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This murder and execution took place on | greatly attached to the unhappy man, de

the road between Strabane and Derry; and as the memory of them still lives among the peasantry, the spot is pointed out to passengers, and recalls traits of what Ireland was about one hundred years ago, even in the most civilized county. Abduction was then a common mode of courtship in the north as well as in the south, and a man was deemed a man of spirit if he so effected his marriage. Any fatal accident resulting to resisting friends was considered a venial offence, and the natural effect of their unreasonable obstinacy.

The circumstances and character of the parties in this affair rendered it one of the deepest interest. The young lady was but fifteen, gentle, accomplished, and beautiful,

votedly fond of her father, and, with the strongest sense of rectitude and propriety, entangled in an unfortunate engagement from simplicity and inexperience. The gentleman was thirty-eight, a man of the most engaging person, and a model of manly beauty. His manners were soft, gentle, and insinuating, and his disposition naturally generous and humane; but when roused by strong excitement, his passions were most fierce and uncontrollable. His efforts on his trial were not to preserve his life, which became a burden to him after the loss of her he loved, but to save from a like fate a faithful follower, and to exculpate his own memory from a charge of intended cruelty and deliberate murder.

MRS. S. C. HAL L.

[Anna Maria Fielding was born in Dublin | produce in a collected form; and thus in 1829 not long after the century had commenced. While still an infant she was taken to Bannow, in county Wexford, where her maternal grandfather and grandmother lived. Her family on the mother's side was of illustrious Huguenot descent, tracing back its lineage partly to French and partly to Swiss sources. In her early home at Bannow the future authoress drank in the vivid impressions of Irish scenery and life, which she was destined to so finely reproduce afterwards. She lived, as she herself tells us, in a locality rich in the picturesque, and amid a people whose strong individuality offered abundant materials for the student of character. The young Irish girl was not, however, given any lengthened opportunity of studying her country and countrymen; for she was but fifteen when she left Ireland and settled in London. In September, 1824, she was married to Mr. Samuel Carter Hall. To this event we probably owe her accession to the ranks of littérateurs; and she herself gained through it the blessing of a devoted companion, alike in tastes, in sympathies, and in aims.

appeared Mrs. Hall's first work, Sketches of Irish Character. The volume met with immediate and deserved success; for the stories were distinguished by fidelity to life, pathos without exaggeration, bright but never illnatured humour, and absolute freedom from political or religious bigotry. Mrs. Hall's next work was one intended for the youngThe Chronicles of a Schoolroom-a volume in which, while things are treated with the necessary simplicity, there is a complete absence of the goody-goody tone and wishywashy sentiment of so many books with a like purpose. The Buccaneer, published in 1829, was Mrs. Hall's first attempt at a regular novel. The scene is laid in England, and the time chosen is the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. The Outlaw, which followed in 1832, also belonged to the department of the historical novel; the Revolution of 1688 being the period described, and James II. the chief character. Though many of the scenes described in those stories bear a strong impress of truth and give a good idea of the times, the passages which will be read with most

Mr. Hall, during the early years of his mar-pleasure are those descriptive of domestic life. ried life, was engaged in the production of an illustrated "annual" called the Amulet; and here Mrs. Hall's first sketches appeared. Those sketches a publisher-much to the astonishment of the young writer, who was modestly unconscious of her own power-offered to

Mrs. Hall was probably more at home in a work which appeared in the interval between the two historical novels. Tales of Woman's Trials is a delightful volume, full of touching stories, told with delicacy, poetic feeling, and truth. Two of the tales are especially beauti

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