Harp

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Vol. VI. MONTREAL, JULY, 1881 . No. 9.

GOD SAVE OLD IRELAND.

BY REV. T. AMBROSE BUTLER.

How fondly now, how proudly now, the exiles’ bosoms swell
With thoughts of scenes of loveliness, by lake and hill and dell ! —

With mem’ries of the sunny hours that faded so away,

Like golden light that gleams awhile at dawning hour of day !

And tear-drops glisten in the eyes of gallant men and true —

The forest-oak, like fragile flower, oft bears the morning dew —

Oh, Native Isle ! — the heart distills such tribute tears for thee ! —

God save old Ireland ! — struggling Ireland ! — Ireland o’er the sea !

How bravely now, how nobly now, the few and fearless stand —

The struggling sons in Freedom’s van who work for mother-land !

Who dares the dungeon face the steel and mount the scaffold high,
Ay, ready now, like men of old, to bravely fight or die —

Oh ! truly shall their mem’ries live ; — their gallant deeds be told,

And Allen’s name shine through the years a burnished lamp of gold ;
And Celtic mothers pray to heav’n their sons as brave may be !

God save old Ireland ! — struggling; Ireland ! — Ireland o’er the sea !

Oh, may the swan-like dying notes of Erin’s martyr’d braves
Be wafted' far and move the hearts of those beyond the waves —

The shattered Celts whose discord dire has dimm’d our glorious Green, —
May all unite in Larkin’s name ! Let women chant his caoine !

Oh ! let those hands that .brush aside the noble soldier’s tear
Be stretch’d to those who vow revenge beside O’Brien’s bier !

Swear, swear, you’ll struggle side by side to make your country free !
God save old Ireland ! — struggling Ireland ! — Ireland o’er the sea !

THE ORPHANS;

OR,

THE HEIR OF LONGWORTH.
CHAPTER XXX.

BY THE GARDEN WALL.

“ Mother,” says Frank Dexter, “I
want to ask a favour.”

It is the morning following the thea
tricals, and Mr. Dexter has made the

earliest of morning calls upon his moth-
er. They have the little sunshiny par-
lour all to themselves ; Mrs. Dexter oc-
cupies a rocking-chair, and is swaying
to and fro, a placid smile on her face as
she watches her tall son. That young
gentleman roams restlessly about, pick-
ing up books and throwing them away,
sitting down suddenly and getting up
abruptly.

Something beyond doubt is preying

376

THE HARP.

on Mr. Dexter’s mind. The very tiniest
of tiny matrons is Mrs. Dexter, and pro-
portionately proud of her six foot son —
a gentle little soul, more used to asking
then grantingfavours, more accustomed
to obeying than being obeyed. One of
the docile sort of little women who
always mind their men folks, whether
as fathers, husbands, or sons, and who
do as they are bidden, like good grown-
up children, all their lives.”

“ Yes, Franky dear,” says Mrs. Dex-
ter folding two mites of hands on her
lap ; “ only please sit down, dear. You
make me nervous, fidgeting about so.
What is it ?”

“ You are going to Boston this after-
noon, mother?”

“ Yes, dear. As I return to Georgia
so soon, I must go to Boston at once, if
I go at all. I really must go, you know
dear, having so many friends there, and
coming north so seldom. And then I
have such a quantity of shopping.”

“ How long do you propose staying
in Boston ?”

“ Well, two or three days, or a week.
Certainly not longer. Your poor dear
uncle hates being left alone, and you
have annoyed him very much, Franky
dear, by your prolonged absence this
summer. He says there is no gratitude
or natural feeling left in the world —
young men are all selfish and head-
strong alike. You really should be care-
ful, Frank dear, it will not do to arouse
him, and there is so much at stake.
More than once have I caught him talk-
ing to Lawyer Chapman about Laur-
ence Longworth ”

“Never mind about that, mother,”
cuts in Frank, impatiently, striding up
and down once more ; “ I’ll make that
all right before long. I shall be home
for good in less than a fortnight.
Mother,” he comes back abruptly and
sits down beside her, “ I wish you would
ask Miss Landelle to go with you to
Boston.”

“Yes, dear?” says Mrs. Dexter, in-
terrogatively, but more placidly if pos-
sible than before, . “ Miss Landelle ? I
will if you say so. What a pretty crea-
ture she is — the prettiest I think I ever
saw.”

“ Do you really ?” Frank cries, and
all his honest face flushes and brightens
“ Thank you, little mother. Yes, she is

beautiful as an angel, and as sweet and
as good. You will love her, mother —
No one can know her and help it — so
will my uncle ”

“ Your uncle, Franky dear !” says
Mrs. Dexter, opening her innocent little
eyes ; “ he doesn’t know her you know,
and is not likely to, so how can he, you
know ?”

Frank laughs. He has a subtle plan
in his head of which the trip to Boston
is only the initial step, but he is not dis-
posed to take his mother into his confi-
dence at present. Old James Long-
worth is certainly in the pitiably be-
nighted state of not knowing Marie
Landelle at present, but out of that
depth of darkness his nephew proposes
to rescue him.

“ Would she like to come, do you
think?” inquires the lady. “I should
like to take her very much. There is
always a sort of distinction in chaperon-
ing a new beauty — people take so much
notice of one, and gentlemen are so
very attentive, and then I dislike travel-
ling alone. I shall be pleased to take
her, Frank, if you really think she will
be pleased to go.”

“ Mother mine,” Mr- Dexter cries,
“ my conviction is, that you are without
exception the most charming little
woman in the world. Like to go ? I
am certain of it — I have it from her own
lips — I — in fact I asked her yesterday,
and she said she would be delighted.”

“ Oh ! You did. Well then, Franky
dear, nothing remains but to obtain Mrs.
Windsor’s consent. I presume she will
not object?”

“ I don’t see why she should. You
will put it to her, mother, as a personal
favour to yourself. Say you have taken
such a fancy to Miss Marie — which will
be true, won’t it ? And that she is look-
ing pale — which is true also — and needs
a change , and that you will prize her
company so highly, and all that. You
know what to say — women always do.
And, mother, suggest to Miss Landelle
that as you may remain a week, and
will be out a great deal, shopping and
making calls all day, and going to thea-
tres and places in the evening, she had
better take a box.”

“ But, Franky dear, we are not going
to theatres and places. We shall have
no one to take us.”

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377

“ Oh yes, you will. You need not
say anything about it, but I will be
there. Just let it appear in a vague
way that your friends will take you.
The yacht is to be launched to-morrow
morning, and will go at once to Boston.
I shall not remain to go in her, but will
follow you to-morrow afternoon by train.
Then, of course, I can take you both
everywhere, and make things pleasant
for you in Boston. And at the end of
the week, when the yacht is ready and
there, perhaps we can persuade Miss
Landelle to take a little trip with us to
the Isle of Shoals and the coast of
Maine, and so on. But you need not
mention this. Just put your things on,
like the dearest and most docile of little
mothers, and trot around at once, and
ask Dane Windsor for the loan of her
granddaughter ?”

He lifts her bodily out of her chair as
though she were five instead of fifty,
and kisses her heartily with a crushing
hug.

“ Beally, Franky dear,” expostulates
the good lady, settling her hair with
both hands, “ what a great boy you are.
Well, as you say there is no time to lose
so I will dress and go at once. But if
M.rs. Windsor should say no ”

“ You must not let her,” cries Frank,
in alarm. “ I insist upon it, mother.
Under pain of m} T dire and deep dis-
pleasure, do not take no for an answer.
I know how eloquent you can be when
you like, and in that eloquence I place
my trust now. Put it to her strongly —
as an immense personal favour — no one
can refuse you when you put it strong^.”

“ Beally,” says Mrs. Dexter, with a
pleased simper, “ how you do go on. I
certainly have a command of language
— that I have always been told, even
from my earliest infancy. I daresay
Mrs. Windsor will not object for a
week.”

“ Say nothing of the yacht or of me,”
pursues this artful plotter; “ Do not so
much as mention our names. How run
away, madre mia, and don’t be long. I
will wait for you here.”

Mrs. Dexter dutifully departs, and
Frank smiles to himself with satisfac-
tion as he paces up and down. New and
strong resolve is written in Mr. Dexter’s
ingenious countenance. He has waited
and been patient, until waiting and pa-

tience have ceased to be virtues. He
will speak, but not here. Marie will
accompany his mother to Boston ; dur-
ing their stay in that centre of civiliza-
tion and intellect he will devote himself
to her amusement and pleasure. The
hours shall fly, winged with every new
excitement. Then there shall be a din-
ner on board the yacht, in a cabin served
up regardless of everything but beauty,
luxury, and delight.

After the dinner it will not be diffi-
cult to persuade her to join in that
charming trial trip to the Isle of Shoals.
He has told her of the wild and rugged
beauty of the coast of Maine, and she
will brave a little sea-sickness for the
sake of the pieturesque. And then,
what more natural than to persuade her
to return with his mother to Georgia,
and in his own “ancestral halls” he
will lay his hand and heart at her feet,
and implore her to remain, queen and
lady paramount, in that sunny southern
land for ever. Is she likely to say no ?
Is Mrs. Windsor likely to object?

Frank’s face grows luminous with
love and delight as he builds these en-
chanting air castles, and then, all in a
moment there rises before him the im-
age of Durand as he saw him last night,
sitting beside her, holding her hands in
his, speaking impassioned words, gazing
at her with impassioned eyes, handsome
and picturesque as the most romantic
girl’s fancy could desire, in his Faulh-
land dress, and the roseate visions tum-
ble into the dust.

Marie Landelle is not a romantic girl
he more than suspects. She is too
beautiful herself to overmuch prize
beauty in a man; but even she cannot
be altogether insensible to the dark
charm of that face. Nothing could be
more tame and spiritless, and unemo-
tional than her rendering of Julia, ex-
cept in that one particular scene where
she renounces him. That she certainly
did with relish. Frank is jealous : but
even in his jealousy he has to own she
gives him no cause. She has avoided
Durand ever since his coming, in the
most pronounced manner. To all out-
ward seeming Longworth has much
more cause for suspicion than he ; and
yet there is a prophetic instinct in love
that tells him it is not so, that Durand
is Marie’s lover, or has been, not Beine’s.

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£78

Mrs. Dexter descends, and Mr. Dexter
clears from his manly brow the traces
of moody thought, and escorts her to
within a short distance of the Stone
House. He lets her enter alone; it is
his diplomatic desire not to appear in
the, matter at all.

