O'DONNEL.

VOLUME I

VOLUME II
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Notes on Volume II

VOLUME III

CHAPTER I.

WHEN the cloth was removed, and Mc. Rory had placed the table near the fire, and the chairs round it, he still seemed to linger with an obvious anxiety in the room. It was evident, by his efforts, that he was solicitous to excuse his master's absence, and apparent neglect of those hospitable rites, which, in the estimation of this genuine Irishman, were the first of virtues.

Lady Singleton, who always suspected something, even where there were least grounds for suspicion, merely to show her superior acuteness and penetration, now observed in French to her party, that the sudden retreat of the master, and the lingering of the servant, were odd circumstances, that the whole had une mauvaise mine, and that she wished they were safe out of the horrible mountains, where none but a man of desperate fortunes would reside. - "She did not like," she added, "the air of the place altogether," and observed, that the immense sword or sabre over the chimney-piece was a singular piece of furniture in any place, but the retreat of a captain of a band of "White Boys," or some such outlawed desperado. As she spoke, she directed her eyes to the sword; and Mr. Glentworth, laughing at the folly of her suspicion, said aloud, that "he supposed the sword was some family relic."

"Is it the sword, your Honor?" said Mc. Rory, whose eyes were fixed on the stranger's, though he was affecting, in his own words, "just to ready up the place."

"Yes," said Mr. Glentworth, "it looks as if it had seen service, Mc. Rory."

"O! then it's itself that has," returned Mc. Rory, taking it down, and blowing the dust off it: "many a tall fine fellow it laid low in its day, any how, I'll engage."

"Indeed!" returned Lady Singleton, looking round significantly at her party, while her daughters and Lady Florence turned pale: "so it has committed great havoc, has it?"

"It's truth I am telling you, Madam; the world would'nt get the marks of the blood out of the blade, so it would'nt. They say it is the blood of an O'Neil, which an O'Donnel killed in these very mountains."

"Indeed!" said Lady Singleton, becoming gradually the victim of her own idle imaginings: "and pray, Sir, who does this sword belong to?"

"To the great O'Donnel, my lady, who beat the English troops fairly out of the province."

"Lately?" asked Lady Singleton eagerly.

"O yes, Madam; that's when the master's people were kings of the county round, I may say, and bate the world before them, which they did in great style."

"You mean, I suppose," asked Lady Singleton in a tremulous voice, "in the late tumults which we have heard so much of in England, as disturbing this country?"

"O yes, my Lady, I do! - surely."

"And pray, Sir?" asked Lady Singleton still more faintly, "do the White Boys or the Oak Boys, prevail in these mountains?"

O, my Lady," returned Mc. Rory, "we have no call to the likes of them at all, at all; there never was any RUCTION to signify in these mountains since the ould times, when the great O'Donnel Baldearg, that's 'O'Donnel the Red,' cleared the country fairly with this same sword, of all the rogues and rapperies, that wanted to drive us into the bogs and mountains like wild bastes, when he fought at the battle of Balintubber for the glory of Ireland."

"And this O'Donnel the Red," said Mr. Glentworth, who had been much amused with the equivoque of a dialogue, he had hitherto forborne to interrupt; "and this O'Donnel the Red was, I suppose, some famous ancestor of your master?"

"O! he was, your Honour, the 'Star of the North' he is call'd to this day, - long life to him!"

"An ancestor!" repeated Lady Singleton, recovering from her transient panic: "oh, that is another thing."

"Stay, Madam!" exclaimed Mc. Rory in a hurry, putting up the sword, and running to a book-shelf, from which he took down a little volume in primmer size: "see here, my Lady, sure here is the whole story, covered with elegant red morocky; and, troth, and it will amuse you greatly till the master comes; you'll be highly delighted with it, I'll engage. Myself used to get it by heart of a winter's night. That's the fine ancient ould copy of it, which was wrote with Abbé O'Donnel's own hand, but the master got his done out fairly by the Torney Costello's clerk."

Lady Singleton took the book; it contained but a few pages, and was done in a neat printed hand. Mc. Rory trimmed the lamp, put fresh turf on the fire, and wishing them "every amusement in life," left the room; when, at the request of all, Lady Singleton read as follows: -

O'DONNEL THE RED,

OR,

THE CHIEFS OF TIRCONNEL.

A FRAGMENT.

THE Irish annalist has boasted, - the English historian has avowed, that Ireland first submitted to England in the reign of James the First; and his Irish subjects fondly believed that is his veins flowed the blood of their own royal line.*

[* "It was not till the 12th of James I. 1614, that the Irish were considered as subjects," they "were then taken into his Majesty's gracious protection, under one law, as dutiful subject." - Borlase, p. 188.]

Till that period, the English settled in Ireland, neither "governed the land in peace by law,* nor could they root out the natives by the sword in war."**

[*Sir J. Davis.]

[**They offered the English sovereign 8000 marks to grant them the benefit of the English law, and were refused. (See Sir J. Davis's Historical Relations.) They were, therefore, governed by their own laws so recently as the reign of Henry VIII. for the then Chief Baron observes, "Those laws and statutes, made by the Irish on their hills, they keep firm and stable, without breaking them for any favor or reward." - Baron Fingloss, Breviate of Ireland.]

Till that period, the few eastern districts which the Saxon arms had won, were, by harassing encroachments, partially extended; but the Irish chiefs of the north, of the south, and of the west, nay, even those who raised their castles on the borders of the pale, were of necessity left to the enjoyment of their own rude independence.* Their septs in the days of Elizabeth, as in the days of Henry the Second, paid submission only to their respective chiefs, and lived in federal alliance with each other. When in amity with the English power, they were termed friends and allies;** when refractory, they were called "the Irish enemy." The epithet of rebel was not applied to them, till, by being admitted to the benefits of the English laws, they were considered as subject; which did not take place till the twelfth year of James the First's reign.

[*As in the instance of the O'Beirnes, Chiefs of Glen-Maluva.]

[** "They were sworn to keep the peace, but in every other particular retained their own distinctions and independence." - Leland, Volume 2.]

In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth, flourished Calvagh O'Donnel, chief of Tirconnel.*

[*Tirconnel, modern Donegal.]

On the north-west of Ulster, over a region of rocks and marshes, of lakes and mountains, deeply indented with the sea, and skirted by precipitous head-lands, the chiefs of Tirconnel had reigned in a regular, though not tranquil, succession from the tenth century.

Their national title was Tanist, or Chief: that bestowed on them by foreign potentates bore a loftier sound. - Henry III. of England,* solicited their alliance by the title "King;"** Francis I. of France, sought their assistance by the name of "Sovereign Prince;" and the Roman Pontiff and Spanish Monarch gave them these titles so lately as in the days of Elizabeth.

[*The letter of Henry III. to the Irish Chief is extant in Rymer, Volume I, page 426. In which he writes to him, "Rex, Donaldo Regi de Tirconnel, Salutem."]

[**Francis I. failed to induce the Irish Chief to unite with him against Henry VIII. And James I. acknowledges the hereditary fealty and attachment of the O'Donnels to the Crown of England, until the Irish Lords, President, and Deputies, drove O'Donnel the Red to desperation in Elizabeth's reign. This acknowledgment is made in the King's letter to Earl Rodwick O'Donnel, the brother of the deposed Chief, extant in the Irish Rolls.]

To the chiefs of Tirconnel stood opposed the powerful sept of the O'Neils, chiefs of Tyrone. Descended from the same stock, they were yet hereditary rivals, and waged a warfare for ages against each other, under the operation of all those passions, which break out with greatest violence, among a people unsophisticated and unrefined.* Hugh O'Neil, the celebrated Earl of Tyrone, alternately the favorite and the foe of Queen Elizabeth, who, in the end, threw off allegiance with his English Earldom, and re-assumed the state and independence of an Irish Prince,** saw, and loved, the Lady Johanna O'Donnel;*** and the feuds of ages were extinguished upon the altar of family alliance. - The fair daughter of Tirconnel became Countess of Tirowen, and the nuptials were celebrated in the Castle Donegal, in all the rude magnificence of the times, and consequence of the parties.

[*It was between these haughty Chiefs that the well known anecdote occurred of "pay me my tribute or else," &c. &c. &c.]

[***Hugh O'Neil, Baron of Dungannon, lived much in the court of Elizabeth, had command of a troop of horse, and received letters under the great seal of England for the Earldom of Tyrone, &c. - See Morris's Ireland.]

The septs pledged each other in draughts of meadh from the Corna, which had so often sounded them to battle;* and the bards of the O'Neils and of the O'Donnels swept their harps to the praises of the descendants of "Niall of the Nine Hostages."

[*See note at the end of the Volume.]

FRAGMENT II.

The nuptial feast, according to the boundless hospitality of the times, was held for many days; and the carousal was only interrupted by an event, which speard desolation and misery in the House of O'Donnel, caused the annihilation of its glory, and gave birth to conflicts, from which Ireland had not recovered at the end of the succeeding century.*

[*The successes of O'Donnel and O'Neil had unquestionably a great influence upon English affairs in Ireland, for a considerable time after even the death of those celebrated chiefs.]

In the family of the Chief of Tirconnel a star had arisen, which, though but just verging above the horizon of life, already shed around a light, destined never to be quenched, but with the independence of the land, which it for a brief period illuminated. Hugh O'Donnel, called O'Donnel the Red,* the eldest son of Calvagh, a boy in years, a hero in spirit, a being "out of the common roll of men," had already given proofs of such extraordinary valour and virtue, that in the language of the chronicle, "his fame had gone throughout the land."** He had assisted at the nuptials of his beautiful sister, and on the third night of the carousal, had risen from the nocturnal revels, to enjoy the fresh sea breeze on the ramparts of the castle: thither he had been followed by two young and gallant friends, John and Henry O'Neil. As they descended towards the shores, a sound, sweeter than their native harp, caught their ear; it came from a rocky cove, where a Spanish vessel, which had put in a few days before, lay anchored.

[*O'Donnel Baldearg, or O'Donnel Roue, from a red mark in the centre of his forehead.]

[**See note at the end of the volume. All the accounts given of this Chief, both by friends and enemies, represent him as a most extraordinary person. - See Leland, Abbé Oseaghagan, Annals of the Four Masters, &c. He was as remarkable for his eloquence and personal beauty, as for his humanity and military prowess.]

The ship was said to be the property of a Cadiz merchant, and had furnished out the marriage feast with the racy wines and luscious fruits of Iberia. The Spanish captain had, by his urbanity and fair dealing, won upon the opinion of the inhabitants of the town and Castle of Donegal, and received a promise from the younger chiefs to pledge him to the health of his kind on board his vessel.

As O'Donnel and his friends approached the cove, they perceived a Spanish minstrel seated on the prow of the bark, and accompanying with his mandoline the sweet strain, which he had raised over the stilness of the moonlight waters. The youths approached and mounted the deck; the minstrel changed to a bolder measure. He sung of the common origin of the Spanish and Irish nations; of the prowess of the Sons of Milesius; of the times gone bye, when the O'Donnels, raised the standard of their blood-red cross, in the fields of Arragon, against the Pagan Moors.* The spirits of the listening youths kindled at the song of the strangers. O'Donnel pointed to the cannon mounted on the ramparts** of his castle, which the King of Spain had presented to his father. The captain of the vessel sent round the cup, and pledged the chiefs in the name of his sovereign. The sailors who manned the vessel, a hardy band, crowded on the deck, gazed with respectful wonder on the grandeur of the young chief's powerful figure; approached - surrounded him.

[*In all the accounts of the capture of the young O'Donnel, these arts of seduction were attributed to the feigned captain of the vessel.]

[**Historic.]

FRAGMENT III.

It was midnight - the torches were extinguished in the Castle of Donegal; the watch-fires on the faughgard were lighted. The warder paced the ramparts, and threw from time to time a look towards the beach; for the young chief and his friends had not yet returned from their visit to the Spanish vessel.

The moon went down; a profound darkness settled over the face of the deep; no noise was heard but the murmur of the refluent tide. The dawn broke, the night-guard was relieved. The warder descended the rock towards the sea-side; he secretly condemned the want of dignity in the young Irish Lords, who condescended to join in the nocturnal wassailage of a foreign trader. He turned his eyes towards the cove, where the vessel had been moored, but he saw not the glittering of the white sails amidst the darkness of the cliffs. - He turned his eyes to the north, and to the south, to the east, and to the west; but all, to the utmost verge of the horizon, was one broad expanse of illuminated waters. The sun rose magnificently from the ocean, but no vessel speckled its placid bosom. The truth flashed like lightning on the warder's mind - the heir of Tirconnel was carried off by a strategem; he flew to the castle with the intelligence, but he had not power to tell the tale to the aged father: he fell speechless at the feet of the venerable chief.

