goblet of his Burgundy I bid farewell to England, and wander over the waters a broken-hearted man!

W. M.

The above was found by me among the papers of my grand-uncle, who died last year at the age of eighty-five. He was a man of remarkably quiet and placid manners, and nobody would have suspected him of nourishing such feverish thoughts as those which he has here left behind him in this paper. His sister, my grandmother, has been dead for some years, and she only was acquainted with his history. I am not sure that even she knew every thing about him, for she was younger by twenty years, and so must have been a mere girl at the time when the events referred to had occurred. We, the junior branches of the family, never thought that Mr. Churchill had been married. On reading this paper, I went to the part of the country where his estates lay. I never, in fact, knew their situation or extent until after his death; and then I learned that nearly fifty years ago, Sir Richard Mostyn had been found dead in his dining-room, in the morning after he had given, what was in those days fashionable, a splendid supper to the principal gentry of the neighbourhood. He was wounded in several places. Suspicion attached to his servants, and two of them were tried, but acquitted. When he was killed, Mr. Churchill was believed to be in London, and his name was never implicated with the deed. I could not learn any thing of Mrs. Churchill, except what I found in the parish books, which told me that Thomas Churchill, Esq., married Isabella Robinson, on the 2nd of May, 1782. In 1783, Sir Richard Mostyn was killed; and among the burials of the same year is that of Isabella Churchill. I found her tomb in the church-yard, but it only contained her name, and an old verger told me that, for almost fifty years, a guinea was sent regularly by some unknown hand, to keep it clean. The guinea, added the old man, has not come this year. The story is thus buried in obscurity for On recollecting my grand-uncle's conversation, I do not remember any thing which would lead to the suspicion that he was haunted by any feeling or sentiment of remorse. I only remember that two or three years ago, some one was regretting that gentlemen did not now wear swords as formerly; and old Mr. Churchill, with a peculiar emphasis, said—" It is better as it is; they were the too-ready instrumeuts of hasty wrath."

ever.

DARBY O'FLAHERTY'S DREAM.

Εὕδουσα γὰρ φρὴν ὄμμασιν λαμπρύνεται.

ÆSCHYLUS.

THE road between the town of Nenagh and the city of Limerick presents, in different portions, the marked contrast that exists between the great body of the population and the owners of the soil. There is in one part of it the wild and uncultivated bog, the crumbling hovel, the half-naked peasant family; and in another, the trim plantation, the wide demesne, the lofty mansion, and the splendid equipage of the landlord. Of the residences of the gentry there are but few to equal that which is well known to every traveller on the Limerick road, as "Birdhill." There, a neat, substantial, and comfortable house peeps from the summit of a steep mount over one of the most beauteous vales in the country, taking, within the scope of its owner's view, a land rich to the extreme of fruitfulness in corn, abounding with flourishing clumps of forest trees, adorned with a distant view of the translucent waters of the Shannon, and beyond it the romantic and delightful village of Castleconnel. It is a place

where the lover of nature and the friend of his fellowman might pass his days, from youth to age, in happiness and tranquillity.

One of the owners of Bird-hill, a few years since, was, we regret to state, very unpopular amongst the

peasantry by whom he was surrounded. Unfortunately for that gentleman, his wife and daughters had become saints, and they, in the language of the country people, "led him a hell upon earth;" for, from the moment they sanctimoniously resolved that a school should be opened for "the conversion of the Papists," the landlord of Bird-hill was embroiled in disputes with his tenantry. In the process of proselytism, the landlord's family had pulled the roofs off the houses of some obstinate Catholics, and for this slight violation of the law, the Bird-hill Biblical was condemned by a Clonmel jury to pay fifty pounds damages to his ejected tenants, and sixpence costs to their attorney, Martin Lanugan.

The mulcting a proselytising landlord in damages and costs was an event of far too much "national" importance not to be celebrated by "the poor benighted peasantry." The time selected for the rejoicing was a Sunday evening, and the place of festivity the road at the base of Bird-hill. Here were collected about thirty couple of strapping Tipperary boys, that "could handle a slane with any man," and stout girls, "who would stack a kish of turf in no time." They were footing it away merrily to the music of a couple of fiddles, while at a little distance from them sat the married men "of fourteen or fifteen years standing," and the old men, who were past their labour." The latter group were drinking potheen, and discussing the politics of former ages, and the present. Amongst them a dispute was beginning to arise as to St. Ruth's qualifications as a general, when Dan Hackett, a gossoon, came running up to them to say, that he had never seen such dancing in his life, as there was going on amongst "the young people" below. "Dancing!-nonsense! Dancing, indeed! You'll

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never see such dancing as I seen once in my life," observed a long gad of a fellow who was stretched on his back upon the green sward, his two arms folded so as to form a sort of a pillow under his head, and his old caubeen of a hat drawn down upon his face to shade his sleepy eyes from the rays of the sun, that were shedding a golden light upon the coarse frieze in which his lazy limbs were encased.

"Why, then, tear-and-nation to your impudence, Darby O'Flaherty, where would you see dancing to compare to what is going on there below?" asked Dan Hackett.

"Where would I see it?" replied Darby, gradually lifting himself from a lying into a half-sitting posture ; and as he leaned with one elbow upon the grass, he stared with his dull black eyes at Dan-" where would I see dancing? Wasn't I in Dublin, you bosthoon you? What is dancing there below but a parcel of comely Christians?-But I saw the dancing in Dublin, where there wasn't a Christian foot to lift a leg on the floor! Of all the dancing and capering that ever was, it was I

that seen it!"

"Oh! Darby, jewel!" said Dan, "tell us what you saw in Dublin."

sun.

"Give us a glass and I will," answered Darby. The glass of potheen was handed to him immediately. Darby took it, and placed the clear liquid between him and the The concentrated rays of light, pouring through the water-like medium, formed a starry spot upon his dark brown cheek, which Dan said "resembled a leaf of copper-beech upon which a white blossom of the horsechestnut tree had fallen!" Darby looked at the potheen, and exclaimed, “Oh, you darling, and it's you that's

often brought me into throuble! There you are, looking as modest as a virgin, as quiet as well water, and as clear as crystal! There you are smelling like the newmown hay before the green sap is dried out of it! There you are, sweeter than sugar, and wholesomer than milk! There you-" His enormous mouth opened, the liquid disappeared, and he continued, while he handed back the glass, "there you were-many's the trouble I was in on your account, but none greater than that which I am now going to tell of."

'Do, Darby,” cried out all the old and middle-aged men with one voice, " do tell us what happened you in Dublin."

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"Well, said Darby, fixing himself bolt upright in the middle of the listening group, “" I will tell you. Of all the places in the world, surely Dublin is the quarest, as you will all say when you hear the story, that really now happened to myself there. One evening, you see, and sure it was a remarkable evening, entirely; for that very day there was a great aggregate meeting of myself, and all the other Catholics in Ireland, in Clarentine-street chapel; and that very day, by the same token, Mr. Jack Lawless made the meeting come to a resolution that the man that wore Irish manufacture made in Leeds, or Manchester, or any of them outlandish places, was no Irishman, nor the mother before him either. And the very same day, too, Counsillor Sheil, long life to him, but it's he that has the words at will, proved, as plain as the nose on your face, that the English government act like Turks, and that the Greeks are Irishmen, every soul of them; though, as far as I know, he must be a little out there, for I never heard of them same Grecians drinking whiskey and wearing the shamrock on a Patrick's day;