“Don’t make your call too long,
mother,” he says, at parting: “I will
hang around here until you come.”

Mrs. Dexter promises of course, but
the call is nearly an hour for all that,
and Frank is faming with repressed
impatience before she comes.

“Well?” he says feverishly, the in-
stant she appears.

“ Well dear,” answers smiling Mrs.
Dexter, “ it is all right. Mrs. Windsor
objected a little at first at the shortness
of the notice, but she has agreed to let
her go.”

Her son’s face grows radiant once
more.

“Ah ! I knew your eloquence would
move a heart of flint, little mother. And
Marie — Miss Landelle — what did she
say ?”

“ Miss Landelle is a very quiet young
lady, dear. She never says much ; but
she smiled and looked pleased, and said
she would like to visit Boston very much,
if grandmamma was perfectly willing.
So it is all settled, my dear boy, and I
expect to enjoy my trip ever so much
more with so charming a companion.”

“ Yes, that is a matter of course. Did
— did any one speak of me ?”

“ Mrs. Windsor asked if you were to
be of the party, and I said, oh, dear,
no! you wer’n’t coming with me — you
had to stay and get your yacht launch-
ed. I never made the least allusion to
your following to-morrow, Frank,” says
his mother with a diplomatic smile, and
her head very much on one side, like an
artful little canary. “ I daresay Miss
Marie will not like Boston any the less
for your being the one to show it to her.”

It is quite evident that, as far as his
mother goes, Frank’s course of love is
likely to run smooth. Ho one in the
world is quite good enough for her boy,
of course, but Mrs. Windsor’s grand-
daughter approaches as near her ideal
as it is in young lady nature to come.
She is a great beauty, she will be a
great heiress, her manners are simply
perfection — even old uncle Longworth

can find no flaw here. And uncle Long
worth has been heard to say he wished
the boy would marry, and bring a wife
home before he died.

Heine is not at home during Mrs.
Dexter’s call, and when she comes home
an hour or so later is surprised to find
Marie and Catherine busily engaged in
packing a trunk. She pauses in the
doorway to gaze and wonder.

“Why are you doing this, Marie?
What are you about with that trunk?
Where are you going?”

“ I do not think I will mind that pink
silk, Catherine. I am not likely to need
it. Oh ! is it you, Petite — wtnt did you
say ? Yes, I am packing. I think that
will do, Catherine; you may go, and
thanks, very much.”

The woman departs, and Marie, on
her knees, rests her arms on her trunk
and looks at her sister.

“Come in and shut the door, Petite.
I am going away for a week, and oh !
little sister, how glad I am for even that
reprieve. Since Leonce came my life
has been miserable. To get away even
for a few days is happiness unspeak-
able.”

Heine stands looking at her without a
word, her dark, solemn eyes seeming
darker and more solemn even than
usual.

“Why stand there silent?” Marie
goes on, in a low, concentrated tone.
“Why do you not begin? Why not
tell me it is not right, that it is my
duty to stay, and so on ? Why do. you
stand there and look at me like a sphinx ?
Why do you not speak ?”

“ I have nothing to say. What does
it matter whetherl speak or am silent ?
You will do as you please. Where are
you going ?”

“ To Boston.”

“ With whom ?”

“Mrs. Dexter.”

And as Marie speaks the name her
lovely upraised eyes flash defiance.
Heine’s lip curls.

“ Soit / And with her son, of course ?”
“ There is no of course. No, we go
alone ; Mr. Frank remains to look after
his yacht.”

“ When did Madame Dexter ask you ?

“ This morning — an hour ago.”

“ Why did she ask you ?”

“ When did she ask you — why did

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379

she ask you?” Marie breaks into one of
her faint laughs. “ You go on like the
catechism, Petite. She asked me, she
was good enough to say, because she
had taken a great fancy to me, and
thought my companionship would en-
hance the pleasure of her trip. Now,
Petite, excuse me, we go at two, and it
is half-past twelve already.”

“Marie, I am not going to remon-
strate — it is of no use. I am not going
to talk of right or wrong — you do not
care. But I will talk of prudence. I
wonder you are not afraid.”

Marie throws back her head with a
gesture of disdain. “ Of whom ? Of
what? I am not afraid. There are
some nature’s that can only be kept in
subjection by letting them see we defy
them. Let Leonce speak if he dares —
he knows the penalty.”

“ Yes, he knows it well ; we talked it
over last night; and, Marie, there is
that within him of which I am afraid.
On his guard he may be while you are
here — ”

“Ah, yes, greatly on his guard,”
Marie interrupts, with scorn , “as he
was on his guard last night, for exam-
ple.”

“ Last night’s excitement is not likely
to occur again. I say he may be on his
guard ; but go, and with Frank Dexter’s
mother — to be joined later, no doubt, b}’
the son — and I will not answer for the
consequences. You know how utterly
reckless he can be when he likes. I
only say. this — take care !”

“Thanks, Petite. I shall take excel-
lent care, be very sure,” says Marie, go-
ing on with her packing. “ If Leonce
is inclined to be unreasonable you must
talk to him. I really require a change ;
I lose appetite and colour. His coming
has worried me and made me nervous ;
it would be inhumanly selfish in him to
object, but Leonce is selfish or nothing.
I shall go, that is fixed as fate ; so clear
that overcast face, little croaker, and
say no more about it.”

The look of decision that sets some-
times the pretty mouth and chin of
Marie Landelle sets and hardens it now.
Peine looks at her for a moment, then
resolutely closes her kps, and without a
ord quits the room.

Still the sisters part friends. In her
art Reine loves Marie far too dearly

and deeply to let a shadow of anger or
reproach mar even a brief farewell. She
kisses her again and again with a
strange, trembling passion of tenderness
that is deepened and intensified by some
nameless foreboding.

“ I will do what I can,” she says,

“ with Leonce. How much I shall miss
you, oh ! sister beloved. Take care, I
entreat, and do not, do not fail to return
at the end of the week. Let nothing
tempt you to linger longer.”

“Certainly not, dear Petite; why
should I ? Make Leonce go before I
come back, if you can. It will be best
for all. Tell him I will write to him,
and forgive his coming when he is fairly
gone.”

So they part. Reine stands and watch-
es the carriage out of sight, still with
that dull foreboding in her mind of evil
to come.

“ Is she altogether heartless, I won-
der?” she thinks, in spite of herself.

“ Nothing good will come of this jour-
ney, I feel that. And last night Leonce
promised to go. Who is to tell what he
will do now ?”

But when, a few hours later, as she
walks purposely in the direction of Mrs.
Longwortb’s, and meets him, and tells
him in rather a tremulous voice, he
takes it very quietly. His dark face
pales a little, and there is a quick flash
at the sound of Mrs. Dexter’s name.
Beyond that no token of emotion.

“ So,” he says, “ she is gone, and with
Monsieur Dexter’s mother. When does
Monsieur Dexter propose joining them,
for he is still here ?”

“ Not at all. How unkind you are,

Leonce ! as if Marie ”

He smiles.

“Marie can do no wrong — you and I
know that, Petite. Did she leave no
message for me ?”

“None — except a message you will
not care to hear.”

“ Still I will hear it.”

“ She bade me tell you, then, to leave
Baymouth — you know why, and that
when you are fairly gone she will cor-
respond with you, and try to forgive
you for having come.”

“ Ah ! she will correspond with me
and try to forgive me,” repeats Durand
and laughs. “ That at least is kind ; but
Marie is an angel of kindness in all

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380

things. For so much condescension I
am indeed grateful.”

“ And yon will go ?”

“ No, Petite, 1 will not. If my stay-
ing annoys you I regret it; for believe
me, my little one, I would not willingly
give you annoyance. I will remain un-
til Marie jeturns. Who can tell when
we may meet again ? Not until the
grandmother dies, and the future is
secure — and she looks as if she might
live for ever, that stately grandmamma,
I must speak one parting word to Marie

— then indeed ”

Peine sighs resignedly. It is of no
use contesting the point. Durand and
Marie will go on their own way with
very little heed to her counsel.

“ You may as well say your parting
word now then, Leonce,” she says reso-
lutely, “for this is the very last tete-a-
tete we will have. As long as you stay
in Bay mouth, I shall remain strictly in
the house. I should not have met you
to-day, but it was necessary you should
hear of Marie’s departure first from me.
Now I shall say adieu, and meet you no
more.”

“Monsieur Longworth commands
this?”

“ That is my affair. My grandmother
forbids it, people talk and that is enough.
You know how I abhor everything clan-
destine. Go or stay as you please, I
will trouble myself about it no more.”
“ Petite,” he says, with real feeling,
“ You are my good angel now and al-
ways. I ought not to have come. But
I swear to you that when Marie returns
I will go. I will be patient and wait,
although it seems almost impossible,
and she is so cold — heavens, so cold.
Adieu, my little sister, and a thousand
thanks for all your goodness.”

He kisses the hands he holds. At the
moment a man passes along the opposite
pavement — Mr. Longworth is on his
way to dinner: He lifts his hat, and

passes rapidly on.

Peine flushes with vexation and draws
away her hands.

“ Leonce, we are in the street, how
can you forget yourself. Monsieur
Longworth saw us.”

“ Well, Petite,” Durand says, coolly,
“ and what then. A brother may kiss
his sister’s hand. Mr. Longworth is on

his way to dinner and will favour me
with more languid grand seigneur airs
than ever. He does me the honour to
be jealous, Peine. Ma foi, I appear to
be a cause of jealousy to more than one
gentleman in your little country town.”

Peine leaves him abruptly and goes
home, feeling vexed with Leonce for his
salute, with Longworth for having seen
it, with Marie for her departure, with
herself for no particular reason — with
all the world, in fact. But she is too
generous and frank-hearted for moods
and fancies, and sits down to the piano
and plays away her vapours. Presently
it grows too dark, and then she rises,
takes a shawl, and hurries away to her
favourite twilight seat on the garden
wall.

She sits a very long time, her hands
clasped in her lap, her eyes fixed dream-
ily on the water, and thinks. Five
months scarcely have passed since she
came to this place, and how much has
haj^pened — more than in all her life be-
fore. She was unhappy at first, but
that has worn away. Leonce frets her ;
but that is only a passing annoyance,
nothing deep.

