love was requited, could only spring from feeling not like that of the ordinary sons of men. His was the worship of a poet, which could thus abstract, as it were, its object, from all the circumstances that surrounded her, and bow down before her in secret in all the purity of spiritual affection. Here, too, was the clue to much that had been hitherto mysterious in his character. His almost superhuman exertions to attain distinctions that he did not seem to prize at all, was to raise himself to a station in which he might honourably seek her love. And while I could not but admire the depth of that love which prompted him to these exertions, I could also the better appreciate the fulness of that filial devotion, which, instead of hoarding the immediate proceeds of those exertions, appropriated them to ministering to his parents' comforts.

He walked up and down the room for some time--he seemed ashamed of what he had told me. At last he flung himself upon a chair, the only one beside the one which I occupied, which his scantily furnished apartment contained-he leaned his head upon the table, and burst into a convulsive flood of tears.

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It was but for a moment--he became calm. Mr. O'Brien," he said, "I am foolish; but had you like me loved. No! love is not the word to express what I felt, what I feel-it was madness-for fifteen years she has been the vision of my soul-a part of my existence-mysteriously present to all my thoughts-but now," said he, "the spell is broken. Surely man disquieteth himself in vain.”

You

I endeavoured to urge upon him the possibility that he might yet attain his wishes-but he stopped me. do not know the nature of my passion -long-long before I calculated on the cold contingencies of life--this passion seized my mind. I remember the day when I gathered her wild flowers-she then seemed to me like an angel; and from that hour I associated with her everything that was fair, and virtuous, and pure. I was then in an humble station, and in it I would have been happy, but it was not God's will. She crossed my path like a being from another sphere-a spark, as it were of fire, fell-upon my

soul, and it has been burning ever since-and this was the flame whose flickering gleams men have admired; for I know I have been admired-but do you recollect Horace :

"Post ignem ætheria domo

Subductum Macies et nova Febrium
Terris incubuit cohors;"

And so it was with me, a fever preyed upon my heart, and consumed me, and the production of this disease was what you called talent."

"She is now a woman," he said, after a pause; "but I cannot bear to think of her otherwise than as the simple and innocent little girl of former days with her eyes like as the heaven on which she smiled, and her curls clustering along-but I have seen her-different-changed-like other women-a flirt."

A deep groan burst from his heart. With difficulty I persuaded him to tell me to what he alluded. It seemed, that during his last visit home, an officer quartered in the neighbourhood had been paying Miss some particular attention-she was not very averse to receiving it. Her familiarities, which never passed the bounds of propriety, in the eyes of a jealous lover were crimes. She knew nothing, she could not dream of his attachment; but still he fancied it a crime that she should receive even the common-place attentions of another; and unable to endure the sight of what his madness-for madness it was-regarded as a desecration of the goddess of his idolatry, he had hurried from his home; and this was the secret of that abrupt departure which I had attributed to such a different cause-but how could I have dreamed of the real one?

But with absence his love returned he reasoned with himself that he had no cause to have a lower opinion of Miss than he had before; but still the spell was broken-she had hitherto been an ideal creature of his fancy-upon whom, as it were, no one could look but himself-she was now but a woman-and strange to say, for the first time, he began to think of the possibility that some more favoured rival might bear away the prize for which he had toiled so long. It was strangely characteristic of the wildness of his passion, that never

before had this very rational apprehension crossed his mind.

His love, he confessed, was as strong as ever, but he said it was undefinably changed in its character-it had assumed more of reality and less of that mysterious indefiniteness which had been, perhaps, its charm. It seemed, he said, as if its object had been suddenly removed from that holy and enchanted bower, in which the magic of his imagination had securely enshrined her, and was now in the world of sense, exposed to all the dangers and subject to all the caprices of ordinary women.

He now mourned over the hopelessness of his passion. I endeavoured to inspire him with hope. "Ah!" he answered me, "in what reasonable time can I hope to attain a station in which I might hope for her handyears must pass away-years to me of solitude and anguish-and will she wait for a lover of whom she has never heard, and whom, if she did hear of, she would despise-ah!

