THE novel just published, called " The Anglo-Irish of the

Nine- teenth Centure ," answers but in part to the expectations suggested

and cleansed of the perilous stuff by the title. It exposes the chimerical and anti-national views of polluted—to snatch one instant of sublime enjoyment, and in the the dominant faction in Ireland, and gives occasional glimpses of grand swell of the choral song, or in the soft responsive strain of the Anglo-Irish character ; but, on the whole, it is the follies of the people, rather than the people themselves, who figure in the novel. treble voices, to let the imagination kindle till this earth becomes The Anglo-Irish part is very inferior in effect at least, if not in ac- With the hand of a master. To the remaining portions of the work triennial triumph of harmony perpetual. The time is coming, we are not disposed to attach much value. It is sometimes defi- cient in originality, sometimes in truth, and almost always in power. The hero, as usual, is without a character ; those, who next to him, occupy the largest portions of the canvass, viz., the cynic and the exquisite, are ale, and—the latter especially—tiresome. The style is witot any peculiar charm ; the conversations are long and their truncheons and batons, shall need no influence to bring us tedious ; the adventures commonplace ; and the plot, so far as together but our mere love of harmony and relish for refined gra- there is a plot, vulgar. tifications. Till then, great patrons, stand firm, and think it not With all these drawbacks, it is a work we are glad to have. hard to repair once in three years to a remote old town, whose That part of the Irish people which, though but a fourth of the total scanty accommodations will only give zest to your after enjoyment of population, has from time immemorial borne sway over the whole, the s in a situation so anomalous, that we are naturally inquisitive after the opinions, the views and characters to which so unfavour- lated produce of corn taxes effloresce in e splendour of musical

festivals, and not shine only for yourselves in gilded drawing- able a position has given rise—particularly at the present crisis, rooms, or reek only for yourselves in the savoury steams of your when their monopoly of power appears to be in danger. Though kitchens. Let us, the bread-eaters, at least see the magnificence to- the author of the present work is, as we have said, an Irishman wards which we contribute each a portion of his loaf, and live hardly entire, his sketches are neither distorted nor ill-natured ; and the that you may fare sumptuously. Already, like the grasping daugh- recent history of the faction would have justified the laying on of ters of Lear, the grudgers of public enjoyment begin to ask—why much darker shades than any he has seen fit to employ. But he a festival every three years ? why not be content with one every has preferred amusing himself with their insane projects, and left it five 2 And soon it will be, why oftener than once every Arleen— to themselves to discover their bad passions ; of which the late till, in the length of the interregnums, the very idea grows obsolete, Brunswick meetings have made some very convincing disclosures.

and the members of the Managing Committee (never, save only in As for the whole Irish, or genuine Irish, they arc a people whose the egregious mistake of PAsrA, to be named without honour) sleep character is so imperfectly appreciated in this country, and of below the pavement, whereon they looked to have discharged their which it so deeply concerns us to form a just conception, that every

ennobling duties and deserved the thanks of their country work which puts it in a fair point of view has the strongest claim Let us not delude ourselves—let us not seek like hypocrites to on public attention. Mr. BAmat—and we conceive the novel delude others with the notion, that charity is the moving-spring of under review to be of the O'Hara family—is the only veritable the whole. Delectation, public delectation, of the highest, purest, painter of the Irish; the rest are caricaturists or romancers. Even and most purifying nature, is the end of a Musical Festival. It is Miss EDGEWORTH, with powers of composition much superior to worthy of a great and wealthy nation so to combine for the purpose those of Mr. Beetiet, more point, vigour, and brilliancy, has pre- of intellectual enjoyment, and so to assemble—like reapers at liar- sented us with only the eccentricities of the Irish character ; and vest-home—to participate in the reward of that national industry and of these she has made the most that a fertile imagination and enterprise to which we owe the means of this and all our other lux- decided turn for humour enabled her to make. Mr. BANINfs pie- uries. And if, in the midst of our banquet, we forget not the poorer tures are neither so amusing nor so striking ; but they have the class of our countrymen, whom sickness, or poverty, or the absence property which invariably distinguishes truth,—the longer we con- of a cultivated taste for such pleasures, cuts off from a participation template them, the stronger is the impression they make, and the in them—if we so contrive that the indulgence of our tastes shall be- deeper our conviction of -their accuracy. In the second and third come the means of adding to their comforts and providing for their volumes of the present work—by much the most valuable—the wants, all then have their just share in the common festivity, and reader will find a fair proportion of Irish life under various &- Agitations like these are in every way beneficial. They raise It may be of service to the reader to lay before him a mere out- *In 3 vets, lenekee leea, Colburn.

