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"Amen!" responded the sub-sheriff; "but you'll want to take a trifle of duds with you, to make yerself comfortable in prison ?" "Oh, murder! and must I go to jail ?"

"Arrah, the divil a help for it," returned Mr. Ryan,

"but sorra one

of me will let you walk; I'll give ye a lift in the gig. But what can ye
do? if half was paid down, I might get ye time for the remainder."
"If I could muster ten pound its the outside," returned the church-

man.

"Ten pound-is it jokin' ye are, Father Thady? and the debt above a hundred."

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"Step up to the house," said the priest, "step up-every scurrick I'm worth in the world I'll give rather than go to jail.' "Well, God sees I pity you," said the tender-hearted functionary of the law. "I'll just send the bailiffs out of the way to get a drink, and if the captain will drive the gig to the barracks, I'll be there presently myself."

A trifling gratuity was given to the peasants, who trotted off. I mounted the gig-drove to Ballysallagh and left Shaun Crughadore to arrange matters with Father Thady.

Mr. Ryan was absent about an hour. The sentry directed him to my room, and after he had deposited a sooty bag upon the table, he drew a chair forward, and filled himself a glass of whiskey and cold

water.

"Well, how did you settle matters with the priest ?"

"Oh, poor man! I took what he offered, and made him happy for life, by assuring him I would never inquire for the balance," was the reply. "Here is the money in the leg of an old stocking, pulled out of a hole in the chimney."

So saying, he turned the contents out upon the table-a score of Spanish dollars, and several handsful of tenpenny and fivepenny pieces, then the silver currency in Ireland. Many of the coins were discoloured even to blackness, and proved how long the old man must have been engaged in accumulating the little hoard.

I looked at Mr. Ryan.

"Have you no conscientious compunctions-no contrition for plundering the church?"

"Conscience!" he repeated; "did you ever know a sub-sheriff to have any? I have made the old man happy at his escape from an imaginary jail-of what use was this money while stuck in a cranny of a chimney? I'll put it into circulation-and that's a public benefit."

"You won't put it in the poor-box, like Mr. Kirwan's five pounds."

"It will be consigned to the same box, no doubt; but my gig is at the door. I hear you are to be immediately relieved, and when you return to head-quarters, you'll find yourself within an hour's ride of mine. When time hangs idly on your hands, come to me I'll give you cead fealleagh, and the experience of half a century. No man has seen life in light and shadow more extensively than myself. I have had beauty kneeling at my feet-pride stooping abjectly to ask a favour-a peer has been beholden to me for the very bed he lay on-and a countess only used her carriage at my sufferance. Rest assured, that in this world

none know the secret passages of private life, but-the priest and the sheriff."

Mr. Ryan lifted the old stocking from the table-placed it behind him in the gig-squeezed my hand-and left Ballysallagh at an easy trot. I thought of what I had heard and what I had seen that morning, and I determined to cultivate an intimacy with my new acquaintance.

I did so: and heard from Shaun Crughadore some singular disclosures. They were delivered to me without the seal of confidence, and as unreservedly shall they hereafter be communicated to the gentle reader. W. H. M.

UNPOSSESSED POSSESSIONS.

BY HORACE SMITH.

WHOSE are Windsor and Hampton, the pride of the land,
With their treasures and trophies so varied and grand?
The Queen's, you reply.
Deuce a bit! you and I

Thro' their gates, twice a week, making privileged way,
Tread their gilded saloons,

View their portraits, cartoons,

And, like Crusoe, are monarchs of all we survey.

And whose are our noble's magnificent homes,
With their galleries, gardens, their statues and domes?
His grace's? my lord's?

Ay, in law and in words.

But in fact they are our's, for the master, poor wight!
Gladly leaving their view

To the visiting crew,

Keeps a dear exhibition for other's delight.

And whose are the stag-haunted parks, the domains,
The woods and the waters, the hills and the plains?
Yours and mine, for our eyes

Daily make them our prize;

What more have their owners?—The care and the cost!
Alas! for the great,

Whose treasures and state,

Unprized when possess'd, are regretted when lost.

When I float on the Thames, or am whisk'd o'er the roads
To the numerous royal and noble abodes,

Whose delights I may share,

Without ownership's care,

With what pity the titled and rich I regard,
And exultingly cry,

Oh! how happy am I,

To be only a poor unpatrician bard!