A subtle sense of happiness has come
to her of late ; she accepts it without
caring to analyze its nature too closely.
Her grandmother has grown more kind
and tolerant since her engagement —
perhaps it is that. She likes Miss Hariott
more than likes her. It is always good,
nnd restful and comfortable to be with
her. A red woman f iend is such a true
ana satisfactory thing. She likes Bay-
mouth— dull but not dreary, monotonous
but not wearisome. And then there is
Mr. Longworth. She pauses in her
musing with a smile and a faint blush.
Yes, there is always Mr. Longworth. It
is well, after all, to have one’s future
husband chosen for one — one can take
him and feel that self-will and sentiment
— dangerous things always — have noth-
ing to do with it. Yes, certainly it is
well — they manage these things best
in France, there can be no doubt.

Mr. Longworth is very good — he is a
husband one can be proud of, he has a
generous and noble heart, he is not mer-
cenary, or he would be Madame Wind-
sor’s heir to-day, and she and her sister
toiling in London for a scanty living.
How very handsome and gallant he

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381

looked last night in the scarlet and gold
of an English officer.

Yes, decidedly he is handsome, and of
a fine presence— clever, too, which is
best of all — man is nothing if not intel-
lectual. It does not so much signify in
women — it is not expected of them;
people who ought to know say they are
better without too much mind, but men
— oh ! a man should be strong and brave
gentle and tender, upright and generous,
and true of heart. All this M. Long-
worth is, she knows ; has she not had
proof of it ? How grateful, for example
is that blind girl ; how well Miss Hariott
likes him — Miss Hariott incapable of
liking anything selfish, or sordid, or
mean.

How her haughty grandmother seeks
and respects his opinion — her proud,
imperious grandmother, who tolerates
no advice nor interference from any one
else. How strange that he should have
had a grand passion for that passee
Madame Sheldon. JDo men really out-
live and forget such things as that ? He
has told her he loves her, and he is a
man of truth. That faint flush rises
again as she recalls his looks, his words,
the fire in the eyes that have gazed on
her. They are extremely handsome
eyes, and perhaps most handsome when
anger as well as love flashes from them.

If she could only tell him all — but
for the present that is hopeless, and he
has promised to trust her. What is af-
fection without trust, firm abiding faith
and trust through all things. He must
wait yet a little longer, and believe in
her despite appearances, and meantime
she is happy, and Baymouth is pleasant,
and eighteen a delightful age, and love —
Well, love, of course, “ the very best
thing in all the world.'’

She wraps her shawl a little closer
around her, for these September nights
have a ring of sharpness, and watches a
belated moon making its way through
windy clouds up to the centre of the sky.

But Beine is neither lonely nor sad;
All her presentiments and vexations are
gone with the dead day, and she sings
as she sits. And presently a step — a
step she knows — come down the path
behind her ; but, though a new gladness
comes into her eyes, she does not look
round, but sings softly on.

The step ceases, he is beside her; he

has heard her song, but he does not
speak. She turns and looks up, and to
the day of her death never forgets the
look his face wears. The smile fades
from her lips, the gladness from her
eyes ; her singing ceases. She sits erect
and gazes at him in consternation.

‘•'What is it?” she asks, with a gasp.

“ Yery little,” he answers. His voice
is low and stern, his face fixed and in-
flexible. “ V ery little, perhaps, in your
eyes. Only this — I overheard you last
night,”

For a moment she does not know what
he means. Then it flashes upon her,
and her face blanches.

“You mean ” she says, in a terri-

fied voice.

u I mean your interview with Mon-
sieur Leonce Durand in Miss Hariott’s
garden last night, I did not go out
eavesdropping. I went out honestly
enough to smoke, but I chanced to over-
hear. I heard him claim the right to be
with you. I heard him call you his
wife !”

She utters a low, frightened cry, and
turns from him and covers her face.

“ Don’t be afraid,” he says, a touch of
scorn in his tone; “I am not going to
hurt you. 1 am not even going to re-
proach you. There is not much to be
said between you and me ; but, great
heaven, how I have been deceived in
you ! I stand and look at you and am
stunned by it, I thought I knew some-
thing of women and men ; I thought, in
my besotted self-conceit, I could read
the soul in the face. I looked in yours
that day on the deck of the ship and
thought I saw a brave, frank, fearless
heart, shining out of tender and truth-
ful, and beautiful eyes. And the end is
this !”

She does not speak a word. She sits
like one stunned by a blow so sudden,
so cruel so crushing, that it deadens
feeling and speech.

“ Your motive for what you have
done,” he goes rapidly on, “ is not so
difficult to understand. You know that
whatever shadow of chance you stood
unmarried, you stood no shadow of
chance married, and married to a
Frenchman. You were naturally am-
bitious to obtain your rightful inheri-
tance, and for the sake of that inheri-
tance you have plotted, and schemed,

3^2

THE HARP.

and duped us all. You played your part,
as Lydia Languish very well last night
but you shine far more brilliantly off
the stage than on. You knew how to
make your very perversity, your petu
lance, bewitching. Your very pride and
defiance held a curious charm. You
kept me off, and knew that in doing it j
you lured me on. You were the furthest
possible from my ideal woman, and yet
you captivated me with your very faults.

< I believed in you with as trusting a
simplicity as the rawest and most un-
licked cub of twenty. I was all the
more eager to win you because you
seemed so hard to win. It was a well
played game ; but your husband, with a
man’s natural impatience for his wife,
comes before your plans are matured
and spoils all. Once before a woman
deceived me, a girl younger even than
you ; but I was a hot-headed boy then,
and her task was easy. Now, in man’s
maturity, with the average of man’s
judgment in most things, you have done
it again, with a skill and cleverness no
one can admire more than I do. Laura
Longworth was only weak and empty-
headed ; you are heartless, treacherous,
and false to the core !”

She has not spoken or stirred — he has
given her no chance to speak ; but if he
had it would have been the same. If
her life were the forfeit she could not
save it by uttering a sound. He turns
with these last harsh and merciless
words, and so leaves her.

Six days have passed. It is a bleak
afternoon early in October. In Mrs.

M indsor’s pretty sitting room a fire
burns cozily, and casts its red gleams
between the crimson-silk window cur-
tains. In a great armchair before this
fire, wrapped in a large fleecy white
shawl, Mrs. Windsor sits.

She is not alone ; her younger grand-
daughter is sitting by the window look-
ing out. It is not owing to any special
pleasure Mrs. Windsor takes in her
younger granddaughter’s society that
she has her here, but the cold in her
head, and the perfect tempest of sneezes
that now and then convulse her, have
flown to her visual organs. With eyes
weak and watering one cannot amuse
one’s self with a book, and to sit here
all day alone, and unable to read, is not
to be thought of. Heine, then, is here

to read to her ; but grandmamma had
had sufficient unto the day of fiction,
and the sorrows of heroes and heroines ;
vexations of her own are beginning to
absorb her.

“ That will do,” she says, pettishly.
“ Ring for Jane; this lemonade is cold.”
Heine rises and obeys. The bleak
light of the overcast afternoon falls full
upon her face as she does so, and Mrs.
Windsor is struck by the change in it.
More than once during the past week
that change has surprised her. A great
change is there, but it is so subtle that
she can hardly tell in what it consists.

She does not sing, she does not play,
she does not talk, she does not smile.
She never goes out, she loses flesh and
appetite daily, she comes slowly when
she is bidden, and goes wearily when
she is dismissed, with little more of vi-
tality than an automaton might show.

“ Heine,” her grandmother says, and
says it not unkindly, yet with more of
curiosity than kindness, “ what is the
matter with you ? You go gliding about
the house like some small gray ghost.
Are you not well ?”

“I am very well, madame.”

She resumes her seat. Jane appears
with a fresh and steaming pitcher of
lemonade, and departs. The young girl
listlessly takes up her book.

“ Shall I go on, madame ?”

“ No, I’m tired of it ; paying atten-
tion makes my head ache. But you may
as well remain. I expect a person who
owes me a sum of money ; he will be
here directly, and he will want you to
write him a receipt. Stay until he
comes.”

She leans back and closes her eyes.
She is a trifle curious still concerning
the change in her granddaughter, but
she will inquire no further. Can it be
her sister’s absence ? Nonsense ! they
seem fond of each other, but to fret over
a week’s separation would be ridiculous
indeed. The house seems desolate with-
out Marie’s fair, bright face — she is as-
tonished and vexed at the way she miss-
es her.

Then Longworth is absent, too, has
been absent for five days ; and what is
remarkable, was with Heine in the gar-
den the night before his departure, and
yet left without stepping in. This is
not like Laurence. She opens her eyes

THE HARP.

383

and glances at the motionless gray
figure at the window.

“ Beine,”

“ Yes, madame.”

“ Did Laurence Longworth tell you
that night last week where he was go-
ing next morning?”

“ He did not, madame.”

“ Hid he tell you he was going at
all ?» J * *

“ Ho, madame.”

“ Hid he not even bid you good-bye ?”
“ Hot even that.”

“ Curious !” says Mrs. Windsor, and
knits her brows. “ Why then did he
come ? What did he say ?”

“ I cannot remember all he said,
madame. Certainly not a word about
going away the next morning.”
t Mrs. Windsor turns upon her a keen,
sidelong, suspicious look. She is an odd
mixture of frankness and reticence, this
youthful relative of hers. If she has
made up her mind to be silent it will be
a difficult matter indeed to induce her
to speak. One of her most reticeut
moods is evidently upon her now.

“Can they have quarrelled?” she
muses. “ I thought only sentimental
simpletons in love quarrelled. And this
young woman is not a sentimental sim-
pleton. And if they have quarrelled,
what have they quarrelled about’? I
will know at once, and woe betide this
girl if she has played Laurence Long-
worth false !”

CHAPTER XXXI.

Mrs. Windsor’s meditations are doomed
to be cut short. After a few more rest-
less imaginations she closes her eyes
once more, and this time drops into a
dose. Beine throws aside the novel
with a tired sigh, and takes apathetical-
ly enough another book. It is a book
that never leaves Mrs. Windsor’s room
—it lies beside the ponderous family
Bible, is rarely opened by its owner. It
is a copy of the “ Imitation,” beautifully
bound, and on the fly-leaf, in a large,
free hand, is written —

“ To the best of Mothers — on her
birthday.— From her affectionate son.

“ George.”

Beine looks at the faded words long.
This is the^ dashing brother George,
of whom she has so often heard her

mother speak; the handsome, clever,
high-spirited son grandmamma loved
with all the love one heart ever held,
whose memory is more to her still than
all the world beside. She has learned
why Longworth has won so close a
place to that memory , she wonders if
George Windsor really looked like that
— tall, fair, broad-shouldered, strong.
Her mother was tall and slim, with a
thin, fretted face, a weak, querulous
voice, and tearful, pale blue eyes. Poor
mamma ! always ailing and unhappy
always making every one about her un-
happy too. No, George Windsor could
never have been like mamma ; he had
bright eyes and a sunny smile — she had
heard him described often.

