man a rogue. We promised, however, to give our readers an account of Rory's adventures on his mission to the sea-port. They will serve as a fair specimen of the incidents of the entire. After a tender interview with Kathleen on his way, he reached the town and made his way to the public-house to which he had been directed by De Lacy. Here he observed a party who seemed to be the men he sought. By preconcerted signals he soon satisfied himself, and followed them from the public-house. He was introduced by them into a dark cellar in some obscure lane; the grip of the United Irishman, however, assured him he was safe; and a light having been struck, he found himself in company with Shan Regan and a foreigner of the name of De Welskein, the smuggler, whose vessel was employed to carry on a communication with France. From De Welskein he received a letter from General Hoche to De Lacy. We shall see presently that the introduction of poor General Hoche, as the writer of this letter, is founded upon one of the most amusing blunders that even an Irishman could be capable of. But for the present we go on with the scene in the cellar. "Another person as well as Regan was present in addition to the three Rory had followed from the public-house; and this man seemed more familiar with De Welskein than any of the others, and sometimes addressed him in French. Round the cellar were some coils of rope; a couple of hammocks were hung in one corner; two or three kegs and some rolls of tobacco were stowed away under a truckle-bed in another quarter of the den; and in a rude cupboard, coarse trenchers and drinking-cans were jumbled together, with some stone jars of a foreign aspect. After some bustle, pipes and tobacco were laid on the table, the stone bottles and the drinking-vessels were taken from the cupboard, and De Welskein invited Rory to sit down beside him. Combe, you sair-seet down-here someting for you to dreenk-not nastee, like pobelick-house, bote goot-lia, ha! No doretee portere, bote brandee ver goot and nussing to pay.' "All the men sat down, and sending the stone jars from man to man, the cans were charged with brandy, slightly diluted with water from a black pitcher; pipes were lighted, smoking and drinking commenced." After some desultory conversation: "A tap at the door of the cellar announced a fresh arrival; and after some signals given, the door was opened and some other men entered, and, at short intervals after, a few girls. Some of the latter were good-looking, though with a certain expression of boldness and recklessness that Rory did not admire. Rory had enough of imagination and sentiment to render the society of the softer sex always matter of delight to him; but there was something in the manner of these girls he did not like. "You see,' said De Welskein, de leddees mek visite to me.' know how, very well, to answer this apYis, sir,' said Rory, who did not peal. "A fiddler, in some time, made his appearance; and after the first jug of dance was set on foot. One of the ladies niggers (negus) had been demolished, a asked Rory to stand up on the flure,' himself to the utmost to do credit to his which, of course, Rory did, and exerted dancing-master. In short, Rory, though he did not like the party, had intuitively too much savoir vivre to let any repugnance he might entertain be manifested, He drank, to be sure, sparingly; and after the niggers was introduced, he took no more brandy-and-water: he smoked an occasional pipe, and danced like anything,' but he kept himself clear of intoxication, though he had drunk enough to produce exhilaration. Dance after dance succeeded; and Rory displayed so much elasticity of limb, that it excited the admiration even of De Welskein. One of Rory's partners seemed much taken with him; and after a certain jig they had executed, much to their mutual honour and the admiration of the beholders, the fair danseuse sat beside him so close, as not to admit of any doubt that she rather admired him. A cessation to the dancing now took place, and brandy-and-water and niggers ad infinitum was the order of day-or rather the night." Our readers will understand from this quite as much as they wish of the character of the company in which Rory was placed. We say nothing of the probability of important communication being placed in such keeping. In a short time "Their brutal revelry had so far over come the party, that of all present, Rory O'More and his partner only were tho roughly conscious of what was going forward. When Rory saw there was none to oppose his retiring, he drew the bolt of the door to depart." The lady, however, was not disposed to part from him, and put forth all her blandishments to induce him to remain. In fact she had been making desperate love to him all night. Rory, however, excused his rudeness "In as soothing a tone as he could command, he said- Don't blame me; I've a sweetheart that trusts to me, and I musn't deceive the innocent girl!' "The words 'innocent girl' seemed to go through the heart of the woman like a pistol shot [bullet we presume is meant.] She withdrew her arms from Rory's neck and hiding her flushed face in her hands, burst into tears, and, throwing herself on a bench, sobbed as though her heart would break." Rory took the opportunity of this unprovoked outbreak of sentimentalism to escape, not, however, without having excited feelings of intense