braes in Glenmorloch; but the truth was, he had a dishonest shepherd, who purloined the animals, and laid the blame on the eagles, and the Judge was too much occupied professionally and too ignorant of country matters, to attend to his Highland farms; so he would cry, 'Shoot the earns-shoot them all; but at all events he never would suffer me to interfere in any thing, he was 80 clever himself and wise." Here the lady's voice sunk to a lachrymose tone, and as we pursued our way up the path, she went off into one of her long, soft, silly, reiterative monotones, in which she repeated herself a hundred times-in which she spoke much and said nothing-in which she was droll enough to listen to at the beginning, but became dull and wearisome at the end. Her daughter seemed to be a reaction from this; she certainly was at times a little short in her manner, matter-of-fact, and even abrupt. Perhaps she inherited this from her father, old Glenmorloch, who had been a Scotch Lord of Session, with a proverbially short temper, but surely greatly softened in its transmission to his fair daughter.

We had emerged up from the glen, and were standing on a piece of high table land adjoining the cliffs. "Now, ladies," said the General, "take your last look at bonny Glenroe, its woods, its waters, its shadows, and its stillness, for you must henceforth battle with the wind and hear the waves roar. Ha! here we are; the gale, too, is lulling. Yonder is the Thubber-aThallin, about three hundred yards off, just under where the sea-gull is wheeling, and there goes a splendid shot from its great stone gun-barrel." As he spoke, a bright green jet of water arose from the distant rocks in a liquid pillar of considerable height, and, broken and shattered into a million of diamonds, or aqua marine gems, as it fell back, was swept through its funnel into the deep sea vault from which it had been forced by the action of the waves and the wind below, and accompanied by a report as loud as that of a sixtypounder.

"Well done! brave Thubber," said the General; "that was a noble shot, but we shall have an unwished-for shower-bath by standing here. The

next discharge will wet us through, and though blue water' will not give cold, it will spoil clothes. So, Walter, let us bring the ladies round to windward of the Thubber, and we can stand within a few yards of it, and sustain no damage." This we accordingly did, and remained for nearly an hour watching this singular natural phenomenon.

"This Thubber-a-Thallin," said the General, "signifies the 'Salt Fountain,' and for brightness, volume, and power, Versailles can boast of nothing like it. It is also called 'M'Loughlin's Cup'-I never heard why. Puffing holes like these are common among the Irish sea-cliffs; the finest of them is in the county of Donegal, on the noble promontory of Horu Head. This, when compared to that, is but as a pop-gun to a pistol shot. On the same precipitous and ironbound coasts are the loftiest cliffs perhaps in Great Britain-certainly in Ireland. They are called the cliffs of Slieve League, and are close on two thousand feet high. Still more southward, as Donegal approaches Sligo, there is on the sea-shore what is called the Fairy Hole.' Here, when the winds are high, a perpetual mist issues from the orifice, which is accompanied by a wild sound like chanting, and so loud as to be heard from a distance. This I have never seen, but know it to be the fact."

"Yes," I added as my uncle paused, "and we have the subjoined testimony of Peter Sleveen, who was there in one of his wanderings, and actually looked down into the hole during a gale of wind, and saw through the rifts of the mist most wondrous sights a round table covered with a sea-green cloth, and tassels of searack, and seated about it a whole bevy of musicians, and none of them more than six inches high; little old men with brown coats, and yellow waistcoats, and grey small-clothes, and sky-blue caps, and white silks, and diamond knee-buckles; and tiny old ladies also, no bigger, Peter said, than a child's doll, in red velvet gowns, and large fans, and their cheeks beautifully rouged, and their hair powdered. And they were all singing and playing on flutes, and trombones, trumpets, and triangles, and jewsharps, tambourines and barrel-organs. And the king of the fairies was there, a little

old minnikin of a man, dressed all in green and gold, with gold buckles to his shoes, each of them as large as a pancake, and a gold chain dangling from his fob, and real gold spectacles on his nose like a complete gentleman, as no doubt he was; and the weeshy creature was seated on a three-legged stool in the middle of the table, and sawing away with his fiddle at 'Planxty O'Connor Dhu.' And all this time, said Peter, the great waves were rolling and rushing into the cave, and whirling round its sides, but never touched or wet the good people or their table; and big fishes were there whales, and sharks, and dolphins, and congour eels, grinning and gaping and glaring at the little folk, and swimming round them, but did not touch or harm them, or offer to lay a hand on them, but kept still going round and round the inside of the cave, listening to the fairy music, and humouring it too: the sharks whisking their tails to and fro, and snapping their white teeth; and the dolphins splashing the salt water up into Peter's face in their admiration of the performance; and the congour eels wagging and wriggling their bodies, and winking with their eyes; and the whales swimming slowly, and beating time steadily with their fins on their long fat sides to the Planxty; and the little people, all the time, sitting in the hollow of the water, quite dry and comfortable. At last Peter became so excited that he could stand it no longer, but got desperate; so pulling off his boots, he seized his kit, and was just in the act of slipping on his dancing shoes, that he might hark in with the concert, and fling and foot it to the Planxty, when the wind ceased, and the mist fell thick and heavy, and the music died away in a deep mournful wail; and when Peter bent over the funnel to look down, all was dark and still; he heard nothing but the sobbing of the waves, and the hollow plashing of the water against the sides of the cavern. And so ends my version of Peter Sleveen's vision at the Fairy Hole."