supported on his right by a sheriff's officer in the costume of a gentleman, in place of having him, like STEELE, in a livery behind his chair. The domestic affairs of this English-Irish family being pretty freely exposed—(we hope, with the hero, that the Anglo- Irish are not to be judged of by this sample)—and Mr. Blount having narrowly escaped being hooked into matrimony by the charms of one of the ladies, and into a quarrel by the long spurs of one of the Tenth,' sets out for the estate of an elder brother—an English-Irish absentee Lord; and falling by the way into the pos- session of a party of Rockites, is in some danger of being shot as the new man come to supersede Larry O'Dea in the tenancy of a certain hovel and potato-garden ; but, after many adventures by flood and field, is suddenly transferred, by an agency we shall not pretend to explain, inasmuch as there is a love mystery at the bot- tom, from the blackness and darkness of an Irish bog and a star- less night, to a brilliantly lighted drawing-room, in his brother's mansion ; where, in process of time, half Irish as he is, he marries an entire Irishwoman ; having first bundled up and flung over- board a -pretty considerable parcel of Anglo-Irish theories. As usual, this is a consummation brought about one does not exactly see how : but, for this reason, it is only the more in nature; since whim, disgust, and self-interest, which tue very operative all over tli& globe, seem just now to be especially active in that part of it called Ireland.

Such are the outlines of the map. , On going over it a second time, we can afford only to jot down one or two of the more re- markable features of the chart.

The breakfast conversation at Lord CASTLEREAGH'S is a pi&Y.? de reslytance almost tough enough to defy masticulation. What we have to say of this may be said of all the English-Irish conversations in the book—and they are many and fearfully lone--the author is never seduced out of the right road of truth by the temptation of showing himself pointed or felicitous in dialogue, or humorous in the exhibition of character. The impatient reader tushes, pshaws, and skips till he comes abruptly to an end, and does not deny that, for insipidity at least, the conversations have every claim to be considered as genuine.

The following is intended as a specimen of the gibberish which our late lamented statesman used to indulge in at debates and di- plomatic dinners.

" The mass of our half-countrymen are certainly difficult to govern,' said the Minister ; I fear, they may he said to give his Alajesty's Coun- cils as much continued, though petty trouble, as any people who are, or have been, our declared enemies.'

" And I fear so, too, my Lord.'

" An 'tis a problem they should, Mr. Knightly ;—for whether we con- sider their long experience of the Government and of the laws of Eng- land; or their necessitous knowledge of their own level in the scale of nations ; or their constant opportunities to grow wiser, by observing the course pursued by other people, and especially by their neighbours, to- wards happiness and prosperity ; in fact, in whatever way we balance the question, we are unable to forge it into any tangible solution capable of being comprehended according to the rules of cause and effect."

"Here;' obligingly adds the author," may be detected instances of the rather infelicitous clash of imagery that occasionally marked his lordship's language." "Infelicitous clash of imagery !" Surely this is LorsoiNus himself,—" the model of the great sublime he drew ; "—his Lordship might have retorted with the adage of the kettle and the frying-pan. As we have quoted the opinion of one statesman respecting the strange indocility of the Irish people, not- withstanding the bright example enjoyed by them in the sister island, we shall subjoin the remedy for it prescribed by another, to whose name happily we cannot yet affix "late and lamented."

" So, indeed, says our distinguished countryman, now immortalizing himself on the Peninsula. One of the chief causes of Ireland's turbu- lence is her self-flattering conviction, that, as yet, she has been but half conquered. Whenever she ,deserves it, then, he argues, conquer her to her heart's content, and she will be quieter. And I think ita fair syllogism ; and, for my own part, can imagine no state of things better calculated to let us remodel the old Celtic character—to make it, in fact, English-Irish —that's still my word—than one offered by the salutary humiliation, per- haps diminution, of a newly-conquered people !' "

We are fortunately able to throw light on a passage somewhat darkly expressed, as well as to vindicate our author from the im- putation of having exaggerated the sanguinary theories of the Anglo-Irish faction. "Salutary humiliation, perhaps diminution of a newly-conquered country"—is thus explained by that preacher of "peace and good-will among men," the Reverend Mr. HORNER, at the late Brunswick meeting in Tyrone.

"1 foresee that their insurrection [meaning the insurrection of the Catholics, as yet existent only in the divine imagination of the reverend speaker] will be marked with all the worst features of religious war ; and how shall the scenes be described, when those atrocities are requited by a numerous, an irritated, and a triumphant host ? I can conceive, Sir, that all that is recorded of past secerthes shall be light, compared with what may then he inflicted. I can conceive that even the altet 'attire of Con- Paw.I.ht may no longer be left asa refuge for the fu;:itiros; but that an indignant 'nation, [meaning the English-Irish facticin, for the reverend speaker surely has not the impudence to bespeak us for his butchers] giving a loose to its resentment, and measuring punishment only by pro- meation, may rid the country of Meat [six millions] altoe-,ether, and rescue the country from the cruel necessity [kind gentleman !] of chastising them again."

" Tantmne animis ccelestibus " .... surely this man's " brains

have tumbled down into his belly,"lo use the phrase of another reverend divine, and he reasons through his organs of digestion ! What but the anticipated privation of tithe-pig and mortuary guinea could have bred such dreams of vengeance ? If a parallel is to be found for this sweeping and exterminating harangue, we must lookefor it nowhere but in the worst days of the worst factions

of ancient Greece, where party-men, pent up within the walls of a city, anticipated the cutting of their own throats by making previous incisions in those of their antagonists. Cleon's motion to put to death the whole people of Mityleme, proposed and carried in the assembly of the Athenians, has usually been cited as an unexampled instance of political atrocity. But the Mitylenteans, instead of six millions, were only some twelve hundred, and instead of being in a state of perfect submission to authority, had just been reduced with great difficulty after a desperate and dangerous revolt ; so that, " measuring punishment by provo- cation," Cleon's motion was not—what we have always thought it —a piece of enormous brutality, but a just and necessary measure of "severity." Moreover, the Athenians next day repented them of the cruelty they had meditated, and rescinded the act ; but we have not heard that the Brunswickers of Tyrone, who cheered the reverend Cleon, have repented them of their cheers, and testified any change of sentiment.

