some English lady at the castle, with thou- | meant me. 'He's below,' she said, 'afther sands, fell in love with him and married him, hiding some of the plate under the turf-rick, though he never held up his head like a man for fear of them vagabonds seeing it.' 'Send afther. She was a weakly, conceited little him up,' says the master; and though I'd the lady, and was never to say asy till she got run of the house all my life, it was the first him to London; and I've seen a deal in my time I was ever had up before him. He called life, but I never yet saw the Irish fortune, to me to his bedside, he put his hand upon my say nothing of the remnants of one, that could head, and looked for full five minutes in my stand London. face; he then sighed out from the deep of his heart, and turned upon the bed. May I go, your honour?' I said. 'Aye,' he made answer, 'do; why should you not go, poor boy? those I trusted in are all gone.' 'Maybe your honour would let me try to turn the luck, by staying,' I made answer. He held his hand over the side of the bed; I fell on my knees and kissed it; and I never left him from that day to the day of his death." "The master, when he would come home, was not like himself, but chuff and rough; and the expenses at the Mount made less, and many retainers turned off, and ancient residenters cast away, and the family seldom in it, and the masther high and up like with the gentry. I remember once he went as foreman to the grand-jury with padlocks on his pockets, and when asked why, he made answer, he was afraid to go among such a pickpocketing set without them; and so they challenged him to fight, and it was a fine sight to see them all go out one afther the other, and he flinging away, winging one, laming another, and so on; but he behaved mighty like a gentleman all through, for he did not shoot one of them dead. Another election came on, and who should start against the masther, but the very gentleman that he had brought in so often-set up against him upon his own ground out of revenge for his forgetting the situation he promised-and such a contest!-the ouldest people in the counthry never remembered the like. The luck of the O'Tooles turned; he fought was wounded—and lost the election. This was not long before the rebellion; and sure any one then would know that throubles were coming, both to the ould residenters and the country itself. 'Where's your mistress?' said the masther to the ould housekeeper, and she handing him a drink of whey out of a silver pint. My lady's in her own room, very bad with the narvous disorder,' replied the ould woman. 'And my sons, where are they?' 'Indeed, then, they are just amusing themselves with shooting each other for divarshun, now the bother of an election is over.' 'This is not wine-whey,' said the poor gentleman. 'My grief, no, sir; but it's good two milk,' she made answer. 'Sorra a drop of wine in the cellars; and the devil of a marchant has sent in an execution over eleven hundred for his bill, and no one here strong enough to keep it out; only I oughtn't to be telling you the throubles, my darlint masther, while the weakness is on you.' She might well think of the wakeness, and he almost fainting. 'Where's the boy?' said he again; and by 'the boy,' he The old man, overcome by the full gush of remembrance, laid his head on his hands, and continued silent for some minutes. "The young gentlemen (he had but the two) were fine, proud, wilful boys; that on the tiptop of an English education had been learnt what faults their father had done; and indeed they did pretty much the same themselves, only in a different way, siding with their mother against him: and she had none of the great love for her husband which makes people cling to the throuble sooner than lave the throubled. I'm not going to set up but what the masther was hard to bear with; he certainly was. Yet any way, she soon took herself and her children off to England, to her relations-poor wake lady! The best property that could be sould was sould; and at last, if it wasn't for the tenants who had been made over with the land to the new proprietors, the house of Mount Brandon would have been badly kept; but they were ever and always sending a pig, or a fat sheep, or something on the sly, to the housekeeper, who knew they war for the masther's use, and he none the wiser. Oh! 'tis untold what I've seen him suffer; trying, in his gray-headed years, to swallow the pride: and when at last we found that some, though they knew he had nothing but his body to give, wanted that to rot in a jail, we were night and day on the watch to keep them out; and one night the masther says, in his strange way that there was no gainsaying, 'It's a fine clear night, and I should like to walk to the ruin by the side of the monument.' I couldn't tell you how his health had gone and his strength along with it; everything but his pride. And the ould housekeeper and myself went along with him; and he romanced so much as we went, first | his hat, and fell on his knees upon the grass. about one thing and then about the other, that I thought the throuble had turned his brain. It was a clear, moonshiny night, and the stars were beaming