FRAGMENT IV.

The seeming Spanish vessel was an English frigate, fitted out by the Lord Deputy Perrot, for the purpose of betraying into his power the young heir of Tirconnel. The youth and his friends, surrounded and overcome by numbers, were placed under the hatches, coveyed to Dublin Castle, and thrown in the depths of a noisome dungeon. The reason assigned for this act of treachery, which filled a whole province with dismay, was, that the Earl of Tyrone having married the Lady O'Donnel, would inevitably seduce the chief, his brother-in-law, to unite the forces of Tirconnel to those of Tyrone, in opposition to the English power, from which the Earl was suspected of deserting; and that the great promise of the youthful chief bespoke a fearful enemy in future times.* Five years elapsed; and the first emotions of rage and grief, which preyed upon the life of the young O'Donnel, resolved themselves into a rooted principle of hatred to oppression, and vengeance on his own oppressors. Of the feelings which belonged to his age, hope only remained; and her cheering dream was nearly realized by the ingenuity and efforts of his young fellow-sufferers. The O'Neils, less strictly guarded, because of less consequence than O'Donnel, contrived their own and their friend's escape; broke his chains; and unsuspected, unobserved, in the midst of darkness and of danger, crossed the castle fosse, escaped the vigilance of the guards, and fled to the Wicklow mountains. Overcome at last by suffering and fatigue, torn and wounded by the briary underwood, which crept over their perilous and unfrequented paths, they at last grew desperate, approached a humn dwelling, and sounded the horn that hung suspended at the gate of the Castle of O'Tool. The warder appeared, and they claimed protection for the son of the great O'Donnel, of Tirconnel. O'Tool granted a seeming protection, but betrayed his trust. The next day the young chief was delivered into the hands of the English government, conveyed to the Castle of Dublin, and with his young and faithful friends, was again consigned to captivity, and loaded with irons heavier than before.**

[*Annals of the Four Masters. Others assert that Sir J. Perrot, by this act, sought to conciliate the English government, whom he had displeased by his lenient measures in Ireland. But though Sir J. Perrot planned this scheme, the severity of its execution was left to his successor, Sir W. Fitzwilliam.]

[** "His manner of usage was most dishonourable and discommendable, and neither allowable before God or man: for O'Donnel being young, and being taken by this strategem, having never offended, was imprisoned with great severity, and many irons laid upon him, as if he had been a notable traitor," &c. - Lee's Memorial to Queen Elizabeth. MSS. Trinity College.]

Another two years of captivity elapsed, when the attachment of one of the warders of the castle to his young and unfortunate prisoner again procured his escape.* His keeper knocked off his irons, and conducted him and his friends beyond the gates of the city. The fugitives sought once more the intricate wilds of the Wicklow mountains, where the passes were alone unguarded. The depth of the snows, the darkness and horrors of the night, the apprehension of pursuit, distracted and bewildered the unhappy wanderers; and in the confusion and precipitancy of retreat, the younger O'Neil was lost. The voices of his friends were in vain raised; in vain O'Donnel and his brother turned back, at the risk of liberty and life, to seek him - he was gone for ever! In distraction and despair, the brother and the friend pursued their dreary course, amidst the horrors of the night.** The strength of the surviving O'Neil failed. O'Donnel, more vigorous and robust, in vain supported him in his arms - O'Neil sunk under his sufferings. O'Donnel laid him under the shelter of a rock, in the Valley of Glendaloch; stripped off his own wretched garb, and placed it over the shivering body of his friend,*** and stretched himself beside him, in the hope of communicating warmth to his chilled and lifeless limbs.

[*The great tie which existed between the keeper and his prisoner was, that he spoke Irish, says the Chronicle.]

[***Ibid.]

On the borders of the Valley of Glendaloch stood the Castle of Maluva, the ancient seat of the O'Beirnes. It was reserved for the chief of that powerful sept to discover, amidst the rocks which screened his castle, two youths nearly buried in the snow. The one lay dead in the other's arms; the other was alive, but speechless; and when the humane attentions of the chief, who summoned his attendants to the spot, restored the faculties of the survivor, O'Beirne found in the object of his charity the son of a prince! - the son of his own kinsman and friend, the Chief of Tirconnel!

The body of the unfortunate O'Neil was consigned to the Abbey of Glendaloch.* O'Donnel was carried on the backs of some of O'Beirne's sept, to the defile of Glen-Maluva.** His name, his youth, his rank, his misfortunes, had gone before him. The clan of the O'Beirnes came forth from their strong holds and castles to receive him. They met the northern chief, the descendant of the royal line of Eirin, with shouts of exultation, mingled with expressions of implacable animosity to his enemies.

[*The ruins of this abbey are still visible in the beautiful valley of Glendaloch, in the county of Wicklow.]

[**Annals of the Four Masters.]

FRAGMENT V.

The flight of the illustrious captive was soon discovered. The Lord Deputy posted guards on the fords of the Liffy, to prevent his escape; but the chief of Glyn-Maluva, true to his trust, risked his own life to save his friend's. He placed himself at the head of a troop of horse, and conducted O'Donnel towards Dublin, foreseeing the security of the attempt in its unsuspected boldness. As he imagined, the fords so near the capital were carelessly guarded, and on the banks of the Liffy the friends embraced and parted. When the aged warrior wept, the eyes of the young chief were not dry; national suffering had not yet subdued national sensibility.

A messenger, in disguise of a harper, was sent before the fugitive, to prepare the old chief of Tirconnel for the return of his son. Accompanied by eight horsemen only, O'Donnel took his perilous way through the heart of the English pale,* passing near many an English garrison, beholding in distance the night-fires of many an Irish Faughguard,** retreating among the heights of the mountainous region of Sleeve-gullion, while the troops stationed in Balbreken Castle wound along the river beneath. He successively caught a view of Rose Castle;*** of the blue waters of Lough Erne, and the banner of the chief of Fermanagh, floating on the mast of the barge, which the brave Mc. Guire had prepared to carry him across the lake, to the foot of his father's fortress at Ballyshannon. Soon distinguished by the friends of his House, the long stilled cry of "O'Donnel nel aboo,"**** rent the air. Borne in joyous triumph over the waters of the lake that bathed his native domains, he was received by the inhabitants of Tirconnel, who came in multitudes from the remostest districts to hail the restoration of their betrayed chief to liberty, and to his country.***** They knelt in his path; they kissed his feet; they clasped his hands; and, in the midst of the acclamations of thousand of voices, the aged Lord of Tirconnel resigned his chieftanry to his son, to give him a free scope to avenge his own injuries, and to protect his people. O'Phryle performed the ceremony of inauguration,****** and the harpers of the family sung the feats of the heroes, which it had produced, calling upon the new chief to emulate the glory of his ancestors.

[*His way lay through Meath, Louth, Armagh, and Fermanagh. The ruins of the fortress of Ballyshannon still remain; and the town takes its name from a ford, where the old chief of Tirconnel was drowned. - Ballyshan Eye, the mouth of the ford.]

[******A kind of Bardic priest; the hereditary performer of this ceremony.]

FRAGMENT VI.

Indignant feelings of personal oppression and injustice sharpened the sympathy of national suffering. The outrages committed by the Lord Presidents of Ulster and Connaught suffered not the wounded spirit of O'Donnel to heal. While his limbs were still galled from the weight of the chains, he had so miraculously broken, the protection of his arm was claimed by the cries of his countrymen.* All Ulster rose, and ranged itself under the red banner of the O'Donnel and the O'Neil; and he, whose young and balmy blood had been so early "turned to gall," whose warm and amicable feelings had been so prematurely roused into vindictiveness, was elected the champion of the oppressed, and triumphantly styled by compatriots,

"The invincible Hero of the North,"

for, in the successive conflicts which tore and distracted his country, he was invincible.

[*The injustices and atrocities committed on the Ulster and Connaught chiefs, by Bagnall and Bingham, in their presidencies, were by all contemporary historians assigned as causes of the insurrection in those provinces. Queen Elizabeth was so well assured of it, that she publicly accused them of their enormities, and thus alludes to it in her instructions to the Lord Deputy:

Queen Elizabeth made frequent attempts in favor of the Irish; "but her gracious intentions were neglected or disobeyed by her principal ministers in that kingdom."]

The young chief of Tirconnel soon spread the fame of his prowess throughout the kingdom. Those who had wept his unbought misfortunes, now triumphed in his unequalled succcesses. In a short space of time he had overrun the province of Connaught, restored those chiefs who had been deposed,* punished others who had become apostate,** expelled the unjust stewards of an abused sovereign, and scattered those "bands of landless resolutes who had been sharked up***" by borrowed power to spoilate his own possessions, and lay waste the land of his fathers.**** Pursued by disciplined armies and distinguished leaders, he turned back upon thier multitudinous forces with a desperate, but successful valour; overcame the troops of the famous General Norris at the battle of the Curlieus, and routed the English army, though led on by the gallant Clifford, in the plains of Dunaveeragh; held parleys with the Essex's and the Mountjoys, and won "golden opinions" alike from the enemy he vanquished, and the friend he redressed.

[*The sheriffs and other officers of the Lords President followed their example; entered the several counties, attended with large bodies of armed men, pillaging the inhabitants, whom they affected to despise. - Leland's Hist. of Ireland, p. 302.]

[****A great part of the unquietness of O'Donnel's country came by Sir W. Fitzwilliam placing there one Willis as Sheriff, who had with him three hundred of the very rascals and scum of the kingdom, who did rob and spoil the people, &c. &c. - Lee's Memorial to Queen Elizabeth, MSS. Trinity College.]

FRAGMENT VII.

O'Donnel, covered with glory, retired to the Castle of Donegal, to celebrate his union with the fair object of a long-cherished and romantic passion. The Lady Avelina O'Neil, the daughter of the Earl of Tyrone, by a former marriage with and English lady, had alone shared with his country the feelings of his heart. To years of suffering, disquietude, and hardships, some months of domestic felicity succeeded; when the family compact, formed by double alliance between the chiefs of Tirconnel and Tyrone, obliged him to draw his sword in a cause, which, unlike all other contests, in which he had engaged, brought not its excuse along with it.

His fortunes changed with the cause, in which he was led, by his ambitious kinsman, to embark them. The unexampled rapidity of his marches from the north to the south of Ireland, his distinguished feats of personal prowess, availed him not; the red cross banner of the O'Donnel was trampled in the dust before the walls of Kinsale; his castle was seized, and garrisoned by the English forces in Donegal; his life was forfeited with his possessions; but his first and last defeat, though it maddened,* did not subdue him. After wandering, with a few faithful friends, through the bogs and mountains of Munster, with nothing left but his life, his honour, and his sword, he excaped an ignominious death by flight from his native land; and (in the words of the chronicle) sailed, "with his heroes for Spain." The little vessel in which he embarked anchored in the port of Corunna, in 1602,** under the mouldering tower of Breogan,*** named after the hero who was supposed to have raised it, and from whom the first conquerors of Ireland were descended.

[*O'Donnel (says the Irish Chronicle) grew desperate and furious, after his defeat at Kinsale; so that he would neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, for three days and three nights successively. - Annals of the Four Masters.]

[***Annals of the Four Masters.]

The exile chief knelt and kissed the earth, consecrated by the memory of his progenitor, and hailed the tower of the son of Milesius, as a happy omen on the arrival of his descendant in a strange land.

FRAGMENT VIII.

The King of Spain received the Irish chief as a sovereign prince, promised him redress, and established him in a royal palace at Corunna. But the king slumbered over his promise, though the spirit of the chief slept not. Ireland, the land of his affections, was the goal of his hopes. Soon weary of his splendid dependence, he panted to behold his country, his children, his wife: his patience brooked not delay; he had not been used to wait upon fortune, but to command her. Though worn out and exhausted by bodily and mental anguish, he pursued the king to his court at Valladolid, and within view of the Moorish palace where the sovereign resided, the Irish chief died in the arms of his attendants.* His heart was broken; his gallant spirit fled for ever in its last stuggle for independence:

"Peace to the soul of the hero."