And in the midst of all his youth and
beauty, and strong young manhood, he
had been struck down doing a good and
noble deed. Ho wonder grandmamma
was cold, and stern, and unloving.
Who would care to love in a world
where the word was only another
name for misery Love was of heaven,
a plant from paradise, never intended to
bloom and blossom in the desert here
below !

She opens the book at random — it is
a book beloved always, and well known.
A marker is between the leaves at the
chapter called, “ The King’s Highway
of the Holy Cross,” and Beine begins to
read.

“ Sometimes thou shalt be left by God,
other times thou shalt be afflicted by
thy neighbour, and what is more, thou
shalt often be a trouble to thyself.

“ For God would have thee to suffer
tribulations without comfort, and wholly
to subject thyself to him, and to become
more humbly by tribulation.

“ Host thou think to escape that which
no mortal could ever avoid !”

She can read no more; she closes the
book, replaces it, folds her arms on the
table, and lays her face down upon
them : —

“ For God would have thee to suffer
tribulation without comfort, and become
more humble by tribulation.”

Yes, yes. Oh! yes, she has been
proud, and self-willed, and rebellious,
and her punishment has fallen. Her
pride is humbled to the very dust , she
has been stabbed to the heart in the
hour of exultation. She has lost what

THE HARP.

she was learning to hold so dear; she is
despised where she was beginning to
seek for approbation, scorned where
she most wished to be highly held.

She does not blame Longworth — he
has acted hastily and rashly ; all the
same, she could not have explained if he
had come in calmest moderation to ask
that explanation. How strange he
should so have overheard. Is there a
fate, a Nemesis, in these things? She
does not blame him ; she only feels
crushed, stunned, benumbed, left strand-
ed on some barren rock, the land of
promise gone for ever, with a drearily
aching heart, and a sense of loss and
loneliness for ever with her.

Six days have passed since that moon-
light night by the vgarden wall, when
she had sat with hidden face and list-
ened to Longworth’s bitter, scathing
words. He has gone the next day, Marie
is gone, and Miss Hariott, by some fata-
lity, is absent for a few days with some
country friends. She has not once stir-
red outside the gates, she has not once
seen Durand during this interval. She
has said nothing of her broken engage-
ment. When Longworth comes back
he will tell her grandmother; he must
tell. She does not know what the re-
sult will be — she does not care. Noth-
ing worse can happen than has happen-
ed already.

She lies still for a long time. She has
slept very little last night, and in the
silence and warmth of the room she
drops half asleep now. A loud knock
at the house-door startles her into wake-
fullness. She sits upright, and Cather-
ine opens the parlour door, and announ-
ces “ Mr. Martin.”

Mr. Martin, a bluff, elderly man, comes
in, and Heine goes over and gently
awakes her grandmother, annd tells her
her expected visitor has come.

“ Well, ma’am,” says Mr. Martin, in a
hearty voice, “ here I am up to time,
and with the money down on the nail.
Fifteen hundred and fifty pounds, that’s
the amount, ma’am, ain’t it? Here’s
the cash all correct and proper ; count
it over — countit over !”

“ Heine,” Mrs. Windsor say, languid-
ly, “ count it, please, and then write out
Mr. Martin’s receipt.”

Reine obeys. She counts over the
roll of notes carefully, finds the amount

right, produces pen and paper, and
makes out a receipt for Mrs. Windsor to
sign.

“ Take this money upstairs,” says
Mrs. Windsor, “and lock it in the cabi-
net in my bedroom. Here is the key.”

“ And when you’ve locked it up,
young lady,” interposes Mr. Martin,
with refreshing frankness, “ I would
advise you to take a turn in the fresh
air. One of my girls fainted yesterday,
and she didn’t iook a mite paler doing
it than you do now.”

“Yes, go,” her grandmother says,
coldly, and looking annoyed. “ The
heat of this room makes you look wretch-
ed. Lock the cabinet and leave the key
on my dressing table.”

“Ay, ay, look out for the key,” says
bluff Mr. Martin ; “ can’t be too particu-
lar about money. It’s a sight easier
to lose always than to find. Nobody
hadn’t ought to keep money in the
house anyhow.”

“ There is not the slightest danger,”
answers Mrs. Windsor, still very coldly;
“ burglars are almost unknown in Bay-
mouth, and I keep no one in my house
whose honesty I cannot implicitly
trust.”

Heine leaves the room and goes slow-
ly to her grandmother’s bedchamber.
The cabit mentioned is a frail but very
handsome Japanese affair of ebony, in-
laid with pearl and silver. She places
the roll of notes in one of the drawers,
locks it, and lays the key, as directed,
on the dressing-table. As she descends
the stairs again, she encounters Cathe-
rine with a letter.

“ For you, Miss Heine,” the woman
says, and hands it to her. “Law, miss
how white you do look. Quite faintly
like, I declare. Ain’t you well?”

For Heine, not Marie, is the favourite
of the household now. Time has told,
and though Miss Landelle is as lavish
of sweet smiles and gentle words as ever,
it has been discovered that she is selfish
and exacting, and not at all particular
as to how much oi how little trouble she
may give those who attend her.

“ She can’t even put on her own
clothes, she’s that helpless,” says Cath-
erine, indignantly, “ nor so much as
button her boots or her gloves, but it’s
please, Catherine, here, and thanks,
Catherine, there, Catherine, do this, and

THE HARP.

Catherine, fetch that, and Catherine, go
for ’tother, from morning till night. She
don’t mind, bless you, how often she
rings her bell and brings you upstairs
to ask you where’s the pins that are
lying on the table before her eyes, or
how her back hair looks, or her over-
skirt sets. It don’t tire her legs, you
know. But Miss Eeine can do things
for herself, and find things, and has a
little feeling, and would do without
what she wanted sooner than make you
fly up again before you got right down.
Miss Marie’s pretty as a picture, and
smiles sweet, I don’t deny, and never
says a cross word, but give me Miss
Eeine for my money, after all.”

“ I am quite well, thank you, Cathe-
rine,” Eeine answers and takes her
letter.

It is from Marie — the first she has
received. She goes out, sits down in the
stone porch, opens it eagerly, and
reads —

Boston, October 3, 18 —

“ Chere Petite, — When you receive
this, I shall be (as heroines say when
they elope) far away. I am not going
to elope, but neither am I going back
as soon as I had intended. Mr. Frank
insists on our making a trial trip in the
famous yacht, and pleads so piteously
for my company that it would be cruel
to refuse. His mother, and a very
charming young lady of this city, form
the rest cf the party. We visit the Isle
of Shoals, and will look at some coast
scenery for a few day, not, probably,
more than a week, for I know, in spite
of all Mr. Frank’s reasoning, that I shall
be sea-sick. It is doubtful, however, if
I shall return even at the close of this
excursion, for Mrs. Dexter urges both
Miss Lee (the Boston lady) and myself
to accompany her to Georgia for a
month. Miss Lee has consented, and
Mrs. Dexter has written to grandmam-
ma for me. I hope she may say yes,
for I shall like it extremely. Has Leonce
gone ? If not he may as well make up
his mind to go. He will certainly gain
nothing by remaining. You may show
him this letter if you see fit. Adieu,
Petite. With your devoted Mr. Long-
worth by your side, your bosom friend,
Miss Hariott, close by, you will hardly
miss, even if she goes to Georgia, your
own “ Marie.”

385

The letter drops in Heine’s lap, her
hands clasp with a wild gesture.

“ Oh, heavens j” she says, and sits
looking at it, a sort of horror in her
eyes. “ Gone ! and in the yacht with
him, and to his home in Georgia to be
absent so long. Oh, how shall I tell
Leonce this ?”

As if her thought had evoked him,
she sees through the trees, stripped and
wind blown, Durand himself approach-
ing the gate at the moment. Can he be
ccmingin? She rises, and runs down
the path, and meets him just as he lays
his hand on the gate.

“I could endure it no longer,” he
says ; “I made up my mind to brave
the dragon, and go to the house to see
you. For a week I have been waiting
and looking for you in vain. Where
have you been ? What is the matter ?
You look wretched, Petite ; have you
been ill ?”

She does not answer. She stands
looking at him, the gate closed between,
her face grayish pale in the dull even-
ing light, blank terror looking at him
out of her eyes.

Ls it anything about Marie ?” he
demands, quickly. “ Is she coming
back ? Have you heard from her ? Is
that a letter ? Let me see it.”

He reaches over and takes it our of
her hand before she can prevent it.

“ Leonce,” she exclaims, in a terrified
voice, “ let me tell you first. Do not
read the letter. Oh ! Leonce, do not be
angry with her! Indeed, indeed &he
means no harm.”

He turns from her, and reads the let
ter slowly, finishes it, and reads it again.
The afternoon has worn to evening, and
it is nearly dark now, but Eeine can see
the look of deadly pallor she knows on-
ly too well blanch his face, sees a gleam
dark and fierce, and well remembered
come into his eyes. Bat his manner
does not change , he turns to her quiet-
ly, and hands it back.

“ Allons /” he says, “ so she has gone.
Well, I am not surprised. I half expect-
ed as much from the first. If she finds
the South pleasant, as how can she oth-
erwise in the society of Mrs. Dexter, it
is probable she will not return for the
winter. She likes warmth ; Georgia will
suit her much better than Baymouth
and a long northern winter.”

986

THE HARP.

“ Leonce ”

“ You are not looking well, Petite,”
he interrupts, “ and Mr. Longworth is
away. Has the one anything to do with
the other ?”

“ Listen, Leonce ”

“ No, Petite. Let us talk and think
of you a little. Some one should think
of you, for you never had a habit of
thinking of yourself. You are looking
ill, and I fear you are not happy. I
think, too, that Monsieur Longworth is
jealous of me, and that my presence here
may be the cause of your unhappiness.
It shall be the cause no longer. I go
to-morrow.”

His face keeps its settled pallor, his
eyes their dark and dangerous gleam,
but his voice is low, and quieter, if pos-
sible than usual. She stands looking at
him in mute fear.

“ 1 ought never to have come. I know
that Monsieur Longworth thinks I am
or have been yeur lover. Undeceive
him, Petite, when he returns — tell him
the truth. You may trust him. He loves
you — in a cold and unsatisfactory fash-
ion, it may be, but after his light. He
will keep the secret, never fear, and
then for you all will go on velvet. I
will not detain you, little one, lest the
terrible grandmamma should miss you
and make a storm. Whom have we
here ?”

