“That Roger Moyle has not much reflection, is proved by an occurrence well known and often related. His mother's uncle was the catholic bishop of the diocese: a learned and pious man. On his death-bed he was frequently visited by Moyle. One evening he said, Roger! you have an excellent heart, sound sense, and great influence in the county. I am sorry, on leaving the world, to think we shall never meet again.' and only said, he did not think wrath was worth | story with a few variations, and swore in the precarrying home, though a man rode. sence of several, that he would kill the first soldier he met, private or officer, in service or out. The declaration was made before O'Mara, who, in addition to his other offices, is justice of the peace. He watched his opportunity of surrounding Nat's house, which Nat had been just seen entering, and called aloud 'Nat Withers!' Nat came to the door, and falling on his knees, ‘Why sure, captain, your Honour can not want me; you have so many other brave men about you. For the love of Christ! what are your Worship's commands?' "Nat Withers! only just come a step out and be hanged, and hold your tongue upon it. Leave the rest to me: witnesses are sworn: all is ready, just as you could wish it: sentence and service shall be read over you at once: up upon your legs! be aisy!' "Don't think about that, uncle Nol,' said Roger. 'I will remain with you, and lie upon a rug in this chamber, if you wish it.' The bishop groaned, Poor Roger blind still! kind-hearted nephew! in another world then we never must meet!' and burst into tears. Uncle Nol!' said Roger, 'tears are good for the tooth-ache, but may do harm in your complaint. Let us be reasonable, and discourse it over.' "Nat sprang up, and attempted to run off, but, turning the corner of the house, was shot. There may be more of them within,' said the captain; lose no time, boys!' "The bishop pressed his hand, and thanked him for the only act of kindness he never had seemed disposed to. You will then hear me, Roger, "They were entering the cabin, when the wife upon our holy faith?' He brought forward all met them, and levelled one with her fist, and the arguments in its support, every one of which stabbed another to the heart with a knife. Surwas irrefragable, and pure from the mouth of rounded and seized by the remainder, she threw apostles, doctors, and confessors; and at the conclu- it from her, and fixing her eyes upon the captain, sion he cried, 'I have a cloud more of witnesses.' 'Och! bloody hound! Och! that it was not "The cloud we have had is quite enough, uncle thee!' Ugly witch!' cried O'Mara, 'who art Nol!' Now, Roger! can you doubt them?' cried thou?' 'I am Dinah Shee, Nat Withers's wife the good man emphatically. I can not,' said these nine years, whose blood be upon thy head!' Roger. You hold then these blessed truths?''Better there than upon this new pantaloon,' said 'I do.' And will stand firmly thereby?' 'I O'Mara, 'where a braver man's is.' 'A lie in your will.' 'You abandon then your own pernicious errors?' hound's throat a stride across!' cried Dinah : 'there was no braver man in all Ireland than Nat Withers, though he was not always brave at the right time.' "Roger hesitated; and then said tenderly, 'Uncle Nol, turn upon your back again and lie quiet. Sure I may keep my own errors, and take yours too.' "The captain smiled: she struck at him with "O nephew Roger! my last hopes are blighted!' her fist: he caught her arm, and said calmly: "Pooh! pooh! no such thing. I believe all' Dinah Shee! thou hast spoken fair, and done that you have said, uncle Nol; but I may believe other folks as civilly. Men of honour may differ in opinion, and no harm in it, while they don't contradict. If you tell me what you saw and what you know, why then indeed I take your word rather than another's, as being my next of kin, and aware right well what blood is in your veins.'" "Incapable as I have shown myself," said Le Doux, "of judging the other parts of his character, I will not hazard a word upon his prudence; but it appears wonderful to me that, in the vicinity of those whose relatives he has shot, he rides home alone in the evening, through a country so uninhabited." "The same thing was remarked to him by Captain O'Mara," said Lady Glengrin; "and he replied that he was mounted on such a horse as no man need be ashamed of: that, if there were few, he would show them his head; and, if the bidders were too many, his tail. Neither expostulation nor experience have altered his custom. Nat Withers, called