Nae falsehood to dread, and nae malice to fear, There's nane half so sure as ane's ain fireside. When I draw in my stool on my cosy hearthstane, And mark saft affection glent fond frae ilk ee; LADY MORGAN. MORGAN (Sydney Owenson, or Mac Owen, as the name was ly written), during the course of forty or fifty years, wrote in departments of literature-in poetry, the drama, novels, hy, ethics, politics, and books of travels. Whether she has any one book that will become a standard portion of our re, is doubtful, but we are indebted to her pen for a number er lively national sketches and anecdotes. She had a mascuregard of common opinion or censure, and a temperament, herself stated, as cheery and genial as ever went to that medley of pathos and humour-the Irish character.' Mr. on, the father of our authoress, was a respectable actor, urite in the society of Dublin, and author of some popush songs. His daughter (who was born in 1783) inherited dilection for national music and song. Very early in life she ed a small volume of poetical effusions, and afterwards The the Irish Harp,' and a selection of twelve Irish melodies, usic. One of these is the song of Kate Kearney, and we on whether this lyric will not outlive all Lady Morgan's other ations. While still in her teens, Miss Owenson became a st. She published two tales long since forgotten, and in 1801 d, 'The Wild Irish Girl,' which was exceedingly popular. uccess introduced the authoress into some of the higher circles h and English society, in which she greatly delighted. In she married Sir Charles Morgan, a physician, and travelled im to France and Italy. She continued her literary labours, blished The Missionary, an Indian Tale' (1811); 'O'Donnel, onal Tale' (1814); 'Florence Macarthy, an Irish Tale' (1818); The O'Briens and the O'Flahertys' (1827) In these works our ress departed from the beaten track of sentimental novels, and red, like Miss Edgeworth, to portray national manners. the high authority of Sir Walter Scott for the opinion, that onnel,' though deficient as a story, has some striking and beautiassages of situation and description, and in the comic part is We very rich and entertaining.' Lady Morgan's sketches of Irish manners are not always pleasing. Her high-toned society is disfigured with grossness and profligacy, and her subordinate characters are often caricatured. The vivacity and variety of these delineations constitute one of their attractions: if not always true, they are lively; for it was justly said, that whether it is a review of volunteers in the Phoenix Park, or a party at the Castle, or a masquerade, a meeting of United Irishmen, a riot in Dublin, or a jug-day at Bog-moy— in every change of scene and situation our authoress wields the pen of a ready writer.' One complaint against these Irish sketches was their personality, the authoress indicating that some of her portraits at the viceregal court, and those moving in the best society' of Dublin, were intended for well-known characters. Their conversation is often a sad jargon of prurient allusion, comments on dress, and quotations in French and Italian, with which almost every page is patched and disfigured. The unfashionable characters and descriptions-even the rapparees, and the lowest of the old Irish natives, are infinitely more entertaining than these offshoots of the aristocracy, as painted by Lady Morgan. Her strength lay in describing the broad characteristics of her nation, their boundless mirth, their old customs, their love of frolic, and their wild grief at scenes of death and calamity. The other works of our authoress are 'France' and 'Italy,' containing dissertations on the state of society, manners, literature, government, &c. of those nations. Lord Byron has borne testimony to the fidelity and excellence of Italy; and if the authoress had been 'less ambitious of being always fine and striking,' and less solicitous to display her reading and high company, she might have been one of the most agreeable of tourists and observers. Besides these works, Lady Morgan has given to the world 'The Princess' (a tale founded on the revolution in Belgium); Dramatic Scenes from Real Life' (very poor in matter, and affected in style); The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa;' The Book of the Boudoir' (autobiographical sketches and reminiscences); 'Woman and her Master' (a philosophical history of woman down to the fall of the Roman empire); and various other shorter publications. In 1841, Lady Morgan published, in conjunction with her husband, Sir T. C. Morgan (author of Sketches of the Philosophy of Life and Morals,' &c.), two volumes, collected from the portfolios of the writers, and stray sketches which had previously appeared in periodicals, entitling the collection 'The Book without a Name.' In 1859, she published 'Passages from my Autobiography,' containing reminiscences of high-life in London and Paris. A pension of £300 a year was conferred on her during the ministry of Earl Grey, and the latter years of Lady Morgan were spent in London. She died in April 1859. Her Correspondence was published by Mr. Hepworth Dixon in 1862. : Irish Hedge Schoolmaster-From 'Florence Macarthy.' f rough-headed students, with books as ragged as their habilments, à at the sound of the horse's feet, and with hands shading their