"bene nummatum decorat Suadela Venusque."

Some rich and heartless fool will purchase her with his wealth to misery." He smote his forehead with his clenched fist, and muttered "PURCHASE HER," two or three times, bitterly.

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This was a conversation that there was but little use in pursuing. He was the victim of a passion, the strangest that ever preyed upon the heart of man-and what to say, I knew not. I urged him strongly to change his mind and accompany our party to Killarney on the next day, but he was inexorable. He said, when I was about to leave him, that he had a presentiment we might never meet again. This was very strange, for he generally spoke in a tone that I considered almost presumptuous of the certainty of his reaching a good old I remarked to him the change. "I will tell you why," said he. You remember the first commandment with promise Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days be long.' I thought I surely had honoured mine, and that my days would be long."

age.

"And why not depend upon the same promise now?"

Because I am not sure that I have

always honoured them, Mr. O'Brien," continued he; "it went to my old mother's heart to part with me the last time. She did every thing but command me to stay, and I might have gratified her; and I pleased myself; and she cried sore when I left her."

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Well, Arthur," said I, "if this be the only thing in which you have not done honor to your parents, I trust God will forgive it, and grant you length of days."

"Amen," he responded, in a tone of mingled confidence and fear.

We parted; and as I heard the heavy slam of his garret door as I hurried down the stairs, its sound fell upon my ear with a strangely dismal and melancholy foreboding. It was now quite dark; I wrapped my cloak tight about me and sallied out across the courts. I looked back, and saw the glimmering of the candle from Arthur's attic window cast a faint and solitary ray upon the darkness that wrapped the rest of the buildings.

Next morning rose gay and joyous upon the world, and I turned my back to town to enjoy a fortnight's ramble among the far-famed beauties of Killarney. At the end of that time I returned to town, and but a few hours had elapsed before I sought out Arthur Johns.

I found his room shut up, and from his opposite neighbour, who had returned to College in my absence, I learned a story that even now I can hardly bear to tell. Poor Arthur had been seized with a brain fever-he had been some days ill before any body knew it and one day he was found in the agonies of delirium by one of the few students who were then inmates of the College, wandering about the courts, his head streaming with blood, and his face and linen disfigured with its stains. He was taken by this student upon a jaunting-car to Sir Patrick Dunn's hospital, where he still remained.

To the hospital I rushed, almost distracted with grief and alarm. I found one of the surgeons, who told me that poor Arthur's death was hourly expected. He said that it seemed a case in which proper treatment at first might have subdued the complaint.

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But," added he, "when he came here, mismanagement had put it beyond our reach." I was admitted to his bedside.

He lay in one of the wards of the hospital, in a clean but lowly bed. He did not know me; his eyes were rolling heavily in a deadly stupor, and his lips moved occasionally as if attempt ing to mutter something; but they gave utterance to nothing but the most indistinct sounds. For about four hours I sat beside him, determined to see the last of him. It was just as the twilight was fading away in the darkness that his pulse ceased for ever to beat; and one long, gasping sob exhaled his last

breath.

I could hardly believe that he was gone that this was the end of him of whom so many fond and proud hopes had been entertained. I am not softhearted; I have seen death in many a shape, and I am stern enough to gaze on it unmoved; but when I looked upon him in that bed, a lifeless and a nangled corpse, and thought of all he was and of all he might have been, and of what the surgeon had told me, that care at first might have saved him, I thought my heart would have broken.

I say, his mangled corpse-for-how shall I tell the most horrid part of this dismal tragedy! He had, it seems, sent for an apothecary on finding himself unwell. The wretch whom he sent for ordered him a blister for his head, and paid him no more attention; thinking, I suppose, from the appearance of his garret, that he was not likely to make much by attending him. He sent the blister, and his college woman, his only attendant, applied it to his unshaved head and left him. The pain tormented him, and in a fit of delirium he tore away the blister and parts of the scalp together, and with the blood trickling over his face he wandered out into the courts. My readers know the rest.