The coincidence of opinion between the English-Irishman of

the novel and the man of Tyrone, gives us no little confi- dence in the fidelity with which the author has represented the views of the Anglo-Irish faction. But for the elucidation afforded by the reverend commentator, we should certainly have set down sonic passages of the Ibllowing scene as instances of culpable exaggeration ; whereas, compared with the remedies so solemnly and soberly suggested at the Brunswick meetings, the after-dinner hints of the English-Irish at St. Stephen's Green, lose almost all their atrociousness, and retain only their ridiculousness.

" A few of such infant schools, on the principle of Pestalozzi, estab- lished by myself, I have great hopes of, as you know, Alias Flint.'

" Ali, no wonder !' assented Miss Flint; those your Ladyship showed me, last month, in the country ! Lots of the poor little dears, Mrs. Gore, sitting on mats, to keep the damp of the clay floor from their your little- hodies,' hesitating, and none of them more than three or four years old; and they so comfortable there, the day long, out of harm's way, and fretted with nothing in the world wide, but just allowed to develope the consciousness of the divine germ within their own hearts! Think of that! So, educate them after dear, delightful Pestalozzi, I say too.'

" Educate theta, but not so vaguely,' observed Mr. Priestly : educate them in the letter as well as in the spirit of the Word. " That is, convert them,' said Lord Harmer.

" Keep them down,' recommended Sir John Lumley. " And begin with the demagogues,' added the Judge's son, 'and the counsellors,' with a sneer.

" Make them tidy,' exhorted Miss Flint ; ' support our society, teach them to go neat, and to turn small loans, and to whitewash.'

" At the last weird Mr. Gore slightly started. [This is mine host with the bailiff en ,xentilhomme supporting him on his right.]

" Set them to drain all the bogs,' said Lord Offally. " And to improve the fisheries,' hinted Lord Friar.

"'Thin them,' advised a young Fellow of Dublin College. [Mr. Horner's proposition, but more faintly put.] "'That's the way,' agreed the Militia lieutenant.

" Yes, ship them off, in fleets, to our colonies,' recommended Mr. Blake.

'And afterwards,—indecd, immediately,—make marriage amongst those who stay at home, except under prescribed circumstances, and at a certain age, penal,' said the young clergyman who had pronounced grace, a deep student in Malthus.

" Think of that !' cried Miss Flint, looking very much pleased at him, (though astonished and puzzled,) in gratitude for his confining matrimony to a certain age.' "

'Mine is a shorter way,' resumed the young Fellow of College ; 'their and their demagogues threaten us with their numbers—let them rebel.' [Mr. Horner again—what a witch this author is!]

" Ay, and thin them then,' echoed the lieutenant.

• " 'What say you, Mr. Gunning ?' asked Mr. Gore.

" Oh, nothing like leather,' answered the cynic. "Mrs. Gore arose to lead her fair battalion to the drawing room, ere Mr, Gunning gave his reply; as if, indeed, she and they were not to sit and listen to the opinions of so uncouth a person. " The moment they had retired, Lord Friar raised his glass, and while his common, vacant, and disagreeable features betrayed a peculiar excite- ment= Come, Gore,' he said boisterously, you shall have my remedy in my old toast at the Beef-steak,' and here it is—' The Pope in the pillory, the pillory in h-11, pelted with priests by the d---1." "Amid the cheer which followed, Gunning arose, and said, 'I decline that toast.'

" And so do I,' said Gerald, standing by his side, and offering him his unhurt arm."

We can afford not a word for Westminster or Cambridge and can only hint at the sixty mortal pages of a dinner (in vol. I.) at Mr. Secretary CROKER'S ; at which we should have murmured less, had Mr. CROKER and his company been made to say more that was worth repeating. If it be a correct report of an after- dinner conversation at a "high official personage's," it only adds strength to our conviction, that the brilliancy of a great man's con- versation resides in the great man's champagne and claret, and should never be taken without them. If Mr. CROKER and his company do really talk in the style in which they are made to talk in this imaginary banquet, the less we hear about them the better. Why should a man's affectations go abroad to annoy those who never eat either pippin or pear at his table ? Besides the talk —" all stuff and nonsense" in the opinion even of the author's Mr. CROKER himself—about converting ducks into geese, or making Irishmen English, there is a bye conversation about distinguished talkers ; in regard to whom an opinion is put forth, which may be correct in general, but is certainly erroneous in the particular instance adduced. It is said that a great talker must have the field to himself, or he is dumb ; and that two great talkers brought to- gether cannot talk at all. WORDSWORTH, by way of example, is supposed " pedlar-like plodding" at the author of Waverley's stirrup;—"ithe exciseman and he could not keep up a conver- sation five minutes together,' How it may rare with talkers who profess only talking-, or how it may fare with WORDSWORTH, we know not : but in the instance of Sir WALTER SCOTT, we are

