It was a very ghastly sight. The body sagged loosely in the hammock-shroud of the ancient mariner's last long sleep; he had died so lately that there had not been time for his limbs to

stiffen.

His head and face were uncovered. The long grey hair streamed down on his pillow. The eyes and mouth were fallen in, so that the nose and chin seemed unnaturally prominent. The white foam stood among the grizzly stubble of his lips.

Handsome, fashionable, high-life corpses, who have passed through the tumbles and tossings of this baggage-waggon existence, like delicate porcelain ornaments carefully packed in cottonwool, when they come to be examined on the shore of the great sea by that chiefest of all custom-house officers, Death, previous to final exportation, exhibit well-preserved features moulded in sculpturesque repose; and the bloodless hue of death really does look something like the marble to which it has been so often compared, suggesting the idea of wealth and luxury even through the chill comfort of expensive marble monuments. But a poor old worn-out broken-down body, whose face looks as if it had been used to break stones on the highways of hardship, whose skin is wrinkled, and furrowed, and tanned, and weather-beaten through a long life of exposure, even the smooth whitewashing hand of Death (for Death is of many professions) cannot make anything more of him than a pale, speckled, whitybrown crumple of parchment, distended here and there by a few hideous bony prominences.

The traces of passion and excess that flushed in the cheek and lowered in the eye of the pampered worldling (I speak after the manner of Chartist field-preachers), pass away with life. The magic charm of wealth which made his vices tolerable in life, makes his carcase decent in death. He looks respectable as he lies on his bed to listen, in a calm and gentleman-like manner, to the adieus and condolences of his friends. Condolences that, in nine cases out of ten, amount to something like this:

"Oh, my dear fellow, I am shocked to see you looking so pale! I am very sorry you will not be able to laugh at any more jokes by the fashionable wit you used to ask to dinner for that purpose; I am sorry you will not be able to eat any more good dinners yourself, nor drive in your carriage. In fact, I am sorry you have left a deuced comfortable and respectable position here, to go the deuce knows where."

Such is respectable death and condolence. To return to our fisherman.

Feet foremost he came down the steps from the pergola; the priests and hooded figures, and candle-bearing acolytes, had begun to move in procession, when, breaking away with a great cry, from those who would have detained her, the daughter of the old man came rushing wildly down the steps, threw herself on his breast, and clung there kissing the cold and motionless features amid the most heart-broken moans and wailings, till they tore her

away, and supported her half-senseless up into the house, and the procession moved along the shore.

This sort of scene strikes one as very shocking, because it is so contrary to our stoical English habits. With us, everything affecting, or distressing, or important, is smothered, and muffled, and boxed-up as tight as possible from the eyes and hearts of our fellow-men. Our slovenly unhandsome corpses are done up in all the hermetical respectability that the plumber and upholsterer can command.

The tears of the female relations are all respectable orthodox whimpering, pocket-handkerchief tears, fit for public inspection. I will undertake to say that all the thousands of funerals I have met in London put together, have not given me half this impression of death and bereavement.

Oh, England! England! whatever you may say or think, however much you may hug yourself in the belief that you have a vast deal of deep feeling and exalted piety (too good to be wasted on the rest of the world), and which you snug up secretly in the bottom of your breast-you are not a deeply feeling nor a deeply religious land—you are pre-eminently respectable and that is your eulogy.

While we avoid the errors of Catholicism, I see no reason in being so dreadfully afraid of the bewitching sorceress robed in scarlet, that we are to stop our eyes and ears to her merits, where she really has any.

The many visible signs and emblems of religion, the easy ingress of places of worship, when any desire of worship supervenes, are surely advantages, if prayer and frequent remindment of our religion be advantageous.

As to the pretence that the twopenny figures of the Virgin or the crucifixes are themselves idolatrously worshipped, I don't believe a word of it. It is my sincere impression that the cruciphobious spirit of the Church of England arises from a feeling that there is so thin a partition between themselves and Babylon, that if they draw a hair out of the mortar the whole lath-and-plaster skrene might tumble down. We avoid many things that are practised by Roman Catholics, not because we see any real disadvantage in them, but because they are practised by Roman Catholics.

