would be merely ridiculous if they were not the result of a malady which humbles human nature: the incident by which they were succeeded ought to make Democritus shed tears. Sinot had a child who had been affected by fits, and over whom the priest had been requested by its mother to say prayers. This was not only a natural, but I will add a reasonable application. It is not supposed by Roman Catholics that the prayers of a clergyman are endowed with any preternatural efficacy; but it is considered that praying over the sick is a pious and religious act. The recollection of this fatal request passed across the distempered mind of the madman, who hurried with an insane alacrity to Sinot's cabin. It was composed of two rooms upon the ground-floor, in the smaller of which lay the little victim. It was indeed so contracted that it could not contain more than two or three persons. The crowd who followed the priest remained outside, and were utterly unconscious of what he was about to do. The father of the child was not in the house when Father Carroll entered it, and was prevented by the pressure in the exterior room from approaching him; and for some time after the death of the child was wholly unconscious of what had taken place.

No efforts whatever were made to prevent his interference. He was produced as a witness upon the trial, and swore that it did not enter into his thoughts that Father Carroll intended to do the child the least harm. He could not, he said, even see the priest. It is not necessary to describe the manner of the infant's death. It is enough to say, that after uttering a few feeble cries, and calling upon its "mammy," every sound became extinct. The madman had placed the child under a tub, and life was extinguished. It may well be imagined that the trial of this case excited a strong sensation in the county where the rebellion had raged with its most dangerous fury, and from which it will be long before its recollections will have entirely passed away. The Protestant party, forgetting that many of their own sect had taken a partial share in the proceedings, of which they had been at all events the passive witnesses, exhibited a proud and disdainful exultation, and affected a deep scorn for the intellectual debasement of which they alleged this event to be a manifest proof; while the Catholics disclosed a festered soreness upon an incident which, they could not fail to feel, was likely to expose them to much plausible imputation.

The Court-house was crowded to the roof by persons of all classes and opinions, among whom the clergy of both churches were conspicuous. It was filled with parsons and with priests. Although there is a certain clerical affinity between ecclesiastics of all sorts, it was not difficult, under a cloth of the same colour, to distinguish between the ministers of the two religions. An expression of sly disdain, accompanied with a joyous glitter of the eye, gleamed over the parsons' faces; while the countenances of the Catholic clergy betrayed, in the rude play of their marked and impassioned features, the bitter consciousness of unmerited humiliation. The dress of the two clerical parties presented a singular contrast. The priests were cased in huge topboots of dubious and murky yellow and of bespattered black: the parsons' taper limbs were inclosed in tight and sable silk, which, by compressing, disclosed their plumb proportions. The nameless integuments of the popish ministers of the gospel were framed of substantial thickset, and bore evidence to the high trot of the rough-coated nags with which they had descended from the mountains; while the immaculate kerseymere of the parsons' inexpressibles indicated with what nicety they had picked their steps through all the mire of the Catholic multitude round the court. The priests' dingy waistcoats were closely fastened to their neckcloths, and looked like an armour of economy; while the parsons' exhibited the finest cambric, wrought into minute and snow-white folds. A ponderous mantle of smoking frieze hung from the shoulders of the priest; while a well-shaped jerkin brought the parson's symmetries into relief. The parson held a pinch of Prince's Mixture between his lilied fingers, while the priest impelled a reiterated and ample mass of Lundifoot into his olfactory organ. The priest's cheek was