inclined to think that the author is entirely wrong. A person who talks for enjoyment and not for fameL-talks from the exuberance of a rich imagination, and a memory full of " auld wand stories" —would feel from the propinquity of a man like WORDSWORTH a pleasurable excitation, which would induce only amore abundant and continuous flow of conversation—just as one high-mettled horse is stimulated by the company of another. We must not quit Mr. Secretary CROKER'S without giving the best pie of the entertainment, which we take to be the presenta- tion of Mr. Gore from county, Ireland : it is an exquisite piece of painting.

" Gerald thought he should have discovered the gentleman's country without a verbal notification of it. At a first view, there was about him a sufficient portion of the elegant display of features and manner to which, particularly at Cambridge, our hero had been accustomed, in the persons of his Hibernian fellow-students. He rose up to his full height, and that was commanding, gracefully assumed his best position ; and, all the while that his round ruddy face glowed with smiles, and his expres- sive mouth insinuatingly curved up at one side, slid off a bow so exploded although so easy, that nothing but his absence from court during the last five or six years could have well excused it ; and Gerald deemed, so much having been done, there was an end, for the present, to civilities ; but Mr. Gore, again assuming his full height, and stepping to the brothers with something of the noble style which Watteau has so well imparted to his minuet. moving old gallants, possessed himself, I cannot say unceremo- niously, for it was the very perfection of polite ceremony, of a hand of each, and in rich, not vulgar, Irish, made a handsome speech."

In the evening with the lady Protestant reformers, at the house of Lady Kilbane—(who, the newspapers inform us, was last heard of at Alexandria, where she was preparieg to embark with Mr.

Loupe for the land "round about de vaters of de Dead Shea") —a very great deal of unreadable conversation is atoned for by

Mr. Cornelius O'Hanlon, who having heard of the Bible-meetings got up by " half Irish and even whole English people," judged that he might find it more profitable to enact the convert from Popery in London, than to teach ragged boys—his original pro- fession—to consther Homer in_Kerry. And so- " The real living descendant of a hundred old Popish Milesians came over in a frieze coat at sixty years of age, with his luscious brogue and his rustic simplicity, as it were a converted soul from the darkness of Popery to the light of Scripture knowledge.

"'Tire poor cratures of my poor country are hungry and thirsty for the word, and crying out for the word, and hunting out the word, through holes and corners,' declaimed Mr. O'llanlon—' give the poor cratures of my poor country the word, and they will ask you for nothing else but the word.'

" You amazingly valuable creature ! '—lisped Flood, [the exquisite] loud enough to be heard by all, " I will go amonsht dem, and I will preash amonsht dem, and I viii thereby slice conversions amonsht dem, and the vorld viii shoe conver- sions,' promised Mr. Loupe, taking up Mr. O'Hanlon, and de vord shall be theirs, and dwell amonsht dem : I vill tell dem of my sojourning in de holiest chitty, and round about by de vaters of de Dead Shea, and round about de holy mountain, and on de top of de same, and in de holy valleys and holy places, and of de hopes dat vere born of my preashing arid bashing, in every place, to de poor followers of de superstition of Rome ; and den, dey also shall believe ; for de people of Ireland are people ye have reashon to hope veil of, and many coming out from dem, over de vaters, to dis land, are good in de sight of good men.' "

When Mr. Blount appears engaged for life in a succession of Ministerial dinners and fashionable religious routes, and the au- thor thinks—certainly not before the reader—that there has been even too much of them, he takes measures more suo to extricate him from the dull routine of official life, and precipitates him at once into an intrigue with a certain Lady Cox, the wife of a mad Irish baronet. After his hero is lost beyond redemption, the au- thor generously interposes to save him, and a rival suitor has the honour of eloping with Lady Cox, and of being shot by Sir Richard ; who next does similar justice on himself. The consum- mation is delightfully Irish.

"Upon the middle of the floor lay Sir Richard Cox, dead and cold. At one side, near a sofa, were stretched Newbury and Lady Cox, bound together with her own sash and shawl. At first the people thought that they, too, were both dead. But, to their horror, Lady Cox moved her head sideways, when she heard their approach, and fixing her large dark eyes on them, smiled. Her companion was, indeed, lifeless and stiff; she was only mad : her husband had offered her no personal injury ; but, having shot her paramour through the heart, he bound her to the body, placed its arms round her neck, and demoniacally refining his revenge, preferred to let her live, that she might see him die too, and then pass the night in the situation in which the people found her, and afterwards remember it if she could."

An author of any other country would have contented himself with a simple duel, and sending his hero out of the country as the consequence. But the Irish novelist must do it—as Bob Acres would have his challenge written—with a vengeance; and so the change of scene is brought about by the combined force of adul- tery, murder, suicide, and madness!