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WHEN the news came to Wagstaff that he had made a public appearance in the New Monthly Magazine, he affected to be in great wrath that his peccadilloes should have been laid bare to the whole nation; and was for sacrificing the individual who had held him up to ridicule. Luckily, that person was out of town for some days, so his anger had time to cool if it were real; but the truth must be told, that Lancelot Wagstaff was in heart quite delighted at being shown up for a séducteur, and has ordered some new waistcoats, and affects to talk very big about the French play, and has been growing a tuft to his chin ever since. Mrs. Wagstaff still continues at Bognor. Poor soul ! She will never know whose was the portrait which figured last month in this Miscellany under the pseudonym of Wagstaff: it is only the coincidence of the new waistcoats and the sudden growth of that tuft that can by any possibility betray him.

Some critics have hinted that the scene described was immoral. So it was, there's not a doubt of it; but so is a great deal of life immoral: so are many of Hogarth's pictures immoral, if you don't choose to see their moral tendency;-nor indeed are critics to be very much blamed for not perceiving the moral of the brief tract called the Partie Fine, seeing, as it were, that it was not yet in sight. No: it was purposely kept back, as a surprise for the June number of the Magazine. THIS is going to be the moral paper: and I hope to goodness that Mr. Colburn's editor will not refuse it, or I shall be set down, in spite of myself, as a writer of a questionable tendency. I solemnly demand the insertion of this paper, in order to set a well-meaning man right with a public he respects. Yes, ladies, you yourselves, if you peruse these few, these very few pages, will say, "Well, although he shocked us, the man is a moral man after all." He is, indeed he is. Don't believe the critics who say the contrary.

The former history described to you the conduct of Wagstaff abroad. Ah, ladies! you little knew that it was preparatory to showing the monster up when at home. You would not have understood the wretch had you not received this previous insight into his character. If this be not morality, I know not what is.

"I

Those people who at the club and elsewhere are acquainted with Mr. W., declare he is the most generous and agreeable creature that ever turned out of the city. He arrives, his jolly face beaming with goodhumour. He has a good word for every body, and every man a good word for him. Some Bachelor says, "Wag, my boy, there is a white-bait party at Greenwich; will you be one ?" He hesitates. promised Mrs. Wagstaff to be home to dinner," says he; and when he says that, you may be sure he will go. If you propose to him a game of billiards in the afternoon, he will play till dinner, and make the most ludicrous jokes about his poor wife waiting till his return. If you ask him to smoke cigars, he will do so till morning, and goes home with a story to Mrs. W., which the poor soul receives with a desperate credulity.

Once she used to sit up for him; but to continue that practise would have killed her. She goes to bed now, and Wagstaff reels in when he likes.

He is not ill-humoured. Far from it. He never says an unkind word to the children, or to the cook, or to the boy who blacks his boots, or to his wife. She wishes he would. He comes down stairs exactly three minutes before office time. He has his tea and his newspaper in bed. His eldest daughter brings the paper in, and his poor wife appears with the tea. He has a kind word for both, and scrubs the little girl's fresh cheek with his bristly beard, and laughs at the joke, and professes a prodigious interest in her lessons, and in knowing whether Miss Wiggles, the governess, is satisfied with her; and before she finishes her answer, he is deep in the folios of the Times, and does not care one farthing piece what the little girl says. He has promised to take the child to Astley's any time these four years. She could hardly speak when he promised it. She is a fine tall lass, and can read and write now: and though it was so long ago, has never forgotten the promise about Astley's.

