at home in the part. But, to proceed more directly in my tale. At the rere of Knock-body, and leading to the village of Multifarnham, is a deep, narrow glen, at that time, for about a mile, close and darkly shaded by wood at both sides of the road, and from this circumstance called, from time immemorial, in Irish, Glan mille dhu, or the glen of the dark mile-do, but mark what an Irishman I am become! In truth, there is in the character of this people, something so frank, so kind, so attractive, that you cannot help amalgamating your feelings with it; drawing you on in a willing slavery, you cannot help yielding to it, although you apprehend, and not without reason, that it may deceive you, and you run the double risk of suffering uuder your own want of judgment, or their want of constancy. But, my dear friend, there is a great alloy to all this brilliancy of surface: the virtues of the Irish are a vigorous but uncertain impulse of their nature; their vices, the more fixed and constant companions of their semi-barbarism, and habitual subjection to the belief and practice of superstitious atonements. But, returning to the ominous gloom of the "dark mile.” Our household fool had wandered to the glen wood, on the evening of the fatal night, to gather nuts, and was involved in the thicket, when he overheard the conspiring murderers deliberately plan their work of horror; all, all were to be murdered-master and servant-matron and maid-adult and infant. Mercy was to leave no possible evidence of robbery, and their crime was to be enveloped in the silent obscurity of the grave. The fool had a touch of pity in his nature—an exclamation betrayed him-he was seized

upon, but the fool was not altogether impolitic, when policy was needful. He affected to have been hurted by the re-action of a strained hazel bough. They were satisfied that they incurred no danger from the comprehension of an idiot, and he was suffered to depart unhurt. He fled swiftly homeward-terror of the vengeance he feared to fall upon his head, prevented a full and explicit disclosure of what he had heard, and his dark ambiguous warnings there lived none to remember. He had beenalways peculiarly attached to the little heir, then about three years old, and, unobserved by any one, he bore the child away to the cabin of his nurse, remaining there all night.

morning sun disclosed the scene of horrid massacre, and the affection of a fool saved one innocent scion of the parent tree from the general devastation. This fool, my companion saw many years afterwards in the family of a gentleman in the county Longford.*

* In my childhood, I knew a fool of this kind in a gentleman's family, and a very singular one he was. Poor Pierce! never was there a more faithful or honest creature; a more indignant and determined hater of any thing false or immoral. He would receive fifty puzzling and contradictory messages, charge himself with as many minute purchases in the next market town, and execute all with a correctness and punctuality not to be exceeded, and seldom equalled by the intelligent and the lettered. He never could be induced to encumber his feet, which were of most ample dimensions, with the restraint of shoes or brogues. He entertained the most sovereign contempt for the English language, never honoring it by his adoption; and he always bore a club, which two dandies, of our degenerate days, could scarcely carry, and of which he was well disposed to make use, if his "way were prescribed," or his manifold trust attempted to be invaded. No Quaker could be more familiar in his colloquial address, no mat

My companion's tale was just concluded as we reached our landing place. It was a bold, high shore, and on the eminence, overlooking every point of the lake with a lordly comprehension of view, stood, in the olden time, a baronial castle, of which, now, there remains only the foundation lines, overgrown with grass, and a very small relic of one of the inferior buildings of the fortress. The castle, which covered, including its area, more than an acre of ground, was surrounded by a deep ditch; and, judging from the lines of its foundations, it was on the plan, and could not have been much, if at all, inferior in magnitude, to the castle of Trim. Not many years back, a considerable portion of the ruins were standing, but they were pulled down, and the stone carried away, probably to build the cottages of the neighbouring peasanHe who opposes practical and substantial good to the indulgence of antiquarian impressions, will think those materials better employed in administering to the comfort of the present race, than as di

try.*

ter what the rank of the person he spoke to, nor modern saint more free from vice, without ever claiming a merit for the virtue. -ED.

* As this paper of the excursion originally stood in the Warder, the dilapidation was stated to have been for the purpose of building cottages for the neighbouring peasantry, "tenants of Lord Longford." It is but justice to his Lordship, whose good taste may thus have been indirectly arraigned, to obviate such an inference, Mortimer's Castle stood on the estate of a Mr. Carey, and Lord Longford could not have controlled its destiny, even had his veneration for antiquity equalled that of Gregory Greendrake; or still more, had it been as great as his Lordship's well-known anxiety to benefit his fellow-creatures.-En.

lapidated and mouldering monuments of power and grandeur long passed away. I am, however, of the number who consider those remains of antiquity with great reverence; they serve as connecting the living generations with the early history of their countrythey exercise the reflective and higher powers of man, give an interesting locality to their action, and teach him that dependancy on the past and the future, which distinguishes him from the mere animal, which seeks and is contented with present physical enjoyment, and is indifferent to that which preceded or shall follow him. Impressed with such sentiments, I could not but regret that no vestige remains of that proud castle whose battlemented towers once displayed the pennons and the banner of Mortimer, Earl of Marche, who lost his life in battle with the chief of the O'Beirne's, when representing the person and power of his weak and unfortunate master, Richard the Second. If ever Sir Walter Scott shall think of making Irish history the subject of his magic pen, I think that Mortimer Castle, for so is the place of this once extensive ruin called, would furnish him with materials with which he might raise an imaginative structure more than recalling into being its past existence and glories.

Forth from the rocky base of the hill, bubbles and flows a spring of the purest water, which was our original attraction to the spot; but, on approaching the shore, there offered to our view, that which proved a stronger inducement. On the platform of the hill, where once was the castle, there stood a groupe of our female friends from the village, waving their

white handkerchiefs, to invite our landing, the appearance of which, at a distance, suggested my introductory quotation. We found the ladies prepared with some good and substantial additions to our frugal means of refreshment; not altogether unacquainted with the art of angling, they calculated on our want of piscatory amusement, and with the provident kindness and delicate attention, in which they so immeasureably surpass our sex, they were resolved that we should not have cause to accuse our fortunes on shore. To any one who has experienced the happy confusion of what is called a sod dinner-the thousand little circumstances incidental to the absence of form and ceremonial restraint-the practical jokes which appear to be the result of accident, and the accidents which appear to be jokes-the buoyant spirits, and the hearty laugh, responded by surrounding echoes to tell you that this was one of the pleasantest parties of the kind that ever I partook of, is but truth. Would you know our bill of fare? Here you have it :

A cold, nicely roasted, fore-quarter of lamb,
An excellent sallad to grace it;

A cherry-hued, well flavor'd, fine mellow ham,
A leash of roast chickens to face it.

From a neighbouring cabin, a piping hot dish
Of that root of all roots, the potato,

As good and as dry as a monarch could wish,
And too good for the lovers of Plato;

Then, with porter, and cider, and good whiskey punch----
For we scorned your port and your sherry-

We gaily diluted our pastoral lunch,

And danc'd, laugh'd, and sung all so merry.