[*Annals of the Four Masters.]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER II.

ALL pride, however diversified its features, is the mere offspring of human weakness. In its best sense, perhaps, it is but the mean which gives to vanity the air of virtue; in its worst, it is a puerile veneration for the accidental circumstances of life; a rigid exaction of respect from others, for things of qualities, independent of all will or power inherent in ourselves.

The pride of the Irishman was immoderate. Still, however, it might find its apology, if not its justification, in the circumstances of his life, and the history of his family. The one had been an incessant struggle between a lofty spirit, and an untoward fortune; the other was a register of the deeds of chiefs, of the feats of heroes; interwoven in the history of his country, sharing its glory, and participating in its misfortunes. This high and inherent sentiment, nurtured rather than weakened by physical senisbility, sharpened rather than obliterated by moral suffering, was now deeply wounded, not in its most vulnerable, but its least laudable point; not where it was felt with most acuteness, but where it was sustained with least dignity. Though one "out of suits with life," he disdained complaint, he contemned pity, and shrunk from displaying his unhappy fortunes before those, from whom he could not hope for sympathy, nor have accepted relief. The chances were now against him: he was baited to his den; and what was still worse, he had exposed a weakness of feeling; he had deprived poverty of that dignity, which could alone have rendered it respectable.

Blushing for the involuntary error of mortified pride, and anxious to repair it, he returned to his guests, just as Lady Singleton had laid aside the little historical fragment of his family memoirs; and with all the sterner feelings of his nature, relaxed into the smooth courtesy of high and polished refinement, he apologized for his absence, and excused it by the arrival of some letters from the continent, in which he was much interested, though they contained no public news. Meantime the ladies discovered that not only his manner, but his appearance, was much improved. He had changed the rude habit of his wanderings, the threadbare jacket which had shrouded his gentility from Mr. Dexter's eyes and observation, for a suit of deep mourning. With an excusable foppery, natural to the soldier, he had also assumed the order of Maria Theresa, and the cross of St. Louis, both the badges of distinguished military merit; and though in his marked and intelligent countenance a mind was dipicted which

"O'er informed its tenement of clay,"

yet the enchantment of a noble form absorbed his spectators in the first moment of his return, and left them no leisure to reflect upon the moral superiority, by which it was evidently accompanied and dignified.

As soon as he entered the room, he informed Mr. Glentworth, that he had procured a messenger from a neighbouring cabin, to go to the town for proper workmen, to refit the broken vehicle; and begged to know if he had any commands, of which the man might be the bearer.

Lady Singleton, having suggested the necessity of acquainting their fellow travellers with their situation and misfortunes, wrote a note of three pages to Mr. Dexter, made up of orders and reproaches, interwoven parenthesis within parenthesis.

"And now," said Colonel O'Donnel, assuming a cheerful face, "I shall not importune you with apologies or excuses: the master of a hut can only offer the best his hut affords; and, to confess the truth, mine contains but one sleeping room, and an adjoining closet with a camp bed; yet are there five fair candidates for a complete repose, after so much discomfort and fatigue."

Lady Singleton then went to look at the rooms, and make arrangements herself. On her return it was settled, with much good humor, that the sofa was to be wheeled into the bed-room, and prepared by the old woman, to the best of her ability, for the accommodation of the ladies; and that Mr. Glentworth should tête-à-tête with his host in an arm chair. The party then surrounded the tea-table, at which the governess presided, and conversation circulated with freedom and gaiety; for the absence of the two vapid men of fashion, and of the pert presumtuous man of no fashion, was a sensible relief to the Irish host.

Surrounded by women thrown upon his hospitality, and in communion with a man, whose liberal and enlightened mind assimilated with his own, O'Donnel gradually unfolded into confidence, and brightened into cheerfulness. A true Irishman - warmly reflected upon by the circumstances of society, his spirits took their tone from his situation; and his conversation, at once amusing and desultory, was brilliant as the eyes, from whence, perhaps, after all, he chiefly drew his inspiration.

"But, Colonel O'Donnel," said Lady Singleton, admiring some remark he made in unison with her own opinion, "I cannot at all understand how a man of your time of life, professional rank, talents, and accomplishments, can choose to bury yourself in this wild and solitary place."

O'Donnel bowed to the compliment, and replied to the curiosity which had given birth to it: "It is not, Madam, exactly a matter of choice."

"Oh dear! then, I dare say you history is quite a romance; pray indulge us with a little biographical sketch."

"You do not, my dear, consider," said Mr. Glentworth, "that our short acquaintance with Colonel O'Donnel does not warrant this intrusion upon his confidence, and that we are already too much his debtors to..."

"There is nothing," interrupted O'Donnel, "in my short life worthy your attention, nor has it even the merit of singularity. It is an oft-told tale, repeated in my family from generation to generation, for three hundred year back."

"Any tale of which you are the hero," said Lady Florence, with a smile full of blandishment, "cannot fail to interest us."

"Your Ladyship is very flattering," he returned, slightly colouring, as he met those soft eyes, which gave so good a comment upon the text her lips had expounded: "but in this instance I must believe with Rousseau, that, il vaut mieux offenser les grandes dames, que de les ennuyer; which inevitably would be the case, if I became the hero of my own story."

"You are quite mistaken," cried Lady Singleton: "a story never can ennuyer: we have already been entertained beyond every thing with a little family romance of your's, put into our hands by Mc. Rory, called 'O'Donnel the Red:' pray, was he an ancestor of your's, Colonel O'Donnel"

"My immediate ancestor, Madam," he replied; - "a very brave and very unfortunate man, who lived the Lord of this region, and died with only this sword to bequeath his posterity."

Mr. Glentworth made some just observations on the causes which had driven the chief of Tirconnel to the measures he had adopted; - and Lady Florence said that Colonel O'Donnel must be amazingly vain of being the descendant of such a hero.

"No, Madam," he replied: "I may say in this instance, as the old Earl of Tyrone did, when his harper, striking up a martial strain, sung the heroic conduct of his ancestors: 'I ambition not so much,' said he, 'to derive honor from my ancestors, as to reflect back upon them the lustre they have shed upon me.' - I am however justly proud of the character and virtues of Hugh O'Donnel."

"I am astonished I never heard of this O'Donnel," said Lady Singleton, "for I am a pretty good historian."

"You will find his name mentioned with honor," he returned, "in all the histories of Ireland, whether traced by her enemies of her friends.* But I beleive the most authentic, though the simplest account fo him, will be found in the old national chronicle, called the Annals of the Four Masters, from which the pages you have read are extracted."

[*See note at the end of the volume.]

As he spoke, he took the volume which lay on the desk, and running over its pages, he said: "This is one of our most curious chronicles extant. The late master of this retreat, my dearest friend and nearest kinsman, was engaged in translating from it the history of our family, when death closed his own. Here is a part of his manuscript, which his own hands placed among these pages."

The stranger sighed deeply; and every one examined the book, and the loose leaves it contained: they were a rough draught of the fair copy from which Lady Singleton had read the little story of the chief.

"You must perceive," said their host, "that what has been done by my late venerable kinsman, has been done carelessly, and is indeed rather a loose abridgement, than a just translation; exhibiting that want of connection, so frequently obvious in the last efforts of declining intellect; when all links of association hold feebly together, when the mind only recovers itself by starts, and imagination, if not wholly extinguished, sends forth but brief and sudden sparks from its decaying fires, yet the author of these feeble fragments, the original of that interesting picture (pointing to the portrait impannelled in the door) had once nerve, spirit, and talents, adequate to fill the highest station, to crown the boldest enterprise. The Abbé O'Donnel distinguished himself in the diplomacy of Spain. His services, however, less known than felt, were marked rather by their success than their recompense."

"It is lamentable," said Mr. Glentworth, "that talents, so rarely found, should be employed in the service of any country but their own."

"True," said O'Donnel, "it is indeed lamentable - destructive to the country, and fatal to the individual. But to command the services of genius, it must be unrestricted. It is the equal right, the equal hope, shining on all alike, which gives vigor to ability, and a right direction to the vague impulses of ambition. Sink the individual in the scale of social consideration, withdraw from him the natural motives, which should give strength to resolution, and energy to action, and you banish or degrade him: he remains at home, alternating between the torpor of disgraceful indolence, and the wildness of sullen disaffection; or he retires to other countries, to offer those talents, those energies to foreign states, for which he finds no mart at home. Like the liquid element, the human mind flows cloudy and polluted through narrow and prescribed channels, and derives its brilliancy, its purity, its wholesomeness, and its utility, alone from the freedom of its course, and the agitation of its own natural and unrestrained motions.

"To this alternative of idleness or banishment, were the gentlemen of Ireland reduced by religious disqualification, at the period when the original of that picture, accompanied by a younger brother, bid adieu to the land of his fathers. The brothers offered their services in causes with which their feelings held no alliance. Then younger O'Donnel entered the Austrian army, where so many of his kinsmen had already distinguished themselves. He rapidly attained the rank of a general officer - lived in honour, and died in glory. The elder brother, with an early imbibed taste for philosophical diplomacy, became an efficient agent in the court of Madrid, and expiated his illusion by his disappointment. He found himself involved in the narrow and illiberal views of a crooked and intricate policy; and discovered too late, that the labours of an unfortunate alien, received alternately with a necessary distrust, are viewed with suspicion, and rewarded with parsimony. In a moment of his melancholy conviction (his strong passions ever veering to extremes) he abandoned the world, and threw himself into the Abbey of La Trappe.* He was soon, however, again sought for, because his talents were soon missed; and the royal entreaty and papal authority once more dragged him on the scene of life, at the moment he was found digging his own grave. Yet when death, after a course of years, robbed him of the prince he served, he remained uncompensed, unprovided for; advanced in life, and care-worn in spirits. Then it was that his affections (having completed the circle of objects, which in turn possess the bosom, and mark the stages from the cradle to the tomb) returned to the goal from whence they started. His country, his home, awakened his heart's last warm impulsion; and the fond desire, so common among the Irish, that his eyes should be closed by the hands of kindred affection, led him back to that paternal roof, and to those ties, whose images, time and absence had rather strengthened than obliterated from his remembrance. He had left an elder brother, the representative of the faded honours and lesseneed fortunes of his family; and to the sons of this brother he looked forward for the bright reflections of his own ardent youth - for the solace of his declining years. He returned after thirty years of exile; but found nor home, nor brother, nor brother's children."

[*See the account of Abbé Hussy in Cumberland's Life.]

The stranger paused; then, with some emotion, and great rapidity, he added:

"There was at the period to which I allude a penal statute* in force, which struck at once against the law of God and man, and tore asunder the holy bond, which forms the type of every social institution - the tie of filial and parental love. By this law, it was enacted, that the son of a Catholic parent, by conformity to the established church, could legally possess himself of the property of his family, and for ever alienate it (when so gained) from the rightful heirs. A crime thus sanctioned, did sometimes, (not often) find its motive in the sordid selfishness of human depravity. Oh! then many a blessed tie was rent asunder - many a grey head was bowed with shame and sorrow to the grave. The offence was neither solitary nor unproductive. Brother raised his hand against brother." .... He paused again in emotion - and again continued: .... "In a word, such was the event which hailed the Abbé's return to this country... The youngest of his two nephews had abjured a faith which only intailed misfortune; and reaping the fruits of his apostacy by taking the letter of the law, left his family and its natural heir destitute. The injured brothers, maddened with the double wrongs of himself and his infant son, gave vent to nature's bitterest indignation. The brothers faught....fratricide was added to apostacy; and the guilty survivor, not able to appear on the scene of his crimes, left his country for ever.

[*This law, which in the present age requires not to be characterised by its appropriate epithet, was enacted at a period when the worst passions were admitted to legislate for Ireland. It has long since ceased to disgrace the Statute Book; the abrogation of it being one among the first remissions in the severity of our penal code. The legislation of every country has had some cause for blushing; and if we have fallen upon happier times, let us pity rather than reproach the errors of our ancestors; or rather let us forget them for ever.]

"He who was thus at once breaved of property and life was...my father!

"The venerable exile, thus welcomed to his native land, sought his last asylum among these mountains; and, with the poor remains of his hard earnings raised this shed, in a region over which his ancestors had reigned, and at no great distance from the rock, on which, in ruder times, they were inaugurated. Here, too, he watched over the infancy and boyhood of his orphan grand-nephew; and gave up the first sixteen years of his solitude to my education. Thus, but for him, I should have remained for ever 'one of the wild shrubs of the wilderness:'* to his learning and science I am indebted for whatever information I possess; to his taste I owe that cultivation of mind and love of letters, which is now almost my only enjoyment.

