WE were staying during the Christmas week at the Bishop's Palace at X. ; a small party- chiefly young people, with a sprinkling of the cleric order. It had snowed most pertinaciously for three days, thus precluding all out of doors amusement, so we were thrown upon our own resources to create enjoyment at home, and kindle artificial sunshine around the yule log, and beneath the mistletoe. And so it came to pass that on the last evening of the old year, after supper, and when our dear and venerable prelate had retired to his rest; one of his grandsons, a fine bright lad just fresh from Harrow, made a lively proposition that we should all sit up till twelve o'clock, and keep vigil, to see the death and the birth, the exit and the entrance of the old

and the new year; to say "farewell" to the former, and cry "all hail" to the latter; and to behold these two great shadows meet and mingle for a second on the vast dial-plate of time, and then pass, and part for ever more. This motion of our young friend's was carried, no man dissenting; and furthermore, we agreed to beguile the " cripple tardy-gaited night" in telling stories each in his turn, thus establishing a sort of abridged Decameron, but neither so witty or so wicked as the Florentine's; or an "English Night's Entertainment" on an epitomized scale to that of Sultan Schariar, but wanting the cutting off of the heads, and the muliericide of that sanguineous potentate. The young people commenced-the Harrow man leading the van; their narratives were not over wise, but then they were not over long, and if they were wanting in learning and wit, they produced laughter and kept up good humour, which was all we required. Then followed a sentimentally intoned, and somewhat lugubrious recital from the pale young curate of Hazlewhittle-cum-Shiveringham, which had this remarkable feature, that the most melancholy parts of the narrative were sure to produce most concealed mirth among

VOL. XLIX.NO. CCLXXXIX.

the younger auditory; and what the pensive narrator put forth as pathos, seemed ever to be considered by his hearers as purest bathos. Doctor Broadhurst next took up his parable, and narrated his adventures in the great snow of 18- during a ride from Oxford to C- when his "black mare balled in her hoofsslipped-slided-sliddered, and eventually stumbled and fell prone; prostrating the learned Doctor on the surface of the snowy element, who lost on the occasion his equilibrium, and his blue spectacles. And this fall had nothing of miracle in it, seeing the Doctor was purblind quoad his vision, and plethoric quoad his person, and thereby unfitted to perform the functions of the equestrian order, &c." "Procumbit humi bos" whispered the Harrovian. It was now eleven o'clock, and none remained but myself, and our honoured guest the Dean of Pimlico, who looked so intelligent and had such a sparkle in his pure grey English eye, and such a meeting of the waters of benevolence and sarcasm around his well cut mouth, that calling to mind what the great Ussher once said of Bishop Bedell, "broach him, and you will find good liquor in him," I felt certain that the Dean of Pimlico"clarum et venerabile nomen"-would not belie either his face or his fame by the quality of his narrative. So I briefly and simply told what had befallen me by night at an old Inn in the City of Gloucester where George Whitefield was born, and the comfort I had received, in an hour of depression, from the chimes of an ancient clock, most sweet and clear, ringing out, over the still midnight air, a Gre gorian tone. My tale was short, and my audience applauded me-an unexpected compliment, paid, I suspect, more to the brevity of my story than produced by its weight. And now all eyes were turned upon the Dean of Pimlico, who, crossing his strong but well shaped limbs on the hearthrug, with a white handkerchief in his hand, and a clear and ringing voice,

B

and a preliminary smile, and a little hem, as if he were about to deliver a charge to his chapter, proceeded as follows:

It was about this night seven years that I was standing on my own drawing-room hearth-rug, thinking of nothing, and listlessly watching the footman who was extinguishing the waxlights in the lustre; for I had had a bachelors' dinner-party, and my guests were just departed-when suddenly there came a tremendous double knock at the hall door, disturbing the silence of the night, and expressive of haste and much mental agitation in him who knocked. On the door being opened, some one bounded up the stairs with such a wonderful velocity and eagerness, that I immediately concluded it must be either a highwayman, or else my nephew Harry, a young divinity student; but who, having Irish blood in his veins, occasionally exhibited more vivacity than just suited the sober standard of my staid domicile. True enough it was he, and his first appearance rather alarmed me, for I love the lad in my soul, and he is to be my heir. On the present occasion his face was flushed, his hair in disorder, and his eye and aspect troubled and excited.