unes from the sun, stood gazing in earnest surprise. Last of this singular wed O'Leary himself in learned dishabille! his customary suit, an old fastened with a wooden skewer at his breast, the sleeves hanging unocnish-wise, as he termed it; his wig laid aside, the shaven crown of his bling the clerical tonsure; a tattered Homer in one hand, and a slip of e other, with which he had been distributing some well-earned punities s; thus exhibiting, in appearance, and in the important expression of his ce, an epitome of that order of persons once so numerous, and is still far et in Ireland, the hedge schoolmaster. O'Leary was learned in the antigenealogies of the great Irish families, as an ancient senachy, an order of elieved himself to be the sole representative; credulous of her fables, and her ancient glory; ardent in his feelings, fixed in his prejudices; hati g Sassoni, or English churls, in proportion as he distrusted them; living past, contemptuous of the present, and hopeless of the future, all his arning and national vanity were employed in his history of the Macar, to whom he deemed himself hereditary senachy; while all his early asand affections were occupied with the Fitzadelin family; to an heir of ad not only been foster-father, but, by a singular chain of occurrences, host. Thus there existed an incongruity between his prejudices and his that added to the natural incoherence of his wild, unregulated, ideal He had as much Greek and Latin as generally falls to the lot of the inh priesthood, an order to which he had been originally destined; he spoke is native tongue, with great fluency; and English, with little variation, as ave been spoken in the days of James or Elizabeth; for English was with ired by study, at no early period of life, and principally obtained from such came within the black-letter plan of his antiquarian pursuits. Words that wise Bacon and grave Raleigh spoke, iliarly uttered by O'Leary, conned out of old English tracts, chronicles, ial instructions, copies of patents, memorials, discourses, and translated ances from the Irish chiefs. of every date since the arrival of the English in 1; and a few French words, not unusually heard among the old Irish 3, the descendants of the faithful followers of the Stuarts, completed the his philological riches. ry now advanced to meet his visitant, with a countenance radiant with the on of complacency and satisfaction, not unmingled with pride and im, as he threw his eyes round on his numerous disciples. To one of these modore gave his horse; and drawing his hat over his eyes, as if to shade om the sun, he placed himself under the shadow of the Saxon arch, ob I see, Mr. O'Leary, I very eagerly avail myself of your invitation; but I fear nterrupted your learned avocation.' a taste, your honour, and am going to give my classes a holiday, in respect urf, sir.-What does yez all crowd the gentleman for? Did never yez see a tleman afore? I'd trouble yez to consider yourselves as temporary.-There's holars among them ragged runagates, your honour, poor as they look; for in these degendered times you won't get the children, as formerly, to talk d languages, afore they can spake, when, says Campion, they had Latin like r tongue, conning in their schools of teachcraft the aphorisms of Hippocrates, e civil institutes of the faculties, yet there 's as fine scholars, and as good phers still, sir, to be found in my seminary as in Trinity College, Dublin.step forward here, you Homers. "Kehlute meu Troes, kai Dardanoi, id if a dozen overgrown boys, with bare heads and naked feet, hustled forward. here's my first class, plaze your honour; sorrow one of them gassoons but throw you off a page of Homer into Irish while he 'd be clamping a turf roi." Have you no stack.-Come forward here, Padreen Mahony, you little mitcher, ye. better courtesy than that, Padreen? Fie upon your manners!-Then for all that, sir, he 's my head philosopher, and am getting him up for Maynooth. Och! then, wouldn't ax better than to pit him against the provost of Trinity College this day, for all his ould small-clothes, sir, the cratur! Troth, he 'd puzzle him, grate as he is, ay, and bate him too; that's at the humanities, sir.-Padreen, my man, if the pig's sould at Dunore market to-morrow, tell your daddy, dear, I'll expect the pintion. Is that your bow, Padreen, with your head under your arm, like a roasting hen? Upon my word, I take shame for your manners.-There, your honour, them 's my cordaries, the little leprehauns, with their cathah heads, and their burned skins; I think your honour would be divarted to hear them parsing a chapter.