their second meeting she thought him ugly, but extremely fascinating. A week or two afterwards he had so far succeeded in his design that she declared she could not live without him. Her father refused his consent unless Sheridan could settle £15,000 upon her, and, in his usual miraculous way, he found the required sum. they were totally unsuited to one another, and the marriage was by no means a happy one.

But

In 1799 he brought out his last dramatic work," Pizarro," an adaptation from Kotzebue. Many will still remember Charles Kean's revival of this ranting, stilted, bombastic tragedy, but it suited the taste of the day, and the political significance of several of the speeches, more especially that of Rolla, the Peruvian hero, who in his address to the soldiers institutes a comparison between the Spaniards and Peruvians that the audience eagerly applied to France and England, secured it enormous popularity. But his usual dilatoriness imperiled its success on the first night. When the curtain rose he was in his room writing the last act, which, with the most profuse apologies, was sent down bit by bit to be studied by Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, during their waits in the early part of the play. The receipts of the first sixty nights performances amounted to £60,000, and he received as much as £2,000 for the copyright.

But the inevitable Nemesis that sooner or later overtakes all such men was now close upon his heels. On the 24th of February, 1809, Drury Lane theater, which had been rebuilt only ten years previously at a cost of £150,000, was burned to the ground. There is a story which relates how, while the theater was burning, Sheridan was coolly sitting in a tavern close by, sipping his wine, and, upon some one remonstrating with him, he replied, with inimitable sangfroid, "A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside." Michael Kelly, however, who was his acting-manager at the time, and present at the catastrophe, tells a very different tale. He says that there was no performance on that night, and that Sheridan was at the House when the news was brought him. Out of respect to him a motion of adjournment was made, but he opposed it, saying, that "Whatever might be the extent of his private calamity, he hoped it would not be allowed to interfere with the affairs of the nation," moved that the debate should be proceeded with, and calmly kept his seat.

The directors of the theater were naturally desirous to get rid of a manager who by his recklessness was grievously depreciating their property, and it was agreed that Sheridan should be bought out for £28,000, which sum was not to be paid until the house was rebuilt. Whitbread, the brewer, who started the proposition and undertook to carry it out, had the perhaps not enviable distinction of being the only man who was ever known to resist Sheridan's powers of persuasion; in vain did the fallen genius entreat him to advance a portion of the money which was his due before the stipulated time had

expired, in order that he might meet his election expenses at Stafford. The man of beer was inexorable, and Sheridan lost his seat. This was the last blow. His furniture, his jewels, his pictures, all he possessed, were seized by his creditors, and he himself consigned to a sponging-house.

Moore, in his "Life of Sheridan," as well as in the scathing monody on his death, bitterly denounces the "velvet friends" who forsook him in his distress:

Who could bask in that spirit's meridian career,
And yet leave it thus lonely and dark at its close,

and more especially the prince, whose cause he had so well served in the early days of the regency. A writer, however, in the Edinburgh Review, soon after the publication of the biography, endeavored to place the prince's conduct in a more favorable light by stating that he sent his unfortunate friend £4,000 towards paying his liabilities, which amounted in all to only £5,000, but that the money was either attached by the creditors, or dissipated in such a manner that it was useless to him. Neither his wife-a lymphatic creature, with very little heart-nor her friends gave him any assistance, although, as we have seen, he settled £15,000 upon her; and gradually he sank into penury and misery.

At the beginning of the year 1816, when his last illness had just come upon him, a paragraph, supposed to have been penned by Moore, appeared in the Morning Post, calling attention to his condition. "Nothing could be more wretched than the home in which he lay dying," says an eye-witness; "there were strange-looking people in the hall; the parlor seemed dismantled; on the table lay a bit of paper, thrown carelessly and neglected-it was a prescription." In his last moments a sheriff's officer arrested him, and would have carried him away in the blankets to a sponging-house, had not the physician in attendance threatened to make the fellow responsible should the patient die in consequence.

His death occurred on the 17th of July, 1816, he being then in the sixty-fifth year of his age. He died at his house in Saville Row, but the body was conveyed to the house of his friend, Mr. Peter Moore, in Great George street, as being more convenient for a walking funeral to the Abbey. The Dukes of York and Sussex were mourners; the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, Lord Holland, the Bishop of London and Lord Spencer, were pall-bearers.

How proud they can press to the funeral array

of one whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow;
How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,
Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow!

WHAT CAN BE DONE FOR IRELAND?

*

I PUT forward the following statements on Irish matters, like those in two former papers, as the result of my own personal experience during forty years' residence in Ireland as a landlord. In discussing the proposed remedies for our difficulties, it is needful to bear clearly in mind the facts established in the papers just alluded to. No one can wish to avoid harsh words more than I do, yet the truth must be told truly. The falsehood and scheming that prevail in Ireland are the causes of the chief part of the difficulty.

The real state of the country is one of great backwardness in civilization. Education, habits, and ideas are those of a semi-barbarous people. They have both the virtues and vices of that state. Read the daily account in the papers of outrages committed. To say nothing of shocking murders, consider what such facts as these mean. A few weeks ago the house of a poor man in County Limerick who had given offense was beset. They tied him down in bed and cut off his ears. Of course this is better than burning him and his wife and children alive in their house, as was done in the same district within the memory of many. To cut off only the man's ears shows progress. But what a progress! It is still grievous barbarism, if less horrible than formerly. Since then other poor fellows' ears were cut off in other places. It is becoming an institution. Yet there are a large number of Irish M. P.'s who feel no shame in stirring up an agitation of which such acts are the sure fruit, and when these cruelties have been done, palliate and excuse them, denying that they are answerable for such wickedness, and asserting that it is the fault of the Government or the landlords.