ruddy with the keen air of the mountain and the glen, while the faint blush upon the parson's cheek left it a matter for conjecture, whether it proceeded from some remnant of nature, or was the result of the delicate tincture of art. The former sat near the desk, and the latter near the bench. Besides the Clergy of the two religions, I observed another class, whom, from their plain apparel and primitive aspect, I took for the friars of Wexford, but upon looking more closely I discovered my mistake. There was a grinness in their expression, quite foreign from the natural and easy cheerfulness of an Irish Franciscan; and in their disastrous and Calvinistic visages, their long lank hair, and the gloomy leer of mingled hatred and derision with which they surveyed the Catholics around them, I beheld the ghostly "teachers of the Word." A pause took place before the trial was called on, which rendered expectation more intense: at length Mr. Justice Johnson directed that the prisoner should be brought forward. Every eye was turned to the dock, and the prisoner stood at the bar. His figure was tall and dignified. A large black cloak with a scarlet collar was fastened with a clasp round his neck, but not so closely as to conceal the ample chest, across which his arms were loosely and resignedly folded. His strong black hair was bound with a velvet band, to conceal the recent incisions made by the Surgeon in his head. His countenance was smooth and finely chiseled; and it was observed by many that his features, which, though small, were marked, bore a miniature resemblance to Napoleon. His colour was dead and chalky, and it was impossible to perceive the least play or variety of emotion about the mouth, which continued open, and of the colour of ashes. On being called on to plead, he remained silent. The Court was about to direct an inquiry whether he was "mute of malice, when it was seen by a glance of his eye, that he was conscious of the purport of the question; and by the directions of his counsel he pleaded not guilty. During the trial, which was conducted with the most exemplary moderation by the counsel for the crown, he retained his petrified and statuelike demeanour; and although the heat was most intense, the hue of his face and lips did not undergo the slightest change. The jury found that he had committed the direful act under the influence of insanity. Judge Johnson addressed him in a very striking and pathetic manner. He seemed to me to have blood in his eye for Prince Hohenloe, whose miracles were then in vogue, and were supposed, however erroneously, to have contributed to the prisoner's infatuation. This was a mistake: he was organically insane, and was in reality as innocent as the poor child who had perished in his hands. The learned judge opened a masqued battery upon Bamberg, and some of the shots reached to Rome: but he should not have forgotten that there is a form for exorcism in the Protestant as well as in the Roman Catholic ritual. The religion of England requires a further cleansing, and a new Reformation might be a judicious project.

STANZAS.

DOST thou never remember the old river-mill,

Overwhelm'd by the storms, undermined by the stream,

With its willows and wild flowers creeping to fill

The rude rents in the strength they can never redeem?

In its prospering time we had pass'd it unseen,
Or had deem'd it a blot on the beauty around;
But in ruin we dwell on its fragments of green,
For there's nothing beyond it so fair to be found.
Even thus is our fellow through life in its pride
Often slighted and scorn'd until ruin comes on,
And the rents of the heart he would patiently hide,
Make us muse on our coldness in days that are gone.

JOSEPHINE.

"Les grands, les princes devroient être ses esclaves; les sceptres devroient être à ses pieds. Cependant là voilà miserable coureuse!”

We did not meet in courtly hall,
Where Birth and Beauty throng,
Where Luxury holds the festival,
And Wit awakes the song;
We met, where darker spirits meet,
In the home of sin and shame,
Where Satan shows his cloven feet,
And hides his titled name;

And she knew she could not be, Love,
What once she might have been;
But she was kind to me, Love,

My pretty Josephine.

We did not part beneath the sky,
As warmer lovers part;

Where Night conceals the glistening eye
But not the throbbing heart;

We parted on the spot of ground,

Where we first had laugh'd at love;
And ever the jests were loud around,
And the lamps were bright above ;—
"The heaven is very dark, love,
The blast is very keen;
But merrily rides my bark, Love,
Good night, my Josephine!"

She did not speak of ring or vow;
But fill'd the cup of wine,

And took the roses from her brow
To make a wreath for mine,

And bade me, when the gale should lift
My light skiff o'er the wave,

To think as little of the gift,

As of the hand that gave ;

"Go gaily o'er the sea, Love,

And find your own heart's queen;

And look not back to me, Love,

Your humble Josephine!"

That garland breathes and blooms no more,
Past are those idle hours;

I would not, could I choose, restore
The fondness or the flowers;

Yet oft their wither'd witchery
Revives its wonted thrill,

Remember'd, not with passion's sigh,
But, oh! remember'd still;

And even from your side, Love,

And even from this scene,
One look is o'er the tide, Love,
One thought with Josephine!

Alas, your lips are rosier,
Your eyes of softer blue,

And I have never felt for her,
As I have felt for you;

ROUSSEAU.

Our love was like the bright snow-flakes,
Which melt before you pass,

Or the bubble on the wine, which breaks
Before you lip the glass;

You saw these eyelids wet, Love,
Which she has never seen ;—
But bid me not forget, Love,
My poor Josephine!

MY AUNT'S POODLE.