hatred in the mind of his inamorata. "When the unfortunate girl whom Rory had left sobbing in the cellar had recovered her outbreak of grief, she arose from the bench on which she had flung herself in her passion of tears, and the feeling that had possessed her heart changed from lawless love to bitter hate -for "Hell has no fury like a woman scorn'd.' And cursing the man that had made her feel such degradation, she quitted the den of riot and iniquity, leaving the beastly revellers sunk in besotted slumber." The hatred of this lady towards Rory, whom of course she had never seen before, is little better than a caricature upon human passion. It was no passing feeling of displeasure; it was a deep seated purpose of revenge. Some days afterwards in a fair "Rory's attention was attracted by a party of mummers, who were parading up and down on a platform, in dirty rags sprinkled with rusty spangles, and amongst them he recognised the girl that had been So sweet on him in the cellar. "With her ruddled cheeks, short petticoats, and shabby finery, she was a most disgusting object, though rather a fine girl. While Rory looked at her, he fancied he caught her eye; its brazen glare was for a moment darkened by a demoniac expression, and instantly withdrawn." Nor was this demoniac hatred confined to her own bosom. Shan Regan, it will be recollected, was one of the party in the cellar; he employed the incident of Rory's dancing with this lady to make mischief between him and Kathleen. Kathleen upbraids Rory with his offences. Rory denies the imputation, and invites Kathleen to meet him at an old rath or fort by moonlight, that he may deny it again. Kathleen, like a prudent girl, persuades her mother to accompany her on this moon-light excursion; the old lady is, accordingly concealed under the arch of a bridge close at hand, and Kathleen goes forward to meet her lover in the rath. A few words of reproach on the one side and protestations of innocence on the other succeeded "You left home for a day about three weeks ago?' said Kathleen. 66 6 I did,' said Rory. "You went to the town beyant ?' 666 You were in a cellar there?' "I was.' "And not in the best of company, Rory,' said Kathleen, reproachfully. "Worse than I hope I'll ever be in agin,' said Rory. "You own to that, thin?' "I'll own to all that's thrue,' said Rory. Thin what have you to say,' says Kathleen, about the girl that you were so much in love with?" "In love with!' said Rory, indignantly. Kathleen, there is but one girl on this earth I love, and that's yourself. I swear it by this blessed light!' "Just as he spoke, as if the light which he adjured had evoked a spirit to condemn him, a dark shadow was cast on the mound before them; and on their both looking round, a figure enveloped in a cloak stood on the embankment behind them. "Kathleen could not suppress a scream, and even Rory started. "Is that what I hear you say?' said this mysterious apparition. • Kathleen! Kathleen! he said the same to me.' "Kathleen could not speak, but stood with clasped hands, in trembling astonishment, gazing with the fascination of fear upon the figure that stood on the bank above them. "Who are you?' said Rory. "The figure was about to turn, when Rory caught hold of the cloak in which it was enveloped, and dragged the intruder within the trench of the rath. Who are you?' said Rory, again, turning round the person to face the light. said the unknown, who throw back the "Don't you know me, Rory O'More?' hood of her cloak at the words, audthe pale moonbeam fell on the face of the frail one of the cellar." Kathleen of course fainted. "Look what you've done!' said Rory, stooping to raise the fainting girl, which he did, and supported her in his arms, as he turned to the ill-omened intruder, and said reproachfully, What did I ever do to deserve this?' Do!' said she, and her eyes glared on him with the expression of a fiend Do'-What a woman never forgets nor forgives and I'll have my revenge o' you, you cowld-blooded thief, I will! That's your innocent girl, I suppose !Mighty innocent indeed, to meet a man inside a rath, by the pleasant light o' the moon!-How innocent she is!' May the tongue o' ye be blisthered in fire,' said Rory, with fury, that would say the foul word of her! Away wid you, you divil! the ground's not wholesome you thread on. Away wid you!' "She shrunk before the withering words and the indignant tone of the lover, and retired to the top of the embankment; but ere she descended, she stretched forth her arm in the attitude of menace to Rory, and said with a voice in which there was more of hell than earth, "Make the most o' your innocent girl to night, Misther O'More, for it's the last you'll ever see of her! You think to have her, you do,—but she'll never be yours; for if I pay my sowl for the purchase-money, I'll have my revenge o' you!-ha! ha!-remember my words— Dever! never!