showman, or player. "The country people," he resumed," are demnetioned brutes in this here place. I stepped into a cabine, I think you call it, and asked for a glass of water; the stupid brute brought me a noggin full of buttermilk." "I dare say, fellow-traveller,” said I, laughing," the noggin suited your mouth fully as well as the glass, and is what you have been most accustomed to: I think you owe thanks, however, to the man who gave you milk when you only asked for water." "In England," said he, "a man always gets what he calls for; nobody pretends to think for you there: but these poor creatures are always cramming you with kindness: and then they have such a lingo, that a parson can't understand the half of what they say." "Their accent," I replied, losing patience, "is a natural one, and will, therefore, never be disagreeable to any man of sense or reason: but yours is an affected one, equally ridiculous and unavailing. You are no Englishman, nor can you ever persuade any person that you are. If you wish to counterfeit one, imitate his virtues, and not his defects: imitate his sobriety, attention to business, and love of truth; but do not meddle with his superciliousness and arrogance; they are bad enough in the original, but they are still worse at second-hand. The Irishman who, because he has lived a few months among Englishmen, affects to adopt their narrow and illiberal prejudices, who despises as uncivilized his untravelled countrymen, is a less respectable character than those thinks least respectable. You have often, I dare say, thought it hard, in England, that your accent and country should be treated with derision; yet you, the instant you arrive in it, are foolish enough to imagine that lowering your country's consequence adds to your own." I quickened my pace, and he showed no inclination to follow me. I learned afterwards that he had lived about eighteen months in England, and was a journeyman printer. I have mentioned above that the lady to whom I was going was the mother of an old and intimate friend; he was indeed a friend, such as is seldom to be found. His kindness had gladdened life in its gay, had cheered it in its melancholy, and sustained it in its sinking moments-he was now no more. In the flower of youth, in the enjoyment of comfort, he had been summoned from this life, from the banquet he scarcely had tasted, from the cup that was just raised to his lips, from his mother's house, where last I had seen him, the abode of plenty and happiness, to the cold mansions of the grave! She received me with pleasure; she strove to tell me so, but her heart was full. Welcome was in her eye, but she could not speak it with her tongue; she made the attempt, however, but her words were drowned in her sobs and her tears. She looked on me, but she thought of her son, of the days we had passed together, our convivial nights. The years that elapsed were forgot, and her son seemed to stand before her in the person of his friend. I strove to console her, but I wanted consolation myself: twelve years had rolled their heavy course since I had seen her last on this spot; what changes had since taken place in her life and my own! The dreams of youth were vanished, the brain-spun web of romantic happiness was broken, and the flowers with which fancy graced its border torn away. This, per haps, is but ideal misery; hers, alas! was real: she was old, she was solitary, she was a widow, she was childless: one of her sons had died abroad in a distant land, among strangers, in the island of Malta; the other, he whom I knew at home, on the eve of marriage, in her arms. She closed the eyes of him who she hoped would have closed hers, and she had not one relation remaining in the wide world: like the North American chief, she might sorrowfully exclaim, " There is not a drop of my blood runs in the veins of any human being." After some time she grew more composed, and we passed the evening in melancholy, but not unpleasing, conversation. We talked of times that were long past, and of persons I had once well-known; there was not one family among whom great changes had not taken place; and so much I fear does misery predominate over happiness, that not even in one of them was the change for the better: many whom I had left children were grown up to be men and women, and had turned out ill; many whom I left old and infirm were alive still, a burden to others as well as to themselves; while the healthy and vigorous, in the bloom of youth and fulness of manhood, had been snatched away, and now mouldered in the tomb. There had been considerable emigration to America; a desire of change had taken some, poverty and drunkenness, more. This latter vice had made great progress among the youth, and several promising young men were destroyed by it. I begged Mrs. to contrast her situation with that of their wretched parents who mourned worse than the death of their sons the death of their good name, of their talents, of their virtues, of their respectability; whose vile bodies walked abroad, while the souls which should have ennobled them were shrivelled, and sunk, and degraded into idiotism by the abuse of ardent spirits, which, were I a believer in the doctrine of the Manichæans, I should suppose some malevolent deity had showered on the earth for the destruction of man. She told me several stories of individuals, it would be improper to mention here, nor is it necessary. Misery -was the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and ending of them all; misery is an often-told tale, and well may it be so, for it is the history of man. "'Gainst the foul fiend what can relief afford? CHAPTER XVI. Lord B His libertinism-Mr. D- - Dr. Political en thusiasm-Reflections on the conduct of England with regard to the French Revolution. C C as the name implies, is situated on a hill, along the ridge of which it runs for nearly half a mile. The street is wide and spacious, and the houses good. It is in the county of Cavan, but near the extremity where it touches the county of Monaghan. C is on the estate, and takes its name from the noble family of C, which is now extinct by the death of the late Earl of B -The estate was bequeathed by his lordship's will to his natural son, S. C, Esq. and handsome legacies were left to his other natural children, of whom he had as long a list as King Priam. He was a descendant of Sir C. C, a puritan officer, who came over to this country in the year 1630. Lord B inherited none of the austerity or moroseness of his reverend ancestor: he was a man of the highest refinement and most perfect elegance of manners; at one period he was the very mirror of fashion," Th' observed of all observers!" though the latter part of his life was passed in great seclusion, and his name was almost forgot in those circles where once he had shone the gayest of the gay. He was educated at Geneva, where he imbibed liberal ideas of government little in unison with his courtier-like appearance, and the excessive and almost dazzling polish of his manners; he spent several years abroad, and returned to Ireland a finished petit maitre. Accustomed to the elegancies of the continent, he could ill brook the roughness of Irish manners; their rude, though hearty welcomes, and above all their everlasting drunkenness. He used to express the utmost horror and dread of the Irish Hottentots, as he termed the jovial generation of gentlemen who then lived in Ireland. In speaking of the county of Cavan, of which he was a native, he thus characterised it:-"It is all acclivity and declivity, without the intervention of one horizontal plain; the hills are all rocks, and the people are all savages." Something of this excessive refinement, which shrunk like the sensitive plant from the touch of vulgarity, perhaps was real—it is probable more was affected: he delighted in resembling a Frenchman, nor could he be paid a higher compliment than to take him for one. In the |