[*See note at the end of the volume.]

"Having thus bestowed upon me all that he had to give; he sent me, as he himself had been sent, to earn an honourable subsistence in a foreign land. After many years of absence, the public events, which changed the face of Europe, once more brought me back to these solitudes. I returned with that sword, which I had taken out with me, my only property, and this ribbon, my only reward. I found my venerable kinsman, with the extraordinary energies of his character still unsubdued, approaching to a patriarchal age, and still devouting his lingering faculties to letters and to science. Permitted at length to serve my king and country, I again left the asylum of my early home, and drew my sword with a joyful emotion, suited to the cause in which I was allowed to embark; but on my return from a short and fatal campaign in the West Indies, circumstances of necessity, as well as feelings of attachment, drew me back to these solitudes; and I arrived but in time to fulfil my aged kinsman's long-formed wish. - He died in my arms, and his eyes were closed by the hand of kindred affection."

The stranger ceased: he had been listened to with attention; but there were few among his auditors who had directed their interest to the point which naturally called for it. They thought not of causes, though they were moved by effects. Even the matter of the relation struck them less than the manner. It was the rapid modulation of the speaker's voice; the changeful expression of his countenance; it was the warm effusion of a soul prone to enthusiasm; it was the language dictated in the energy and emphasis of the heart, which charmed their imagination, and held attention captive.

Mr. Glentworth sighed and was silent; Lady Florence fixed her full eyes on the narrator's face; and Lady Singleton said:-

"I wish you would give me the heads of this little story, Colonel O'Donnel. I know a lady who would work it into a charming pathetic tale. I am very glad those stupid penal laws are at an end: I suppose they are all long since repealed?"

"Not all," said O'Donnel. "It is but just, however, to observe, that the wisdom and policy of the present times have done much towards their total abrogation; and that great and noble sacrifices have been made of ancient prejudices and exclusive privilege, to general benevolence and national prosperity. To these sacrifices I pay a willing tribute of praise and gratitude; for I do not agree with Fra Paolo,* that mai alcuno si pretende obligato a chi l'habbi fatto giustitia. I acknoweldge the good that has been done, and I look forward with patient expectation for the final completion of this great work of natural justice."

[*On the Venetian government.]

"We have already done so much," said Mr. Glentworth, laughing, "that I suppose you think we may as well throw you in the little that remains. For myself," he added, more seriously, "I have always felt and interest for this country, for which, it has been truly said, God has done so much and man so little; and I have always lamented those religious disqualifications, which, in all countries and in all ages, have equally produced evil to the rulers and to the people. The penal statutes of Queen Ann against her Catholic subjects; and the revocation of the edict of Nantz by Louis XIV. (the exterminator of French Protestants,) are alike in my opinion. Abhorrent from good policy, as they are shocking to good feeling; nor can any thing be imagined more injurious to the cause of all religion, than thus to arm it with the authority of the law, and make it the scourge of opinion. To

Employ the countenance and grace of Heaven,
As a false favourite doth his prince's name
In deeds dishonourable,

Is surely the worst impiety."

"Oh! then," said O'Donnel, with enthusiasm, "liberal and enlightened, benevolent and temperate, as you appear, remain amongst us. Extend your pacificating influence to the utmost verge of your sphere; and encourage by the success of your example, our other great English landholders, who draw their ample revenues from our plenteous soil, to visit, to know, and to acknowledge us. Let them come with minds detached from every bias, which can influence passion, or revive prejudice; let them come unfettered by office, unsuing for place - more prompt to heal than to irritate, to sooth than to excite. With such high examples of conciliation, we should sleep over the memory of sufferings, which, whether inevitable or unjust, are passed by, and would, indeed, be forgotten, were they not industriously revived by many a commemorating distinction; for though the tint of a flower, or the colour or a ribbon, the echo of a song, or the triumph of a toast, be but idle and puerile causes of irritation; yet upon imaginations, too prone, perhaps, to kindle; upon hearts too prompt to feel; upon spirits, which, though yielding to conciliation, are yet too apt to swell against the appearance of insult; they must, and do, produce a more than adequate effect; and are borne, perhaps, with less patience than more serious greivances."*

[*Les personnes, a qui la fortune n'est pas trop favorable, sont je ne say comment plus soup conneuses que les autres, et prennent tout en mauvaise part. - Terence de Dacier. Les Adelphes.]

The stranger paused abruptly: "I fear," he added, "you will think me an enthusiast; I am nothing less: - at least I would not be one; but the little circle in which I am now placed is not calculated to chill reflection, or subdue fervor. The imagination of an Irishman will kindle when his country is his subject, and woman his auditor: and an Irishman's heart will expand, when an Englishman advocates the cause of Ireland, sympathizes in her destiny, and acknowledges her merits."

O'Donnel, with that brilliant illumination of countenance, which caught its fire from the soul, stretched out his hand to Mr. Glentworth, who shook it with cordiality and emotion.

"I shall not," he said, "Colonel O'Donnel, love and admire this country less for having known one who reflects so much honour upon it."

"I assure you, Colonel O'Donnel," observed Lady Singleton, "I like your enthusiasm of all things; and I wish it was bon-ton in London to be enthusiastic; but it is not. I was myself quite an enthusiast when I was abroad. By the bye, I wonder we never met. You say you were for twelve years upon the continent."

"In the Austrian service, I suppose, Sir?" said Mr. Glentworth.

"I served six years in the Austrian service," he replied. "The name of O'Donnel carried a certain influence with it, from the fortunes of my kinsmen, one of whom, at the time I entered the service, was Field-Marshal, Governor-General of Transylvania and Grand Croix of the military order of St. Theresa.* My rapid promotion followed of course; and an act of boyish temerity was so far rewarded beyond its merits, that I was made by the imperial order, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Emperor's Body Guards. But this irregular promotion of a foreigner over the heads of a national corps was not suffered to pass unnoticed, and the intruder had literally to fight his way to the distinction, vainly lavished on him by the sovereign. Every officer was anxious to prove my claim on the point of his sword. After being wounded in the arm, I declined contesting the matter further. I felt that these brave men were right;** I felt too that I was a stranger; and with the folly of a hot-headed Irishman, I yielded to my first impression of mortified pride, and took my leave of the Court of Vienna, receiving this order as a bouquet d'adieu, and a letter of introduction from the Emperor to his illustrious kinswoman, the beautiful and unfortunate Maria Antoinette. Thus presented, I could not fail to succeed. In a few years service I had risen to the rank of Colonel of Cuirussiers, when the French Revolution took place.

[*This General O'Donnel was a great favourite and friend of the Empress Queens.]

[**See note at the end of the volume.]

"A devotion to hereditary monarchy has always been attributed to the Irish gentry, even by their enemies. To this of old they owe their misfortunes; to this in the present times they may look for the full restitution of their rights. With an inconsiderably few exceptions, the Irish gentlemen, whose misfortunes had driven them into the French service, were faithful and loyal to the king they served, as they would have been, if so permitted, to the natural sovereign of their native realms. The six regiments of Irish brigades were, to a man, true to the cause of royalty; and after fighting well, and suffering much, in the allied armies, the offices repaired to their native land, obtained leave to raise regiments, succeeded in the attempt, and were permitted to enroll themselves in the British army, under their old designation of the Irish Brigades.* I had followed the course of these brave men, and when sinking under infirm health, from two wounds, which had nearly proved fatal, I was ordered to try my native air. Obliged to leave the army in Flanders, where I was serving as a volunteer, I again, on my recovery, joined the new-raised corps of a friend and fellow-soldier; and too happy to be employed in the service of England against regicide France, I accepted a majority in the --- regiment of Irish brigades, and embarked for St. Domingo. There, in a sanguinary and remorseless war, contending with the climate, famine, and the sword, amidst royalists and republicans, negroes and maroons, I left many a gallant countryman and friend buried on the burning sands of that pestiferous region; and have returned once more to these solitudes, perhaps, as their last tenant used to say, with little else to do that to dig my own grave and die."

[*See note at the end of the volume.]

"You surely do not mean to give up the service?" asked Mr. Glentworth.

"The service, I fear," he replied, "means to give me up."

"Have you applied for your military rank?"

"I have no interest in this country, no kinsman high in the service; and my letters of nobility, which served me abroad, would here be ridiculous."

"Still you ought to have applied."

"I did apply, for a majority, a company, a lieutenancy:* I did not succeed, and I went no lower. My relation, General O'Donnel, of the Spanish service, has offered me a majority in his own regiment; but having once fought in the cause of England, I will never draw my sword against her. But," he added cheerfully, "though I state facts, I do not complain of grievances. I know not how I have been induced to enter upon this tale of egotism: it is in truth and ungracious subject to me, as it must be tiresome to you."

[*See note at the end of the volume.]

He then gave a new turn to the conversation, by displaying some very fine fossils, which he had himself collected; and shortly afterwards the ladies retired for the night.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER III.

THE next morning Mr. Glentworth and his host walked to the heath before the ladies had risen, and found the workmen employed upon the carriage, which was by no means so much injured as might have been supposed, and which would be ready before noon for use.

On their return to the cottage, the ladies were at the breakfast table, and Mc. Rory (though he had relieved guard on the carriage in the middle of the night) brisk, and busied in attendance; doing the honours by the griddle cake, pledging himself for the freshness of the eggs, and eulogising Katty Mulloy's elegant butter, which was in the churn surely not one hour ago, my Lady.

When the salutations of the morning were mutually exchanged, Lady Florence declared she had dreamed of Irish chiefs and heroes the whole night: the young ladies expressed their pretty fears, to which the dashing of the torrent had given birth every time they awoke; and Lady Singleton observed that she had never closed her eyes all night, from the variety of schemes and plans which were working in her brain, relative to a new mode of legislation for Ireland; - to cultivating bogs, opening roads through mountains, and raising a supplementary corps in addition to the Ballynogue Legion, of which she should make Colonel O'Donnel the captain; for though Mr. Dexter was an excellent officer, owing to some hints of her own, and a book she had put into his hands (for he had only got his commission in the Legion since their acquaintance with him), yet as he had not see foreign service, Colonel O'Donnel would naturally be of all possible advantage, and -

Before she could finish the sentence, the entrance of the hero of the Ballynogue Legion put all her schemes to flight; nor could Mr. Dexter's pleading look, submissive bow, and contrite visage, save him from the lecture, which her Ladyship had prepared for his reception, whenever he should appear.

Mr. Dexter heard her out uninterruptedly in silence, standing beside her chair, with a countenace in which he endeavoured to mingle an expression of grief and penitence, till she was checked in her career by Mr. Glentworth's observing with a smile:

"Come, Lady Singleton, if you do not intend imposing a fast as well as a penance on Mr. Dexter, I think you had better defer for the present the conclusion of this exordium and reproof, and suffer him to get some breakfast."

Mr. Dexter now took the opportunity of laying his misfortunes to the darkness of the night and the intricacies of the roads; but confessed that his crime, his only crime, was, in the first instance, having neglected to avail himself of her Ladyship's advice - a crime he had expiated by the most miserable night he had ever passed; for though part of his sufferings were abated by his knowledge of the safety of his friends, coveyed by her Ladyship's note, yet her displeasure alone was more than he was able to endure, and he had the most horrible nightmare in consequence that had ever disturbed repose.

At this contrite speech, all Lady Singleton's anger vanished, and Mr. Dexter having received his pardon at her hand in the form of a cup of tea, resumed his natural pertness. Having paid his compliments to Mr. Glentworth and the ladies, and given a familiar nod of recognition to Colonel O'Donnel, he wriggled about the room, threw his eyes from the earthen floor to the old sword, and from the old sword to the old pedigree: he then smiled, and smirked, and took his seat at the table; helped himself to the hot cake, recommended it to the ladies, to whom he handed it round, and replied to Lady Florence's inquiries for her two friends; whom he assured her Ladyship had got safe into the town, about an hour after himself; and whom he left in bed sleeping away their fatigue; while he had rise before daylight, had been the means of sending off the workmen at so early an hour, and had only waited till the lazy Irish hostess was up to give orders for their reception; as not exactly knowing the state of the carriage, he was uncertain how long they might remain at the inn.