He draws back. The house door opens,
but it is only Mr. Martin going home.

“ You ought to haVe a shawl, miss,”
saj’s the old farmer. “It is turning chilly
and you’ll catch cold. Don’t forget to
look after the money. I hope you locked
it up all safe ?”

Heine bows silently. As he opens the
gate, he catches sight of Durand, and
eyes him keenly. “ Sho !” thought the
Yankee farmer; “ I didn’t know she’d
got her beau, or I’d have been more
careful speaking of the money. Nobody
knows who to trust.”

“ Who is that?” asks Durand.

“ A man who has been paying grand-
mamma some money !”

“ A large sum ?”

£ Fifteen hundred pounds.”

“ I wish I had it,” Durand says, with
a short laugh. “I went to Monaco be-
fore I came to America, and won enough
to keep me ever since. But I am a beg-

gar once more, and Monaco is incon'
veniently far off.”

“ I can lend you, Leonce,” Heine says,
eagerly, taking out her purse. “ Madame
Windsor paid me my quarterly — how
shall I call it? — salary — allowance —
what you will — yesterday. I do not
want it. Pray take it!”

“ Thanks, Petite — it is like you; but,
no, I will not take it. Keep it for your
poor ones. The terrible grandmamma
is liberal at least, is she ?”

“ Most liberal indeed, if money were
all.”

“ I wonder she likes to keep such
large sums in the house. It is rather
lonely here too.”

“ She does not think fifteen hundred
pounds a large sum. She generally
keeps enough for the current expenses
each month in her room, and there are
no robbers in Baymouth.”

Durand’s eyes lift and fix for a mo
ment on the room that is grandmam
ma’s He knows it, for Heine once point
ed it out, and her own and Marie’s.

“ But tell me of yourself,” she says.
“ Oh, Leonce, do not follow Marie. You
may trust her indeed. She is angry
with, but cares nothing for Frank Dex-
ter. It is because she is angry that she
goes. You know Marie — she is not
easily aroused. It is the sweetest tem-
per in the world; but when aroused — ”

“ Implacable. Do I not know it ? How
am I to follow her ? She gives no ad-
dress, and I have no money. I must go
to New York and join my people — the
opera season approaches. Have no fears
for me, m' amour — take care of yourself.
Tell Monsieur Longworth — it will be
best.”

“ I cannot. I have promised Marie.”

“ Break your promise. Think of
yourself Do not sacrifice your life to
her selfishness. She would not for you,
believe me. You lbve her well, but love
her wisely. Do not let Monsieur Long-
worth make you unhappy by thinking
I am your lover. Petite, may I ask you
— am I not your brother ? — do you love
this cold, stern, proud Monsieur Long-
worth ?”

She turns her face from him in the
dim gloaming, and he sees a spasm of
pain cross it.

‘‘Ah, I see. I wonder if he knows
what a heart of gold he has won. Petite

THE HARP.

S87

1 am going. Who knows when or how
we may meet again ? Say you forgive
me before I go.”

“ Forgive you, my brother ?”

“For coming. I should not have
come, I have brought you nothing but
trouble. All the amends I can make is
to go, and return no more. Return I
never will — that I swear ! Petite Peine,
.adieu !”

“Leonce, Leonce,” she cries, in an
agony, “ you mean something ! Oh,
what is it?”

“I mean nothing, dear Petite, but
farewell. Once more adieu !”

He leans forward, and salutes her in
his familiar French fashion on both
cheeks. Her eyes are full of tears Some-
thing in his face, in his eyes as they look
at her, chills and terrifies her.

“Leonce,” she says again, but he is
gone.

Once he looks back to wave his hand
and smile farewell. She stands and
watches the slight, active figure until he
turns the corner and is gone.

The darkness has fallen. She is con-
scious for the first time how bleakly
cold it is. A high wind sweeps around
her, a few drops of rain fall from the
overcast sky. Chilled in the wet and
windy darkness, she turns with a shiver
and goes back to the house.

CHAPTER XXXII.

TWO IN THE MORNING.

Mrs. Windsor’s influenza is worse,
Reine discovers, when she re-enters the
parlour, and Mrs. Windsor’s temper
suffers in proportion. The paroxysms
of sneezing are incessant now ; there
appears to be nothing for it but bed be-
times, and a mustard footbath, warm
gruel, and a fresh supply of hot lemon-
ade. All these remedies with the help
of Jane and Catherine, are attainable.
The, lady is helped to her chamber, is
placed in bed, the nightlight turned
down to a minute point, the door is
closed, and she is left to repose.

Reine returns below.

“It is barely eight o’clock, and there
is a long evening before her. How shall
she spend it ? If she were in the mood
for music, music is out of the question,
with 'grandmamma invalided above.
There are book-, but she reads a great

deal, and even books grow wearisome.
“ Of the making of many books there
is no end, and much learning is a weari-
ness of the flesh.” Everything is a
weariness; there are good things in the
world, but they do not last — nothing
lasts but the disappointments, the sin,
the suffering, the heartbreak. They go
on for ever.

Shall she go and see Miss Hariott ?
Catherine has just informed her that
Candace has informed her that Miss
Hariott has returned. She has missed
her friend unutterably, her strong com-
mon sense, her quick, over-ready sym-
pathy for all troubles great and little.
Her troubles are not little, Reine thinks ;
they are very great and real, and even
Miss Hariott is powerless to help her.

Still, it will be something only to look
into her brave, frank eyes, to feel the
strong, cordial clasp of her hand, to hear
her cheerful, cosy gossip, to sit in that
comfortable ingle nook which Long-
worth talks of so often and likes so well.

She goes to the window and looks out
at the night — black, pouring, windy.
But she is not afraid of a little rough
weather, and the long hours here alone
will be simply intolerable. Yes, she will
go. She gets her waterproof and rub-
bers, pulls the hood over her head, takes
an umbrella, looks into the kitchen to
tell them, and starts forth into the wet
and windy darkness. The distance is
not long ; she knows the road well ; ten
minutes brisK walking will bring her to
the cottage, and does.

Yes, Miss Hariott is at home. The
light from her windows streams forth
cheerily into the bleak wet street.
Reine rings, half smiling to think how
surprised her friend will be, and Can-
dace admits her.

“ Lawful sakes 1” Candace begins ;
but her misstress’s voice from the half-
open sitting-room door, breaks in —

“If that’s the post-man, Candace,
don’t stand taking there ; fetch me my
letters instantly.”

It isn’t the postman, Miss Hester,
honey,” says Candace ; “ it’s Miss Reme
come to see you through all the pourin’
rain. Lor, chile, how wet you is !”

Instantly Miss Hariott is in the hall,
indignant remonstrance in face and tone
struggling with gratified affection.

“You ridiculous child to come out

388

THE HARP

such a night ; but it is awfully good of
you to come ! You will get your death
of cold ; but I am delighted to see you
just the same. Take these wet things,
Candace, and fetch in a nice hot cup of
tea, and some of those cakes that smell
so good baking out there. Come in, you
mermaid, you Undine, and tell me what
drove you out such a night. I wonder
what Mrs. Windsor was thinking of to
let you.”

“ She did not let me. She is ill in bed
with cold, and knows nothing about it.”
“ You’re a self-willed little minx, and
like to have your own wicked way. Sit
down here and put your teet to the fire.
This is Larry’s chair, but you may have
it; it is all one now. He is away, Marie
is away, grandmamma is in bed, and all
the cats being out of sight, this misbe-
haved mouse does as she likes with im-
punity. Now, child, it does me good to
sit and look at you. What a little dear
you are to come and see me so soon.
Have you really missed me ?”

“ More than I can say, madam e. It
has been the longest and loneliest week
I ever spent in my life.”

“ Well, that is natural enough. Your
sister is gone, and you are wonderfully
fond of that pretty sister ; I ongworth
is gone, and you are wonderfully — no, I
won’t say it. Has anybody else gone ?”

“ Somebody is going,” Eeine says,
drearily ; “he came to say goad* bye
poor fellow, just at nightfall.”

“ You mean that handsome little Mon-
sieur Durand. Well — I ought to be
sorry because you are sorry ; but, to tell
the truth, I am not.”

“You don’t like Leonce — poor Leonce!
And yet I do not see why. He has his
faults, many and great, but he is so gen-
tle, so tender-hearted, so really good in
spite of all. And you know nothing of
him — why should you dislike him, Miss
Hariott ?”

“ I do not dislike him. I do not like
him. I do not trust him. You love
him, little Queen, very dearly.”

(To be Continued.')

Wickedness can be seen through the
thickest fog, but virtue has to have an
electric light turned on before it will be
recognised by the world.

CANADIAN ESSAYS.

DENIS FLORENCE McCARTHY.

BY JOSEPH K. FORAN.

McCarthy, was not only one of the most
original, but even the sweetest poet of
the Nation. His style differs from that
of Davis, of Mangan, of Williams, of
Fergusson, of Duffy; in fact he has a
style peculiar to himself. Of his life we
know but little. He yet lives, at a ripe
old age, to enjoy the beauties of that
Bay of Dublin, which he so well des-
cribed and to peacefully and calmly “hus-
band out life’s taper to the close.” We
find his name often made mention of, by
the Young Irelanders, and above all the
men of the Nation, when telling of their
excursions into the country every year
and when speaking of their literary
meetings in the city. But only as a
poet is McCarthy known to the world.
He seldom and perhaps never wrote,
save in verse, for the press. Knowing
so little of his actual life, and only hav-
ing a knowledge of him through his
beautiful poetic productions, we will be
obliged to confine ourselves to a short
reference to the principal poems he
wrote, and to the tracing out of a few
of the endless gems of thought which
he so well expressed.

McCarthy’s poem of the “ Bell-Foun-
der,” is a production unique in the
English language. A few passages from
it will suffice to give a faint idea of the
rhythm and strength of expression and
depth of feeling nobleness of sentiment
contained in that versified reproduction
of a story well known to our readers.
In the opening lines, when the poet
desires to go, away to Italy to there
take up his story which must end in
Erin — he begs Ireland to excuse him
for thus leaving her for a while — and
the reader will judge for himself of the
power of that introduction.

“ 0 Erin! Thou desolate mother, the heart
in thy bosom is sore,

And wringing thy hands in despair thou dost
roam round a plague-stricken shore ?