In Pore la Chaise, Mr. l3lount is offended by what he conceives to be a parade of sentiment ; and cherishes his spleen, till he re- flects that there may be different modes of testifying grief, without any difference either in its depth or sincerity. The French, fluent and unreserved, dilate with eloquence on the subject of their re- gret. The Englishman clasps your hand in silence, and turns away his face to hide his quivering eye-lid. The first, according to their taste, erect urns and weeping mourners, and plant cypresses, and write, " Adieu Julie ! adieu mon enfant ! " The other lays a flat solid stone, or bricks up his grave, and takes an inscription from the formulas of the stone-cutter. The Frenchman shrugs his shoulders—" AA gems barbare!" The Englishman exclaims against

affectation and sentimentality. Each forgets he stands on foreign ground, and that what would be rudeness in a Frenchman, or af- • fectation in an Englishman, is not rudeness in an Englishman, or affectation in a Frenchman. We think the Gallic temper the more fortunate—" Give sorrow words," and it is easier borne—and that a churchyard of green alleys, cypresses, urns, and affecting in- scriptions, is more agreeable to the eye and soothing to the heart than a churchyard flagged with grave-stones, where the citizen, as he walks over the bones of his neighbour's relatives, sees idle schpolboys playing at marbles over those of his own. There is an adventure in Pere la Chaise, but it has reference to the mystery, to which we have not any appetite, and would not balk those that have. Only we would hint, that mistakes built upon personal resemblance are now something stale ; and that a mystery which every body fathoms interests nobody. The voyage and wreck present nothing new or striking ; and the hero arrives on an unknown coast, like Ulysses, navigated by his own legs and arms. He is not aware—so far has he been thrown out of his latitude—on what soil he stands, and fancies himself in Wales; a mistake that is soon rectified:-

" Wales? what Wales ? to the devil with Wales, taffies, and innions and all ! what do you mean by that sort of talk ?—Keep off!' as Gerald unconsciously stepped closer. It's wanting tocoax yourself on me you'd be. Keep off, I say ! or, maybe, the bould buy you fear most is nearer than you think—Arragh, Daddy !—Gossip ! where are ye, I say ?'

" So,' thought Gerald= so ;—I am in the Emerald Isle, after all; and, if I rightly translate the elegant turn, bould boy,' one of my first cham- ber-mates may turn out to he no other than Captain Rock himself."

The reader who has the honour of Mr. BANIM'S acquaintance will not share in the English-Irish hero's regret at having been thrown on the Irish coast ; and indeed we very speedily find reason to be grateful for the misadventure. We set off for Dublin in good style on the box of the common stage, and have coachee's story by the way ;—poor MiCkle Farrell, from a substantial tenant, ground down into the driver of a stage-coach ! After hoaxing Mr. Blount a little about the time it takes in Ireland to put to the horses, coachee apologizes on finding that he has by his side neither a steward nor an exciseman, nor yet a surly Milord, but a kind-hearted liberal gentleman.

" You see, Sir, it's not the best o' you, I'm thinking, ye send, over here to us, for samples, to agent us, and steward us, and lawyer us, and then make little of us, after making nothing at all of us.'

" Excuse me again; I do not understand.'

"Running us down, you persave, Sir, all the time they're thrashing us into chaff, and grinding us into powder—ay, and when it's all over too, and maybe then more than ever ; and axing ye, Sir,—the Englishmen that never come here, I mane,—to believe us the divvles entirely, in regard o' good manners and good behavor, and not knowing how to mind our own business. Sure that's the rason, when we meet one o' your country on the road, we takes the whip-hand of him, in one o' the ways we're your equals, at laste, Sir—by the gift o' gab, Sir, and the gibe and the fun that often hides our hearts, and the little cran we have,—Lord be praised, that laves us any thing, these times,—of keeping our minds to ourselves now and then.'"

Michael tells his story—the common Irish one—with an affected levity, which, at the close, gives way to a burst of emotion that is attended with unhappy consequences to himself and his companion.

" Very well, Sir. The day came, Sir, and so did Mr. Steward, Sir; and turn out was the word. Oh, with all my heart, Sir, says I; 'only if your honor will have us in this one night, till my ould mother gets a little better, I'll thank your honor. She's in bed, in the next room to us, not over well, as the doctor tells us." Where?' says he, opening the dour, and going into her. She just saw his face, and heard Moya and the wee- nachs crying abroad, and she did'nt give any of us much more trouble— the one look at him—killed her,' continued coachee, his tones trembling., as lie stooped to wind a long and gentle lash at one of his leaders ; but I ask pardon ; there was the wake, and a merry wake it was,' laughing; and early in the morning after it, our good steward came again, and staid to lock the house dour with his own hand, and then he wished us good by—the young wife, and her three childer, and another coming, and myself, as we stood in the bosheen,—the ould bosheen, Sir, that led up from the road to my father's house.'

" You have indeed been hardly treated,' said Gerald.

" 'Does your honor think so ?' again laughed coachee.

" Certainly I do, but most by this steward. May I ask you the name of so cruel a man?'

" Bignell,' answered coachee quietly. Gerald recognized the name of Lord Clangore's land steward, and now entertained no doubt that he sat beside an old correspondent.