About an hour after breakfast, notice being given that the carriage was ready, and the horses harnessed, the party set out, accompanied by their host, and walked to the opening on the mountain ravine. After a few paces, however, O'Donnel was obliged to return to the house for a tippet, which Lady Florence, whom he escorted, had forgotten and left behind. As he was proceeding to join the party, he was met by Mr. Glentworth, who, taking his arm, abruptly accosted him.

"Colonel O'Donnel," he said, "I am an Englishman: mine is not the country of professions: it is not our way to say more than we mean; it is perhaps our affectation to say even less. When, therefore, I make you an offer of service, I trust you will understand me to the letter, that I mean what I say. Interest, at the present moment, I have none, but - " he paused, and raised his eyes furtively to O'Donnel's face. A deep crimson burned on the cheek of his host, and Mr. Glentworth quickly added, "but should you ever deem it possible, that I could in any way be of use to you, I hope, I trust, you will call on me. Under all circumstances I shall expect you will give me an opportunity of discharging some small part of the obligation I owe you, by becoming my guest as soon, and as often, as you can. We propose returning to Ireland in two years; and pray believe me, that we shall not be less interested to do so, from the hope of enjoying more readily the pleasure of your society: meantime, however, we shall hold you in our remembrance, as an expected guest at Glentworth Hall, whenever it may answer your convenience to afford us your company."

To this invitation, and to the offer which preceded it, Colonel O'Donnel had only time to make his acknowledgments by a bow; for Lady Singleton, catching the last words of Mr. Glentworth, turned round and added:

"I beg leave, Colonel, to join my request to Mr. Glentworth's, that you will give us the pleasure of your company in Derbyshire. As to London, I say nothing, though I should be happy to meet you any where; but the fact is, for the short three months one is in Town, one is so entrainê by the set one lives in, so borne away in a sort of turbillon of engagements and dissipations, that one sees nobody but those one meets every night in the rounds. I long, however, to shew you our improvements at Glentworth Hall, all made since my residence there, and you must try and come over to us in the dead time of the year, when one can afford to be a little rational."

O'Donnel again bowed his thanks; and Mr. Dexter observed:-

"If Glentworth Hall be any thing superior to Ballynogue, it must be a Paradise of a place; which, indeed being in England, it cannot fail to be."

"O, I hope you will judge for yourself, as soon as possible, Mr. Dexter," returned Lady Singleton. "I trust you will endeavour to make such arrangements that you will be able to follow us about Christmas."

As Mr. Dexter liked to hear this invitation repeated as often as possible, and had merely made his remark for that purpose, he now bowed and smirked with great satisfaction, and assured her he would sooner give up his paltry situation altogether, than fail in paying his respectful devoirs at Glentworth Hall, in the Christmas holydays; for his place was no further of value in his eyes than as it gave him something to do. He hated lounging about on any pretence, but if he did forfeit his place to his feelings, yet there might be something as good on the cards for him in store; and the exertion of a little interest might yet turn up a lucky trump in his favour."

As he concluded his speech, his voice lowered; and the last observation met Lady Singleton's ear only, who replied:

"Well, I am sure you have my best wishes at all events."

They had now reached the extremity of the mountain. The party placed in their carriage, and Mr. Dexter on the favourite mare, which the avant-courier had rode, they made their acknowledgments and adieus to their host, and drove off; while Mc. Rory, bowing and scraping behind his master, took off his shoe, and flung it after the carriage for luck-sake, crying:

"Well, God speed them, and send them safe, I pray Jasus; for if I never see them again, nor any belonging to them, they shall have my good word, for they are the real sort: long life to them! Amen."

Colonel O'Donnel, when he had caught the last view of the carriage turning the angle of the mountain, sighed, and returned towards his hut. Of a sanguine and social disposition, prompt to receive favourable prepossessions, and easily won upon by an appearance of confidence and kindness; to part was, with him, under such feelings, always to suffer. The persons with whom he had become so accidentally associated, and whose recent intrusion had, in the first flush of wounded pride, given him much annoyance, though they were not on his level either in feeling or intellect, were yet persons of education and refinement, of elegant habits of life, and of liberal modes of thinking. Such was the society in which he had hitherto lived, and from such he was now utterly secluded. There were many cogent reasons to confine him within the boundary of the rocks, which enveloped his retreat. The few persons at all within his reach were of an inferior description; and as he had no mode of returning their civilities (if they had been inclined to offer them), he scrupulously avoided their society. Almost all the great landholders for twenty miles round were absentees; and to the few who had visited the country, since he had taken up his residence in it, his existence was unknown. Thus condemned by the elevation of his character, and the poverty of his circumstances, to abstain from all neighbourhood and communion, he saw with something of regret the departure of his polished guests. Though in their two first interviews he had endeavoured to escape any further intimacy with them, yet during the few hours they had been his guests, they had won upon his partiality. The beauty and pointed attention of Lady Florence had awakened certain sensations, not quite strangers to one, who had taken his course in the lists of foreign gallantry. With Mr. Glentworth's character he was infatuated; with Lady Singleton's he was amused. The Miss Singletons and their governess alone went for nothing. The slight mortification, which the latter had given to his vanity, had died away, and no succeeding brusquerie had tended to revive it; for they had held no further intercourse, than what the morning's salutations had included.

Though O'Donnel had as much confidence in Mr. Glentworth's sincerity of profession, as so short an acquaintance could warrant, he yet felt that he never could have an opportunity of putting it to the test. He had himself confessed that he had no interest; his kindness, therefore, could only exhibit itself through a medium, at which he thought Mr. Glentworth had himself glanced - pecuniary benefaction; and from that proof of his friendship the spirit and feelings of the gentleman alike revolted. The delicacy, however, of the offer, and the kindness which dictated it, were appreciated and felt; and O'Donnel's heart told him, that in parting with his acquaintance he was losing a friend. Influenced by these emotions of regret, although he thought his acquaintance with the English tourists had ended among the mountains of his own solitary retreat, he was by no means prepared to learn with indifference an event, with which he accidentally became acquainted, about six weeks after their departure.

One morning, as he was arranging some family papers, Mc. Rory, whom he had sent to the post-house to inquire for some expected foreign letters, entered the room, holding a torn newspaper in his hand. He exclaimed in a whining voice:

"Here is a pretty bit of news I have for your Honour. - Jasus preserve us all, evermore, I pray Christ! Amen. To think of the cratur that stood here in this same room, brave and hearty, little more nor a month ago, being dead and buried; and far from his place, - the sowl! - And an undoubted gentleman he was, any way. And is'nt it the best always goes first? Sure it is: and I'll engage it's long till that spalpeen, that wanted to do me out of my dewotion, would be after taking himself off. Well, pace be to him any how: and troth, and I'd buy a mass for the rest of his sowl with all the veins, so I would, only that he would have no faith in it himself, which is remarkable; only nobody's affair but his own: and any way he shall have my prayers, for I am entirely obliged to him for his extraordinary kindness in regard of the two golden guineas he gave me, going away, long life to him! and troth, and if it was the last farthing I had, I'll change one of them to drink a glass to his memory, this blessed night, before I close my eyes, so I will."

Colonel O'Donnel had frequently asked, "What is the matter, Mc. Rory? Who is dead?" during this funeral oration, which was pronounced with great feeling and emphasis: for though the lower Irish are strangely careless of life, yet death is always to them a subject of lamentation and moralizing, even when they are indifferent to the party deceased.

Before Mc. Rory had got to the peroration of his mourning eulogium, his master had taken the newspaper from his hand. It was the fragment of an Edinburgh paper, nearly a month old, and in the obituary column, Colonel O'Donnel read as follows:

"At Berwith upon Tweed, died of a three days fever, Charles Frederick Glentworth, Esq. of Glentworth Hall, Derbyshire; twenty years a member for ---, in successive parliaments. Mr. Glentworth's death was the result of a severe and neglected cold, caught on his unprosperous voyage across the Channel, on his way from Donaghadee to Prot-Patrick. Mr. Glentworth was returning from visiting his Irish estates, accompanied by his family, and some persons of distinction, who had joined his travelling party. He is succeeded in his large estates by his only son, Charles Glentworth, Esq. of Christ-church, Oxford."

This melancholy and unexpected intelligence gave a natural shock to the feelings of Colonel O'Donnel. Besides a personal regret for the death of this excellent and enlightened Englishman, he felt as an honest man feels for the loss of an honest man, in a world where it is so difficult to fill up the place he has vacated.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV.

TWO years sound but as a brief term of time, as a point in the interminable scale of eternity; and even in the short period of human life, they are considered as trifling in anticipation, and as nothing in regret. Yet, in that "petty space," what events may there not be crowded to frustrate the calculation of human probabilities! - what changes may there not be produced in the condition of an individual, of an empire! There is nothing, perhaps, which reduces the importance of the whole system of existing things so low in the estimation of the philosopher, as this rapidity of succession, which dissolves the most important combinations of society, and gives to the circumstances of life, the fugitiveness of a dream.

Two years had soon elapsed from the time at which the English tourists bade farewell to their solitary host, on the wild shores of Lough Swilly; yet, swift as its flight had been, it had been productive of unlooked-for change to all. To him alone, whom they had left behind, in solitude and obscurity, time had brought, in its course, no alteration; with him it had moved on in the slow and tiresome succession of undeviating uniformity, unmarked but by artificial notices; for, in him, no consciousness of existence arose from the testimony of new and successive sensations. All was blank; and season followed season in a cheerless series, undistinguished by action, unvaried by event, and unblessed by reciprocated feelings or social enjoyments. The vigorous passions, the inherent energy of O'Donnel, struggled hard against the obvious torpor of his destiny; his spirit, though overborne, was not subdued; it brooded in silence over the hopelessness of a life which offered its possessor no portion but obscurity and neglect. But, though days and weeks of listlessness may be endured; yet, when year follows year, and in its flight brings no hope, no promise of alteration, the mind must lose its elasticity, and assume a tone proportioned to the trifling call which is made upon it for exertion. By degrees, therefore, O'Donnel remitted from his accustomed amusements, and sullenly rejected those resources, which in the first period of suffering had cheated the heart of its anguish, and spared the intellect the horror of contemplating its own ruin. He now ceased to find distraction or relief in the researches of science, gave up his wanderings and his books, and suffered the principle of life to prey upon itself. He had no longer a motive to excite volition, nor impulse to rouse to action. Had there been difficulties to vanquish, he had wrestled with their force; the contest would have sharpened his skill, and strengthened his nerve; but he had only to submit. Poverty closed against him every road to occupation and subsistence, such as a gentleman and a soldier could pursue: nor did any method present itself, by which he might hope to be restored to the walks of enlightened and refined society. In all probability, a few more years of inactivity and neglect would have bowed his high spirit to a melancholy acquiescence with his fate, had he not been roused from his increasing lethargy by an effort of petty and local oppression, and by a sentiment of generous and compassionate feeling.

In almost all the villages and little towns of Ireland may be found a sort of plebian oligarchy, composed of beings, whose sole distinction consists in belonging accidentally to, what Edmund Burke has happily called,* "The Master Cast;" who feel and assert a sort of constitutional superiority over the less fortunate of their immediate neighbourhood. At the head of such a ruling faction, in the village nearest to Colonel O'Donnel's retreat, stood a Mr. Brian Costello, Attorney-at-Law; a man who had raised himself from the lowest class of society by arts, which enable such men to attain to a state of comparative affluence; and who finally became agent of the gentleman, in whose kitchen he had often plied as a menial. Mr. Constello had, upon speculation, purchaseed a large tract of mountain, and obtained a considerable portion of commonage attached to it; he had also become master of some small but fertile farms, of which he had obtained perpetual leases of his own employer, and which, as is common in Ireland, he again let out at premiums to tenants-at-will: among these tenants was the late Abbé O'Donnel. The little sum of ready money, of which he was master on his arrival in Ireland, he had expended in purchasing the romantic site of his cottage and small garden, and he took of Mr. Costello a little farm in the neighbourhood, from which he derived the whole means of his subsistence.

[*See Letter to Sir H. Languish, by the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.]

As the Abbé led the life of a hermit, and was too much a cynic to interest himself in the concerns of others, he had lived in his retreat more feared than known, and was suffered to remain unmolested. By some he was deemed a saint, by others a wizzard, and by many as little better than a maniac. The high-spirited and impetuous boy, whom he had made the companion of his solitude, felt the superiority, which nature, birth, and education had given him over the LITTLE GREAT of his neighbourhood; and as his youth and activity carried him in more frequent contact with the vicinage, he took little care to disguise his opinion of himself and them. But to the natives of the soil, the poor Irish servitors, he was condescending and gentle; for he considered them as the descendants of the brave peasantry who had so often fought the battles of his ancestors. Without losing sight of his own dignity, he mingled in their sports, and carried off many a prize of superiority in their athletic exercises.