Thy children are dying or flying, thy great
ones are laid in the dust.

And those who survive are divided and those
who control are uujust —

Wilt thou blame me, dear mother, if turn-
ing mine eyes from these horrors away —

1 lookthro’the night of our wretchedness back
to some bright vanished day ?”

THE HARP.

589

Thus he runs on, until he has ex-
plained his reason for leaving Ireland
to take up a story in Italy and having
done so, he opens as follows his first
picture of the land of vine.

S£ In that land where the heaven tinted pencil
giveth shape to the splendor of dreams.”

He tells of Paolo the youg Campanero
and of his love for Francesca and of
their bethrothal and marriage. In that
portion of the poem the sentiments, ex-
pressed and the ideas displayed are
simply magnificent.

Then we come to the making of the
Bells for the Church of our Lady and
the well painted scenes in the workshop
and the blessing of the bells. Thus
does he describe the entry into the
Church with the new bells.

Xi Now they enter and now more divinely the
saints’ painted effigies smile,

Now the acolytes bearing lit tapers move
solemnly down thro’ the aisle ;

Now the thurifer swings the rich censer and
the white curling vapor up-floats.

And hangs round the deep pealing organ and
blends with the tremulous notes.”

The ceremony of the blessing is de-
scribed and then the chime is suspended
on high.

£ ‘ Toll, toll ! with rapid vibration, with a
melody silvery and strong,

The bells from the sound-shaking belfry
are singing their first maiden song,
Rapid, more rapid the clapper, resounds to
the rounds of the bells
Far and more far o’er the valley the inter-
twined melody swells, &c.”

Thus on does he describe, until that
fatal hour when —

u Feuds fell like a plague upon Florence and
rage from without and within ;

Peace turned her mild eyes from the havoc
and Mercy grew deaf in the din —

Fear strengthened the Dovewings of Hap-
piness tremblingly borne on the gale,
And the Angel Security vanished as the
War demon sweep o’er the vale.”

The Bells are taken away from the
tower and the old man’s children are
killed on the field and his wife
Francesca dies of a broken heart. The
pictures of these misfortunes drawn by
the poet are very beautiful. At last he
says :

“ As the smith in the dark sullen smithy
striketh quick on the anvil below,

Thus fate on the heart of the old man struck
rapidly blow after blow.”

In a rage of despair Paolo resolves to

fly from Florence and to seek thro’ the
world for his bells. The journey of the
old man through Italy is splendidly
described —

“ He sees not the blue waves of Bair nor
Ischia’s summits of brown,

He sees but the tall Campanile that rise o’er
each far gleaming town.”

His heart set upon the finding of his
bells, he seeks a vessel bound for Spain
and there he finds that :

“ A bark bound for Erin lay waiting, he
enters as one in a dream,

Fair winds and full purple sails brought him
soon to the Shannon’s soft stream,

’T was an evening that Florence might envy,
so light was the lemon-hued air,

As it lay on lone Scattery’s Island or lit the
green mountains of Clare.”

The old man sees not the beautiful
scenery described by the poet, he
only watches the towers of the churches.
At last Limerick spreads out beneath
them and Saint Mary’s square tower
arises in the distance. The old man
listens and finally a peal of melody rings
from the tower. He hears in it the call
of his bells that ask of their father to
never again leave them —

“ ’Tis granted— he smiles— his eye closes —
the breath from his white lips has fled,
The father has gone to his children — the old
Campanero isdead !”

Were it possible we would desire to
place the whole of this poem before the
public. The chant to labor in the first
part the description of the happy and
unhappy scenes that surround the life
of the Bell Founder and the numberless
magnificent passages that are contained
in those four pages, would serve, even
I had McCarthy never written another
1 poem to place him amongst the first of
I those who strove to woo the muses in
the language of the Saxon. But if the
language used by McCarthy is that of
the Saxon the sentiments expressed are
those ot the Celt.

Another of McCarthy’s exquisite
poems is his “ Alice and Una.” Of this
we can give but two stanzas — it is of
great length and beauty and would carry
us beyond our space. However in the
following lines the reader may form an
idea of masterly rhyme employed by the
poet —

“ Ah ! the pleasant time has vanished, e’er
our wretched bodings banished,

All the graceful spirit people, children of the
earth and sea,

390

THE HARP.

Whom in days, now dim and olden, when the
world was fresh and gclden ;

Every mortal could behold in haunted rath
and tower and tree ;

They have vanished, they are banished ;
Ah ! how sad the tale for thee —

Lonely Ciemaneigh 1”

“'Still we have a new romance in fire ships
thro’ the tame seas glancing,

And the snorting and the prancing of the
mighty engine-steed ;

Still Astolpho— like we wander, thro’ the
boundless azure yonder,

Realizing what seems fonder than the magic
tales we read,

Tales of wild Arabian wonder, where the
fancy all is freed,

Wilder far indeed !”

To one more of McCarthy's lengthier
poems we must refer and give a
couple of samples of the
style. It would never do to pass
over the “Foray ot Con O’Donnell.”
Like Scott’s “Lady of the Lake” or
“ Lay of the Last Minstrel.” M ;Carthy’s
“ Foray of Con O’Donnell ” is a splen-
did description of the times when the
clans were at eternal war and when
love, hatred, jealousy, affection, courage
and a thousand sentiments at once filled
the souls of the chiefs.

He describes a bard singing in the
hall of Con O’Donnell the chief of a Clan.
The bard praises the wife, the steed and
hound of Mac John and swears their
equals are not on Irish soil. The blood
of Con is heated with wine, and his pas-
sions are alive and in a fit of rage he
takes away with him his clansmen, and
descends at night upon the castle of
MacJohn. They snatch the wife from
her husband’s arms, they lead away the
hound and steed and sack the castle
from tower to base.

When the bard tries to describe the
wife of MacJohn she merely sings : —

“ If lovers listen to my lay,

Description is but thrown away :

If lovers read this antique tale,

What need 1 speak of red or pale ?

The fairest form, the brightest eye,

Are simply those for which they sigh :
The truest picture is but faint,

To what a lover’s heart can paint.”

Thus did the wicked bard excite the
feelings of his chief — till on o’er
Antrim's hills was seen to march “ The
strong small powerful force of Con.”
But if an Irish Chief is hasty, he has a
heart, and noble and better feelings
these soon return. On his way home

with the spoils Con stops on Benbragh’s
heights and sees his own castle and
fields of Tirhugh beneath him. He
asks himself how would he feel if on
reaching home his place was destroyed,
his wife away, his castle despoiled by
robber bands and the old noble gener-
ous sentiment arises and Con thus
speaks : —

“ Fidelity a crime is found,

Or else why chain this faithful hound ;
Obedience, too, a crime must be,

Or else this steed were roaming free ;

And woman’s love the worst of sins,

Or Anne were queen of Antrim’s Glynnes !”

He returns the hound and the steed
and then turning to MacJohn and Anne
he cries —

“ Thine is the outward perfect form,

Thine, too, the subtler inner life,

The love that doth that bright shape warm
Take back, MacJohn, they peerless wife I”

“ MacJohn I stretch to yours and you,

This hand beneath God’s blessed sun. — ■
And for the wrong that I might do ;

Forgive the wrong that I have done :

Well for poor Erin's wrongs and griefs,

If thus would join her severed Chiefs /”

There is yet another splendid, but
very long poem entitled “The Yoyage
St Brendan.” We cannot even now go
into a synopsis of the subject, but we
will give a single extract to show the
style of verse and the choice of lan-
guage — speaking of the midnight sky ;

“ What earthly temple such a roof can
boast ?

What flickering lamp with the rich star-light
vies ;

When the round moon rests, like a Sacred-
Host,

Upon the Azure altar of the skies ?”

Of McCarthy’s shorter poems his
ballads and lyrics are very unique and
touching. His translations are really*
fine ; but none of his productions are
equal to those in which the poet’s soul
seems to flow, those poems on subjects
upon which the writer loved to dwell and
which had for him the peculiar attrac-
tion of home and home associations.
Amongst this class we might mention
his “Kate of Kenmare.” In this lyric
the versification is different from that
heretofore made use of in any other of
his poems.

“ Oh! many bright eyes full of goodness and
gladness,

Where the pure soul looks out and the heart
loves to shine ;

THE HARP.

391

And many cheeks pale with the soft hue of
sadness,

Have I worshipped in silence and felt them
divine ;

But Hope in its gleamings, or love in its
dream ings,

INe’er fashioned a being so faultless and fair,
lAs the lily-checked beauty, the rose of the
1 Haughty,

The fawn of the valley, sweek Kate of
1 Kenmare 1”

Another of those exquisite ballads is
M Shanganah.” In this again the poet
changes his form of verse. One would
almost imagine that his store was with-
out bounds, so numerous are his styles
of composition. Thus does he open the
“ Yale of Shanganah.”

“ When I have knelt in the temple of duty,
Worshipping honor and valor and beauty ;
When, like a brave man, in fearless resis-
tence,

I’ve fought the good fight on the field of
existence ;

When a home I have won in the conflict of
labor,

With truth for my armor and Thought for
my sabre.

Be that home, a calm home where my old
age may rally,

A home full of peace in a sweet pleasant
valley !

Sweetest of vales is the vale of Shanganah !
Brightest of vales is the vale of Shanganah !
May the accents of love, like the droppings
of manna,

Fall soft on my heart, in the vale of
Shanganah !”

It is unnecessary to cite from the
“ Pillar Towers of Ireland.” Who, that
has ever read Irish poetry, has not
learned those lines by heart ? Again
his lyric entitled “ The Bemembrance,”
is also too well known to here fill space
by citations, therefrom. And surely all
those who have seen the ballads of Ire-
land, must remember “ The Clan of
MacCaura.

“ Montmorency, Medina, unheard was thy
rank,

By the dark eyed Ibernian and light-hearted
Frank —

Andycur Ancestors wandered obscure and
unknown,

By the smooth Guadalquivir and sunny
Garonne —

E’er Venice had wedded the sea, or enroll’d,
the name of her Doge in her proud book of
gold f

When their glory was all to come on like the
morrow.

There were Chieftains and Kings of the Clan
of MacCaura !”

McCarthy wrote a series called “ Na-
tional songs.” Of these we have good
specimens in his “ Price of Freedom,”
— “Voice and Pen;” — “New-Year’s
Songs ;” — “ The Living Land — “ A
Mystery;” — “God bless the Turk — -
“A Voice in the Desert / ’—and his grand
tribute to the great O’Connell in his
lament for “The dead Tribune.” To
form an idea of the spirit infused into
those National songs by the bard we
will justgivea couple of stanzas from his
poem. “ The Kemonstrance ” and with
these lines we will close the number of
quotations that almost fill up this essay.