familiarly from this time forward the man of the broken ramrod,' told his well and bravely. If any one bears false witness against thee on this little matter, I will appear in thy behalf, and swear him down to the devil! mind that, boys!' "At these words she fell upon the ground, and howled tremendously. Leave the poor soul in her cabin,' said O'Mara to his men; 'she can not do less for the dead; and Nat there won't come again and bother her about it.'" Le Doux was saddened at the smile on the countenance of Lady Glengrin, who asked him where were his thoughts. "I would have reserved them entire for Mr. Moyle," replied he, "if your ladyship had not been mistress of them, and given them another direction. Really I should like to see his town." "Town!" cried lady Glengrin with surprise. "When he did us the honour to invite us, did he not say Moyle's-town?" "It was always a lone house; although once there was another nearer it, which he pulled down, because the tenant had poisoned a fox; saying that he who would poison a fox would, in proper time and place, at last poison a Christian, and, after that, a child. To explain the subject | lions! the remainder of the earth does not contain of your observation; our houses in the country the half. Those educated in slavery are willing we call towns and boroughs; we have castles and slaves. The Mahometans have expeditious, equal, forts of one story high, comfortably thatched, but and inexpensive laws, and, for the most part, a without wall or ditch, rail or pale, bolt or shutter, delightful climate; the two greatest blessings ; and with green sash-windows, in honour of the | and they believe in fatality . . no small one ! The shamrock, down to the ground. Our lodges and Pagans hear of nothing better than what they cottages are at the gates of Dublin, in Merion- possess and enjoy. The Irish not only hear of it, square, or Stephen's-green, or wings perhaps to but are promised it, and have earned it. Fatalism the Custom-house." is the only foolish thing they do not believe in. During the remainder of their drive homeward, And their climate is such that, rather than bear her ladyship commended the prudence of Le its inclemency, they eat and drink smoke. What Doux, who fearing that some cruelty might be hovels! what food! what beds! what contests of committed in the captain's house, on the men their children and their swine for even these! arrested, and before the visiters had left it, re- Shall then their innocent festivals, the best part quested her ladyship to remember that the even- of the best religions, and here so requisite as a ings were damp and chilly, that perhaps more of | solace, so acceptable as a compensation, be forbidthe disaffected might be abroad, and that, in order | den them ? " to obviate any alarm to herself on the latter subject, and to him principally on the former, as her ladyship's health had been delicate, it might be better to give her commands about the horses. She began to apologise for introducing him to such a creature; adding that, as he had been presented at court, he was a person to be visited, but that still she did not like it. “ However, he keeps the rabble in quietness," said she: "and we have had only one robbery in the parish, the most peaceful in Ireland, all the year. Unluckily it was my peacock. As for murders, there have only been seven or eight in as many months, chiefly of middlemen and tithemen, beside a cow, which indeed died rather from hocking, and from having her tongue cut out unskilfully." O Catholicism! thou art verily a syphilis among the moral evils, eating deep into the political, and fatal where unchecked; but thou hast thy trucklecouch for thy sores to lie easy on, and something under it to catch thy drivelling. God help thee if these are removed! To dance on Sundays, to enjoy the delights of music, the purest of delights, the greatest, the most humanising, are things unlawful: the catholic and protestant are covenanters here. They may celebrate the Lord's day, but they must be as gloomy as if it were the devil's. A gauger comes round, and measures every man's smile; and we may expect the Society for the Suppression of Vice to offer a reward for a gelotometre, which Johnson would have defined a diatonic instrument whereby the cachinnations of laughter may be A few days after, Le Doux rode into the country, to the distance of twelve or fourteen miles.mensurated. He found the labours of the husbandman unre- In Ireland, as in England, Sunday is a festival; mitted, his food