The impressions which he left behind him, when (yet a boy) he quitted the country to enter into foreign service, were revived when he returned in manhood; and though his paternal lands were situated in another part of the country, the name of O'Donnel was still loved and revered. Since his return, he had more than once been the advocate of the unfortunate, and the champion of the oppressed. Though a tenant-at-will for the spot, which afforded him his sole means of subsistence to Mr. Brien Costello, he had, in a feeling of indignation for violated justice, opposed his power, in an instance, which too often occurs, and too often is past over in Ireland unnoticed and unstigmatized. Costello had let some of his mountain land to cotters, at a rent far beyond its value; and, to reconcile them to a bargain closed under the pressure of necessity, he had allowed them a certain portion of commonage: to the cultivation of these wild spots, the cotter had given the overplus of his time and labour; but, when it began to wear the air of cultivation, to repay his industry, and assist him in paying off a part of his exorbinant rent, the sordid landlord, contrary to all equity, and to his compact, inclosed the ground, and deprived his tenant of the only means, which could make his bargain tolerable.*

[*To causes such as these, Mr; Young, the learned and impartial English traveller, in his Irish Tour, Vol. 2, attributes all the tumults which so long disturbed the interior of Ireland, and was committed by the cotters and lowest classes of the people, under the name of "White Boys:" they were chiefly Roman Catholics: but the insurgents who appeared in Ulster, under the names of "Steel Boys," "Oak Boys," "Peep of Day Boys," were the manufacturing Protestants and Dissenters of the north, and their insurrection arose exclusively from some variations in the manufacture, &c. but they were all confounded in one; and the causes so "instigating, were neither enquired into nor known." - See Young's Tour.]

An instance of this kind had occurred in the case of a poor man, to whose door it brought ruin. After the manner of the lower Irish, when they appeal for relief in their necessities, he had thrown himself on his knees at O'Donnel's feet to supplicate his interference with his landlord. That he was the brother-in-law of his own foster-brother, Mc. Rory, was not his faintest claim to the service he demanded. - O'Donnel much against his inclination, condescended to intercede with Mr. Costello; to argue, to entreat; but failed in every attempt: he then informed this equitable landlord, in language no way equivocal, of his opinion of the whole transaction; and it required no very acute powers of induction on the part of Mr. Costello to draw from the peroration of O'Donnel's speech, that he believed him to be a rascal. So satisfactorily to his own mind had he, indeed, concluded upon this point of the Colonel's creed, that he wanted only the courage to call him out: he did, however, what lie thought safer, and quite as much to the purpose - he gave him due notice to quit his farm, unless he chose to continue a tenant at a rent somewhat more than double the possible product of the land. The result was, that O'Donnel was ejected, and left destitute of all means of subsistence beyond the produce of a scanty garden. - There was, indeed, other ground within his option to take at a lower price; but it had much to create, much to reclaim; and O'Donnel, full of spirited activity in other fields, was no agriculturist, either in practice or speculation: his sword lay idle in its scabbard, and yet he knew not how to "turn it into a plough-share." From his early habits of life, he knew nothing of the less dignified, less refined, modes of existence so necessary in the common order of things, but so little attainable by those, whose lives have been a series of brilliant emotion of whose characters can only be influenced by strong and powerful excitements. With Want thus knocking at his door, Charity still found an altar beneath his roof: the day after Mr. Costello had turned him out of his farm, an aged female presented herself to his notice, claiming his assistance, as her nearest surviving relation. Of her person he had no recollection, though he had seen eyes that resembled the still bright and keen orbs, which, unextinguished by time, still sparkled in the stranger's head; but, when she mentioned her name, and alluded to her story, he acknowledged without hesitation the only sister of his deceased kinsman.

It is not long since, a mesalliance in an ancient Milesian family was deemed no less degrading by the good gentry of Ireland, than by the highest of the French nobility; and they claimed the few distinctions left them with religious pertinacity. Honor O'Donnel, once the beauty of her time and country, had made an unfortunate match, and had been thrown for ever from the bosom of her family: after a long life of suffering and misfortune, reduced to the last extremity of want, of misery, and of age, she sought relief from the only one of her kindred, who had not yet rejected and disowned her: the last appeal she had made to family compassion, was the first which had not been refused. O'Donnel considered her rights to the little possessions of her late brother, as, at least equal to his own; and her age and indigence as still more importunate than his own misfortunes: he resigned, therefore, to her, for her life, the cottage and the garden, which was all he could claim as his: the one afforded her the first home, of which she had been mistress, since (forty years before) she had fled clandestinely from that of her youth; the other was sufficient to supply her few wants; and the vigorous old woman, who had served her brother, was a fit attendant for her years and infirmities.

For himself there now remained but one step to take, but one effort to make; and that was once more to seek a foreign service. This was a step abhorrent to his feelings; for he fondly hoped, that having once served his own king and country, he would never have been driven to serve another: but it was a step he reconciled to his principles and loyalty; for he resolved to perish with want, rather than raise an arm against the banner of an empire, of which he was a natural subject, and in whose cause he had before been proud to spill his best blood.

Austria was then in alliance with England, and both were opposed to France: his nearest kinsman and friend was a general in the Austrian service, and to him he wrote, in the certainty of receiving a commission in his own regiment; desiring him to direct his answer to the General Post-office, London, where he hoped to be able to meet it. Such, indeed, was his intention: to remain where he was, was impossible; and even if there was a chance of failing in his application to General O'Donnel (which scarcely could be, since he had pressed him to accept a commission a few years before), he resolved once more to make an effort for obtaining even an ensigncy in the British service; and if all failed, to go out as a volunteer, and subsist on the pay of a private.

But the obstacle, which impeded these speculations, moderate as they were, was want of money, even to bear the expences of his journey. He had distant relations of his own name, both in the south and the west of Ireland, who, though the original splendor of their family greatness was "something obscured," still enjoyed rank, opulence, and high consideration; but he shrunk from claiming the privileges of poor relationship; and from every branch of the O'Donnel family, still remaining in Ireland, he had carefully concealed his situation and circumstances. His books, left him by his uncle, were valuable, but few; and he had obtained a due price for them from a bookseller in Belfast, to whom he had sent the catalogue; but the sum he obtained did not make up the third part of that, which was requisite to defray the expences of his journey to the continent, even without a servant, with which he would be obliged to dispense, though that servant was the faithful and warm-hearted Mc. Rory. He had, besides his books, but two articles in the world, which he could turn into money; and when they suggested themselves to his mind, the blood rushed from his heart to his face, and again returned to its source with an icy coldness; these articles were the sword, which still hung suspended over the chimney-piece, and a small diamond ring. He was alone in the parlour of the cottage, which he now no longer considered his, when the necessity of parting with these, to him, holy relics, suggested itself. The ring was suspended round his neck by a ribbon - He drew it forth and gazed on it: a train of intimate associations arose in quick succession as he read the date engraven on its "golden round;" for the ring was all that remained to him of the earlier and most brilliant period of his existence; when full of hope and joy, his light and gallant spirit had received no impression from time, but such as love and glory gave; when new to life, and flushed with passion, he feared no change, and suspected no illusion - when alternately bound in the silken cords of pleasure, or braced with the rude hardness of war, he sprung from the couch of voluptuousness, to rush into the field of combat, and to carry with him, even into scenes of warfare, that buoyancy of spirit, which once distinguished the gallant leaders of the Gallic armies, and which lent to the rudeness of the camp, the gaiety and grace of the drawing room.

He had won that little ring at a court lottery at Versailles, when the loveliest sovereign that ever received the affections of a devoted and loyal people, distributed the prizes. From the hands of Maria Antoinette he had received the ring, on the night before he accompanied his regiment to the fields of ----. The ring was his talisman - he confided in its influence as the pledge of his success; and the distinction he obtained in that year's campaign, procured him shortly after the military rank, which rendered him the youngest colonel in the French service.

The value of this trinket was inconsiderable; but it was the bequest of a beautiful woman, and an unfortunate queen; and there was still enough of the spirit of a Milesian cavalier in his breast, to estimate the gem by the standard of sentiment, and not by the cold calculation of a lapidary. He kissed and replaced it - arose from the table at which he sat - walked towards the chimney-piece, and fixed his eyes on the sword of a hero, whose memory he revered, of whose kindred he was so proud, of whose character he was enamoured.

With that sword the chief of O'Donnel had avenged his own wrongs, and redressed those of his country. O'Donnel took down the sacred weapon - sacred at least in his estimation, and examined it with the scrutiny of one who beheld it for the first time; but it was, in fact, with the emotion of one who feared he was looking on it for the last.

The basket of the weapon was of pure Irish gold, such as is frequently found in various forms in the bogs of Ireland;* and he supposed from the price obtained by his uncle for a golden corslet, that its value could not be under one hundred pounds. This was a considerable sum to a man who had scarcely a guinea, and he resolved on the sacrifice of a relic, dear alike to his pride and his affections; yet as he drew the blade from its scabbard, he stooped his head so close to it, that it touched his lips, and a tear dropped upon its rusted steel. He hastily pushed it back into its sheath, and with an unsteady hand, was endeavouring to replace it in its old station, when Mc. Rory entered the room. His arms were laden with books, which he was about to pack up to send by a carrier to Belfast. He threw them beside a box that was to contain them, and kneeling down to pack them, he turned up his eyes, and perceived O'Donnel replacing his sword.

[*The handles of swords of the ancient Irish were frequently incrusted with gold, according to O'Halloran, 1744. Some gold-handled swords and golden gorgets were found in the bog of Cullen, in Tipperary, which is since called by the country-people, "the Golden Bog." Several golden corslets were also found in Kerry. - See O'Halloran, and Smith's Kerry.]

"Will I give the hilt of that a rub, your Honor," he said, "with the shammy, for it's mighty dusty?"

O'Donnel made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, and his eyes fixed, lost in thought.

"I wonder, your Honor," continued Mc. Rory, going on with his employment, "I wonder if it be's true, what I hear tell from one of the followers of the O'Connors, when I was keeping my station at Lough Dergh, this time two years; that the great O'CONNOR, Don of Cloonalis, sould the fine ancient ould golden crown of the family, which the Kings of Ireland, his own kin, long life to them! used to wear in the ould times, Sir.* The cratur! - well, it was hard run with him before he did that same, any how, I'll be bound. And well it might, in troth, in regard of his extraordinary hospitalities. Devil a one ever left the gate of an O'Connor yet dry or fasting, and signs** on them, God bless them: in respect of selling the fine ancient ould crown, the sowls!"

[*This affecting circumstance, which occurred a few years ago, is so generally known, in Ireland at least, as to need no comment. Two golden crowns also were found in the Bog of Cullen: the first, of chased work, and without a cross, was purchased by the Cumerford family: the second was bought by Mr. Kinshanlloe, a jeweller in Limerick; it weighed six ounces, and when melted, had very little alloy. - See Harris's Works, Vol. 2, and O'Halloran's History of Antiquities of Ireland.]

[**Signs on them: the sign or symptom of it is apparent on them.]

"I am certainly not ruined by my hospitality, Mc. Rory," said O'Donnel, starting from his reverie, and affecting a tone of cheerful firmness; "and yet I must part with something I value quite as much as my kinsman O'Connor did his crown."

"How is that, your Honor?" asked Mc. Rory, raising his head.

"The fact is, Mc. Rory," returned O'Donnel, in a hurried voice, "I cannot go on here any longer, for many reasons. I mean to pass over immediately to the continent, and to enter the Austrian service. I shall have no means to defray the expences of my journey, but by raising money on this sword, and I wish you to take it with you to-morrow to L. Derry, and to dispose of it."

"Is it the sword, Colonel?"

"Yes, yes," returned O'Donnel, with humour, and annoyed by the expression of Mc. Rory's countenance.