66 Well, Harry, what is the matter? What has brought you up like aghost in a tragedy, at this witching hour of night, to murder sleep, and disturb me and my decorous household ? Speak now, or else for ever hereafter hold thy peace."

arm

"Oh uncle," exclaimed the young fellow, seating himself in an chair, "I have done a deed half an hour ago, which must affect my whole future life, and at which I am sure you will be displeased; and so I came here, late though it be, to tell you my distress, and ask for counsel."

66 Why, what in the name of wonder have you been doing?" I exclaimed.

Say, Stagyrite, have you been libelling Sam of Oxford; or publishing a pasquinade on Dr. Pusey; or administering strychnine to Cardinal Wiseman ?"

"No, I assure you, uncle," answered the simple hearted, matter-of-fact young fellow, "I have never written any libel on the Lord Bishop; and as for Dr. Pusey, I have only seen him once, when I could not believe it was

he; and in regard of Dr. Wiseman, whatever I might

Come, come," interrupted I, "let us have no scandalum magnatum. He has an indubitable position, though not from us or with us; but what is the cause of your trouble, Harry?"

'Why, uncle, I was dining to-day at our cousin's, General O'Brien's. You know you always wished me to cultivate that family; they are so accomplished, so pious, and so charming."

Humph," said I, "no doubt they are; but I can guess what is coming." "And so, uncle, after having been acquainted with them for the last six weeks; led on by the irresistible ardour of an attachment founded on rational esteem," [here I smiled] "cemented by long intercourse," ["six weeks to wit," thought I,] and developing a golden future of domestic happiness," ["More gold, I fear, in the brain than in the bank," I mentally ejaculated,] "I proposed, and was accepted to night by Mary O'Brien; and we have agreed to be married immediately after my ordination. Now, uncle, are you angry with your poor nephew, your sister's son, for taking this step without your express knowledge and sanction ?"

"Well, I confess I have a right to be angry. You know I am your guardian, and stand to you in loco parentis, and you ought to have consulted me before you took the plunge, and not to have come to me now all dripping and drowned, and in this thorough Irish fashion, after the deed was done, under the pretence of asking advice, but in reality seeking for approbation. I am, however, less angry than I ought to be, for two reasons; first, because from the Hibernian impetuosity of your temperament I always felt that you would achieve an exploit of this kind sooner or later; and, secondly, I do think most highly of your choice, if she had a few more years notched in her life's young calendar, and a little of added experience to suit her for a clergyman's wife.”

"Oh! dear uncle, Mary is full eighteen years of age, and I assure you is as wise”–

"As Minerva, no doubt," I said, "and as experienced in menage matters as Hecuba. Well, we will grant all this for argument's sake; but how

are you to live, Harry? Whence are you to have the supplies?' Love is poor to a proverb; Love is a pauper, and makes more paupers than he has pence to fill their pockets with. Love cannot furnish your house; or feed your children, for I presume you intend having children. Love cannot buy you a loin of veal, or gammon of bacon, nor worsted hose, or Welsh flannel, in case you or Mary should become rheumatick, which you probably will be when you come to my years."

"Oh, uncle, uncle, how can you conjure up such ideas?" said Harry, half laughing. "The truth is that

we have quite enough to marry on; for there is a hundred pounds a year which Mary's aunt and godmother, Lady L. settled on her; and then my curacy will bring in a hundred pounds more, annually; then something will come to us at the General's death; but this Mary will not suffer me to speak of. And then-and then-"

"6 Proceed," said I, well knowing what the young fellow was going to

say.

"Why, uncle," said he, taking my hand, and looking so wonderfully like my dear sister, with his fair complexion, and wistful, earnest eyes—

we thought and reckoned on your goodness; that as you have been ever like a father to your orphan nephew, and as you seemed to admire Mary most of all the General's other eight daughters, and as you are always as generous as a prince," [I assure you, gentlemen, the young fellow was quite wrong here, and knew nothing about me]" so we were sanguine on having a little settlement from you also, until such time as I have obtained a living, and done my duties in such a manner as to deserve it."

"Well, Harry," said I, "I am sure you will be an active and earnest minister. You cannot help it, Harry; you have it from nature; you are physically and constitutionally fidgetty and mercurial, as is your country's fashion; you have a kindly nature too, my boy, and no doubt will make an exemplary married man, your domestic organs having a most amiable development. And so, as for the settlement you speak of, it shall be forthcoming in due time, I promise you; but now that the shock of your sudden appearance has sub

sided, I confess I feel rather sleepy ; and you will forgive me if I say, inclined to yawn. I am not in love, and must therefore go to bed, and Í advise you by all means to go home quietly and do the same. So, good night, my dear lad; we will meet at ten o'clock breakfast."