of the coarsest quality, and pro- but he who presumes to enjoy the first course, portionally less plenteous than, from calculation must chew the last in the stocks or in the house of profit, we give our swine and calves. He saw of industry, or acquire an appetite for another such the Catholic faith in all its purity, but without its feast by the wholesome exercise of the tread-mill. festivals. On his return he mentioned this, and If Sundays were holidays, as they should be, and here both parties, and every individual, agreed : | Christmas-day and New-Year's-day were added, namely, that the only good thing among them was the quantity of time devoted to idleness would be the absence of holidays. sufficient. At present they are days of dead lan "The absence of a thing, a good thing!" said guor, and make the tired labourer wish again for he, pondering. “And this absence, among them ! | work. To scold is not forbidden on them; to That is more like an article of faith than an article sing is. He may quarrel with his neighbour; he of logic." He had been accustomed to such incon- must not play with him. Shall the religion then sequences; but never could he persuade himself that incessant labour is a blessing, or that what is individually bad is nationally good. "Can there be prosperity where there is no happiness?" said he within himself: and it was the first time that a statesman ever had revolved a question the most original and the most important. To be awake is well; but to sleep is well also. To work is good; but to cease from it is not less. Much is gained to a nation by handicraft and digging: is nothing gained by joy and gladness, and by rendering them the immovable Lares of the poor man's hearth? The assertion was uncontradicted, that there were in Ireland four millions of poor or oppressed. Merciful heaven!" cried Le Doux, "four mil of no nation be free, not only from gross and incoherent, but from restless and insulting absurdities? Shall kindness be the basis of none? loudly as Christianity hath proclaimed it, constantly as its divine and ever-blessed Founder hath practised and commanded it? Intolerant and self-sufficient bigots, the most impudent and crazy of mankind, legislate for churches and gloss for Christ. They do not trouble their heads in what manner the commutative offices of life are executed, the duties of every day, the interests of society in contact with us; and never are quiet on those which they call the everlasting, but which in fact are no interests at all, being mere dependencies on belief or unbelief, in matters incapable of demonstration, and inapplicable to practice. Much of fanaticism | every kingdom: I wished to do good, and, being is seen in England, some in Ireland: but fanaticism here is among the lighter curses. "It appears to me," said Le Doux, "that in this country the features of evil are harsh, the form indefinite." "We must acknowledge," said Lady Glengrin, "that none of our statesmen has been capable of improving the condition of the Irish." "What!" cried Le Doux, "does the plague rage perennially? Do the rains of heaven never fall among you? Have you no roads, no rivers, no harbours? Have you no herbage, no cattle, no corn?" "Of these things," replied she, "we have plenty." "Bear me witness, heaven!" exclaimed Le Doux enthusiastically. "To make men happier requires little wisdom, but much will. What was Odessa? what is it now? Madam, I do not pretend to greater knowledge than many possess, in in authority, I did it. The Russians were not advanced in civilisation much farther than the Irish; but the gentry were more humane, the clergy more tolerant, and in consequence the serfs more docile." The Irish friends of Le Doux began to think him, some a visionary, some an incendiary: and he, who saw only confusion and contradiction from the first, discovered that the same person was the most polite and the rudest, the most hospitable and the most sordid, the most contentious and the best-natured creature in the world. "It is time to leave this carnival," said he. "The mask in fashion is half-white and halfblack every man finds its inconvenience, yet every man wears it. There is only one exception, and, strangest of contradictions, it is a minister of state. Let me fly from this scene of enchantment while the bristles are not yet out upon me." TIBERIUS AND VIPSANIA*. Tiberius. Vipsania, my Vipsania, whither art thou walking? Vipsania. Whom do I see? my Tiberius ? Tiberius. Ah! no, no, no! but thou seest the father of thy little Drusus. Press