along the sky, now in, now out; and he sat down upon an ancient stone, as this might be, and he says,-I remember the very words "Boy,' says he, 'the time will be, and that not long off, when what little respect belongs to ould families and ould ruins will be done away entirely; and the world will hear tell of ould customs and the like; but they will look round upon the earth for them in vain-they will be clean gone! If I had my life to begin over again I'd take great delight in restoring all them things. It's no wonder I should have sympathy with ruins; I, who have ruined, and am ruined.' As he fell, so four men, vagabonds of the law, sprung on him. Whether he felt their hould or not is between him an' Heaven; but this I do know, that when I looked in his face, as they held him up off the grass, he was dead.” "And that was the end of the most beautiful and most accomplished Irishman of the last century!" "It was his end, God help us! And the murdering villians kept possession of the body for debt. The neighbouring gentry would not suffer it, and offered to pay the money; but his ould tenants would not hear of that; they rose to a man over the estates which had once belonged to him and his, battled the limbs of the law out of possession, and gave the masther the finest wake and funeral that the counthry had seen for fifty years. There was a hard fight betwixt them and the constables when the body was moving, but they bet them off. And then-whew!--who would follow them into the Connamara hills!" "What became of his sons?" "Sir,' said the old housekeeper, who was hard of hearing, and stupid when she did hear, 'Sir,' said she, 'sure Michelawn and the boys might mend the ruins up of this ould chapel, if it's any fancy for it you have.' So he looked at me, and smiled a sort of a smile, could and chilly, without anything happy in it; like the smile you see sometimes upon the lips of a corpse when the mouth falls a little—a gasping smile. 'Sir,' keeps on the ould silly cray-ould ruins of ould Ireland looked to?" thur, 'come away home, for it isn't safe for you to be anything like out of the house, which you haven't been for many a long month before.' "They are both dead: nor is there one stone upon another of Mount Brandon.” "True,' said he, 'true, just let me look here;' and he turned to where the little monument stood to the poor girl's remembrance, and he laid his hand on the marble urn which was at the top, and drew it back on a suddent, as if he had not thought that it would have been so could. He then rooted with his stick among the buttercups and daisies that grew about it; and with a quick thought flung off "But about your obligation?" “Ay! didn't you hear that he wished the "True; but why do you wear no hat?" "Didn't he, who was so high, so great, die that bitter night, bareheaded?” The old man's eyes were moist with tears. "One other question, Clooney; the poor girl's child-the baby who wailed beneath his window?" "Didn't he call me 'boy,' and give me his hand to kiss; and don't I do pilgrimage through the world for the sins of my father and my mother! The poor girl's babby was the only child that loved him!" AUBREY T. DE VERE. [Poetic genius has, in the case of the De Vere family, proved hereditary. In a preceding volume we gave extracts from Sir Aubrey de Vere; in this the same duty devolves with regard to Aubrey T. de Vere, his third son. verse, and the list of his works is lengthy. In 1842 appeared The Waldenses, or the Fall of Rora, a lyrical tale; in 1843, The Search after Proserpine, Recollections of Greece, and other Poems; in 1856, Poems, Miscellaneous and Aubrey Thomas de Vere was born in 1814 Sacred; in 1857, May Carols; in 1861, The at the paternal mansion, Curragh Chase, county Sisters, Inisfail, and other Poems; in 1864, Limerick, and he was educated at Trinity The Infant Bridal, and other Poems; in College. He has written both in prose and | 1869, Irish Odes, and other Poems; in 1872, The Legends of St. Patrick; in 1874, Alex- | from his various works. Of his prose that ander the Great, a dramatic poem; and in which we most prefer is to be found in the 1879, Legends of the Saxon Saints. Besides introductions he has written to his own and the above-mentioned drama he has written his father's works. The style combines the St. Thomas of Canterbury. His prose works are two qualities of simplicity and cultured grace. English Misrule and Irish Misdeeds (1848); His English Misrule and Irish Misdeeds is a Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey generous defence of his countrymen against (1850); The Church Settlement of Ireland, the scurrilous attacks of some English writers or Hibernia Pacanda (1866); Ireland's Church and public speakers.] Property and the right use of it (1867); and Pleas for Secularization (1867). A volume of correspondence entitled Proteus and Ama TO HIS ENGLISH LOVE. deus, in which the chief religious and philo- FLORENCE MACCARTHY'S FAREWELL sophical questions in controversy at the present day were reviewed, and published in 1878, was edited by Mr. De Vere. Of the volumes of poetry enumerated, that which possesses the greatest interest for Irish readers is Inisfail, from which