"O, very well, Sir; surely I will; that is, I'd rather nat, if your Honor plases, for a raison I have - quit the place! to be sure, your Honor, why would'nt we quit; what use is there staying, when we hav'nt as much ground we can call our own, as we could lay the track of our foot in, in regard of that dirty spalpeen, Torney Costello, bad luck to him; it's little the likes of his mother's son, ever thought he'd see the day that he'd turn one of the great O'Donnels out of their own real and undoubted land's, and within view of their own rock,* as I may say, barring the mountains of Kilmacrennan, that's between us and it; but he's come of a bad breed, any how; the scum of the earth - but as to parting with the sword, your Honor, it's what I'll never consint to, while I breathe the breath of life: for what would you part with her, Sir? Is it the great O'Donnel Bal-dearg's sword you'd be after selling in the face of the whole country: would'nt it be a burning shame; and what would the family in County Leitrim say to it,** and the family of New Port, and the family in Country Waterford? and what would yourself say, Colonel, if ye heard of the gold rings being sould that were found on your great ancestor's fingers,*** near Ballyshanny, that your third cousin, once removed, wears to this day in Spain, that's if he is in it; or if you heard of your own cousin-german in France, selling the blessed and holy Cathach which was bequeathed to the family by the greatest of saints, Columb-kill."****

[*The rock of Inauguration.]

[****See note at the end of the volume.]

"It is no matter, Mc. Rory," said O'Donnel in a decided tone, "what any one thinks; the sword I must and will part with; nor is that the most difficult effort I shall have to make, for I must part with what I prize still more than the sword."

O'Donnel sighed deeply.

"And what's that, your Honor?" asked Mc. Rory, in a subdued voice, sighing in his turn, and putting in and taking out the books, as if thoughtless of his occupation. "Is it Bran, the baste, in respect of the trifle of mischief he does, betimes, among the neighbours' cattle? Sure, if they'd let the hound alone, he would never ax to trouble them; but they worry the life out of him, fairly, so they do; that's the gassoons, Sir."

"No," returned O'Donnel, with a forced smile; "I don't mean to sell Bran, but I fear I must part with one quite as faithful, and much more valued."

O'Donnel paused for a moment, and then with an effort at firmness, yet with a tremulous motion of the under lip, he added:

"In a word, I must part with YOU, Mc. Rory."

The books dropped from Mc. Rory's hold, and still remaining on his knees, he clasped his hands, and with a look of grief, almost amounting to despair, but in a tone at once supplicating and determined, he replied:

"Oh! no, Colonel - Sir, if you plase, you will nat - part with me! For what, Sir? for why would you part with me? Sure if I have offended you, Colonel, dear, I ax your pardon now, on my two bended knees - take my life, Sir - is'nt it your own? Who saved it for me in the wars, when I fought cheek by jowl with you, Sir? - only yourself, Colonel: troth you did, and for why would you part with me, Phaidrig Mc. Rory, if it was only in regard of being your own foster-brother, who took the same mother's milk with you, and who was a hurler* with you, when we were gassoons together, playing among the mountains? And would'nt I have followed you to foreign parts, when we were grown up fine slips of lads, only the mother that bore me left her dying curse on me, if I deserted my fine ancient ould father, until God had taken him; which he did'nt till five years ago, come Lamas; and for all that, did'nt I go into foreign parts to see you, Sir, and brought you the present of the finest mare that ever was strode, following you through the world wide, into Germany, without knowing a word any foreign language, good or bad, but my own, and I never came ACRASS you, till I saw you go to mass in your elegant regimentals, with the King and Queen, and all the Royal Family,** long life to them; and when you came back here after the troubles, Colonel, did'nt I list with you in the brigade, and follow you to the wars, Sir? and from that blessed moment to this, hav'nt I been your true and faithful servant; and why shouldn't I, Colonel? what abler boy in the Barony could you get to serve you? ante I your Honor's own age, thirty-four last Holy-eve, and your own Honor's height, six feet? and if I don't answer you, Sir, shew me the lad that will, Colonel, to say nothing of fosterage."

[*The hurling matches were frequently played, even within a few years back, by the youth of two counties opposed to each other, and frequently led on by young men of birth and fortune.]

[**See note at the end of the volume.]

During this appeal, in which one association had arisen rapidly out of another in the mind of the affectionate and devoted Mc. Rory, his master vainly endevoured to interrupt him, to raise him from his supplicant posture, and before he had concluded, which he did with tears in his eys, he vainly endeavoured to recover back his own firmness, which the looks, even more than the words of Mc. Rory, had put wholly to flight.

"No, your Honor," said Mc. Rory, when Colonel O'Donnel stretched out his hand to raise him, "I have made a vow to myself, never* to rise off my bended knees, which is as good as being book sworn until it's what your Honor recalls your words, and says, 'Phadrig Mc. Rory, I'll never part with you, as long as you can be of the laste use in life to me, Phaidrig;' and for why should you, Colonel?"

[*A very old Irish custom. - When the celebrated Earl of Tyrone went to demand assistance from the King of Spain, he made a vow, not to rise from his knees till his request was granted.]

"Because, Mc. Rory," returned his master, with a mixture of kindness and irritation in his voice and manner, "because I can no longer either repay your services, or maintain you; for I am a man of desperate fortunes. I am about to seek the means of supporting life in a foreign land, by my sword; nor can I think of rewarding your generous attachment so ill, as to take advantage of your disinterestedness, and involve you in my uncertain destiny, my certain difficulties. But should any thing like independence ever again be mine, my friend, believe that you shall share it, aye, to the last farthing, Mc. Rory."

"Shall I, Sir?" said Mc. Rory, starting on his feet with a look of wildness; and then pausing for a moment, he ran out of the room: returning, however, almost immediately, and emptying the contents of an old worsted stocking on the table, he cried:

"There are four of the ten gold pieces your Honor gave me for a keepsake, when I brought you the mare to foreign parts. There is the five pound note the fine ancient ould Abbé left me by will, and there is the silver gilt watch which ould Thady Dogherty, my father's ould croney, left me with his dying breath; and you know right well, Sir, that when I offered you this same to help to pay the fine for the farm,* to that thief of a Costello, you would'nt intirely oblige me by taking it; and now you see, it will maintain and keep me, till we land in foreign parts, when your Honor will be a great General, and myself a Corpolar, I'll be bound, for your sake, Sir; so you see, Colonel, I'll be no trouble in life to you, and never ax you for bit or sup, only your old coats; and now, Sir, there is no delay in the world, only to pack up the portmantle, and quit the place, which is to the fore for your Honor, whever God takes the fine ancient ould gentlewoman, your grand-aunt, Mrs. Honor Kelly, to himself."

As the attachment and resolution of Mc. Rory were now equally and evidently firm and unvanquishable, and as his master was well assured that he would follow him at all risks, if he was not permitted to accompany him, Colonel O'Donnel, unconsciously pleased to shelter his own inclinations under his servant's, replied:

"Well, Mc. Rory, be it so, if you are willing, for my sake, to encounter hardships without the hope of recompense: if you are satisfied to take the wages of kindness and confidence instead of - " He paused in some emotion, and unable to proceed, he smiled benevolently, and held out his hand to his now happy servant; but Mc. Rory, bowing down to the ground, retreated respectfully, deeming himself unworthy the high honour tendered to him, and with a cry, that something resembled the funeral ullulation of his own country, he rushed out of the room.

Within the space of a few days, O'Donnel received the money for the books he had sent to Belfast; perfected a deed, by which he put his kinswoman in possession of the cottage during her life; had a case placed over the picture of the Abbé O'Donnel, which he commended to her care; and made the few arrangements necessary for his journey to Dublin; where he meant to dispose of the basket of his sword, to a liberal purchaser of such articles, and from whence he meant to sail for England.

On the evening previous to his departure, as he was wandering thoughtfully at sun-set along a ridge of rocks which hung above the ravine leading to his cottage, he perceived a man on horseback riding beneath, and stopping at the cottage-door. He saw Mc. Rory receive a paper from his hand and point to himself. The man threw his eyes upon the heights where he stood, and suddenly gallopped away. Before O'Donnel had reached the glen by the most rapid descent, the echo of the horses' feet had died into silence. Mc. Rory advanced towards him with a letter, or rather a small packet.

"Here is a letter for your Honor," said Mc. Rory. "God send it may bring good news. I tould the young man that brought it, that he'd have his answer in a minute, if he'd step in and take an air of the fire, and give his baste a breathing time; for troth th' animal smoked like the kitchen chimney."

While Mc. Rory was speaking, his master was employed in breaking open cover after cover: one blank envelope succeeded another; and he began to think that all was a blank, and that the whole was some stupid practical joke, when he at last came to the letter thus carefully inclosed, and found within its folds two English bank bills for a thousand pounds each. The letter only contained two lines, which alluded to the inclosure: they ran as follows -

"Use it freely, for it is your own;
Use it discretely, for it is a woman's gift."

Mc. Rory stood watching the rapid changes in his master's countenance, as he cast his eyes fro mthe bills to the letter, from the letter to the bills, and alternately examined the seal and the direction: the former was simply the impression of a dial plate, the motto,

"CHETO FUOR COMMOTO DENTRO."

On the letter there was no post-mark - no post-town; it was simply superscribed to Lieutenant-Colonel O'Donnel.

"I am afraid no good comes of that letter, your Honor," said Mc. Rory, anxiously.

"Would it be possible to overtake the messenger?"

"O! it would, Sir," said Mc. Rory, eagerly; "that is, your Honor, it would nat; but morally impossible in respect of his being at th' other side of the mountain by this - Jack o' the lanthorn was nothing to the lad, in regard of his being mighty quick.

"Are you Colonel O'Donnel's servant?' says he.

"I am, Sir," says I, 'in lieu of a better.'

"Is he at home," says he.

"Yes he is,' says I, 'as your may see;' and I pointed to your Honor on them rocks, with the sun setting like a glory on you. With that he says no more, but gives me the letter, and claps spurs and away with him, though I kept calling to him to come back for the answer; but sure I'll go to the village and inquire for him, your Honor, for he must bait there any how, Sir."

"Pray do then, Mc. Rory," said O'Donnel, with his eyes fixed on the letter.

"O, I will, your Honor; I'll be there in a whiff, though I would'nt know the fellow's face again, in respect of never seeing it, for his hat was flapped so in his eyes, Sir, and his surtout was wrapped round him; but I'll go, your Honor, and look for him."

Still he lingered with an expression of countenance that O'Donnel happily construed, and he observed: -

"You may set your heart at rest, Mc. Rory: there are no bad news. This letter is from a friend; but I wish much to return an answer; so much, that I will walk to the village myself, and inquire for the messenger."

"Well, God be praised, Sir; for I had mighty ugly dreams last night; and thought I saw the ancient ould Abbé, sitting on the Rock of Kilmacrennan, bidding us good bye, which is as much as to say we shall never tread this ground again any way, and Mary says the bracket hin never roosted the whole night long, only flitting about: well, she's a wonderful bird."

During these observations, Mc. Rory was walking after his master, and having opened the little gate for him at the end of the glen, he took out his beads and prayed his way back, observing at every decade, "Well, that letter must mean something good or bad, any how, to say nothing of the dream, which was remarkable."

Colonel O'Donnel returned late to the cottage, and much heated by the rapidity with which he had walked; but all inquiry was fruitless. No person to answer the description of the messenger had been seen in the village, or had stopt to refresh himself or his horse at the public-house.

He remained, therefore, lost in amazement at an event so extraordinary, so unexpected, so mysterious. The number of envelopes, which he had to undo, were intended probably to give the messenger time to escape; for there could be no other clue to discovery. - Who then was this invisible and guardian angel, who thus secretly and unostentatiously administered to his wants. It was evidently a woman, as it was asserted to be; it was a woman's hand, a woman's pretty seal and device, and the act, at once delicate in its conduct, as prodigal in its nature, was a woman's; but what woman? His thoughts suddenly reverted to the English tourists. They wandered for a moment to Lady Singleton. Nothing could be less like her, than the mystery with which so liberal a benefaction was conferred; they fixed on Lady Florence. She was nobly born - might be noble-minded, and perhaps imprudently generous. Two years were a long space to elapse without testifying this liberal interest in his favour, which now fell like a thunderbolt on him; but if it was not her, it was utterly impossible to fix on any other. Her eye and her smile still lived in his memory; for since he had beheld her, no eye so bright, no smile so bland, had met his view to efface their influence. Every man is vain, where woman is in question, and though O'Donnel was as little so, as most men, yet the play of Lady Florence's vanity had been so successively directed against his own, that even at this remote period it influenced his conjectures, and he remained almost convinced that she was his invisible benefactress. The person entrusted with the commission was well acquainted with the intricacies of the mountain roads, and the scite of his retreat; and the Admiral's domestics knew the country well.