-ha! ha! ha!' and with something between the laugh of a maniac and the bowl of a hyena, she rushed down the hill.' 999 The point upon which this effective incident turns is this damsel's desire of revenge. Shan Regan had become acquainted with the intended meeting of the lovers. "He was no stranger to the damsel whose blandishments had been thrown away upon Rory, and he found that a bitter hatred existed against him in that quarter. * * "He knew where to seek her, and met in her a ready person to act up to his wishes. He held out the opportunity of gratifying her revenge upon Rory thus: to blast his hopes with the girl of his heart, by accusing him of treachery and falsehood, and laying her shame to his charge." This will serve as a specimen of the power of delineating character exhibited in the book. The entire is little better than sheer nonsense; the lady of the cellar; one of a company of strolling players parading up and down on a platform in dirty rags, sprinkled with rusty spangles," "a most disgusting object with her ruddled cheeks, short petticoats and shabby finery," and "brazen glare," goes off in a fit of blubbering on the mere mention of an innocent girl; and forms a deadly was her hatred as only to find its expurpose of revenge-so intense indeed pression "in something between the laugh of a maniac and the howl of a hyena; ha! ha! ha!" merely because a chance acquaintance had, with the most sentimental civility, refused sensitiveness to the slight (which we her advances !! So extreme was her must suppose she had never encountered before) that she "cursed the man who made her feel such degradation," casts a dark "demoniac scowl" upon him when she meets him accidentally in a crowd; and lastly adopts the most refined and romantic method of taking her revenge, declaring her readiness "to pay her sowl for the purchase money.' After this fearful threat we never hear more of either her or her revenge; we presume the purchase money was found to have been mortgaged long before. of Rory's adventures on the night of Enough of this. The remainder the cellar scene will exhibit Mr. Lover's power in the construction of incident; tolerably well satisfied as to his historiour readers are, as we should suppose, cal accuracy, and his portraiture of character. When Rory left the cellar he lost his way, and walked on without knowing where he went. He was startled by the tramp of soldiers not very far from him. "He stopped and held his breath; the party was evidently getting nearer; he had no right to be abroad at that hour, for the curfew law had been revived of late. He thought of the letter he had in his possession, and death to himself, and discovery of the plot flashed upon his imagination. To tear the letter suggested itself to him; but then, it might contain intelligence of importance; to preserve it therefore was desirable; yet to have it found, destruction. What was to be done?" Run away of course, and run he did, and concealed himself "in an old fashioned porch, behind one of the columus." this was the bouse of the colonel of It happened, however, that the regiment at which two sentries were posted; and the file of soldiers who had alarmed hin, were coming, down to relieve these very sentries who had not, however, remarked Rory's approach; the file stepped opposite to the place of Rory's conceal ment to relieve guard; they passed on, however, without detecting him. Rory, however, in attempting to ex tricate himself from the crevice into which, in his anxiety for concealment, he had squeezed, contrived to ring the bell. Immediately a window was raised above his head, and the colonel looked out, crying "who's there ?" "Sentries," was the next call-which the soldiers answered-a colloquy immediately takes place between the colonel and the sentries, as to the awful ringing of the bell. ་ "Just at the moment, when Rory was thinking if he hadn't better make a run for it at once, he heard the bolt of the door behind him gently drawn, and the instant after, a pluck at his coat, and a whisper Come in,' made him turn round. He saw the door stand ajar, and a hand beckon him forward, at the same moment that the voice of the colonel from the window said, See if there's any one hiding in the porch.' "Rory slipped inside the hall-door, which was softly closed as the sentry walked up the steps. "There's no one here, your honour,' said the sentry. 666 Push the door,' said the colonel. "The sentry did so; but the door had been fastened on the inside." Rory discovers that it is a female who has given this unlooked for admission; she calls him darling; and hearing the colonel coming down stairs, she hides him in the coal cellar. The colonel is employed in the service of the British crown, and of course is a coward. After a tremulous examination of the premises he retires-the mystery is now cleared up. Betty, the colonel's servant, was in the habit of receiving clandestine visits from her husband, and had mistaken Rory for her good man. Rory keeps up the deception, and a most tender versation follows, with all due enquiries after the children, in the course of which Rory so disguises his voice that the mistake is not discover con not ed!! until at last he finds it expedient gradually to break to Betty the astounding truth that he was Darby at all. The necessity of the revelation arises from Betty's proposing a retirement to bed. We have not room for the entire scene, nor is it one which we would have much inclination to reprint; but we assure our readers that the important secret was broken with as much note of preparation as if he had the most startling intelligence to reveal. "Rory requested the tender and confiding Betty to prepare herself for a grate saycret' he had to tell her, and that she would promise when he informed. her of it, not to be too much surprised. Betty protested to preserve the most philosophic composure. "You