-Well, now dismiss, fads, jewel-off with yez, extemplo like a piper out of a tent; away with yez to the turf: and mind me well, ye Homers, ye, I'll expect Hector and Andromache to-morrow without fail; obsarve me well; I'll take no excuse for the classics barring the bog, in respect of the weather being dry; dismiss, I say.' The learned disciples of this Irish sage, pulling down the front lock of their hair to designate the bow they would have made if they had possessed hats to move, now scampered off; while Ŏ'Leary observed, shaking his head and looking after them: 'Not one of them but is abarpwitted and has a janius for poethry, if there was any encouragement for learning in these degendered times.' MRS. SHELLEY. In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron and Mr. and Mrs. Shelley were residing on the banks of the Lake of Geneva. They were in habits of daily intercourse, and when the weather did not allow of their boating-excursions on the lake, the Shelleys often passed their evenings with Byron at his house at Diodati. During a week of rain at this time,' says Mr. Moore, 'having amused themselves with reading German ghost-stories, they agreed at last to write something in imitation of them. "You and I," said Lord Byron to Mrs. Shelley, "will publish ours together." He then began his tale of the Vampire; and having the whole arranged in his head, repeated to them a sketch of the story one evening; but from the narrative being in prose, made but little progress in filling up his outline. The most memorable result, indeed, of their story-telling compact was Mrs. Shelley's wild and powerful romance of "Frankenstein "-one of those original conceptions that take hold of the public mind at once and forever.' Frankenstein' was published in 1817, and was instantly recognised as worthy of Godwin's daughter and Shelley's wife, and as, in fact, possessing some of the genius and pecularities of both. It is formed on the model of St. Leon,' but the supernatural power of that romantic visionary produces nothing so striking or awful as the grand conception of Frankenstein'-the discovery that he can, by his study of natural philosophy, create a living and sentient being. The hero, like Caleb Williams, tells his own story. A native of Geneva, Frankenstein is sent to the university of Ingolstadt to pursue his studies. He had previously dabbled in the occult sciences, and the university afforded vastly extended facilities for prosecuting his abstruse researches. He pores over books on physiology, makeš chemical experiments, visits even the receptacles of the dead and the dissecting-room of the anatomist, and after days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, he succeeds in discovering the cause of on and life; nay, more, he became capable of bestowing on upon lifeless matter! Full of his extraordinary discovery, eeds to create a man, and at length, after innumerable trials olting experiments to seize and infuse the principle of life into ge of clay, he constructs and animates a gigantic figure, t in height. His feelings on completing the creation of this are powerfully described: The Monster created by Frankenstein. on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my th an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments und me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain patted dismally against and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the halfhed light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, vulsive motion agitated its limbs. an I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch h such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were tion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! v skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair ustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxonly formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his complexion, and straight black lips. es. fferent accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human naad worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life nanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I ed it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation, but now that I had finbeauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my nable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the I continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my eep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, w myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavoring to seek a few moments of But it was in vain; I slept indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets adt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first er lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to nd I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a veloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the I started from my sleep with horror, a cold dew covered my forehead, my ttered, and every limb became convulsed, when, by the dim and yellow e moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the he miserable Monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, uttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He ve spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to e, but I escaped, and rushed down stairs. I took refuge in the courtyard to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the king up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching ng each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal which I had so miserably given life. o mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again ith animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him inished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were renable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have con ed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly t the palpitation of every artery at others I nearly sank to the ground anguor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror I felt the bitter |