He sealed up the bills, and placed them in a letter-case, till on his arrival in London he should have an opportunity of returning them to the prodigal donor; resolved that no want, no misfortune should ever induce him to touch a shilling of a bounty, which, coming as it did, he would have deemed it nothing short of infamy to touch. Few women were so situated as to be able to make such donations, even when the object sanctioned the liberality: a married woman could scarcely do it without the knowledge of her husband, still less probably with his permission; but from any woman, under any circumstances, he would have shrunk from receiving pecuniary assistance: the very idea wounded the finest feelings of his nature, humbled his pride, and revolted his principle. With respect to his wordly circumstances, this princely gift, therefore, went for nothing; but it interested and perplexed him, and kept his spirits buoyant, which would else have sunk, as he again saw himself on the point of quitting the shades of his youth, thrown destitute on the world, with a mode of existence to seek at four-and-thirty. Where now were the hopes that misled, the illusions that dazzled, the motives that impelled, and the fresh unworn imagination that threw its brilliant halo over all? Time and experience had damped or dispelled them, and he was now undeceived without being insensible; he felt not less deeply, but less promptly; and expected nothing, for he had been disappointed in every thing.

The poor and the peasantry of his neighbournood, who heard of his intended departure, crowded the avenue of his dwelling on the morning of his journey, and followed the chaise that carried him to the town where he was to take the mail. While Mc. Rory, who would not be prevailed to go inside, sat on the portmanteau behind, shaking hands with some, waving his hat to others, bidding farewell, and giving a tear or a prayer to all; while Bran, with his old collar newly furbished up for the occasion by his friend Mc. Rory, followed the carriage, and shared the adieus and good wishes of the affectionate crowd.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER V.

IN Dublin, Colonel O'Donnel received the full value for the basket of his sword, carefully preserving the blade till better times might enable him to remount it; and the day after his arrival in the capital of his country, he sailed for Holyhead, in the Dublin Packet, in the hope of making acquaintance with its popular commander, of whose urbanity and attentions Mr. Glentworth and his party had spoken much and gratefully.*

[*It is unnecessary to mention Captain Sk--r.]

Pursuing their route to London by the mail, the Irish travellers reached the metropolis of England in less than two days; and Mc. Rory having discovered a countryman in one of the waiters, at the house where the coach stopt, procured through his recommendation, lodgings more adequate to the pecuniary resources of his master, than to his spirit or rank. But Mc. Rory, who loved change, and loved travelling, and who was in high spirits, declared the place was nate and clane, but the floor might be slippery, though no ways damp, but quite the contrary, which was remarkable.

The morning after his arrival, O'Donnel's first intention was to seek out the residence of Lady Florence Grandville. He had no interest in renewing his acquaintance with any other of his quondam guests; for with the exception of him, who was no more, he considered them as mere people of the world, disciples of that doctrine whose wisdom is to make the most of the present. In the memory of such he well knew absentees have no place: the few who contribute to their immediate amusement, or supply their actual want, make up to them the whole sum of society; and even those few, adopted rather than chosen, tolerated oftener rather than preferred, occupy attention but for the existing moment; and then, as chance or interest decides, pass on, like the little circle which preceded them, to make room for others, who in succession amuse, and are forgotten like themselves. - O'Donnel knew enough of life to feel that with such persons a permanent connection was not to be expected; and that fortune, rank, and consideration, could alone give body to a floating prepossession, or durability to fugitive esteem. Too proud to seek, where he was certain he should not be sought, he confined his researches in the Red Book to the residence of Commodore Grandville; upon this point, however, he obtained no information from its pages. The house of his brother, Earl Grandville, he found was in Portman-Square, and thither he directed his steps. As he was proceeding along Bond-Street, he heard his name loudly pronounced, and turning round, perceived a footman running after him, and still calling him by his name. He stopped, till the man, bustling through the crowd, could come up to him and deliver his message; which was, that his lady, Lady Singleton, begged to speak with him.

O'Donnel followed the man, and perceived Lady Singleton's head stretched out of her carriage window, at a considerable distance. "Colonel O'Donnel," she exclaimed, as he approached, "I am quite rejoiced to meet you here. How long have you been in town? Why did you not call on me? Do you know I have sent you three letters successively, these three last days, begging you would come over as quickly as possible." "Indeed," said O'Donnel, involuntarily gratified by the unexpected cordiality of her manner, and astonished at the nature of her communication; "three letters to me, Madam!" "I have a great deal to say to you," she continued eagerly. "Here, John, open the door. Pray come into my carriage, Colonel, for a few minutes."

O'Donnel prepared to obey; but the thing was impossible. The vis-a-vis was so heaped up with books, papers, parchments, pattern, new music, and old china, that not only O'Donnel could not get in, but a quanitity of the light freighting fell out. "What a bore!" said Lady Singleton. "Take care, John, of that piece of silk; pick up Davy's Researches. There is Lady Llanberis's femme-ornée entirely spoiled - Oh heavens! the Dresden cup! and poor Winter's M.S. ballet!"

O'Donnel and the footman had by degrees reinstated all these valuable and inconguous articles; and her Ladyship, satisfied of their safety, again addressed the former, with an air of confidence and mystery. "I must see you," she said, "immediately. I have something to communicate which cannot fail to gratify and interest you. There is a person extremely anxious about you, a distinguished person."

"About me!" interrupted O'Donnel, eagerly, hoping that he had come at clue of his mysterious benefaction. "I can tell you nothing now," she continued; "for here is the shopman with my lace. I am, as usual, accablèe with business. But will you dine with me to-day in Baker-Street? No, not to-day. By the bye, we all meet this evening at my brother's to sign the marriage articles. To-morrow then - but to-morrow Horatia is to be married. However, you may breakfast with me to-morrow before the fuss begins: we don't go to St. George's till eleven." - O'Donnel accepted the invitation, and the next moment, perceiving her Ladyship deep in all the treasures of Mecklin and Valenciennes, he made his bow, and retired from the carriage, resolved to postpone his enquiries after Lady Florence, till he heard more of the distinguished person who was so deeply interested for him. Aware, however, of the inconsequence of Lady Singleton's character, he resolved not to entrust her with a confidence which she had not the delicacy to estimate. It was not his own secret, but that of another which he held in keeping; and Lady Singleton was perhaps the last person in the world to whom such a trust should be confided. He remembered "the discretion" recommended, and felt no inclination to swerve from the counsel.

The next morning he was punctual to his appointment, and found her Ladyship in her dressing-room, as he had found her in her carriage, encompassed by all the insignia of the bustling office which she had assigned to herself in the world. Lady Singleton was no longer the personage she had been: she was no longer upheld by the influence of twenty thousand per annum, by the respectability of her late inestimable husband, nor by what in London tells more than all, the size and situation of her house. She had lost her hotel with its court, and porte-cocher, and lived in a comparatively small house in Baker-Street. Her character had also undergone some modification, as well as her state. Her self-importance was diminished. But though in heself she had very limited materials to work upon, her wonted restlessness and inherent tendency to dictation still found vent, and was officiously busied for others. She made good matches; broke off bad ones; directed the fêtes she could no longer give, and made lists for assemblies she could no longer hold. Still preserving the bon odeur of her former fashion, she was consulted as counsel, or accepted as umpire, in contests between those rival follies which so often wage mutual and unrelenting war amongst the great. She was the oracle likewise of all those who were not, could not, and yet would be great; and was assiduously cultivated by the nouveaux nobles and the nouveaux riches. She gave the tasteful direction of fashion to the innumerable fopperies in which new-gotten wealth sports away the burthen of its superfluity. There was one person, however, to whom she was at this moment exclusively devoted, whose rank, fashion, and opulence, gave consequence to the connection, and whose character and pursuits afforded ample materials for her "strenuous idleness" to act upon. This person was Adelaide, Countess of Llanberis.

"Well, Colonel," said Lady Singleton, extending her hand to him as he entered; "here you find me, as usual, sur le grand trottoir, in the service of my friends. You do not know that I have been your proneuse en titre since we parted: I have indeed, and to some purpose too. I have not forgotten L'ame Paladin, as Lady Florence used to call you."

"Where is Lady Florence?" eagerly interrupted O'Donnel.

"Oh, poor Lady Florence! you have not heard then? However, you have no loss: she could be of no use to you in London. They had a wretched twopenny house, and lived entirely among their own knot. The Grandvilles are poor as poor can be. Still, however, she was good ton; but there is an end of her. She had twins - Only think of Lady Florence having twins! She lost her health after a bad confinement, and with it her beauty - and you know she had nothing else - she is ordered to the Madeiras, as her last hope, where the Admiral (for he is now an admiral) is stationed. There they have been these twelve months, and there they are likely to remain, as my daughter Vandaleur tells me, who heard from her friend Lady Florence last week."

"Your daughter Vandaleur!" repeated O'Donnel, endeavouring to recollect the members of the group, of whom few had made any great impression upon his memory.

"Then you did not hear that my daughter Caroline had married Mr. Vandaleur? You know he could not really follow his friend Lady Florence to the Madeiras; not that he is less devoted. But exclusively of the necessity of observing the decencies, it could not be expected that a man whose habits are made up to London life would expatriate himself out of sentiment. Au reste, he lived in the same set with my family, and you know men like to marry in their own set; and so cela va sans dire! It is a good match, but not so good as Horatia's, which I call my match; for Mr. Henshaw is one of the most rising young men of the day, and heir to the richest commoner in England. Of course, you read his maiden speech. I have had every thing my own way, from the bridal veil to the jointure. Indeed, I had no one to act for me; for a melancholy change has taken place in my family and circumstances since I saw you, Colonel O'Donnel, which of course you heard."

She paused and sighed, and after a silence of some minutes, which O'Donnel, absorbed in feelings of unaffected regret, did not interrupt, she again resumed:

"My step-son is gone to the Greek Islands with Lord Boston, the son of my most particular friend; but apropos, of this friend, for we have not a moment to lose. There is, as I mentioned to you, a very distinguished person, very much interested for you indeed: and not to faire valoir my little services, I must confess it was I who first mentioned you to her; and that, too, in a manner calculated to make the impressions she had received in your favour lasting; for Je connois ma femme! She expects you at her villa, to which she has particularly invited you. Her invitation is now on its way to Lough Swilly; but it shall be repeated immediately, in due form, as I shall write this day to inform her of your arrival in London. I should not be so anxious to bring about this acquaintance, but that I know, in the end, you will be both mutually obliged to me. She has a powerful interest, great influence; and whatever may be your views (for I suppose you have done nothing yet), she cannot fail to forward them, if her prevention in your favour continues; and this will depend on yourself. Your talents and accomplishments are just the sort of thing to catch her. Indeed, from my description of you, and all that sort of thing, she is already quite eprise, on ne le peut plus. I promised her, when I thought you in Ireland, that you would come over, and spend the Christmas holidays at her "palais d'Alcine," for such her villa literally is. Now that you are here, there can be no question about it, for you are not aware how much she is your friend."

"And who, Madam," said O'Donnel, at last getting an opportunity to ask the question, as her Ladyship paused for breath, "who is this unknown, but propitious deity? Under what name is she to be invoked and thanked?"

"Why, the person in question," said Lady Singleton, importantly, "is no other than Adelaide, Countess of Llanberis, Baroness Boston of Llanberis in Wales, and of Boston Hall in Sommersetshire; and heiress in her own right, at the head of a Welsh principality, and an English estate, which would make the territory of a German prince. She holds five boroughs in her hands; is mistress of one of the largest hotels in London, and one of the most delightful villas in Surrey: add to this, that she is supreme bon-ton, a widow in the prime of life, with an only son, not yet of age, and that nothing can exceed her societies in London, except her Christmas and Easter parties at Longlands. There you are sure to find whatever is most recherchè. I must tell you, also, that Lady Llanberis is quite in our way...not the least English. She is a Welshwoman, with strong feelings and great animation of character; and, as we would say in France, toute petillante. She married, unhappily, at eighteen, was a widow at twenty, and has maintained her enviable independence for seventeen years, refusing the best matches in England...But I must be off; there are the carriages drawn up. I am obliged to accompany the bridal party to Shropshire, to Henshaw's uncle's; but I shall certainly meet you at Longlands in less than ten days; for you must go immediat