These dreadful particulars I learned from the nurse-tender. She told me that in the fits of his delirium he had often called on me, and that sometimes he would fancy himself talking to a beautiful young lady, and then again he would think he was contending with a she-devil. And this was the end of one who might have been an honor to society and to his country!

Round his neck I found a key carefully fastened. I took it off, and having obtained admission to his rooms, I proceeded to secure the little effects he had. Every thing was just as he had left it. His dictionary was still open where he had been searching for the meaning of a word; his Bible, too, never had been closed since last he read it. But, gracious God! I felt my heart faint, and a deadly sickness come over me as I discovered but too positive proof of the horrid truth of the nurse-tender's tale. But I will not shock my readers by describing that, the recollection of which, even now, makes the blood curdle at my heart.

The key which I had taken from his neck I found to open a little cabinet that stood on a table near his bed. Inside it I found a piece of mechanism which I still have in my possession-a little coffin, most beautifully formed, of mahogany, and lined with scarlet cloth. On opening it I found a heart of the same material, broken into two, and branded on it with fire, the word "Matilda."

A few months after this I was again on a visit at Dr. Wail's. Poor old Mr. and Mrs. Johns-they seemed many, many years older than when I had seen them last. I could not have believed how quickly sorrow does the work of time.

I had many opportunities of meeting with Miss and the more closely I watched her the more mysterious did Arthur's passion appear. There was nothing extraordinary about her; she seemed to me a pretty, unaffected, and innocent-hearted girl; she spoke of Arthur as a person whom she hardly knew, but expressed great commiseration for his bereaved parents. Alas! she knew not; and if it could mar an hour of her light-hearted happiness, I trust that she may never know the heart that burned-that broke for her. It is not probable that she ever will; it is more than probable, if she does, that it will cost her but a passing pang. She has since married, and with her husband gone out to India.

THERE never was a people more devoured by civil strife and more harassed by foreign power than the people of Ireland. Previous to the conquest, their history seems for centuries to be but a record of crime, without one gleam to shed a halo around the name of any one individual in the long catalogue of kings and chieftains. We have the strongest testimony of the fearful lengths into which they were drawn by the fury of contending factions, who seemed as ambitious of rivalling each other in atrocity as in power, till the whole island became one mighty theatre for the fearful drama of intestine discord; it swept through the land like the spirit of the hurricane, blighting and wasting in its course, till at last one of those feuds-contemptible but for their multitudinous consequencesled to the arrival of a few bold adventurers from the shores of England. Subsequent to the conquest that ensued -for those raving patriots who deny a conquest of Ireland, may as well deny the conquest of America-the same spirit of discord and civil strife, the same genius that had walked before through the land in garments rolled in blood, stil! lived among her people, and made those who were devouring each other only the more facile prey to the stranger; at the same time, as might be expected from the fierce spirit that ruled all the conquests of those dark ages, those who won by the sword were resolved to maintain by the sword; so that every atrocity which the fury of faction could perpetrate, and every crime which the gauntletted hand could work, fell upon the bosom of this doomed and bleeding land.

It could not be that true religion could live in a land so circumstanced. It could not be that her gentle voice could be heard amidst such a storm of contending passions; and though they began to subside in after times, yet their effects still remained, and even yet remain to a certain extent to our own times. It is like the ocean over which the storm has raged; it may have passed away,

but we still see the heaving of the long swell and the rolling of the troubled wave; years have rolled by, and we fear some few more must vanish with them before the passions of the people will cease to heave to and fro beneath the breath of agitation.

There was no period in the history of Ireland replete with more fair prospects for civilization and religion, than the period of the great plantation of Ulster. It promised to introduce civilization; it promised to establish the principles of the reformation — the former upon the ruins of native barbarism, the latter upon the decay of the Roman church. Both these purposes of true philanthropy it partially accomplished the former far more extensively than the latter-and our present inquiry is as to the causes of its failure in not having more widely extended the influence of Protestantism among the native population; for we conceive that there is an innate power-au expansiveness, as some have called it, in the principles of the Reformation calculated to force their way to the hearts and understandings of mankind.