"Which," said my uncle, smiling, "would have been told with more spirit and about as much truth by Peter himself, whose semi-insane stories please my fancy, though I dislike his dancing, and pronounce it a satire upon our common manhood. I

trels, and others of the great gull tribe, were now seen flying and alighting on the breast of the unquiet ocean.

A large barque, with all her snowy sails set, and her bright yellow sides and smart taper spars, was fast heaving into sight. The General unslung a glass which we had used much in the glen; the ladies had a good view of the handsome craftwhich appeared to be an American packet-ship. My uncle then took the telescope, and after sweeping the horizon, he remained looking in the one direction for some time. The ladies were now at a distance from us, and he said, "Walter, take the glass, and tell me who are those figures walking on the strand, near the mouth of the Trasna, and opposite Inniskeadallow Island?"

I took the glass, and plainly saw my cousin Gilbert pacing the sands, with a female whose back was towards

dark eyes of the Spanish girl Marellos, and I caught the glitter of her large ear-rings in the sun.

In a few minutes a third figure came round a rock, and joined them, who I saw was Marellos himself, when his daughter moved on and left the men together. I gave the glass back to the General, intimating what I had seen, and he continued looking through it a long time, and no doubt watching the motions of the distant party. At last he said, "What can Gilbert be doing with these people; I thought he was twenty miles off with his friend O'Skerrett. It is very strange; but I shall ask him to explain when we meet."

We returned to where we had left our car, by the cliffs, our ladies were in great spirits, and oh how happy was I during that drive back to our house in the evening; and that the chain was weaving round me which so much influenced my life to come, I did not then consider, though I cannot but now regret.

IT is now just five years since we reviewed the first two volumes of this work. Within that time a third volume has been given to the public, but great as are the actions therein recorded, we did not consider that it comprised a sufficiently important portion of history to demand a separate notice. We have, therefore, waited for the continuation of the work, which has now been vouchsafed to us.

Mr. Merivale's third volume includes the triumphs of Antony after the death of Cesar, his coalition with the young Octavius, his loves with Cleopatra, and his final overthrow. It tells us of the battles of Philippi and of Actium, and finally seats Octavius, or, as he must then be called, Augustus, on the imperial throne. The fourth and fifth volumes contain the history of Rome under the Emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius.

In our former remarks we made it matter of charge against Mr. Merivale, that he brought the character of the great Cesar before us too much as though Cæsar were the hero of his piece. We have now no ground for reiterating the complaint. Much as the history of Rome is comprised in the life of Augustus for the fifty or sixty years after the murder of Julius, our author has not found it necessary to merge Rome and the Romans in the biography of an emperor.

We, however, intend to adopt to some extent the practice against which we before ventured to warn the historian; and our present purpose is to give to our readers, by the aid of Mr. Merivale's researches, some succinct account of the reign and character of Augustus.

But we would first say a word of our author's style, and if in doing so we speak more in censure than in praise, it is because we regret to see

one who can write such excellent English, driven into what appears to be a pedantic Latinity, by the habits of his mode of study.

This practice with Mr. Merivale springs not from pedantry, but from thoughtlessness. He has imbued,

as it were, the ears of his mind with classic phraseology, till he has come to regard certain Latin terms as belonging to his own vernacular, and has forgotten to reflect that they do not, at any rate, belong to the vernacular of those numerous readers for whom his studies are intended. We can forbear to blame him when he calls Pompey and Antony, Pompeius and Antonius, understanding, as we do, his desire to maintain the dignified nomenclature of his heroes; though, as he does so, he should, we think, also call Neptune, Neptunus, and should not designate the King of Judea sometimes as Herod, and sometimes Herodes. We can understand, however, that he was embarrassed by a difficulty as to the extent to which he should carry the classicalism of his proper names; but he should have had no difficulty in abstaining from writing Latin when his mother English would equally have served his purpose.

He tells us that the shrine of the hero, Julius, had been erected on the "spot of his cremation," meaning, thereby, the spot where his body had been burnt. He tells that the voice of Augustus was more influential than that of the "prerogative century." The word, century, in English, we take to mean a period of a hundred years, and that only. We all know that Mr. Merivale alludes to that division of the Roman people to which a certain franchise was in old times allotted. He tells us of the perpetuation" of a gens through its clientete," and of the perpetuation of "the Gentile cults." Of this word, cult, he is peculiarly fond. We hear of the "barren simplicity of the Etruscan cult," and of the "ancient cult." Why not say "worship?" To Mr. Merivale's ears, the Saxon word may not be so expressive as that which he uses, but it is, at any rate, English, and if it did not suit him, it was his business to find some English phrase that did. "The Gentile cult" does not, in our language, signify the peculiar mode of worship

of a peculiar family. We hear of the "pronaos of a temple," and of the " censure of Camillus." Now we venture to assert that no Englishman will attribute any but one meaning to this latter phrase, and yet that meaning is entirely different from Mr. Merivale's. He speaks of the censure of Camillus, as we speak of the mayoralty of Mr. Moon; Camillus had held the office of censor, and, as such, had been very vigorous, and his "censure" is spoken of as having been celebrated. The word, however, in every-day English, means blame, and we believe that it means nothing else.