I am all for the principal Bishop of England being at Canterbury, and not Rome, but I would glean all the useful shavings and chips which the hasty hand of Reform may have pared or broken away in scraping the paint or putty off Christianity.

It appears to me quite as unreasonable to allow an infallibility in Martin Luther and the House of Commons, who rasee'd the Church of Rome, as in the Pope and College of Cardinals, who padded and embroidered the Church of Christ. I don't want to shock anybody's feelings, but I have no respect for their prejudices.

A NIGHT WITH THE PEELERS.

"THERE's a man outside wants yer honner, av ye plase," said Barney, thrusting his great shock-head in a mysterious way into the parlour, so as to reveal the whole of a clean face, two of the livery buttons on his coat, and a dirty "neckercher," the cleanliness of the first part of the revelation having been produced by an imperative order from "the masther," at dinner, a few minutes before, "to go out and make himself decent, and be d-d to him, before he waited at table."

We were all enjoying the dinner aforesaid in a snug old country house, around which the gloom of a chilly autumn evening was just settling by way of whetting our liking for the comforts within; and, with all the keen appetite of sixteen, sharpened by a day's snipe-shooting, I was doing my best to incorporate a haunch of mountain mutton, when Barney made the above announcement. The house was one of those ugly square-built old mansions one sometimes sees in out-of-the-way haunts of the kingdom of Leitrim, a portion of Her Majesty's dominions which the law and the sheriff, and that sort of thing, and those kinds of people, compel the natives to consider as the county of that name, though the world knows it was a fine independent and powerful sovereignty a great many years before the Saxons took to Christianity, and wearing smallclothes. The rest of the "we" consisted of the lord and master of the house, his wife, and their children-two stout sons and one trig, merry, bright-eyed laughing little girl. The master was an ironvisaged, wiry, and muscular man of middle age, the most daring, indefatigable, and determined of all the county magistracy: the boldest ruffian that ever swore troth to Molly Maguire had never dared to pull trigger on "bould John O'Hara," or, as he was more frequently called, "The Minor." He had been a ward in chancery; and, as the Irish are fond of adhering to the practices of their ancestors, the peasantry insisted on calling him by the appellation which they had heard given to him by their fathers, and thus, from Carrick to Mohill my cousin was known as "Minor John," or " Minor O'Hara." During the day he had been greatly perturbed, for so calm a man, and, as he was coming in to dinner, I had heard him order a new shoe for the off-hind hoof of his favourite old horse "Shan Bhuid." "To-morrow, yer honour?" asked the groom. "No!-at once; take him down to the forge, and have him back in the stable before seven, saddled and bridled."

Just before the introduction of Barney's head, I had also heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs along the back avenue, though no one else had taken any notice of it; but, when the announcement was made, we all paused, and looked round to the face at the door,

whereon was legibly imprinted mystery, and some degree of alarm. "Who is it wants me?" asked the Minor. "It's a man, your honour," was the reply. "Well, I know, but what man, you ass?" "Sorra one of me knows-but-but-shure he's one of the dhragoon polis, yer honour." (This par parenthèse is the name given by the people to the horse, or mounted police). "Well, show him in, there's no one here will mind."

In a minute after, the door opened again, and in walked one of that admirable force, whose discipline, courage, subordination, and sobriety are standing refutations of all the libels against the Irish race, a tall, fine young fellow, of about six feet in height, slightly built, but full of sinew, with broad shoulders, swelling chest, and small waist, tightened in by a polished leathern belt. As he stood before us, dressed in a neat, well-fitting uniform of dark green, with his shako in his hand, held by the brass scales, and a long sabre in a bright steel scabbard by his side, he was almost the beau idéal of what a cavalry soldier ought to be. He had a letter in one hand, and having cast a glance round the room, and made a military salute, he stood without saying a word, but we all knew that he was the bearer of some important tidings. "Well, and what do you want with me?" asked the Minor. "I have come over from Mohill with dispatches for you, sir, from the county inspector. I am to give them into your honour's own hand, by yourself," (i. e. alone) added he, when Mr. O'Hara stretched out his hand for them. The Minor at once rose and left the room, followed by the constable. In a few minutes he returned with the quiet remark of "I thought I would be in for it to-night," and sat down to finish his dinner.

