Whereupon Deirdre fell down and expired beside the grave. And they laid her in the grave with the sons of Usnach, and piled their cairn, and their names were written on the stone above them. Then fell the curse upon clan Conor;

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"Had I been Fergus," said Henry O'Neill, when Turlogh concluded, "I would never have deserted my charge for Barach's banquet." Ah," said Turlogh, "thou takest no thought of the strange usages of different times and nations. I might readily have made Barach detain Fergus, by claiming his aid in some expedition against an enemy, undertaken for that purpose, and impossible to be avoided by a friend and brother in arms; or I might have detained Fergus on an assembly at Dun Barach, of his order, whereof he was a high dignitary, and being so, could not refuse attendance; or I might have invented any more likely excuse that I had thought fit: but what I have told you is according to the ancient account, which hath never been varied during many hundred

for Fergus, the son of Roy, slew Conor, and burned Emania and the Red Branch to the ground, and no man hath inhabited them from that day to this. So ends the history of the three sons of Usnach.

years of constant tradition, and which hath delighted more princes, and nobles, and honourable audiences than any other story of Milesian times; and this obligation of hospitality, although it be not now practised, yet hath its old existence never been doubted by any bard or story-teller of ancient or modern day. Truly it was a strange and ungracious observance to detain a man against his will, and already angry with his host, at a banquet which neither could enjoy while that anger of the guest continued; and, doubtless, Fergus was in high wrath all the time of his reluctant stay at Dun Barach: yet such is the tale our ancestors have told us, and it becomes not us to alter or corrupt it." "Neither can I understand," said Henry, “how it was that the nobles of Ulster,

"

who had such love to the sons of Usnach, could permit Conor, on a pretence so trifling as the maiming of his servant, to violate both his own pledge and that of Fergus, by slaying their friends and fellow-nobles before their faces, without either remonstrance or resistance." Such is the history as we have heard it," said Turlogh, "the power of the king was supreme; the nobles were at a distance from their own provinces and troops; and all the violence committed was done by the army of the enraged monarch." Again," said Henry; but he was interrupted by Art-" What matter, brother, how the thing was brought about, so that the generosity, and valour, and fortitude, and true love which make the true delight of the tale be not hindered in their operation and display? With the clang of the magic shield ringing in my ears, and the picture of the brother's heroic composure and the damsel's serene constancy before my eyes, I can think of nothing but noble deeds and generous affections: my eyes are dazzled with the glorious flashing of swords and battle-axes; my ears drink in the exulting din of battered armour, while my heart melts within me for pity and compassion, and sweet thoughts of those who love me, and who would do and suffer as much for my sake in a like extremity." "Far different thoughts have been mine," said O'Donnell, with drawing his eyes from an intense contemplation of some scene in the vacancy before him, "not that my breast hath not been stirred with many and strong emotions of indignation, sympathy, or tender remembrance; but truth to tell, I have thought far less of private wrong, or personal affections, than of my country's miserable condition which hath ever been caused and continued by even such feuds and tyrannies among ourselves, as those related to us by Turlogh. And I think, with my cousin Art in this, that it matters little for the nature of those small hinges whereon the mechanical operation of the story turns, so that we be not prevented from seeing clearly the chief truth that the tale at large teacheth. Here, behold what strife and weakness arose for Ulster, from making private wrongs and jealousies the causes of public commotion: behold the nobles

VOL. IV.

disgusted with the king, the king sacri ficing the best and bravest of his own subjects; and, in the end, inviting, by the weakness he had himself occasioned, the invasion of another po tentate, and the final subjection of his own people to the rule of strangers. Alas, it hath been ever thus; and Conors, and Dermots, and Teige Caoluisces have never been wanting to perpetuate the curse of division and weakness. In God's name, my cousins, let not the old quarrels of our houses, hinder our hearty union now! If injury be done by either to the other, let the brehon settle who is the offender, and who the sufferer, while we employ our common arms in upholding the means and power of reparation in both. What though Hugh Calvagh, my own near kinsman, was robbed of wife and lands, by your father, Shane? think you I have better chance of recovering my right from Elizabeth, than from you? No; let us first join in keeping the country, and let us settle its division after. Before God, and Columb Kill, it is my firm belief that we are strong enough, if united, to hold the three provinces against the world! Where could the Claneboys, and men of O'Nelan, and the Fews, most readily muster on the other side of Blackwater ?" "We would join you," replied Art, with Claneboy, anywhere, either in Turlogh Lynach's country, or O'Cahan's; the fort newly built on the Blackwater, would check our march south of Loch Neagh." "At Tulloghoge, then, be it ;" said Hugh, "we will draw down our forces by the earl's country, and assault the fort together; then raise the Mac Kennas and Mac Mahons, drive the Bagnalls into Newry, and narrow the northern pale to Eash Oriall; by my father's bones, a fair exploit! The earl would, beyond doubt, join us, for he hateth Bagnall, as well on his sister's account, whom the marshall hath married against his will, as from his close and dangerous neighbourhood to Dungannon. Ha! we will have another blow for land and liberty, before we see the strangers stable their steeds in our castle halls, and send their ploughs through our raths and hunting grounds! Bagnall and Clifford, Bingham and Fitzwilliam, ye shall yet rue the day you first

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saw Irish land 1. - Ho! Art and Henry, let us go and fix the levies." He rose, unconscious of his captivity, as if to take his seat at a council table; but the fetter again checked him, and he again sat down with a bitter sigh. I had forgotten," he cried, "while meditating English overthrow, that I am still a captive in the chains of England. Yet, why repine? Let me rather thank Heaven that hath sent thee, Turlogh, to lighten my captivity and give me these dreams