"What immediately followed brought certainly on the point. " I3ignell,' repeated coachee, in a tone less composed; ay, Bignell—' he continued, his voice growing vehement, while his features worked, and his hands trembled, and he wound his whip to make, as if unconsciously, a fierce cut at his horses, Bignell, the cursed-above-ground villain !' "The lash violently smote the off-leader, who pranced high. The other horses got frightened, and all set off at a gallop. An old woman who had been picking firewood in the fields, came, crab-like, down a steep bank through a gap in a fence at one side of the road. The scared and excited animals could make nothing of a figure presenting itself in such a ques- tionable shape: observing her, at a distance, they suddenly swerved aside in their furious career ; the coach as suddenly upset, and Gerald was flung off, and momentarily deprived of his senses."

A broken arm and a broken thigh are the respective shares of Mr. Blount and Michael in the common misfortune. The latter is carried into a cabin, where he interrupts the consolation which Mr. Blount is tendering him, with— "'I'm beholden to you, Sir, for your kind word—but, to tell the truth, this thigh is losing its senses entirely—murther 1 and cross o' Christ about us I but that was a pain in earnest.'

"His face grew more pallid than it had been before, his features worked, and pe13piration stood on his forehead, Faintness ensued, for he closed his eyes with a deep groan.

"Gerald called out, and some people entered in a hurried manner with glass and jug. C'oachee re-opened his eyes, and eztended his hand. " `If 'tis spirits, he must not touch it,' said Gerald.

" But Pm burning with the drooth, your honor, and the heart is wake,' remonstrated coachee.

" Give him a glass of water then, and let me have another.' Gerald's own pain was scarcely to be endured. " ' Water, your honor ?' asked his fellow-sufferer, in much amazement =water, to rise the heart?'

" No other drink that we can at present get is fit for either of us, if we mean to take a chance for our lives; but do as you wish.'

" Divvle have me, then, if I do ; give us that could comfort, in the name of God,' he added, in a tone of such mournful resignation, that Gerald half smiled, notwithstanding his own pangs.'

The remainder of this volume is occupied with a meeting or the Catholic Board and a dinner of Brunswickers. The first will be read with interest, even should nothing more be gleaned from the narrative but the shape of O'CONNELL'S wig, and the tone of Mr. SHIEL'S voice. Though we would not give the paring of a pen to know who the gentleman was that corrected Mr. CROKER'S article for MURRAY, and wore " clouds of black hair over his feminine features," we consider the minutest particulars relating to the great Irish agitators to be objects of legitimate curiosity.

" 'See how all the people turn to look after him, Sir, and then smile at each other as they pass : they like to see him walking so bravely along, with his broad shoulders and his full breast ; and 'tis thought he likes to be seen by them, stepping out over the flags of Dublin, through thick and thin, friends and foes ; for he could go in his carriage to the Four-Courts every day if he thought fit, Sir ;—look, Sir ! here it comes, close after him.'

• 'The green one, with the green coachman, and green harness-rib- bons?'

" Yes, Sir ; and he'd have the horses green, if he could.'

" Pray assist me, again ;—I have my eye, I think, upon some other popular character, for the people turn to look after him, too;. though he is so different a figure from Mr. O'Connell : I mean the low, slight, little gentleman, who walks so rapidly, jerking his arms, and pushing out his under-lip so often, and whose complexion is so bilious, and whose nose is rather short and cocked, and—now that he-happens to look up—whose eyes are so dark, and fine, and expressive ?'

'" You're right, Sir, that's Mr. Shiel.' "'Ay l—he is overtaken, now, by a very large Person, who carries his head very high, and wears his clothes very loose, and has great whiskers, and a profusion of shirt-collar, and bears a huge stick or club on his shoulder—is he any one of note?'

" Indeed, and he is, Sir Counsellor O'Gorman, the Secretary, no less.' " "The secretary 9—what secretary ?'

" 'Of the Catholic boord, Sir.'

" Well, and that other gigantic gentleman who now meets him and Mr. Shiel —who is he ?'

" It's a lucky morning for you, Sir ; sure he is Mr. Eneas M`Donnell, that hunts the Biblicals over the whole country, and gives them no rest or pace : when he's on his legs, it would be no asy thing to make him sit down, Sir, against his liking, as you may persave, and he knows that well.'

We pass Sir HARCOURT LEES, with his " yellow leather breeches, top-boots, and whip "—for " no one minds poor little Sir HARCOURT—that hasn't a bit of harm in him at all, at all—only a little cracked or so "—and turn to metal more attractive.

" Now, Sir, here's one worth looking at ; the purple-faced old gentle- man that gets such a shaking on the back of that little rough-coated horse, bending forward, and dropping his jaw so much, and followed by a ser- vant. If ever you heard of the pleasantest judge in the Four-Courts, there he is, Sir—old, old Lord Norbury.' " This is the still life view—let us follow to the Globe Tavern, Essex- street, and we shall see the mighty agitators in debate. We need not enter into details : suffice it to say, that the point to be dis- cussed was whether Mr. PLUNKET should be instructed to concede the Veto or not ; that O'CoNNELr. and SHIEL were divided in opi- nion ; and that it was thought "for once in his life Counsellor DAN would lose the day."