I offered him my hand, but he clasped his arms round me like a child, and though I felt ashamed at the action, I could not but return the pressure; and so we parted, just as the clock on the mantle piece struck the hour of twelve.

Henry Font was my sister's only child. His father was an Irishman, and a captain of dragoons, and was shot in the saddle during a cavalry charge in India. They called it a "brilliant affair," but it killed my poor sister, and made Harry an orphan before he was six years old. Old Mr. Font, his grandfather, now took him up, and had him at his castle in the wilds of Connaught, schooling him in Galway town, and afterwards entering him into the College of Dublin, where he had not been many months when the old gentleman died, and I took immediate possession of Harry, and had him to Cambridge -to old Trinity-my own college; where he gained many honours, for the lad inherited diligence and a taste for learning from my side of the house, and was naturally smart enough, besides possessing a wonderful talent for making friends, from his enthusiasm, his simplicity, and the purity of his life. I certainly was charmed at having rescued the poor fellow from the University of Dublin; for though I acknowledge that the courses of the sciences are well looked after there, I must ever denounce their imperfect manner of composition, and making Latin verses, [here the Dean's manner became slightly acidulated, yet piquant as a lemon lozenge] "they may compose clumsy hexameters, or stiff mechanical pentameters. Sapphics too they might achieve; but I do avow, gentlemen; nay, insist on it, that the Choriambicthe Choriambic laughs them to scorn."

He paused here a little excited, and then went calmly ou.

"Well, gentlemen, that I be not further tedious to you, my nephew was ordained in March, and married in April; the ceremony took place in

the cathedral of Pimlico; it was performed by our dear and right reverend host, assisted by your humble servant. It was a quiet wedding; Mary's eight handsome smiling sister lassies officiating as bridesmaids, and the old general in full uniform, (he was colonel of the Connaught Rangers, the gallant eighty-eighth,) with golden aiguilettes on his shoulder, and sparkling crosses on his breast, and true valour in his heart, and a strong county of Clare accent on his tongue. Short of an eye like Hannibal, and minus a leg like Lord Anglesey, this fine old veteran stumped up the aisle, and frankly gave his lovely blushing daughter away. "She was number six," he said, and he had "no better or fairer than his Mary." And the stern soldier, who had led a forlorn hope more than once, and would march up with composure to the iron mouths of a gun battery, now broke down into nature's softness; and as he bid the bride a weeping farewell, the heart of steel became like virgin wax. I wished their bridal tour should be to Cumberland or Scotland, and expressed this desire, as I slipped a bank post bill into Harry's hand on his getting the license; but no, he was a regular lover of the Green Isle, and there he would go, and Mary was of course sympathetic, and as patriotic as he. I then suggested their going to see Armagh, which I had heard of as a rather civilized part of Ireland, with a cathedral, and archiepiscopal palace, to be a refuge in case of any popular outbreak, or attack from the whiteboys, rebels, or assassins of other denominations. But no; my gentleman was firm, and he was determined to visit the "Wild West," and trace the ruins of his ancestor's old Castle of Kilmanmore, on the banks of what he called the Killeries. I certainly listened to these sanguineous appellations with a shudder, which was not allayed when he further announced his intention of going among some friends of his lady's residing in the county of Tipperary, close under the Knock me down

Mountains, and from thence they were to visit an aunt of the young wife's, the Dowager Lady Lresiding (they told me, laughing actually at what made my few particular hairs to enact porcupine quills a la Hamlet,) in a lone old place called Kilbride Hall, near the town of Ballyragget; but whether the first syllable of this last was spelled with an a or an e, I protest I know not, save that the name of the locality seemed to me to sound grisly, and to irresistibly associate with itself the phantoms of Irish hunger and naked

ness.