Mr. Merivale, though a scholar, is no pedant. There is enough in the work now before us to prove what we say in this respect; but, nevertheless, it should be worth his while to protect himself from any such accusa tion. And, moreover, we regard it to be his imperative duty as au English historian, to write his history in pure English. That he can do so is one of his greatest merits. While ou this subject, we will venture to point out that there are one or two slips which a little more care in revision would have avoided. When he speaks, for instance, of "commanders too daring to overawe, and too dis tant to control," he means that they were too daring to be overawed, and too distant to be controlled.

It is difficult to invest with their popular and yet proper attributes the heroes of the old classic times. Those who in their youth became familiar with the great names of antiquity, have antiquity, have generally carried away ideas formed rather by the imagination of the poets than the records of the historians: and those who, in early years, had no such advantage hardly care to trouble themselves, in after life, with much study as to what was done in Greece or in Rome. The Trojan war, the wrath of Juno, the quarrels of Agamemnon and Achilles, the wanderings of Ulysses and Eneas, the miseries of Prometheus and Edipus, the urbanity of Maecenas, and the stern courage of Regulus-these are the classic incidents which boys carry with them from school, never to be eradicated; but they too generally fail to acquire an historic knowledge of the names with which they are familiar.

Indeed, we may say much the same of many incidents in our own history. We know, or fancy we know, much Inore of Henry V. than of Edward I. or of the Black Prince, because we are familiar with Shakespere--and from Scott's novels we have acquired a very defined, if not very correct, idea of the doings of the Scotch

covenanters.

As regards the great names of Grecian and Roman history, this fault may not, in general, be very fatal to us. It is of much more importance to us in the guidance of our life, that we should have an accurate idea of Lord Chatham than of Pericles of Mirabeau and Danton than ; of the Gracchi. Without the one, we cannot understand the true bearing of those popular aspirations with which we, ourselves, to-day either sympathise or contend; we cannot trace the cause of our present feelings as regards America, or France, or Russia. But no knowledge of Grecian or Roman history is necessary for this. It is only by the philosophic and the learned, that true deduction can be made from the experiences of antiquity for the guidance of the present day. And the philosophic and the learned are, as yet, but a very small minority.

our

There are, however, a few among the ancients who have left their own peculiar mark so plainly on the human race, whose genius and industry have done so much towards creating the present state of the civilized world, that some popular conception of their attributes and character is necessary to complete even a moderate store of historic knowledge; and among these no other stands so conspicuous as Augustus Cæsar. Though, in the common parlance of schools, he ranks as second of the Roman emperors, he was, in truth, the first. He formed the empire, built the throne, created the despotic power, and left it fixed on so firm a basis, that all the follies and vices of his immediate successors did not suffice to dissipate the sovereign rule, though most of them obtained for themselves a speedy and a bloodstained grave. He established a sceptre which maintained itself for fifteen hundred years, and was the first to essay that mode of monarchical rule under which the greater portion

of Europe has been governed from his time down to our own days.

In reading the annals of Rome, we are constantly tempted to ask ourselves whether any Roman ever had a heart. The instances of so weak an organ beneath a toga were, indeed, rare, and Augustus does not furnish one of them.

It is singular that a man whose public life commenced while he was yet little more than a boy, should never have shewn pity, sensibility, or sympathy. It was in his early years that stern cruelty, the sternest, most merciless cruelty, appeared to be necessary to his ambition, and in his earliest years he was cruel as a Robespierre when goaded to madness by continual bloodshed, as reckless of humanity as a Napoleon when driven on to Moscow by the fatality of his career. As a boy he exceeded the massacres of Sulla; and yet, in his after life, he learned to pardon. But in this there was no feeling of the heart. Policy, in both cases, taught him the lesson which he followed. By true heartfelt emotion he was rarely, if ever, actuated; but his head never failed him.

When Cæsar fell murdered in the

senate-house, his young nephew, then called Octavius, was practising in Greece the studies of his youth. He was still under twenty years of age, and it appears to have been the intention of Caesar, who had adopted him as his son, to take him with him in his approaching campaign against the Parthians.

We have all learnt, and learnt with tolerable accuracy, from Shakespere's play, how Mark Antony got the better of the conspirators, and by skill and policy cheated them of the influence which they had expected to obtain on the death of the tyrant. There have been no heroes of history, either ancient or modern, more worthy of contempt than were these conspirators, Brutus, and Cassius, the other Brutus, and the rest of them. They had all the weakness of the French Girondists, and apparently few, if any, of their virtues. That they were not opposed, on principle, to the shedding of blood is proved by the death of Cæsar. Cesar, who had been personally the friend of each of them, fell perforated by the daggers of them all. But though they slow Cæsar, they