the following extracts are taken. The idea is very original; it is to convey in a series of poems a picture of the chief events in certain great cycles of Irish history. "Its aim," writes the poet himself, “is to embody the essence of a nation's history." "Contemporary historic poems," he proceeds, "touch us with a magical hand; but they often pass by the most important events, and linger beside the most trivial. Looking back upon history, as from a vantage ground, its general proportions become palpable; and the themes to which poetry attaches herself are either those critical junctures upon which the fortunes of a nation turn, or such accidents of a lighter sort as illustrate the character of a race. A historic series of poems thus becomes possible, the interest of which is continuous, and the course of which reveals an increasing significance." In accordance with this plan the writer illustrates each epoch by some representative poem and event. At one time he celebrates a great victory in the joyous swing of the ballad; at another an elegy depicts the darkness of a nation's defeat. A great religious epoch is celebrated in stately rhyme; and at another moment the poet has to resort to a lighter measure when individual love plays an important part in fashioning the history of the future. In this way the history of Ireland is presented in a series of tableaux. It is impossible to speak too highly of the skill with which the poet performs his task: he gives, from the nature of the work, specimens of his mastery over all forms of poetry-the martial, the sacred, the passionate, the sad, and over a large variety of measures. The volume published under the title of The Infant Bridal, also contains many exquisite gems My pensive-brow'd Evangeline! I grieve as one with grief who plays." In that far distant land of mine There stands a yew-tree among tombs! England's fair child, Evangeline! Because thy gods on mine wage war, I seek the land of tombs once more. TO THE SAME. We seem to tread the self-same street, Distant as earth from heaven or hell, Between us rush. We might be near. Thy world is fair: my thoughts refuse To dance its dance or drink its wine; Nor canst thou hear the reeds and yews That sigh to me from lands not thine. THE MARCH TO KINSALE. The Princes of the North are come! Lo, these are they that year by year That wondrous winter march is o'er. And thus they sang, "To-morrow morn And blow, thou breeze of sunrise, blow!" Blithe as a boy on march'd the host, With droning pipe and clear-voiced harp; At last above that southern coast Rang out their war-steeds' whinny sharp: And up the sea-salt slopes they wound, And airs once more of ocean quaff'd; Our eyes shall rest upon our foe: And blow, thou breeze of sunrise, blow!" Beside their watch-fires couch'd all night Of moonlit crag, the priesthood pray'd: And blow, thou breeze of sunrise, blow!" But the people loved not the words he spake; sore: They answer'd nought; but their brows grew black, And the hoarse halls roar'd like a torrent's roar. "Has the stranger robb'd you of house and land? In battle meet him and smite him down! Has he sharpen'd the dagger? Lift ye the brand! Has he trapp'd your princes? Set free the clown! "Has the stranger his country and knighthood shamed? Though he 'scape God's vengeance, so shall not ye! Be never named His own God chastens! With the Mullaghmast slaughter! Be just and free!" But the people received not the words he spake, For the wrong on their heart had made it sore; And their brows grew black like the stormy rack, And the hoarse halls roar'd like the wave-wash'd shore. Then Iriel the priest put forth a curse; And horror crept o'er them from vein to vein ;A curse upon man and a curse upon horse, As forth they rode to the battle plain. And there never came to them luck nor grace, No saint in the battle-field help'd them more, Till O'Neill, who hated the warfare base, Had landed at Doe on Tirconnell's shore. True Knight, true Christian, true Prince was he! THE INTERCESSION.1 ULSTER, A.D. 1641. Iriel, the priest, arose and said, "The just cause never shall prosper by wrong! The ill cause battens on blood ill shed; 'Tis Virtue only makes Justice strong. "I have hidden the Saxon's wife and child Beneath the altar; behind the porch; DIRGE OF RORY O'MORE. Up the sea-sadden'd valley at evening's decline 2 O'er them that believe not these hands have piled From the deep to the mountain she roams, and The stoles and the vestments of holy Church! "I have hid three men in a hollow oak; I have hid three maids in an ocean cave:" As though he were lord of the thunder stroke, The old priest lifted his hand-to save. 1 Dr. Leland and other historians relate that the Catholic clergy frequently interfered for the protection of the victims of that massacre which took place at an early period of the Ulster rising of 1641. They hid them beneath their altars. From the landing of Owen Roe O'Neill all such crimes ceased.-De Vere. again From the mountains' green urn to the purplerimm'd main. Whom seek'st thou, sad mother? Thine own is not thine! He dropp'd from the headland; he sank in the brine! 2 One of the mystical names for Ireland used by the bards. |