way of my cudgel, when you knew well enough, aye and wou'd witnefs it too, if the grace of God was'nt juft now out of your memory, that if every one had his own, that big knock on the head you have got is another man's property, only he chanc'd to be out of the way when I gave it to him."

"Seize the murderer," cried one of the troop, upon which John Jenkins and the reft laid hold of him." What is it you are upon, ye pagans," exclaimed Larry, "to be feizing. me? Let the dead man speak for himself, and mark if he don't tell you another story about the matter, whereby it was no murder, only a fmall mistake, and if that's a hanging matter,› woe betide my countrymen! Afk him now, ye fparrow-hawks, if it was'nt at his own defire. that I kill'd him, and how fhou'd I know one man from another in the dark, when I cou'd fee neither ?"

Somebody now cried out to hold him faft, for it was confeffedly a plot between master and man to have affaffinated Henry.-" To be fure it was," faid O'Rourke; "Do you think I'm fuch a graceless teif as to kill my own mafter? Huh! you are a cunning one, are you not, to find out that?"

Three or four of them now began to hale the Irishman away with them, whilft others fetched a blanket from the alehouse, on which they laid the body of Blachford, and in this manner carried him to his own house.

END OF BOOK THE FOURTH.

BOOK

BOOK THE FIFTH.

CHAPTER I.

Afhort Treatife upon Love, antient and modern.

LOVE, as a deity, was invefted, by thofe

who made him fuch, with the most contradictory attributes: they feigned him blind, yet called him an unerring marksman; gave him wings, yet allowed that conftancy was his beft qualification; defcribed him as an infant, yet were not to learn that infancy alone is exempted from his power.

These are contrarieties, which none but the initiated can reconcile. They juftify his blindnefs, when hurried on by the impetuofity of paffion they efpy no danger in the precipice before them; they acknowledge he is fwift of wing, when the minutes they devote to his enjoyments fly fo quickly, and they cannot but regard him as an infant, when one short honeymoon begins and terminates his date of life.

A thousand ingenious devices have been formed to fuit the various properties of this faF 4 bulous

bulous divinity, and every fymbol has it's moral; he has been allegorized and enigmatized in innumerable ways; the pen, the pencil and the chiffel have been worn out in his fervice; floods of ink, looms of canvass, and quarries of marble, have been exhaufted in the boundless field of figurative description. The lover, who finds out fo many ways of torturing himself, cannot fail to ftrike out fymbols and devices to exprefs the paffion under which he fuffers; then the verfe flows mournfully elegiac, and the bleeding heart, transfixed with an arrow, is emblematically displayed; thus, whilft the poet varies his measure, the painter and the sculptor vary their devices, as joy or forrow, fuccefs or disappointment, influence their fancy. One man's Cupid is set astride upon a lion, to exemplify his power; another places his upon a crocodile, to fatyrize his hypocrify; here the god is made to trample upon kingly crowns, there to trifle with a wanton fparrow; the adamantine rock now crumbles at his ftroke, anon we fee him basking on the bofom of Chloe, his arrows broken and his pinions bound.

The Greeks, who had more caprice in their paffions than either nature or morality can excuse, nevertheless bequeathed their Cupid to pofterity

7

pofterity with a confiderable stock in hand; but the moderns added more from funds of their own, and every thing they beftowed was honestly appropriated to the only fex that has any claim upon the regular and folid firme of Venus, Cupid, and Co."

When superstition met its final overthrow, and the heathen temples were difmantled of their images and altars, Love alone, the youngest of the deities, furvived the difafter, and ftill holds his dignities and prerogatives by christian courtesy; and though modern ingenuity has not added much to his embellifhments, yet, in the ardour and fincerity of our devotion, we do not yield to the antients: the whole region of romance has been made over to him; our drama, tragic as well as comic, has gone far beyond that of the antients in building its fable and character upon the paffion of love. Laft in point of time, but not of allegiance, comes the fraternity of novelifts, who are his clients to a man; Love is the cffence of every tale, and fo, ftudious are our authors not to let the spirit of that essence become vapid, that few, if any, fail to conclude with the event of marriage: connubial love is of a quality too tame for their purpose.