The important truth is continually forced upon the mind, while perusing the records of Ireland, that the cause of the failure of the Reformation arose out of the political and social state of the country, which, from the struggles of contending factions-from the continued excitement in which they lived

from the reiterated rebellions into which they were seduced-from their deep and degrading ignorance—and from the wild and barbarous state of the natives in general, was both unfitted for the reception of true religion and incapacitated from right judgment respecting it. Besides all these elements, there were others peculiarly connected with the settlement of Ulster that assisted in defeating, to a certain extent, the great purposes for which it was originally designed, and in them, as elsewhere, we can at once perceive, that the unfortunate circumstances of the country, which make it ever the

victim of agitation, are, as they have been, the causes of the failure of the Reformation in Ireland.

The state of the province of Ulster previous to this settlement, was such that it was soon felt by the English government to be the most difficult of management. Its chiefs were of ancient lineage, and had powerful influence over the provincial clans; and being men of incontrollable ambition and warlike propensities, they were enabled to harass the government and defy the power of England in the field; its general population were in a state of the wildest barbarism, addicted to predatory warfare, and delighting in deeds of blood; its surface was covered with extensive woods and morasses, without the remotest traces of tillage, except in a few isolated districts. The whole province was in a state that rendered it exceedingly difficult of government, and its remoteness greatly added to that difficulty; indeed there scarcely appears to have been a single year that was not marked either by some dreadful conflict or massacre among the native chiefs and their clans, or by some fierce rebellion against the authority of England; nor did there yet appear any mode of civilizing and quieting that extensive province, except by crushing the power and influence of those native chiefs who, acting on the love of predatory warfare universal among the peasantry, were enabled to gather around their standard, at any moment, a multitude of retainers to make their incursions against the English; and besides this, there was a love of whatever was of long standing, an inveterate attachment to old customs and habits of life, deeply seated in the disposition of the natives, so that no means had ever yet been devised capable of weaning them from their wild mode of life, which, at the same time that it retarded the progress of civilization and national improvement, left them a more easy prey to the delusions practised on them by the chiefs, who ever sought to excite them to disaffection and stimulate them to rebellion.

This inveteracy in ancient customs, peculiar always to uncivilized people, and paralleled only among the savage of the desert or the wandering Indian of the forest, demanded some great

effort on the part of the English government. It appeared to them, as it appears to us, absolutely necessary to wean them from their wild and unsettled habit of life to a state of cultured civilization, and to tame into tranquillity and submission to equitable laws, a people who had lived hitherto without almost any law but the will of the chiefs, and who were easily led into the rebellious designs of every disaffected chief. The whole history of Ulster, previous to the plantation of that province, is a saddening witness of a state of wild barbarism-wandering and predatory habits-ferocious and bloody feuds-rebellious outbreaks and horrible atrocities that demanded something more effective than the ordinary methods of reducing such a population to "civility and religion," as the writers of that day express it. The following extract from a proclamation issued by James the First, will illustrate this:

"We do hereby profess, on the word of a king, that there never was any shadow of molestation, nor purpose of proceeding in any degree against them for matters concerning religion. Such being their condition and profession as to think murder no crime, marriage of no use, nor any man worthy to be esteemed valiant that did not glory in rapine and oppression, that we should have thought it an unreasonable thing to trouble them for any different point of religion, before any man could perceive by their conversation that they made truly conscience of any religion."

This proclamation shows that the object of government was not merely the forcing any particular point of coutroverted religion upon the population, but the reducing them from their wild habits to a state of settled civilization

reducing them from their Scythian custom of wandering from district to district, to a state of settled and civilized life, and weaning them from fierce and barbarous habits of lawless rebellion and intestine feud to a tranquil submission to the laws of England. The language of this royal paper is the stronger, when it is recollected that it chiefly refers to the leaders of the northerns, who had just fled the province; and when such a description was applicable to the chiefs of Ulster, we may easily infer the fearful state of the mere peasantry. They lived in the