The country being in this state of semi-barbarism, with parts on the eastern side more advanced, and parts on the western side more backward, the first fact to be observed is, that the average Irish peasant has no desire for progress and civilization. His view is that he ought to be left with all the rough advantages of his uncivilized condition, and that concession ought also to be made to him (at whose cost he cares not) to compensate him for all the disadvantages of that condition. The strongest ground on which he asks for such concessions is his poverty, and he and his M. P.'s urge the extreme poverty of the poorest part of Connaught as a reason why concessions should be extended over the more advanced districts. He has no thought that such concessions, not being founded on strict right, must be ruinous to the country, and in the end even to himself. The present moment and his personal gain are all he can

** Ireland 1840-1880 ;" and Ireland-its Social State,-Macmillan for April and July.

think of, and by this importunity of poverty, like the clamor of the sturdy beggar, he does influence those who act on sentiment rather than on facts. Nearly all the fine sentiments of patriotism and the rest, that are put forward, are the merest shams, invented for the occasion, and having no foundation in fact. The strongest feeling of patriotism is jealousy of England. The legislation of 1870 proceeded on the view that most Irish tenants are good and worthy men, and most Irish landlords the reverse; the truth being, that the proportion of bad tenants in Ireland, indolent, drinking, and useless, is grievously large, and that though some landlords neglect their duties by not laying out money on their land, the proportion of those who treat their tenants with any harshness is very small.

The Devon Commission in 1844 visited every corner of Ireland and investigated every case of hardship that could be heard of. The result was so trifling that for a generation complaints of hardship ceased. Lately such complaints have again begun, it is believed with even less foundation than in 1844. Whenever definite.complaints have been made, they have been shown to be untrue. One good of the new Commission is that it will test all such complaints. This is one reason why it was objected to by the Land League.

We who live in the country know the men and the details of the cases that are brought forward in our own districts. I know the facts about two such cases that have been the pretense for neighboring land meetings, and assert that, from first to last, they rest on mere untruth. It is upon men in this social and moral state that the franchise has been conferred.

I. Ulster Tenant-right.-The extension of the Ulster tenant-right customs to the rest of Ireland is often spoken of as a remedy for all the evils of the country. I assert that except those who hope to gain by it, no one advocates tenant-right, but men ignorant of land and farming. Such an extension would be contrary to all principles of honest dealing toward the owners of land. By the Ulster tenantright, whenever the tenant leaves his farm from any cause, he is usually entitled to sell (what is called) his interest in it to the best bidder, provided he is not a bad character. The transaction is wholly between the outgoing and incoming tenants, the landlord having nothing to do with it, except that any arrears of rent due are paid out of the purchase money. The landlord may object to the purchaser if he is of bad character. But the faults that would justify such an objection are not of the kind that are common among those who have money enough to buy a farm. So that this right in the landlord is of little consequence. In theory, too, the landlord is at liberty to raise the rent. But the practical difficulties in his way, unless the rise be very trifling or the rent unduly low, are so great, that it is very seldom he can accomplish it. The rate of purchase is sometimes as high as twenty years of the rent and over. Ten years' purchase is thought an ordinary and moderate rate. The

price depends upon the acreable rent, and all the other incidents that affect the letting value of land, especially the demand for farms at the moment. Whether the times are good or bad makes a great difference in the price of tenant-right. It has been asserted that tenant-right existed in Ulster more than 200 years ago. The proof of this, however, is very indifferent. Whether it existed or not, it is certain its great extension occurred at the latter part of the last century, when the large improvement of the linen trade took place. Hand-spinning of linen thread and hand-loom weaving were then universal in many parts of Ireland. They went on in every farmer's and laborer's house. The land in Ulster had already been very much subdivided. When the linen trade flourished, it enabled industrious families to make money and pay great sums for the tenant-right of the small lots of their neighbors, willing to sell from any cause.

The spinning-wheel and the loom afterwards earned the means of stocking and manuring the land bought. Tenant-right can only live when the rent is under the true value of the land. If the land is let at the full value the tenant has nothing to sell. Very little thought will show the impossibility that men should go on, from generation to generation, paying the full value of the land in rent, and a great sum of money besides on entry. In those days, and long after, rents were very ill paid in Ireland; the landlords lost in this way very largely. As under tenant-right all arrears of rent due were paid out of the purchase-money, most Ulster landlords acquiesced in the system, and sanctioned it. The purchaser paid his money into the landlord's office; the arrears were taken out of it, and the balance handed to the out-going tenant. It is well known that incoming tenants thus often paid away not only all their own money, but also all they were able to borrow from their friends besides, in order to buy tenant-right. It suits best too for small lots of land.

When thus stripped of capital it is impossible for a mere farming tenant to farm the land well. If a few bad years chance to come he is ruined, and has to sell his interest again for whatever it will fetch, submitting to the loss. Any arrears of rent, then, that he may have accumulated are stopped out of the money that is payable to him, and thus he often becomes a pauper, or near it. The immense effect of bad or good years upon tenant-right has never been duly observed. It is much greater than upon tenants holding in the common way. Further, tenant-right is a chattel. It may be sold by a creditor for debt, and it may be left by will, or settled independently of the farm itself. Sales by creditors are common; they are in effect just the same as ejectments. Tenant-right, too, is often left to wife and younger children as a provision, and so has to be paid over again by the son who gets the farm, thus pumping the farm dry of capital every generation, at the very time when a young.