won't screech ?' said Rory. "What would I screech for ?" said Betty. "It's mighty surprisin' said Rory. "Arrah, don't keep me waitin,' but let me have it at wanst,' said Betty, eagerly. "Now, darlin' take it aisy,' said Rory, <for you must know"What?' said Betty. "I'm not Darby,' said Rory. Betty scarcely suppressed a scream. "You villain!' said she. “I'm not a villain, aither,' said Rory." And all the while that Rory was engaged in this confidential conversation, which to be sure took place in the dark, Betty never once discovered that it was not her husband who was talking to her! Credat Judæus. Rory escapes by a back way from the house, and soon after is taken prisoner by the military. Before Betty had discovered her mistake she had communicated to her supposed husband a little piece of scandal about the colonel and Mrs. Scrubbs, who, it seems, during the absence of her husband, was on a visit to the colonel without the knowledge of her spouse! When Rory is arrested he determines to turn this knowledge to good account. managed to destroy the letter of Hoche in his possession; and when he was ordered by the colonel to receive a lashing, he requested that the room might be cleared as he had something of importance to communicate. then made the colonel believe that his business in the town was to apprize Mrs. Scrubbs that her husband was returning home the next day. He He "And I thought it best to tell her that I heard the masther is comin' dowu to-morrow, and av coorse your honour knows he would not be plazed if the misthriss wasn't in the place, and might suspect, or the like. I hope your honour is not offinded?" " Rory received from the colonel his discharge, and five guineas-and bcsides this, a pass. "At this period a pass from a com We have, we believe, quoted enough to satisfy any rational mind as to the merits of the book as a work of fiction. There is so little that seems worth stealing that, perhaps, our readers would feel little inclined to credit the charge of plagiarism, even if we felt it necessary to establish it. Some of the very scenes upon which we have been commenting are absolutely spoiled from some of the most faulty passages in one of Mr. Banim's novels. The transformation of the trial story may serve as a specimen of Mr. Lover's power of spoiling; and those who have read, (and who has not ?) Captain Marryat's Snarleyyow, will feel little difficulty in tracing the idea of the smug gling spy, and the attempt at wit in the quaint headings of the chapters to a common source. Our readers must not suppose, that we have by any means selected the passages which abound most in impro babilities and contradictions. Mr. Lover appears utterly incapable of preserving verisimilitude through two pages of continued narrative. Thus Mr. De Lacy, the spy of the French government, takes up his quarters without rhyme or reason at Rory O'More's; while there he makes himself most conspicuous by wearing, in the presence of the yeomanry, a showy green handkerchief, at that time the emblem of rebellion; quarrels with the magistrate who remonstrated with him on the exhibition of the color of disaffection, and escapes arrest only by exhibiting the pass which Rory had procured from the colonel, which, though presented under the most suspicious circumstances, lulls all suspicion, notwithstanding that special information had been sent down from the government, of De Lacy's leaving Dublin. We have not space, however, for these exposures. We have said that, in these volumes, we sometimes meet Mr. Lover on his own ground, retailing the comical stories which, for a century, have been in vogue in Ireland. Among them is the story of the convert from Popery who employed a stone-cutter to efface from his father's tomb-stone the popish inscription VOL. XI. “At last,' said Rory, they gave me a hint to go.' 66 6 What hint did they give you?' said the colonel. honour,' said Rory." "They kicked me down stairs, your The story of the peasant who went, in Dublin, to buy a pair of boots for because he asked for the measure-the the priest, and knocked the man down size of a priest's boots. Even the old ignorant creature, not to know the grazier's joke of the Mullingar heifers, is not too stale, or too coarse, for Mr. Lover. Mr. Lover's version of the with the proverbial gallantry of Irishstory, by the way, is little in keeping men. "Yes, sir, and it's all on account of what I towld you about the hay.' "How?' said the traveller. may take a turn out of, if you like, Why, there's an owld joke, you whin you see a girl that's thick in the fetlock-you call afther her and say, "Young woman!" She turns round, and then says you," I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I think you're used to wear hay in your shoes." Thin, if she's innocent, she'll ask " Why?" and thin you'll say, "Bekase the calves has run down your legs to get at it.' Indeed Mr. Lover seems determined to realize Sheridan's celebrated draws on his imagination for his facts, sarcasm; for, unquestionably, "he and on his memory for his wit." To the latter rule, however, there are some exceptions; for the honour of our country, we hope the following pleasantry is his own : "Get out wid you, you mane-spirited dog! Troth, your heart is a dung-hilland suspicion is the cock that crows on it!" The following, too, is desperately original : In a learned conversation between G |