him to thy heart the more closely for this meeting, and give him . . Vipsania. Tiberius! the altars, the gods, the destinies, are between us.. I will take it from this hand; thus, thus shall he receive it. Tiberius. Raise up thy face, my beloved! I must not shed tears. Augustus! Livia! ye shall not extort them from me. Vipsania! I may kiss thy head.. for I have saved it. Thou sayest nothing. I have wronged thee; ay? Vipsania. Ambition does not see the earth she treads on the rock and the herbage are of one substance to her. Let me excuse you to my heart, O Tiberius. It has many wants; this is the first and greatest. Tiberius. My ambition, I swear by the immortal Gods, placed not the bar of severance *Vipsanía, the daughter of Agrippa, was divorced from Tiberius by Augustus and Livia, in order that he might marry Julia, and hold the empire by inheritance. He retained such an affection for her, and showed it so intensely when he once met her afterward, that every precaution was taken lest they should meet again. In a former note it has been signified that the Claudii were deranged in intellect. Those of them who succeeded to the empire were by nature no worse men than several of their race in the times of the republic. Appius Claudius, Appius Cœcus, Publius, Appia, and after these the enemy of Cicero, exhibited as ungovernable a temper as the imperial ones, some breaking forth into tyranny and lust, others into contempt of, and imprecations against, their country. Tiberius was meditative, morose, suspicious. In the pupil of Seneca were dispositions the opposite to these, with some talents, and many good qualities. They could not disappear on a sudden without one of those shocks under which had been engulfed almost every member of the family. between us. A stronger hand, the hand that composes Rome and sways the world . . . Vipsania... Overawed Tiberius. I know it; Augustus willed and commanded it. Tiberius. And overawed Tiberius! Power bent, Death terrified, a Nero! What is our race, that any should look down on us and spurn us! Augustus, my benefactor, I have wronged thee! Livia, my mother, this one cruel deed was thine! To reign forsooth is a lovely thing! O womanly appetite! Who would have been before me, though the palace of Cæsar cracked and split with emperors, while I, sitting in idleness on a cliff of Rhodes, eyed the sun as he swang his golden censer athwart the heavens, or his image as it overstrode the sea.* I have it before me; and though it seems falling on me, I can smile at it; just as I did from my little favourite skiff, painted round with the marriage of Thetis, when the sailors drew their long shaggy hair across their eyes, many a stadium away from it, to mitigate its effulgence. These too were happy days: days of happiness like these I could recall and look back upon with unaching brow. O land of Greece! Tiberius blesses thee, bidding thee rejoice and flourish. Why can not one hour, Vipsania, beauteous and light as we have led, return? Vipsania. Tiberius! is it to me that you were speaking? I would not interrupt you; but I *The Colossus was thrown down by an earthquake during the war between Antiochus and Ptolemy, who sent the Rhodians three thousand talents for the restoration of it. Again in the time of Vespasian, "Coæ Veneris, item Colossi refectorem congiario magnâque mercede donavit." Suetonius in Vesp. The first residence of Tiberius in Rhodes was when he returned from his Armenian expedition, the last was after his divorce from Vipsania and his marriage with Julia. thought I heard my name, as you walked away and looked up toward the East. So silent! Tiberius. Who dared to call thee? Thou wert mine before the Gods .. do they deny it? Was it my fault. Vipsania. Since we are separated, and for ever, O Tiberius, let us think no more on the cause of it. Let neither of us believe that the other was to blame so shall separation be less painful. Tiberius, O mother! and did I not tell thee what she was? patient in injury, proud in innocence, serene in grief! Vipsania. Did you say that too? but I think it was so I had felt little. One vast wave has washed away the impression of smaller from my memory. Could Livia, could your mother, could she who was so kind to me . . . Tiberius. The wife of Cæsar did it. But hear me now, hear me: be calm as I am. No weaknesses are such as those of a mother who loves her only son immoderately; and none are so easily worked upon from without. Who knows what impulses she received? She is very, very kind; but she regards me