idea of the simplicity, strength, and realistic | Wild birds and four-foot creatures, falling rills, Mingled the hum of huswife's wheel, cock-crow, BALLYTULLAGH. (FROM "LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD."1) The hamlet Ballytullagh, small and old, Tall edge-stones, gleaming, gay as spotted snakes, And doleful as the cavern of Despair. And yet, when crops were good, nor oatmeal high, 1 This and the following extracts are made by permission of the author. 2 Camuns, sticks bent at one end. 3 Nagg, wooden ball. clothes were spread to dry on sloping hedge, The colleens did their broidery in the shade Or wash'd and beetled by the shallow brook, Or sung their ballads round the chimney-nook To speed a winter night, when song, and jest, And dance, and talk, and social game are best; For daily life's material good enough Such trivial incidents and homely stuff. Here also could those miracles befall Of wedding, new-born babe, and funeral; Here every thought, and mood, and fancy rise From common earth and soar to mystic skies. Of leafy bush, or gown-skirt overhead, GOING TO THE FAIR. Ere yet the sun has dried on hedge and furze 'Tis where the road-side rivulet expands, The dazzling ribbons nodding round their face. And court that mirror for a final grace, Her shawl is splendid, but her feet are bare; Behold our Bridget tripping to the fair; The shoes come forth, the skirts are shaken wide, 4 Loy, a half-spade. $ Beetling, thumping clothes with a truncheon (beetle). But first of all, with calm submissive face, Beads in her hand, within the Holy Place She kneels, among the kneelers who adore In silent reverence on that mystic floor; Then with a curtsey, and with symbol meet On brow and breast, returning to the street. LOVELY MARY DONNELLY. Oh, lovely Mary Donnelly, it's you I love the best! If fifty girls were round you I'd hardly see the rest. Be what it may the time of day, the place be where it will, Oh, you're the flower o' womankind in country or in town; The higher I exalt you, the lower I'm cast down. If some great lord should come this way, and see your beauty bright, And you to be his lady, I'd own it was but right. O might we live together in a lofty palace hall, Where joyful music rises, and where scarlet curtains fall! O might we live together in a cottage mean and small; With sods of grass the only roof, and mud the only wall! Sweet looks of Mary Donnelly, they bloom before lovely Mary Donnelly, your beauty's my distress. me still. Her eyes like mountain water that's flowing on a rock, It's far too beauteous to be mine, but I'll never wish it less. The proudest place would fit your face, and I am poor and low; How clear they are, how dark they are! and they But give me many a shock. Red rowans warm in sunshine and wetted with a show'r, Could ne'er express the charming lip that has me in its pow'r. blessings be about you, dear, wherever you may go! ABBEY ASAROE. Her nose is straight and handsome, her eyebrows Gray, gray is Abbey Asaroe, by Ballyshanny town, lifted up, Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup, Her hair's the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine; It's rolling down upon her neck, and gather'd in a twine. The dance o' last Whit-Monday night exceeded all before, No pretty girl for miles about was missing from the floor; But Mary kept the belt of love, and O but she was gay! She danced a jig, she sung a song, that took my heart away. It has neither door nor window, the walls are broken down; The carven stones lie scatter'd in briars and nettlebed; The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead. A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide, Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride; The boor-tree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow, And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Asaroe. It looks beyond the harbour-stream to Gulban mountain blue; It hears the voice of Erna's fall,-Atlantic breakers too; When she stood up for dancing, her steps were so High ships go sailing past it; the sturdy clank of complete, The music nearly kill'd itself to listen to her feet; The fiddler moan'd his blindness, he heard her so much praised, But bless'd his luck to not be deaf when once her voice she raised. oars Brings in the salmon-boat to haul a net upon the shores; And this way to his home-creek, when the summer day is done, Slow sculls the weary fisherman across the setting sun; And evermore I'm whistling or lilting what you While green with corn is Sheegus Hill, his cottage Your smile is always in my heart, your name be- But gray at every season is Abbey Asaroe. side my tongue; But you've as many sweethearts as you'd count on both your hands, There stood one day a poor old man above its broken bridge; And for myself there's not a thumb or little finger | He heard no running rivulet, he saw no mountain Mexico in 1845 supplied a new and, at the moment, more attractive field of activity. He [Captain Mayne Reid was born in Kloskilt, | of the war between the United States and county Down, in 1819, being a year younger than many of his biographers have made out. His father was an eminent Presbyterian clergy-sought for and obtained a commission, and man, and intended his son to follow the same