"For God's sake, what is it, John?" asked Mrs. O'Hara; "any fresh outrage? What on earth are you obliged to go out for to-night?"

"Hush, my dear, it's no great matter."

Now, if it was no great matter, that, of course, was a sufficient reason why Mrs. O'Hara should know all about it, for why should a husband conceal trifles from his wife? and so, ere he had finished his first tumbler of whiskey and water, the Minor was driven to the wall, and compelled to confess, "Well, my dear, the fact is, Clune is hiding in my district. I got information to that effect to-day, and the inspector has sent over for my warrant on fresh information of his own, and so we are going to make a regular sweep of the three parishes to-night. There will be thirty men at the back of the house by eight o'clock."

Now this Clune, aforesaid, was the perpetrator of a most coldblooded murder about three months before, in the middle of the noon-day. He had stepped out on the road-side, from behind a hedge, and shot the agent of one of the best landlords in the county, and, as yet, all the rewards of Government, and the exertions of the police, had failed to find him. The rumours, which always pervade the country on such occasions, and render you painfully conscious that the murderer is en rapport with the people, had it that he was well armed, and that he had sworn he

would have the life of any "peeler" or magistrate who might attempt to arrest him, ere he danced on nothing from Carrick drop.

For the same reason it was necessary to observe strict secrecy with regard to the intended search, lest the lurking assassin, who was supposed to be hiding in the corn-fields all day and to shelter in the hamlets at night, should receive information and evade the police; and orders were given that no one should be allowed to leave the house or farm-yard till after nine o'clock, on any pretence whatever. I was soon in a state of intense excitement, and resolved to join in the nocturnal excursion through the parish of Drumthis, Drumthat, and Drumtother. (Drum means a hill, and as Leitrim is mountainous, every district has a drum of its own.) "I should like to go-oh! how I should like to go with you to-night, John," was met, however, by a puff of tobaccosmoke and a grunt of a very unfavourable character. "Amn't I to go, please?" was followed by, "What the deuce do you wish to get into the bogs for again? I should have thought you had enough of them his day's tramp." These discouragements were greatly approved of by Mrs. O'Hara, who was but too well accustomed to the strolls in the dark which her husband was obliged to take after Molly Maguire, and was always much agitated on such occasions about the condition of his mufflers, strong shoes, gaiters, and overalls. She had great objections to the spirit of juvenile enterprise, as her experience convinced her it generally ended in violent contusions and inflammatory colds; and more especially obstinate was she on this occasion, because she had observed the struggling desires of her eldest son "to go out with cousin Corny after Clune," which were expressed as a running treble of "And me too, please, sir," to the various appeals I was making to his governor. Perseverance is a wonderful quality after all; and so, as the governor's tobacco drew to a close of ash and puff, he relented in my favour. "By Jove, Clune will shoot you-so it's a good way of getting rid of you. Put on the strongest brogues and oldest terminations you've got. Mind, though, once you come out, you must go on, come what may, till we do our business." I was in ecstasy; but my youthful relative was at once captured by his mother, and carried up to his room, where he amused himself bullying his brother and the nurses all night, as some amends for his father's cruelty, while I retired to rig myself, as per order, for the march.

The evening had closed in drearily, the wind howled through the fir-trees round the house, and shook their branches with fitful violence from time to time, the passing showers of heavy rain pattered against the windows, and the sun had gone to bed in a great black cloud, which soon rolled over the sky and settled down gradually on hill-side and meadow in drifting fog. The inspector and sub-inspector had arrived shortly before nightfall, and were sitting by the fireside with the Minor in the enjoyment of a glass of whiskey-punch, and in the hope of "getting the fellow this time for certain," when I entered the parlour. They

VOL. XXXV.

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