only; and that which at her bidding is to encompass and adorn me. All the weak look after power, protectress of weakness. Thou art a woman, O Vipsania! is there nothing in thee to excuse my mother? So good she ever was to me! so loving! Vipsania. I quite forgive her be tranquil, O Tiberius! .. Tiberius. Never can I know peace.. never can I pardon anyone. Threaten me with thy exile, thy separation, thy seclusion! remind me that another climate might endanger thy health! There death met me and turned me round. Threaten me to take our son from us! our one boy! our helpless little one! him whom we made cry because we kissed him both together. Rememberest thou? or dost thou not hear? turning thus away from me! Vipsania. I hear; I hear. O cease, my sweet Tiberius! Stamp not upon that stone: my heart lies under it. Tiberius. Ay, there again death, and more than death, stood before me, O she maddened me, my mother did, she maddened me.. she threw me to where I am, at one breath. The Gods can not replace me where I was, nor atone to me, nor console me, nor restore my senses. To whom can I fly to whom can I open my heart? to whom speak plainly?* There was upon the earth a man I could converse with, and fear nothing: *The regret of Tiberius at the death of Agrippa may be imagined to arise from a cause of which at this moment he was unconscious. If Agrippa had lived, Julia, who was there was a woman too I could love, and fear nothing. What a soldier, what a Roman, was thy father, O my young bride! How could those who never saw him have discoursed so rightly upon virtue! Vipsania. These words cool my breast like pressing his urn against it. He was brave: shall Tiberius want courage? Tiberius. My enemies scorn me. I am a garland dropt from a triumphal car, and taken up and looked on for the place I occupied and tossed away and laughed at. Senators! laugh, laugh! Your merits may be yet rewarded. be of good cheer! Counsel me, in your wisdom, what services I can render you, conscript fathers! Vipsania. This seems mockery: Tiberius did not smile so, once. Tiberius. They had not then congratulated me. Vipsania. On what? Tiberius. And it was not because she was beautiful, as they thought her, and virtuous, as I know she is, but because the flowers on the altar were to be tied together by my heart-string. On this they congratulated me. Their day will come. Their sons and daughters are what I would wish them to be: worthy to succeed them. Vipsania. Where is that quietude, that resig nation, that sanctity, that heart of true tenderness? Tiberius. Where is my love? my love? Vipsania. Cry not thus aloud, Tiberius! there is an echo in the place. Soldiers and slaves may burst in upon us. Tiberius. And see my tears? There is no echo, Vipsania! why alarm and shake me so? We are too high here for the echoes: the city is below us Methinks it trembles and totters: would it did! from the marble quays of the Tiber to this rock. There is a strange buz and murmur in my brain; but I should listen so intensely, I should hear the rattle of its roofs, and shout with joy. Vipsania. Calm, O my life! calm this horrible transport. Tiberius. Spake I so loud? Did I indeed then send my voice after a lost sound, to bring it back; and thou fanciedest it an echo? Wilt not thou laugh with me, as thou wert wont to do, at such an error? What was I saying to thee, my tender love, when I commanded... I know not whom ... to stand back, on pain of death? Why starest thou on me in such agony? Have I hurt thy fingers, child? I loose them: now let me look! Thou turnest thine eyes away from me. Oh! oh! I hear my crime! Immortal gods! I cursed then audibly, and before the sun, my mother! his wife, could not have been Tiberius's, nor would he and Vipsania have been separated. WOLFGANG AND HENRY OF MELCTAL*. Wolfgang. Old man, thou knowest, I doubt not, Cæsar that which is Cæsar's, and unto God that why thou art brought before me. which is God's." It does not say, "Keep anything," which it would do, if anything remained. Dost whistle, rogue? Henry. For having been the preserver of Arnold. Wolfgang. For harbouring and concealing an outlaw. Henry. We all are outlaws. Wolfgang. What! and confess it! Henry. I cry you mercy, Sir Wolfgang. About the Scripture I dare argue nothing; but about the thieves.. what thieves have we here? Who is disposed to take away kid or pullet from us? can Henry. Where there is law for none, what else not we, who are in our own houses, defend them can we be? Wolfgang. In consideration of thy age and heretofore good