not speak-she could not sigh-hardly she seemed to breathe; she came close up to us-she fell on her knees, before us. With her hands clasped, she looked up in our faces, doubtless to inquire the fate of her son. Oh! what a face was there! what a countenance for the player to contemplate, could any have been found cool enough to contemplate it! Even its transient glance (I could take no other) was a volume of sorrow: never, never, may I view such another. I would have given the world, had I possessed it, could I have raised the wretched mourner; could I have spoken hope, where there was no hope. She saw it in my look, though she heard it not from my tongue. She threw herself on the earth, she bit the ground-she raised herself up again; she beat her breast, she tore her hair; she called to her husband by his name: "Happy, happy, happy! you are in your grave, and did not live to see this!" She looked up to Heaven, as if appealing to its justice: God, God, you would not-no, no, no, surely you would not be so cruel-you would not take the Widow's Son!

CHAPTER XIX.

A Presbyterian barber-A Catholic cotter-Rapparrees-Fatal accident-Omagh-Old abbey-Party feuds-Lord M-Scotch officer-Predestinarian patient-Scotch cleanlinessDrumra church-Fairies.

Omagh.

I AWOKE the next morning, after twelve hours of undisturbed repose. I had wandered so long over heath and mountain, that my beard was longer than was at all seemly. I sent for a barber to extricate me from

it: an elderly man, lame of a leg, and with a defect in one of his eyes, made his appearance a few moments afterwards. "A clergyman, I pursume, surr," said he," by the colour of your cloth." "Yes," I said; "I was of that trade for want of a better." "And a bra trade it is, surr," said he, "a bonie trade; a man's respected in this world, and he has as fair a chonce to be weel off in the next as any of his neighbours: there's our ain clergyman," continued he, " as guid a sowl as ever broke bread, preaches twa hours together without ever drawing bridle, and has aa the Ould and New Testament at his fingers' ends, from Genesis to the Revelations; lectures on the seven churches, and on the seven candlesticks, as pat as if it was the Gospel o' St. Luke. Has but one fault in the world-he's our fond of the wee drap." "That's a great fault in a clergyman," I said. "Guid man, guid man," replied he," it was nathing to the congregation; if it was na for the slights of others they would na mind it, gin he was to be drunk till he was near bursting; but then it was what other Sacts said. Ogh aye, man, the Papists and the high kirk hold out their fingers at us, and gibe us sore, sore, on his account." I ordered a glass of whiskey to comfort this tender-hearted Presbyterian, and sent him away perfectly happy. "Gin I ever preached within ten miles o' that, he would come," he assured me, "a' the way on foot to hear me." The mention he made of the Revelations recalled to my mind a story I had heard of an unfortunate enthusiast of the name of Russell, who was executed at Downpatrick, in the year 1803, for being concerned in the insurrection of that period. Before the judge passed sentence on him, he requested leave

to say a few words. He did not expect life, he said, he did not desire it; but he had been long engaged in writing a commentary on the Revelations, and had now brought it near a conclusion; if his lordship would allow him a few weeks to finish it, he would be obliged to him. Had his lordship allowed him to live till he had succeeded in making this portion of Scripture intelligible, he probably would have lived as long as any person in court.

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A terrible misfortune had like to have befallen me in this place, which if, after travelling so long together, the reader did not regret, I should have a very ill opinion either of him or of myself. I had walked about half a mile, when I heard a voice, calling from the hill I had just descended, "Captain, captain!" an instant afterwards, " your reverence, stop, stop!" I could not conceive to what reverend captain all this bawling was addressed; when the girl of the house I just had quitted came up, all out of breath, and I found it was to myself: she had formed a compound idea of me, from the united ideas of her master and the barber. "Sir, sir," said she, "you forgot your pocket-book; but whether it houlds gold or bank-notes, aa's safe-it's na the lighter for me." "That I am sure it is not, my good girl," said I. The book did not contain the kind of treasure she imagined; the keeping it would have nought enriched her, but made me poor indeed. It contained neither Bank of England nor Bank of Ireland notes, but notes and observations, infant thoughts and half-formed ideas, for the book I am writing. I am right glad no wag found

MY POCKET BOOK.

My intention, on leaving Balligawly, was to walk

to this town; after I had walked a mile, however, my old enemy, the rain, came down in such torrents, as to put that promenade out of the question: where it came from, I am at a loss to conjecture, as the sky was as bright as a looking-glass about five minutes before. My road lay through a turf bog, probably at the best of times not very dry; a few moments' continuance of the shower made it almost impassable. A turf bog never stands in need of rain; it is like sending coals to Newcastle. I stepped into a cabin which, by good luck, was on the road-side. It was really good luck, for there was a large dunghill in front which nearly hid it from view. By making a detour, however, and stooping very low at the threshold, I got into the house. "I am come," I said, " to seek some shelter till the rain is over." "And why not? and tin thousand welcomes into the bargain," said the man of the house, starting up: "Shusy, draw his honour a creepy." (A small stool.) I knew now I was the guest of a Catholic. The dunghill was suspicious; "your honour” was decisive. A Protestant never gives this appellation lightly; a Presbyterian never gives it at all.

The cabin consisted of a kitchen, and room off it. It was not cleanly, certainly, nor was it squalidly dirty: there was a good turf fire blazing on the hearth, and several noggins, porringers, and a few plates were on the dresser. Stools were in abundance, likewise, and there was one chair. The latter was crazy, however, and seemed an article of state rather than utility. Yet this was the habitation of a peasant of the lowest order. The man's name was M'Laughlin. Mac, I believe, in ancient times, prefixed to a name, signified great man or lord, as O did prince or a lord of the

highest class. Some of his ancestors, probably, held the land on which he now lived a poor cotter. The change of property in Ireland is almost inconceivable. The descendants of the ancient inhabitants are now only the dregs of the people. The wheel of human affairs, however, is perpetually turning, and no person can tell where its revolution may bring them again. He was smoking when I entered; after wiping the pipe, he civilly offered it to me, and on my declining it, handed it to his wife. I asked for a drink of water. "Shusy," said he, “hand the gentleman a noggin of milk.” “I wish," said the poor woman, as she brought it to me, "it was butter, for your sake." This is a strange, but it is a pastoral idea. Job, though he did not drink butter, made almost as singular a use of it. "O that I were," exclaimed he, " as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me. When I washed my steps with butter, and the rocks poured me out rivers of oil." "These mountains of yours," said I, are very dreary and solitary; many a robbery has been committed in them, I dare say." Many a one, I trow," said he; "but not just of young days" (he meant lately)." I have heard my father tell many a long story of what happened when he was a boy." I endeavoured to get him to recollect some of them; but he said he "could na, they had aa escaped his recollection." There was a torpor and listlessness about this poor creature, not unusual among Irish peasants. Travellers have often met with it, and, with the pert flippancy of presumptuous ignorance, have railed at it as inherent and constitutional laziness. It is not laziness, however, in the common acceptation of the word; it is melancholy, it is hopelessness, it is despondency.

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