“ Bless the dear old verdant land !

Brother wert thou born of it ?

As thy shadow, life doth stand.

Twining round its rosy band ;

Did an Irish mother’s hand
Guide thee in the morn of it?

Did thy father’s mild command
Teach thee love or scorn of it ?

“ Thou who tread’st its fertile breast —
Dost thou feel a glow for it ?

Thou of all its charms possess’d —

Living on its first and best —

Art thou but a thankless guest—

Ora traitor foe for it ?

If thou lovest, where the test ?

Woulds’t thou strike a blow for it?”

For this essay we cannot justly claim
any originality. It consists of nothing
more than a reproduction of a number of
verses written by a poet, — a number of
verses which lose much of their strength
through the impossibility of our, here,
presenting the reader with the full
poems. But as we have often repeated,
we only hope that these pages may
draw attention to the poems of Denis
Florence McCarthy, and serve to create
a deMre amongst a few, at least, of
learning from his published works —
the numbers of which are really too
scarce— -how truly poetic were some of
the Bards of the Nation ! Perchance
there are not more than four or five
copies of McCarthy’s “Lyrics and
Ballads,” on this side of the Atlantic ;
and having the happiness of being able to
come upon a number we think it just to
give the public a slight idea, at least, of
how many beautiful poems this man
has written and which are as yet com-
paratively unknown.

Green Park, Aylmer, P.Q.

THE HARP.

592

CHIT-CHAT.

— We live in a great age. Hew
crimes are being invented every dajL
Nor is the British government, that
quintessence ot red-tape-ism ! — behind
hand in the march of invention.
It is in the “ Sister Isle ” that she has
made the latest find. The warrant for
Mr. Hodnett’s arrest charges him with
having “ feloniously assaulted a dwell-
ing house ” ! Now, what in the name
of common sense does this mean ?
Irishmen are ’cute fellows, but Mr.
Hodnett must have been the cutest of the
cute to “assault a dwelling house.” How
did he do it ? Hid he go behind its back
like a cowardly English garotter, and
putting his arm round its neck before
it knew he was there, draw its necker-
chief tight round its neck and strangle
it ? Or did he call it names unbecom-
ing a gentleman, and then black its
eyes ? Or did he give it a “ punch i
th’ye-ad,” or a “ purr-i-th’guts ” like a
genuine English wife-beater ? which ?

— Once upon a time so goes the fable
(all fables were once upon a time)
mighty preparations for war were going
on at Athens. Everybody — or at least
everybody, who was anybody (for we
opine there were nobodies in Athens as
elsewhere) was busy. Only Diogenes,
as became a philosopher and the “ no-
bodies,” had nothing to do. To keep
up appearances — even philosophers and
nob.odies are strong on “appearances ”
he began to roll his tub. What are you
doing ? asked the passers by. Cannot
you see ? answered the philosopher.
“Yes; clear enough but what are you
doing it for?” “Preparing for war ”
answered the philosopher, and round
went the tub. Had he told the truth he
would have said he was “ saving appear-
ances.” We have great respect for Lord
Lieutenants and very little for Diogenes,
philosopher-fool as he was, but in this
case of “assaulting a dwelling house”
we are inclined to suspect that he-of-
Dublin was not one whit less a liar than
he-of-Athens. The philosopher-fool of
Athens in the interests of war, rolls his tub,
the philosopher- fool of Dublin in the in-
terests of the Coercion Act, arrests a man
for “ assaulting a dwelling house.” Both are
nobodies, have nothing to do, and are

ashamed of it ; both must keep up ap-
pearances ; the one does so by rolling
his tub, the other by arresting innocent
men for “ assaulting a dwelling house.”
“ Both pretend to do it in the interests of
peace. “ Yive la humbug ” !

— Old Father Antic — the Law is a
strange personage, and no where more
antic than in that Cinderella of the na-
tions, “the Sister Isle.” We thought we
were prepared for all sorts of queer
things from “Justices English,” but this
imprisoning of a man for “assaulting a
dwelling house ” takes us from behind.
We don’t understand it — we cannot. It
looks to us more like the up-stream
wolf reproaching the down- stream
lamb for riling the water on him, than
a grave warrant after Coke and Little-
ton signed with all the regalia and para-
phernalia of a Lord Lieutenant.

— What are the Land League doing
to be guilty of so grave a crime. Let
them look to their laurels, or we shall
have to give them up. “ If I be drunk,
I’ll be drunk with those that have the
fear of God, and not with drunken
knaves ” quoth Slender.

— Citizen Gambettahas been making
a speech on education which leaves him
in a strange plight. He said-—

“ We have no dogmas, no creeds, no
catechism to acquire or to propagate.”

Yery well; so much the worse for
Gambetta.

A man with no dogmas, no creeds, no
catechism is simply a nuisance, a nonen-
tity a dotard. As well have no brains as
no dogma. Even an ass has dogma.
Thistles are his dogma ; not a
very exalted one but still dogma.
And the possession of this dogma
is proof that he has brains. “No
brains no dogma” ; “no dogma no
brains,” are converse propositions equal-
ly true. In proclaiming then his absence
from dogma Citizen Gambetta the great
tribune of the people has only pro-
claimed his absence of brains ; not a
very exalted or delectable position truly.

— Gambetta is evidently no psycholo-
gist ; your demagogue seldom is. If he
will study the animal kingdom he will
find that the larger the brain, the .more

THE HARP.

•>93

the dogma. The polipod has only one
dogma and no brain. His dogma is a
full stomach. The sponges have only
one dogma and no brain. Their dogma
is lippets ana young oysters. When we
come to the elephant we find many
dogmas and much brain. Citizen Gam-
betta has put himself down below the
sponges.

— But we are not quite as certain as
Citizen Gambetta appears to be, that he
has no dogma. Proudhon made the
French Republic an act of faith, thereby
only substituting one dogma — the di vine
right of republics — for another — the
divine right of kings. We suspect
Citizen G-ambetta’s conduct differs
little from that of Proudhon in
this affair of education. He is
merely substituting the divine
right of Citizen Gambetta in educational
matters, for the divine right of the
Church. It remains to be seen whether
the voice of the people will long tolerate
this substitution of Priapus for the God
of the Christians. We know well what
Citizen Gambetta alludes to when he
speaks of dogmas and catechisms. But
before sneering at those whose lives are
ruled by such things, he should first of
all see whether he himself is altogether
free from them. The pot should never
call the kettle bad names until it is well
assured that its own coppers are clean.
Our French tribune of the people deems
universal suffrage infallible. Now what
is this but a dogma ? He professes “no
God” “ no religion ” : what are these
but dogmas. No very exalted ones
certainly, but still dogmas.

— A shocking tragedy has lately oc-
curred in Preston, England. A man
named Eccleston interfered to protect a
woman who was being beaten b} T two
roughs, when the two men set upon him
knocked him down and literally kicked
him to death with their iron shod clogs.
The jury refused to return a verdict of
wilful murder against the two men.
Surely this English crime of kicking to
death, was more deserving of Kilmain-
ham Jail, than that curiously Irish one
of “ feloniously assaulting a dwelling
house.” Will the Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland take a note of this.

— We live in a gushing age ; and
strange to say your money making
Yankee is your most eloquent of
“ gushers.” There must be something
passing strange in the Russian jewels if
the following from an American pen be
not gush.

“ The splendour of their tints is deli-
cious intoxication to the eye. The soul
of all the fiery roses of Persia lives in
their rubies ; the freshness of all green
sward, whether in Alpine valley or in
English lawn, in their emeralds ; the
bloom of all Southern seas in their neck-
laces of pearl .”

Surely this is gush !

. — Or is it another case of Evolu-
tion. With such splendours as these
the Russian jewels must certainly have
levelled up, (and that pretty rapidly)
through “ the battle of life ” and “ the
survival of the fittest,” not indeed from
the ape, but from the roses, and lawns
and southern seas and harvest moons.-—
Wonderful Russian jewels ! transcendant
in your splendours as in your origin !
You are more exalted than man, who
has only come up from the ape.

— But we fear, our American writer
has done an injustice to the Russian
jewels. It is never well to praise too
much if only for the disappointment of
the thing. We dare wager a bark-canoe
against a scoop-out, that Xenophon’s
Cyrus and the veritable Cyrus were
widely different personages ; and that,
if we could but see the real original, we
should laugh him to scorn as against
Xenophon’s hero. Herein lies our ob-
jection to panegyrics and Panegyrists.
They are all gush and therefore disap-
pointing. It is all very well, if you are
not acquainted with the individual
panegyrized, and are never likely to be ;
but if you know the man, or become
acquainted with him afterwards, your
giant becomes a dwarf, and you visit
the anger, which ought to be bestowed
upon the guilty Panegyrist, upon the
innocent panegyrized.

— It will be with some such feelingV.s
this, we feel sure, that the next visitor
to the Russian jewels will view them.
They will prove most disappointing.
The soul of all the fiery roses of Persia,

394

THE HARP.

the freshness of all the velvet swards
of Swiss and English lawns, the bloom
of Southern seas, the essence of a thous-
and harvest moons will be found to be
only gush — the trick of the author, not
the truthfulness of the historian, in
other words nothing but moonshine, and
the offended visitor, if of a lively tem-
perament will be inclined to kick (me-
taphorically of course) the unfortunate
Russian jewels (which after all are only
jewels) and to visit upon them, that
virtuous indignation which ought if all
men got their own to be expended on the
— well ! lying scribe.

— Are we improving ? Whilst the
19th Century as embodied in the “ So-
ciety for the prevention of cruelty to
animals ” raises a statue to the horse
and writes under it

Justice — Humanity — Compassion
it allows its pauper populations to shiver
and hunger in the cold, and to be shelt-
ered in houses which for order and
cleanliness are not to be compared with
her pig-stys. Is this levelling up or
levelling down ? Which ?