On the 30th of last October, the town of Hillsborough presented an extraordinary, and, to the moralist and the politician, a singularly interesting spectacle. From a remote, and as respects space, an inconsiderable section of an island with regard to which it has become the fashion to argue, as if it were exclusively Popish-there were collected together fifty thousand Protestants capable of bearing arms-* men assembled together for the express purpose of manifesting their attachment to the Protestant institutions of the country, and the Protestant religion of their hearts. And this attachment they have declared with a voice too distinct to be misunderstood, and too loud to be disregarded. This vast assemblage convened, in a legal and constitutional manner, to exercise the most ancient and undoubted right of British sub jects-conducted themselves with the utmost regularity and decorum. The loyal and independent yeomen of Ulster were, upon this occasion, fairly represented. Uniting with a deep respect for the law, a firm determination to maintain those rights which compacts, as least as ancient and as sacred as the law had guaranteed to them--the men assembled at Hillsborough manifested that steady and yet temperate spirit of resolutionwhich distinguishes the deportment of freemen, alike from the licentious unruliness of the democrat and the slavish obsequiousness of the serf. No violence disgraced the sacred cause in which they were assembled-no intemperance, either of language or of conduct, cast suspicion upon their firmness or their motives. All was peaceable, orderly, and determined-the aristocracy and the gentry taking the lead in the proceedings, and the people

uniting with their natural protectors and advisers. These were the characteristics of the great Downshire meeting-characteristics which but seldom distinguish popular assemblages in Ireland. Indeed we question if a multitude of the same numbers-and the same character-evincing the same manly spirit, and exhibiting the same peaceable demeanour, could have been convened in any district of any country under heaven except in the Protestant and the Bible-reading province of Ulster-whether such an assemblage could have been composed of any other class of yeomanry in the world than the much-calumniated and muchinjured orangemen of the North.

It is useless for any party to deny that this meeting has been an important one-the bare fact of 75,000 persons being assembled together, is entitled to some consideration; but when we throw into the scale the moral as well as the physical strength of those who composed this assemblage, when we remember that among these 75,000 persons we reckon some of the first aristocracy of the landand almost all the landed proprietors of the county in which the meeting was convened-while the remainder was made up of shrewd, intelligent, and thinking men, who have education and knowledge sufficient to enable them to distinguish principles and judge of measures-and whose proverbial character it is that they think for themselves-great as is the importance of the meeting, from its numerical strength-that importance is incalculably increased by the character of the elements of which it was composed; and no man, be his political opinions or his political prejudices what they may, can pretend to assert that the sentiments of this great and

influential assemblage, are not entitled at least to consideration and respect.

The first thing that must strike every candid and reflecting mind, is the conviction that this immense multitude was not collected without a cause; it was something beyond the mere desire of assembling together, that brought 75,000 persons from their occupations and their homes; it was no light or imaginary grievance that could have moved this immense mass of human beings; composed not of that class in society who, having no object in tranquillity, desire restlessness for its own sake, but of a class who are perhaps, of all others, the least naturally disposed to political excitement an independent and industrious yeomanry. Individuals, in the upper ranks may have something to gain, those in the lower ranks have nothing to lose by agitation; but the middling class of farmers-the men who, after all, are the true support of a country's power, and the sinews of her might-are very differently circumstanced. There is no motive of ambition to lure them from the peaceful occupations of their industry there is much to restrain them from joining in political movements; from their habits, staid and quiet men, they are not disposed to the tumults of popular assemblages. Nothing but the sense of danger, the tremendous consciousness that their religion and their liberties were assailed, could have prompted the entire yeomanry of a county to rise up as one man, to forego for a time the peaceful habitude of their lives, and display themselves in the imposing attitude offreemen determined to risk all for freedom-of Protestants, resolved to uphold, at any cost, their religion. The liberals tell us that the Irish Protestants have no

grievance to complain of-that there is no pressure upon them; we ask, then, what was it that created the Downshire meeting? It was not the requisition-but, again, the requisition is evidence that all is not right. Is it to be supposed that the aristocracy and the gentry of the county, of all modifications of political creed, from the high Tory Lord Roden, to the liberal Marquises of Downshire and Donegal, would have unanimously agreed to take upon themselves the responsibility of assembling its inhabi

tants, unless they felt that such a measure was not only justified, but rendered necessary by the crisis? But we repeat it was not the requisition that produced the meeting-no! it was the pressure that is acting on the humbler ranks of Protestants in Ireland; it was the feeling abroad among the people that the Protestant religion is to be destroyed-and they do not know the yeomanry of the North, who are not assured that Lords Londonderry and Downshire, and all the influence of the gentry and the aristocracy combined, never could have brought together the one-tenth of those who were assembled at Hillsborough, if the conviction had not previously been brought home to every man's fire-side, that the time was come when the Protestants of Ireland must seek protection in themselves.

The truth is, that it was the feeling of the people that forced on the requisitionists. Long before the arrangements for the meeting were formed, or a single signature attached to the requisition-the middling classes, with that shrewdness which distinguishes the farmers of the North, were unanimously convinced of the necessity of a county meeting, and looked anxiously to their natural leaders to begin. Every man felt, within his own breast, sentiments that he desired to record-he heard in the conversation of those around him the expression of the same feelings that were his own. The gentry but gave the inhabitants of the country, an opportunity of expressing the opinions and the sentiments that they entertained; and we do not hesitate to say, that however well inclined they might be to convene the meeting-the truth is, that they had no other course left if they desired to maintain their influence with their respective tenantries. Such was the feeling of the people, that the gentry must either have complied with the wishes, indeed we may say the demands, of those around them, or forfeited, and that for ever, that esteem and confidence which they now so fully possess. Had the landholders of Down acted a different part from what they did, the affections of the people would have been alienated-that reciprocity of confidence which now subsists between the landlord and tenant