My Aunt Margaret has a poodle. It is, unquestionably, the ugliest little beast that ever bore the canine form. Nature has done nothing for it; and this neglect has been aggravated by a variety of accidents. Early in its puppy-days, one of its legs was broken by a fall through the spiral staircase, from the top of the house to the bottom; so that it limps. Its eyes were villanous at the best of times; they were marked by a sly, suspicious, discontented leer, and never looked you honestly in the face. They gave the dog the air of a pickpocket; and I seldom ever met it without instinctively putting my hand to my watch or my purse. Had I any faith in transmigration, I should say that the soul of Bill Soames had passed into the ugly body of my old aunt's poodle. But as if the natural expression of its eyes had been insufficient to render the beast hateful, an accident must needs occur to remove all doubt upon the point. Some months ago, the contents of a phial of spirits of hartshorn were overturned into Mr. Lovely's right eye (for Lovely is the appropriate name of the exquisite creature)which said right eye has not only been ever since relieved of the performance of all optical duties, but it has assumed an appearance by no means so agreeable as to warrant a description. Its skin too!-The common saying that "Beauty is but skin-deep," would, in this instance, become a gross exaggeration, for Mr. Lovely's beauty is not even as deep as that. He is to make a literal use of another common expression-in a very ugly skin. It is of no imaginable colour—a sort of yellowish-greenish-brownish grey-an unearthly, vampire tinge. And here again accident has stept in to make bad, worse. By the upsetting of a cauldron of boiling water, the unlucky animal was woefully scalded; and to this hour he bears evidence of his sufferings, and his miraculous escape from death, in two large, ghastly, pink spots-one on his left side, the other on the nape of his neck- -as free from hair as the palm of your hand. Now, though it would be impossible to like such a mass of ugliness and deformity, yet had it been a well-disposed, kind-hearted, unassuming, gentlemanly dog; a dog of prepossessing manners, respectable habits, decent conduct, and unimpeachable morals; or were it remarkable for its talents and accomplishments; one might, all upon or any of these accounts, and in consideration of its sufferings, have pitied and endured it. But, no: as it is the ugliest, so is it the worst of created beasts: sulky, snarling, savage, and sneaking; thankless and dissatisfied; as arrant a thief as a magpie, as finished a blackguard as a butcher's cur; and for accomplishments-it could not sit up upon its hinder legs, pick up a penny-piece, or fetch a handkerchief across the room, were either of those feats to be made its benefit of clergy.

It may be asked: Why be at the pains of describing so worthless a beast?-Because the beast, worthless as it is, is the sole arbiter of the destinies of the only remaining representatives of three ancient houses-the Nolands, the Thwaites's, and the Briggs's. Besides, the beast has a clear income of twelve hundred pounds a year; or, which is the same thing, he has the disposal of it.

Yesterday was my old Aunt Margaret's birth-day, when, as usual, all the members of her family were invited to dine with her. Poor Jack Noland and myself are her only immediate relations; the Briggs's (consisting of Mr. and Mrs. B. with their son and daughter, Pomponius and Julia) and Miss Priscilla Thwaites (a maiden lady of fiftyseven) being merely first cousins to her late husband. The assertion that all the members of my Aunt Margaret's family were invited to dine with her, requires some modification: nothing more must be understood by it than all such as enjoy the honour of Mr. Lovely's patronage, and have been wise enough to keep terms with him; for, besides the seven persons enumerated, there are fifteen others, who, owing to various offences committed by them against the peace and dignity of the rascally little poodle, are now no more considered by my Aunt Margaret as her relations, than Prester John.

Now, since Aunt Margaret, as Jack Noland very sensibly observed to me the other day, cannot carry her money with her to the grave, it must be evident that the prospects of us seven who still continue in favour, are improved by the removal of the unfortunate fifteen; but, in proportion as our places are more valuable, our duties, our cares, and our anxieties are more oppressive. The brute seems to be perfectly aware of this; he appears to have studied our dislikes and antipathies for the fiendish pleasure of exciting them; and he takes a diabolical delight in tormenting us to within an inch of the forfeiture of our legacies. He is perhaps more circumspect in his conduct towards me than towards the other expectants; for I long ago gave him a lesson which he has not yet quite forgotten. I am not of a very enduring temper; and finding Mr. Lovely, upon whose caprices my hopes depended, to be a dog whose good-will was not to be won by gentleness -reflecting at the same time that the continual annoyance he inflicted upon me, might one day or other force me beyond the bounds of prudence, provoke me to retaliate, and thereby cost me dearly-I resolved upon a decisive but dangerous measure, with a view to secure myself against his future aggressions. It was simply this: one morning, during my Aunt Margaret's absence, in acknowledgement of an inhospitable growl at my entrance, and a manifest intention to bite, I flogged him in such a way as perfectly astonished him. He has ever since behaved to me as well as such a dog can behave.

a

But yesterday was,, as poor Jack Noland forcibly described it, tremendous day for us all, and be d-d to the dog."-Jack, by the way, is the poor cousin of our family, whose duty it is to love and admire us all, to be of every body's way of thinking but his own, to execute all the disagreeable commissions of the family, and patiently bear the reproach when any thing goes wrong.-"Ah, there again! 'tis Jack's fault, no doubt." But Jack possesses many good qualities, and is a pleasant fellow when he is allowed to expand. But a stern look of the Briggs's, or a sneer of Miss Priscilla, will freeze the jest that is