gown

When he is away from home, Wagstaff talks about his family with great affection. In the long, long days when he is away, their mother, God help her! is telling them what a good man their papa is-how kind and generous and how busy he is-what a pity! he is obliged to work so hard and stay away from home! Poor creature, poor creature! Sure Heaven will pardon her these lies if any lies are pardonable. Whenever he says he will walk with her, Arabella dresses herself in the he likes, and puts on her pink bonnet, and is ready to the very minute you may be sure. How often is it that he is ready at the minute? How many scores and scores of times has he left the heart-sick girl?—not forgetting her in the least-but engaged elsewhere with a game of billiards, or a jolly friend and a cigar-and perhaps wishing rather to be at home all the time-but he is so goodnatured, such a capital fellow! Whenever he keeps his appointment-Heaven help us! she brightens up as if it were Paradise coming to her. She looks with a triumphant air at the servant who opens the door, and round about at the neighbours' windows as if she would have all the world know that she is walking with her husband. Every now and then as she walks (it is but twice or thrice in a year, for Wagstaff has his business on week-days, and never gets up till one of a Sunday). Every now and then as she walks with him, the delighted creature gives a skip, and squeezes his arm, and looks up in his face, she is so happy. And so is he too, for he is as goodnatured a fellow as ever breathed—and he resolves to take her out the very next Sunday-only he doesn't. Every one of these walk-days are noted down in the poor soul's little Calendar of Home as saint's days. She talks of them quite fondly; and there is not one of her female friends whom she won't visit for weeks after, and to whom she will not be sure to find some pretext for recounting the wonderful walk.

Mon dieu, ladies-all the time I was describing that affair at Durognon's, those odious French women, and their chatter, and their ogling, and their champagne, I was thinking of Arabella far away in the distance and alone I declare, upon my honour, she was never out of my thoughts for a single minute. She was the moral of the Partie Fine-the simple, white-robed, spotless, meek-eyed angel of a wife-thinking about her husband-and he among the tawdry good-for-nothings, yonder! Fizz!

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there goes the first champagne cork, Mr. Wagstaff is making a tender speech to Madame Virginie.

At that moment Arabella is upstairs in the nursery, where the same moon is shining in, and putting her youngest boy to bed.

Bang! there goes the second cork. Virginie screams-Fitzsimons roars with laughter-Wagstaff hob-nobs with the old lady, who gives a wink and a nod. They are taking away the fish and putting down the

entrées.

At that moment Arabella has her second child between her knees (the little one is asleep with its thumb in its mouth, and the elder even is beginning to rub her eyes over her favourite fairy tale, though she has read it many scores of times). Arabella has the child between her knees, and just as Wag is clinking his glass with the old lady in London, his wife at Bognor says something to the child, who says after her.

"Dod bless my dear papa :" and presently he is in bed too, and sleeps as soundly as his little sister.

She

And so it is that these pure blessings are sent-yearning after that fellow over his cups. Suppose they reach him? Why, the spotless things must blush and go out again from the company in which they find him. The drinking goes on, the jokes and fun get faster and faster. Arabella by this time has seen the eldest child asleep in her crib, and is looking out at the moon in silence as the children breathe round about her a soft chorus of slumber. Her mother is down stairs alone, reading "Blair's Sermons," a high-shouldered, hook-nosed, lean, moral woman. wonders her daughter don't come down to tea-there is her cup quite cold, with the cream stagnant on the surface, and her work-basket by its side, with a pair of man's slippers nearly done, and one lazy scrawl from her husband, four lines only, and ten days old. But Arabella keeps away thinking, thinking, and preferring to be alone. The girl has a sweet soft heart, and little sympathy with the mother's coarse, rigid, strongminded nature. The only time they quarrel is, when the old lady calls her son-in-law a brute: then the and defends her own young one fires up like a little Amazon.

What is this secret of love? How does it spring? How is it that no neglect can kill it? In truth, its origin and endurance are alike, utterly absurd and unreasonable. What secret power was it that made this delicate-minded young creature; who had been bred up upon the purest doctrines of the sainted Mrs. Chapone; who had never thought about love; who, simple soul, had been utterly absorbed in her little daily duties, her pianoforte practice, her French lesson, her use-of-the-globes, her canary bird, and her Mangnall's questions-what, I say is it, that makes this delicate girl all of a sudden expand into a passion of love for a young sugar-baker, simply because she meets him three times riding a gray mare on Clapham Common, and afterwards (the sly rogue!) on half-a-dozen occasions at her aunt's at tea? What is it that makes her feel that that young sugar-baker is the fatal man with whom her existence is bound up go through fire and water to marry him: love him in spite of neglect and indifference: adore him so absurdly, that a halfhour's kindness from him more than balances a month's brutality! O, mystery of woman's heart! I declare all this lies in the moral of the Partie Fine.

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