"The Catholic parliament were not then so well accommodated with a place for debate, as at present they are understood to be. Gerald entered a second or third-rate tavern, and made his way up a narrow staircase into an ordinary-sized room, communicating with another by folding.. doors, now flung open. Both apartments were beginning to be rapidly filled, but as the greater part of the people had not yet come in, the crowd was not too dense to forbid Gerald's approach, even with his lame arm, to the table arranged for the debaters. His place was scarce secured, however, when a great bustle occurred; and first, Mr. O'Gorman, the Secretary, walked sturdily into the room, carrying his great shillelagh on his right shoulder, which he laid down on the table with an important air, as if it had been the great seal, or the Speaker's mace; and then fol- lowed Mr. O'Connell, towing Mr. Eneas M`Donnell, and pursued by a throng that quickly stuffed the two apartments to the walls. A little per- son, wearing an unfashionably shaped blue frock, who had been previously turned from the table, looking over some manuscript, now quickly faced round, and Gerald recognized the pale-coloured, peculiar, but highly in- tellectual features of Mr. Shiel. His hat was off, and a superfluity of black hair, divided, with some affectation, like a woman's, or an old sta- tue's, upon his forehead, gave his head a peculiar character. Mr. O'Con- nell also appeared uncovered, exhibiting a plain unromantic brown wig, that whimsically turned up behind, so as to leave visible part of the back of his neck. He took off his Oxford-grey surtout, fully unbuttoned his under-coat, half unbuttoned his waistcoat, touched his profuse muslin frill, pulled down, until it hung at almost its full length out of his fob, a massive gold chain, to which fitly appended a ponderous bunch of seals, took the chain in his right band, and began whirling the seals about ; thrust his left hand into his breast ; got into a slight rocking motion, half- earnest, half. swaggering; and looking exceedingly serious, seemed as if collecting his thoughts from some score of law cases that day gone through, to fix them on the new business in hand. He had taken up his position close to Mr. Shiel ; and as that young gentleman, turning side- ways to the chair, folded his arms hard, compressed his small well-cut lips, or sometimes pushed out the under one, and, growing paler, and glancing upwards, as he was obliged V.; do, fixed his glittering black eyes upon the very Irish, but not otherwise remarkable face of his vast anta- gonist, no contrast (in their situation) could be more remarkable than that which appeared between both.

"In a few seconds, a judicious friend of Mr. O'Connell moved his brother into the chair, and the great 'agitator' immediately set-to.' Gerald remembered that the question for discussion, namely, whether Mr. Plunket should receive the Catholic petition with or without instruc- tions, was one upon which these gentlemen had also differed, to their loss, with Mr. Grattan. Mr. O'Connell's brogue, and his long drawling way of speaking,—his see-saw motion, his continued twirling of his chain and seals, the awkward sweep of his disengaged arm, and his bend- ing low, whenever he sought to he emphatic; all this did not please Gerald in the first instance.' It It was inveterately and broadly Irish. But as he listened, and got used to the novelty, the oratt s fluent diction, and close reasoning, made a more favourable impression. Gerald could recognize little of the demagogue in Mr. O'Connell's opening speech. 'The counsellor' stood before him as a man deeply in earnest, or seeming to be so ; well informed in his subject ; inflexible in his conscientious scruples ; calm, serious, and with more of appeal and entreaty than of bluster in his manner ;—and from all he had previously heard, this sur- prised Gerald; and, indeed, it seemed equally to surprise those around him. Dan is very quiet to-day,' they said. On more than one occasion, when Mr. Shiel's friends interrupted him with cries of question !' Gerald only remarked a studied pause in the speaker, and then a ready and adroit plea for patience. The continued whispers of the gentlemen near to Gerald explained this mystery. As had been premised by the waiter at Morryson's, half the assembly was composed of predetermined voters against their old idol, and it behoved him to break ground very cautiously. These critics did not add, what Gerald ultimately discovered, that it was also Mr. O'Connell's plan to make as long a speech as he possibly could.

At length, however, he had left himself no pretext to continue longer on his legs ; and Mr. Shiel, whose deep and almost startling look scarce turned till that moment from his opponent's face, jerked round to answer him. "the ear-piercing fife' was hardly shriller than the ' Sir' with which, addressing the chair, the young politician began, as he stepped back from the table, closed one hand on his breast, and protruded the other, clenched also. Gerald was within one or two of Mr. Shiel, amid. almost started. Sentence after sentence rang out, in the same key, modi- fied now and then,.by a somewhat theatrical hut melodious under-tone. This energy, at starting, must SO011 have defeated itself, if it could not progress to a climax really vehement. But so it did.