Well, they had their happy tour; and in six months after their marriage he wrote to me as cheerfully and lovingly as usual, and asking my permission to accept a curacy offered to him in the county of Donegal; a region only known to me as existing on the map, and of the manners, customs, physical aspect, and population of which I was as little cognoscent as I was of the interior of Australia, or the steppes of Tartary. But I wrote my consent, adding my blessing; and there he continued for a whole year, visiting his people, the little wife going everywhere with him, working amidst his poor and his parishioners, and becoming perfectly conversant with the names of every hill and every hamlet, nay, I believe, actually enamoured of their "Kills," and their Knocks," their Slieves," their "Duns," their"Raths," their "Innises," their "Ballys," and their "Bogs." I had an occasional letter from my old friend, Dr. B- the bishop of of the diocese, speaking most highly of poor Harry; and one from himself, telling me how he had been twitted by the leading dissenter in his parish with "6 reading his sermon from a book," and that he had now become an extemporary preacher; at which, I shrugged up my shoulders, shook my head, and cried, "Foolish fellow!"

Every summer he came to see me during five years, till at last he joyfully announced that the old Earl of

house, had offered him his family living in a southern county. It was worth a clear six hundred pounds per annum; and he took possession of it shortly after he had left me for Ireland. And now came long letters from him and Mary, descriptive of the delights of their new residence, the grandeur of the earl's great oaks, the beauty of his forest walks, the river which swept through the park, and the extraordinarily rich and beautiful lights, and shadows, and purple tints which glittered and deepened and glowed on the glorious Galtee mountains which skirted their eastern horizon. Then a description of each of the children, of which there were now five, and another expected; not forgetting frequent allusions to the old, old, quaint house in which they were living while their glebe was repairing, and which had been a hunting lodge of the unfortunate Earl of Desmond, attainted in the reign of Elizabeth, and called Earlesoke, from trees planted there by the hand of his almost equally ill-starred son.

I think you may have perceived in the course of my narrative that I had no great love for Ireland; yet, strange to say, I found myself on one fine June evening shortly after this, steaming into Dublin Bay. I had been summoned as a witness on an important trial involving some Irish property of which I had been left executor, much to my annoyance. I certainly was wonderfully delighted as we neared the Irish shores; the sun was just setting amidst thin cloudlets of amber, pink, and purple, the sea mirroring and retaining these tints in long paths on its smooth surface, and the Wicklow mountains covered with a golden gauze-like haze, yet preserving their tent-like outlines against the darkening sky. As the sun went down, the moon rose and shone out brightly over Killiney hills. I certainly never saw such a beautiful sight, or such a grouping of the points of diversified landscape. Our packet, dashing through the deep clear water, passed many a loitering yacht with snowy sail; many racing boats flew by us as we rounded the white pier of Kingstown; the harbour was crowded with gay crafts, among which loomed a large war ship. The whole population seemed to be on the long flat pier; there was music

on the water, and the many lights on the shore reflected from the harbour looked like trembling pillars of gold standing in the water. I felt my

prejudices against the Irish soil a little abated; and a month's sojourn in the good society of Dublin nearly converted me into a Philo-Hibernian. Here I found learning without pedantry, humour without effort, piety without priggism, enthusiasm for the arts without exclusiveness, much love of literature, a growing taste for the mechanical and agricultural sciences, and thoroughly gentlemanlike hospitality; indeed, they thought they could never make enough of the Dean of Pimlico. So on a fine July day I went down to my nephew, by the Cork and Limerick express train, appointed and worked fully as well as our Great Western; and the same evening found me sitting under a gigantic oak which stood almost opposite the queerest, oddest, and most antique of parsonages rudely Elizabethan in its architecture, with low walls, lofty chimneys, mullioned windows, and small arched door-a most unique yet tumble down concern. Dear Harry was here, radiant with joy at seeing me; his wife handsomer than ever, much improved and very selfpossessed. The children, especially my godson, whom they called the young Dean of Pimlico, healthy bright animals. We had tea and strawberries under the kingly tree, whose hollowed stem I measured next morning, and found it to be twenty-four feet in girth. In the little dark parlour was a wooden scutcheon over the mantle piece, and on it was rudely carved in the Irish or Celtic language an inscription which Harry translated for me in the following fashion, "This is the great Earl of Desmond's hunting lodge, 1570." All the old portion of the house seemed to me very insecure, but the family chiefly inhabited an offshoot which was a much later erection. I spent a delightful month here; Harry was as enthusiastic and as vehement as ever, and a truly active and efficient parish minister. Here was a large body of well conditioned Protestant yeomanry, v, farmers and cottiers, and the country was studded with the handsome seats of an educated, well born, and very