise of almost unlimited patronage. But the restorative came too late: the poison had worked its portion, and in the guise of Fame, DEATH approached;

"And as around the brow
Of that ill-fated votary he wreath'd
The crown of victory, silently he twined
The cypress with the laurel at his foot
Perish'd the MARTYR STUDENT."

We have nothing to add to this. Had we not hoped to strike a chord of sympathy in our reader's heart, we should never have even advanced so far, or have uplifted the veil so as to exhibit the "latter end" of such. Reader, in conclusion, you know not the toil, and trouble, and bodily labour, and mental inquietude, that furnish you each week with the price of YOUR PENNY!

S. H.

PADDY CORBETT'S FIRST SMUGGLING TRIP.
"Then on the 'tither hand present her,
A blackguard smuggler right behint her,
And cheek-for-chow a chuffie vintner,
Colleaguin' join.—BURNS.

No order of men has experienced severer treatment from
the various classes into which society is divided, than that of
excisemen, or, as they are vulgarly denominated, guagers.
If, unlike the son of the Hebrew patriarch, their hand is not
raised against every man, yet they may be truly said to in-
herit a portion of Ishmael's destiny, for every man's hand is
against them. The cordial and unmitigated hostility of the
lower classes follows the guager at every point of his dan- |
gerous career, whether his pursuit be smuggled goods, pot-
teen, or unpermitted parliament. Literary men have catered
to the gratification of the public at his expense, by exhibiting
him in their stories of Irish life under such circumstances
that the good-natured reader scarcely knows whether to
laugh or weep most at his ludicrous distress. The varied
powers of rhyme have been pressed into the service by the
man of genius and the lover of fun. The Diel's awa' wi'
the Exciseman" of Burns, and the Irishman's "Paddy was up
to the Guager," will ever remain to prove the truth of the
foregoing assertion.

66

But the humble historian of this unpretending narrative is happy to record one instance of retributory justice on the part of an individual of this devoted class, which would have procured him a statue in the temple of Nemesis, had his lot been cast among the ancients. Many instances of the generosity, justice, and self-abandonment of the guager, have come to the writer's knowledge, and these acts of virtue shall not be utterly forgotten. The readers of the Irish Penny Journal shall blush to find men, whose qualities might reconcile the estranged misanthrope to the human family, rendered the butt of ridicule, and their many virtues lost and unknown. On a foggy evening in the November of a year of which Irish tradition, not being critically learned in chronology, has not furnished the date, two men pursued their way along a bridle road that led through a wild mountain tract in a remote and far westward district of Kerry. The scene was savage and lonely. Far before them extended the broad Atlantic, upon whose wild and heaving bosom the lowering clouds seemed to settle in fitful repose. Round and beyond, on the dark and barren heath, rose picturesque masses of rock-the finger-stones which nature, it would seem, in some wayward frolic, had tossed into pinnacled heaps of strange and multiform construction. About their base, and in the deep interstices of their sides, grew the holly and the hardy moun

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broad, good-humoured countenance, told, as plain as the human face divine could, that the fierce and stormy passions of our kind never exerted the strength of that muscular arm in deeds of violence. A jacket and trousers of brown frieze, and a broad-brimmed hat made of that particular grass named thraneen, completed his dress. It would be difficult to conceive a more strange or unseemly figure than the other: he exceeded in height the usual size of men; but his limbs, which hung loosely together, and seemed to accompany his emaciated body with evident reluctance, were literally nothing but skin and bone; his long conical head was thinly strewed with rusty-coloured hair that waved in the evening breeze about a haggard face of greasy, sallow hue, where the rheumy sunken eye, the highly prominent nose, the thin and livid lip, half disclosing a few rotten straggling teeth, significantly seemed to tell how disease and misery can attenuate the human frame. He moved, a living skeleton: yet, strange to say, the smart nag which he led was hardly able to keep pace with the swinging unequal stride of the gaunt pedestrian, though his limbs were so fleshless that his clothes flapped and fluttered around him as he stalked along the chilly moor.

As the travellers proceeded, the road, which had lately been Pent within the huge masses of granite, now expanded sufficiently to allow them a little side-by-side discourse; and the first-mentioned person pushed forward to renew a conversation which seemed to have been interrupted by the inequalities of the narrow pathway.

"An' so ye war saying, Shane Glas," he said, advancing in a straight line with his spectre-looking companion, "ye war saying that face of yours would be the means of keeping the guager from our taste of tibaccy."

"The devil resave the guager will ever squint at a lafe of it," says Shane Glas, " if I'm in yer road. There was never a cloud over Tim Casey for the twelve months I thravelled with him; and if the foolish man had had me the day his taste o' brandy was taken, he'd have the fat boiling over his pot today, 'tis'nt that I say it myself."

"The sorrow from me, Shane Glas," returned his friend with a hearty laugh, and a roguish glance of his funny eye at the angular and sallow countenance of the other, "the sorrow be from me if it's much of Tim's fat came in your way, at any rate, though I don't say as much for the graise.”

"It's laughing at the crucked side o' yer mouth ye'd be, I'm thinking, Paddy Corbett," said Shane Glas, "if the thief of a guager smelt your taste o' tibaccy-Crush Chriest duin! and I not there to fricken him off, as I often done afore."

"But couldn't we take our lafe o' tibaccy on our ponies' backs in panniers, and throw a few hake or some oysters over 'em, and let on that we're fish-joulting?"

"Now, mark my words, Paddy Corbett: there's a chap in Killarney as knowledgeable as a jailor; Ould Nick would'nt bate him in roguery. So put your goods in the thruckle, shake a wisp over 'em, lay me down over that in the fould o' the quilt, and say that I kem from Decie's counthry to pay a round at Tubber-na-Treenoda, and that I caught a faver. and that ye're taking me home to die, for the love o' God and yer mother's sowl. Say, that Father Darby, who prepared me, said I had the worst spotted faver that kem to the counthry these seven years. If that doesn't fricken him off, ye're sowld" (betrayed.)

By this time they had reached a deep ravine, through which a narrow stream pursued its murmuring course. Here they left the horses, and, furnished with the empty sacks, pursued their onward route till they reached a steep cliff. Far below in the dark and undefined space sounded the hollow roar of the heaving ocean, as its billowy volume broke upon its granite barrier, and formed along the dark outline a zone of foam, beneath whose snowy crest the ever-impelled and angry wave yielded its last strength in myriad flashes of phosphorie light, that sparkled and danced in arrowy splendour to the wild and sullen music of the dashing sea.

66

Paddy Corbett, avick," said Shane Glas, "pull yer legs fair an' aisy afther ye; one inch iv a mistake, achorra, might

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