" It was Mr. Shiel's plan to shake the authority and weight of Mr. O'Connell's opinion, in the present instance, by stamping with incon- sistency, and satirizing bitterly many previous opinions of the veteran agitator, upon the same, or upon similar questions. In the first part of his address, Mr. Shiel was loudly applauded, and Mr. O'Connell much laughed at, and evidently losing ground. But now Gerald began to dis- cover the tact and mannerism of the Catholic colossus, and, at the same time, to witness the excessive vivacity of his antagonist. It was by no means Mr. O'Connell's policy to allow his young and learned friend un- interruptedly to accumulate evidence and sentiments which, pressing upon the understanding of the meeting, might prove too much even for his own prescriptive popularity, and for his time and materials for reply. Fle did not, therefore, hesitate to interrupt iqr. Shiel, almost at every sentence. He flatly denied the connexion of the extracts that had given him such a blow, and demanded, what he knew could not be immedi- ately produced, the newspaper-file itself. He called to order every two minutes, merely to correct a fact., When Mr. Plunket's name was reverently mentioned, he hinted, under his breath, as it were, that just then, Mr. Plunket had at his disposal ' some very snug commissionerships of bankruptcy for rising young vetoist lawyers.' With well-feigned so- lemnity he squibbed off sundry personal sarcasms, and cross-fired, and hedge-fired, at the battle-array of his opponent, and at the powers of comprehension, of patience, and of abstinence of the close packed rooms, until his contemplated result was amply produced. Mr. Shiers clarion voice became a scream; his visage grew ghastly; his lips, blue ; his eyes rounded and flashed ; he jumped back, and he jumped forward; he smote the table; he raised his clenched hands to his bead,—remind- ing Gerald of Kean, in the mad tragedy of Bertram, about to strew the halls of Aldobrand with his raven hair—he foamed ; he grinned ; and (if it seemed a pathos in narration, it was also one in the reality,) he be- gan to repeat the same eloquent things over and over again, and thereby tire his own friends. For it was now past six o'clock ; dinners were overdone at home ; guests were met without hosts ; wives were ' nursing their wrath, to keep it warm. ;' and still the indignant orator would reply to every one of Mr. O'Connell's interruptions ; and then go back to the subject, arguing after convincing, and, above all, evidently bent upon a grand peroration. His warmest adherents obstreperously expostulated with him, requesting to be let home to their dinners.' Ile turned upon them, eloquently and poetically demanding, 'if the great and sublime interests of their freedom and their religion were to be sacrificed because their domestic viands lay smoking on the board ?"fhey remonstrated again ; Mr. O'Connell still poked at him ; he would not have douse ; he would not sit down ; and many thereupon deserted. for their beef and cabbage, and a hot tumbler,' (Mr. Shiel had said " viands") the famishing post of patriotism.

" Wretches hang, that jurymen may dine.'

" But for reasons, Mr. O'Connell had not so tired his liege men. From various asides' Gerald understood. that many of them were to dine with himself; the rest remained, because they felt almost personally engaged in a contest which, for the first time, threatened to end in a majority against their worshipped leader. He knew this ; and, waiting for the politician's moment, magnanimously sacrificed his right to a reply, and, raising himself the cry of ' question, question !' organized a division while Mr. Shiel yet stood screaming to the chair.

Gerald continued observant. The greater orator's voters stood their ground; their opponents went up stairs. Tellers were appointed; and counting heads after them, the two antagonists stood at the outer door, side by side. Mr. O'Connell's votes were first ascertained, They amount- ed to eighty-five. Now came the tug. It was a hard-fought, doubtful battle, and, as Gerald studied the countenances of the political comman- ders, he saw that neither had yet arrived at any anticipation of the issue.

" Come down, gentlemen cried Mr. Shiel, at the stairfoot, and his friends descended like a cataract. 'Eighty !' he shouted, turning to his

eightieth man. O'Connell ! what's that you say you are ?'

Eighty-five !' shouted his learned friend. " Eighty-one—two—three !' continued the author of Evadne Come down, if you please, gentlemen !—eighty-four !—for God's sake, come down ! what keeps you up there ?'

"

'There's no one else to send. down to you, Mr. Shiel, Huzza!' ex- claimed one of Mr. O'Connell's tellers, who had run up to see : and Huzza ! huzza !' shouted Mr. O'Connell, rushing back into the room, throwing off his broad.brimmed hat, and jumping perpendicularly up- ward, while all his seals rattled= We have it, boys! we have it !—No veto I no vetoists ! Huzza!'" a great shout followed.

"Gerald stept out to the door and looked at Mr. Shia He continued to stand at the stair-foot, his hand resting on the balustrade, his head drooped, his lips firmly shut, the paleness of exhaustion and disappoint.. inent now succeeding to that of excitement and vehemence, and his large luminous eyes half-closed in fatigue. A heavy step descended the stairs : he started and looked up. An old man, some superannuated servant of the house, came down; Mr. Shiel clutched him with both his hands. 'And whom do you vote for ?' he screamed into his ear.

" The Lord bless you! Sir,' answered the old man, much startled, I don't know how to vote at all—I'm not used to it.'

" And what brings you here then?' twisting the poor old fellow round, and violently turning him down the second flight of stairs."

We have done—we must have done, and we cannot have done in a happier moment for the estimation in which this work is to be held by our readers. And we can assure them, that besides the volume and a half, from which we have made the above scanty gleanings, there remains a volume and a half of matter wholly un- touched, which, as it is more exclusively and genuinely Irish, is

also much more uniformly interesting and instructive.