repute, our emperor in his clemency would remit the sentence passed on thy offence, taking only thy plough and oxen in punishment of disobedience. Henry. Ploughs and oxen are not instruments and furtherers of disobedience. Why were they taken from me before? Had they never been seized by his Apostolic Majesty, and had not the great man Gessler told me that I, a hoary traitor, should be yoked in place of them, my valiant son had never cursed him and his master. Wolfgang. I turn pale with horror.. Curse the right-hand of the Almighty! Henry. We were told that Man was his image, long before we ever heard that a dry marten-skin on the shoulder, and a score of cut pebbles on the head, made any creature his right-hand. This right-hand does little else than, like children, strip the image, or just as they do, break the head of one against the head of another. Wolfgang. What particular hardship couldst thou complain of? Henry. Only that whenever there was a fine day, my oxen were taken for the emperor's use, and that my boy was forced to guide them. Wolfgang. You had many days left. Henry. Ay verily; all winter, from the first of November to the first of April. While the snow was from five to three feet deep, I might plough, sow, and harrow. A green turf was an imperial rescript, and I never saw one in the morning but I met a soldier at my gate ere noon, and my two poor beasts were unhoused. Wolfgang. Factious man! the mildest governments in the world have always exacted this trifle in payment for their protection. Where there is little coin, there must be labour or its produce: and how much better is it to give the half, or rather more, to a lawful master, than the whole to robbers? But indeed this half is not given: all in right is Cæsar's. Thy Bible says, "Give unto * Landenberg, who governed the country for Albert of Austria, sent to drive away a yoke of oxen from Henry of Melctal. His son Arnold, complaining of the violence, was told that peasants might draw the plough themselves if they wanted bread. Arnold struck him with his staff, broke two fingers, and fled to a friend at Uri. On this the father in his extreme old age saw his cattle driven from his farm his goods confiscated, his house seized.. and nothing else: for his eyes were burnt out. as well as those who are some hundred miles off? and, when we can not, is not our neighbour as ready to help us as they are? Yet our neighbour would blush to ask a spoonful of salt for doing it. Wolfgang. Malcontent! what wouldst thou say if thy master should forbid thee to turn thy barley into malt, or to plant thy garden, or any plot of it, with hops? Το Henry. I dare not imagine this wrong. order me how to crop my garden or how to mix my tankard! To forbid the earth to give its increase in due season is the heaviest and the rarest curse of God. Never, I trust, will our nation be so heartless as to endure a like interdict from the wrath of man. Wolfgang. There is no danger: nevertheless why not profit by example, and avoid the chances of mischief? The tortoise, well protected as it is, draws in its head at the touch of a child. Henry. I will do the same when I am a tortoise. But we Switzers have our rights and privileges: we may kill even a hare if we find him in our corn, provided the land be our freehold. What nation in Christendom can say the same, beyond these mountains? We alone are raised to an equality with the beasts and birds: we alone can leave our country: we alone pine and perish if we are long absent from it. a Wolfgang. Is that a privilege? Henry. No, my lord judge; it may be a want, weakness; but those who are subject to it are exempt from many others. Of what are they not capable in defence of their country, to whom she is so dear! We see our parents and children carried to the grave; we lose sight of them, and bear it manfully. On losing sight of our country our hearts melt away. Wolfgang. Brave men bear it. I left my country to perform my duties in this; and what country is pleasanter than Austria, or more productive of cattle and game, of river-fish and capons? Henry. All men have a birth-place, Sir Wolfgang, but all men have not a country. Nay, there are some who have it not, and who possess almost half a province, with tolls, and mills, and chases, and courts, and prisons, and whatever else can make the great contented. Wolfgang. I should be censurable if I listened longer to such idle and wild discourse. The people of Burgundy are subject to more hardships than thou art, so are those of Swabia and of France. Be |