passed through some of the most exciting and calling, but after studying for some time with dangerous scenes of the war. He was present this view, he suddenly left some say ran at the capture of Vera Cruz. He led the last away from-home. He sailed for the United charge of the infantry at Cherubusco, and as States, more with the idea of seeing the world one of the forlorn hope at Chapultepec he was and finding adventures than with any definite severely wounded and reported killed. At the plan. He landed at New Orleans, and went close of the war he resigned his commission, on several excursions on the Red River and and his next idea was the organization of the the Missouri. During this period he traded American legion to help the Hungarians in and hunted with the Indians, and for more their insurrection against the then oppressive than five years he enjoyed the wild adventures, rule of Austria. When he arrived at Paris he the strange and eccentric scenes, and the found that the rebellion had been suppressed. bracing freedom of the prairie. It was at this From this period forward he has been a littérstage of his life he obtained that intimate ateur, and works have come from his pen with acquaintance with the Indian character and extraordinary fertility. The popularity of his wild scenery which he has so well reproduced writings at home and abroad has been remarkin several of his works. Afterwards he went able. Of The Scalp hunters alone a million on a tour through the United States, visiting of copies are said to have been sold. The almost every part of the country. He had Athenæum says that in Russia he is more already begun to use his pen, but the outbreak | popular than even Scott or Dickens. In France, Spain, and Italy several authors have produced different translations of his works. Of his writings we can here mention but a few of the most remarkable. The Rifle Rangers, The Scalp-hunters, The War Trail, The Quadroon, The White Chief, and The Headless Horseman. In his works there are many scenes of vivid description, and the rapidity with which he hurries the reader from scene to scene, makes his stories highly excitable.] THE WILD WEST.1 Unrol the world's map and look upon the great northern continent of America. Away to the wild west, away toward the setting sun, away beyond many a far meridian let your eyes wander. Rest them where golden rivers rise among peaks that carry the eternal snow. Rest them there. You are looking upon a land whose features are unfurrowed by human hands, still bearing the marks of the Almighty mould, as upon the morning of creation; a region whose every object wears the impress of God's image. His ambient spirit lives in the silent grandeur of its mountains, and speaks in the roar of its mighty rivers: a region redolent of romance, rich in the reality of adventure. Follow me, with the eye of your mind, through scenes of wild beauty, of savage sublimity. I stand in an open plain. I turn my face to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west; and on all sides behold the blue circle of the heavens girdling around me. Nor rock nor tree breaks the ring of the horizon. What covers the broad expanse between? Wood? water? grass? No; flowers! As far as my eye can range it rests only on flowers, on beautiful flowers! I am looking as on a tinted map, an enamelled picture brilliant with every hue of the prism. Yonder is golden yellow, where the helianthus turns her dial-like face to the sun. Yonder, scarlet, where the malva erects its red banner. Here is a parterre of the purple monarda, there the euphorbia sheds its silver leaf. Yonder the orange predominates in the showy flowers of the asclepia; and beyond the eye roams over the pink blossoms of the cle ome. This and the following extract from The Scalp-hunters are by permission of the author. The breeze stirs them. Millions of corollas are waving their gaudy standards. The tall stalks of the helianthus bend and rise in long undulations like billows on a golden sea. They are at rest again. The air is filled with odours sweet as the perfumes of Araby or Ind. Myriads of insects flap their gay wings: flowers of themselves. The bee-birds skirr around, glancing like stray sunbeams; or, poised on whirring wings, drink from the nectared cups; and the wild bee, with laden limbs, clings among the honeyed pistils, or leaves for his far hive with a song of joy. Who planted these flowers? Who hath woven them into these pictured parterres? Nature. It is her richest mantle, richer in its hues than the scarfs of Cashmere. This is the "weed prairie." It is misnamed. It is the garden of God. The scene is changed. I am in a plain as before, with the unbroken horizon circling around me. What do I behold? Flowers? No; there is not a flower in sight, but one vast expanse of living verdure! From north to south, from east to west, stretches the prairie meadow, green as an emerald, and smooth as the surface of a sleeping lake. The wind is upon its bosom, sweeping the silken blades. They are in motion; and the verdure is dappled into lighter and darker shades, as the shadows of summer clouds flitting across the sun. The eye wanders without resistance. Perchance it encounters the dark hirsute forms of the buffalo, or traces the tiny outlines of the antelope. Perchance it follows, in pleased wonder, the far-wild gallop of a snow-white steed. This is the "grass prairie," the boundless pasture of the bison. Its The scene changes. The earth is no longer level, but treeless and verdant as ever. surface exhibits a succession of parallel undulations, here and there swelling into smooth round hills. It is covered with a soft turf of brilliant greenness. These undulations remind one of the ocean after a mighty storm, when the crisped foam has died upon the waves, and the big swell comes bowling in. They look as though they had once been such waves, that, by an omnipotent mandate, had been transformed to earth, and suddenly stood still. This is the "rolling prairie." Again the scene changes. I am among green swards and bright flowers; but the view is broken by groves and clumps of copse-wood. The frondage is varied, its tints are vivid, its outlines soft and graceful. As I move forward new landscapes open up continuously: views park-like and picturesque. "Gangs" of buffalo, "herds" of antelope, and "droves" of wild horses, mottle the far vistas. Turkeys run into the coppice, and pheasants whirr up from the path. Where are the owners of these lands, of these flocks and fowls? Where are the houses, the palaces that should appertain to these lordly parks? I look forward expecting to see the turrets of tall mansions spring up over the groves. But no. For hundreds of miles around no chimney sends forth its smoke. Although with a cultivated aspect, this region is only trodden by the mocassined foot of the hunter, and his enemy the red Indian. The forest in autumn; still bearing its full frondage. The leaves resemble flowers, so bright are their hues. They are red, and yellow, and golden, and brown. The woods are warm and glorious now, and the birds flutter among the laden branches. The eye wanders delighted down long vistas and over sunlit glades. It is caught by the flashing of gaudy plumage, the golden green of the paroquet, the blue of the jay, and the orange wing of the oriole. The red-bird flutters lower down in the coppice of green pawpaws, or amidst the amber leaflets of the beechen thicket. Hundreds of tiny wings flit through the openings, These are the "mottes" the "islands" of twinkling in the sun like the glancing of gems. the prairie sea. I am in the deep forest. It is night, and the log-fire throws out its vermilion glare, painting the objects that surround our bivouac. Huge trunks stand thickly around us; and massive limbs, gray and giant-like, stretch out and over. I notice the bark. It is cracked, and clings in broad scales crisping outward. Long snake-like parasites creep from tree to tree, coiling the trunks as though they were serpents and would crush them! There are no leaves overhead. They have ripened and fallen; but the white Spanish moss, festooned along the branches, hangs weeping down like the drapery of a death-bed. Prostrate trunks, yards in diameter and half-decayed, lie along the ground. Their ends exhibit vast cavities, where the porcupine and opossum have taken shelter from the cold. My comrades, wrapped in their blankets, and stretched upon the dead leaves, have gone to sleep. They lie with their feet to the fire, and their heads resting in the hollow of their saddles. The horses, standing around a tree, and tied to its lower branches, seem also to sleep. I am awake and listening. The wind is high up, whistling among the twigs, and causing the long white streamers to oscillate. It utters a wild and melancholy music. There are few other sounds, for it is winter, and the tree-frog and cicada are silent. I hear the crackling knots in the fire, the rustling of dry leaves "swirled" up by a stray gust, the " coowhoo-a" of the white owl, the bark of the racoon, and, at intervals, the dismal howling The air is filled with music: sweet sounds of love. The bark of the squirrel, the cooing of mated doves, the "rat-ta-ta" of the pecker, and the constant and measured chirrup of the cicada, are all ringing together. High up, on a topmost twig, the mocking-bird pours forth his mimic note, as though he would shame all other songsters into silence. I am in a country of brown barren earth and broken outlines. There are rocks, and clefts, and patches of sterile soil. Strange vegetable forms grow in the clefts and hang over the rocks. Others are spheroidal in shape, resting upon the surface of the parched earth. Others rise vertically to a great height like carved and fluted columns. Some throw out branches, crooked shaggy branches, with hirsute oval leaves. Yet there is a homogeneousness about all these vegetable forms, in their colour, in their fruit and flowers, that proclaims them of one family. They are cacti. It is a forest of the Mexican nopal. Another singular plant is here. It throws out long thorny leaves that curve downward. It is the agave, the far-famed mezcal-plant of Mexico. Here and there, mingling with the cacti, are trees of acacia and mezquite, the denizens of the desert land. No bright object relieves the eye; no bird pours its melody into the ear. The lonely owl flaps away into the impassable thicket, the rattlesnake glides under its scanty shade, and the coyote skulks through its silent glades. I have climbed mountain after mountain, |