— Buckshot Forster ! This is a hard
name, but the world is given to hard
names. It takes its descriptions like
its prescriptions in homeopathic doses
— very small but very strong and very
drastic. “Buckshot Forster” is a
pillule of many and important and
powerful ingredients. In a very small
space it means many things. It is the
political “ credo ” of English govern-
ment of Ireland. I believe in a deeply
religious and high minded people goad-
ed to desperation by great and acknow-
ledged bad government and in thous-
ands of bayonets called by a pious
euphuism police; and in this acknow-
ledged bad government sustained and
maintained by these thousands of
bayonets; found face to face with
this deeply religious and high minded
people goaded to desperation by bad
government; and I firmly believe in
the order to fire (given by this acknow-
ledged bad government) to these thous-
ands of bayonets by a pious euphuism
called police, upon this deeply religious
and high minded people goaded to des-
peration ; and that this fire shall be not

with bullets, which would only wound
one man for each bayonet, but with
buckshot which will rip and tear and
riddle by the fifties, so that this deeply
religious and high minded people shall
be shot off from this earth, and the land
and the fatness thereof preserved for
alien rowdies and carpet baggers.

Yerily a respectable “Credo” for
any civilized government !

— The teacher who cannot teach with-
out flogging is not fit to be a teacher.
And so with governments — the govern-
ment which cannot rule without buck-
shot and bayonets is not fit to rule. It
should step down and out.

— How differently they do things in
England. The Liverpool police are not
allowed to carry staves. If they are
attacked by ruffians, they have nothing
else for it, but to fight it out with their
fists. A policeman’s staff is considered
too dangerous a weapon to be used
against English freemen, albeit they
be ruffians withal ; and ruffians of the
worst stripe. England is merciful even
to her ruffians. Hot so in Ireland. The
Irish policeman is a soldier in drill, in
accoutrements, and in weapons. Ilis staff
is superseded by a bayonet, and he is
ordered to load not with blank cartridge,
not with bullet, but with buck-shot
withal. And this not at ruffians but at
starving men and women and children
goaded to desperation by famine and
bad government. Let the Irishman rest
and be thankful.

— Mr. Forster is an intelligent, fair-
minded, humane and tender hearted
gentleman in England , a Quaker in re-
ligion and a truly liberal man in politics.
In Ireland he looses his head and be-
comes a fool. His buck-shot is a proof
of this. His list of “ outi ages ” another.
When a man and especially a statesman
has to eat his own words, it is to say
the least of it, a pitiable, not to say, a
nauseating sight. Mr. Forster has had
to acknowledge that many of his
“ outrages ” were not traceable to the
Land League ; that the majority of
them were not “outrages” at all, but
very harmless things, bre iking no bones,
injuring no one ; and that in many

THE HARP.

395

instances the same offence was reported
in four or five different ways, thus
making in the report four or five dif-
ferent “ outrages.” If Mr. Forster asks
the Irish Constabulary for “ outrages,”
he may rest assured he will get them.
Men who will obey the order to load
with buckshot, will be • capable
of the far less crime of inventing “ out-
rages.” Did Mr. Forster think of this,
when he asked for “ outrages ” ?

— Mr. Foster in Irelan 1 reminds us
of Hood’s bullock driver, who when
advised to “ try conciliation, my good
man,” drove his goad deep into the
bullock’s flesh, exclaiming “ There! I’ve
conziliated im.”

H. B.

CARDINAL MANNING ON THE
LAND QUESTION.

A letter addressed by his Eminence
Cardinal Manning to Earl Gray in the
year 1868 has been reprinted. It
contains some remarkable passages.
The Cardinal writes —

“ In England the traditions of centu-
ries, the steady growth of our mature
social order, the ripening of our agri-
culture and industry, the even distribu-
tion and increase of wealth, have re-
duced the relation of landlord and ten-
ant to a fixed, though it be an unwritten
law, by which th$ rights of both are
protected. Our land custums may be
enforced in the courts and thereby have
the force of law. English landlords, as
a rule live on their estate. Their lands
are their homes. English tenants are
protected by the mightiest power that
ever ruled a Christian country — a
power which controls the Legislature,
dictates the law, and guides even the
sovereignty of the Crown the force of a
vigilant, watclifuls ubiquitous public
opinion. But in Ireland none of these
things are so. In one-fourth of Ireland
there are land laws, or rather land cus-
toms, which protect the tenant. In
three-fourths of Ireland there are neither
laws nor customs. The tenants are
tenants-at-will. Over a vast part of
Ireland the landlords are absentees. The

mitigating and restraining influences of
the lords of the soil which in England
and in every civilized country do more
to correct the excesses of agents, specu-
lators and traffickers, and to temper
legal rights with equity and moderation
are hardly to be found. . . . The ten-
ant-at-will may be put out fo~‘ any cause
not only for non-payment of rent, or
waste of land or bad farming, or breach
of covenant, if such can be supposed to
exist, all of which would bear a color of
justice, but for the personal advantage of
the landlords arising from the tenants’
improvements, for political influence,
for caprice, for any passing reason or no
reason, assigned or not assignable which
can arise in minds conscious of absolute
and irresponsible power. ... If
the events which had passed in Ireland
since 1810 had passed in England, the
public opinion of the latter country
would have imperiously compelled the
Legislature to turn our land customs
into Acts of Parliament, If any sensi-
ble proportion of the people of Englis'h
counties were to be seen moving down
upon the Thames for embarkation to
America, and dropping by the roadside
from hunger and, fever, and it had been
heard by the -wayside that they were
tenants-at-will, evicted for any cause
whatsoever, the public opinion of the
country would have risen to render im-
possible the repetition of such absolute
and irresponsible exercise of legal rights.
If five millions, i.e., one fourth of' the
British people, had either emigrated in
a mass by reason of discontent, misery,
or eviction, or had died by fever and by
famine since the year 1848, the whole
land system of England would have been
modified so as to render the return of
such a national danger impossible for
ever. But both these suppositions have
been verified in Ireland. It is precisely
because these suppositions have been
verified in Ireland that we are now face
to face with a most dangerous agita-
tion. The\‘e is now, a loud and bitter
cry against landlordism, and the due
distinction between bad and good land-
lords is often disregarded : but it is un-
principled extortion and the anti-na-
tional attitude of a large proportion of
Irish landowners. The late Lord Derby
had the truth and courage to charge the
Irish landlords with insatiable avarice,

? g6

THE HARP.

and so notorious was this spirit of
avarice, that Walker, the compiler of
the best of dictionaries, defined the word
rack rent to mean the rent usually ex-
torted by Irish landlords from their
tenants.”

His Eminence in another fine passage
showed how the conduct of England
was condemned by the whole world.
He wrote : —

“I have talked freely for many years
with men of most countries in Europe.
I have found everywhere a profound
sympathy with Ireland in no way flat-
tering to England. Our insularity
keeps these things from our ears, and
we therefore soothe ourselves with the
motion of our own superiority to other
men. But such an abuse of the rights
of property is without parallel, at least
in this century, on the continent of
Europe. Our self-respect should lead us
to give up the illusion that our office in
the civilized world is to teach the na-
tions how to live.”

Finally, the Cardinal, or as he then
was, the Archbishop, thus sums up
what the Land Question is — 1

“ It may be thought that I have
ventured to speak upon a subject which
is be} r ond my capacity and my duty.
But I have done so from the profound
conviction that the deepest and sorest
cause of the discontent and unrest of
Ireland is the Land Question. I am
day by day in contact with an impover-
ished race driven from home by the
Land Question. I see it daily in the
destitution of my flock. The religious
inequality does indeed keenly wound
and excite the Irish people. Peace and
goodwill cam never reign in Ireland
until every stigma is effaced from the
Catholic Church of Faith, and the gall-
ing injustice of religious inequality shall
be redressed. This, indeed, is true.
But the Land Question, as we call it, by
a somewhat heartless euphemism means
hunger, thirst, nakedness, notice to quit,
labor spent in vain, the toil labor spent
in vain, the toil of years seized upon,
the breaking up of homes, the miseries,
sicknesses, deaths of parents, children,
wives, the despair and wildness which
spring up in the hearts of the poor
when legal force, like a sharp harrow,

goes over the most sensitive and vital
rights of mankind. All this is contained
in the Land Question.”

It would be impossible to sum up the
Land Question in language more truth-
ful, eloquent, and just than that used
more than twelve years ago by the
illustrious Cardinal of Westminster.

MEMOIRS OF LUCIEN BONA-
P ARTE.

Prince or Canino.

(' Written by Himself.)

The interesting memoirs of the only
uncrowned and by far the ablest of Na-
poleon’s brothers, which were published
in 1836, contain on the Union and on
Ireland most interesting details and
prophetic words.

I give the following extract from his
deeply interesting work : —

“ THE UNION.

“ A conquered province is ruled by
the victorious nation according to cer-
tain rules, or it is united to that power
and becomes an integral part of it.

“ As long as it is treated as a conquer-
ed country, it is evident that its inter-
ests should be sacrificed to those of the
conquerors — 1 Vce victis.' 1

“ Good policy, then, is to employ
both force and moderation in the legis-
lative measures in what the vanquished
have no part except in obedience. The
conquerors are magnanimous when they
leave the vanquished people some ot
those vague forms of nationality which
the vanity of the conquered race fondly
cling to, though a mere illusion.

“ Such was the state of Ireland before
the Union ; a careful ‘ survillance’ and
watchful suspicion were the inevitable
consequences.

“ The oppression of six millions of
Irish Catholics ” (the writer overrates
consideiably the population at that
time), “forced to pay tithes to the Pro-
testant Church, seemed relatively just ;
it was a tribute to the religion of the
conquerors.

“This religious subjection of the
majority to the Church of the minority
was the consequence of the political
power. One of these forces rested on
the other, one was perhaps necessary

THE HARP.

397

for the other, and if so, in a political
point of view, it was pardonable.

“ The Irish, were not only conquered
but expropriated j their land was divid-
ed among the Protestants. The priests
were deprived of their titles, as the
landowners were of their estates. A
conquest; carried to such terrible mea-
sures must necessarily have left the
most bitter animosity ; that horrible
abuse of victory could not be so soon
forgotten.

“ The oppressor having no right to
support him, was for a long time to
depend only on the sword, in keeping
under the yoke those whom he had
plundered, in giving to the victorious
Church, the tithes of the vanquished
one, was consistent.

“ It was the logic of the strong. But
the conquered and ruined population
showed its discontent by alarming
troubles, tried to be turned to account
by foreign enemies, and the victorious
nation than in its own interest deter-
mined to treat those they oppressed as
brothers ! They would free them, and
incorporate them in the nation, not to
have to combat them. Nothing better,
unless the thing should prove a failure,
if everything is done, absolutely every-
thing , to gain over the affection of those
new brothers ; if ihe land confiscated
and the tithes of the land are given to
those to whom they belong ; or, at least
(as Mr. Grey said in the House of Com-
mons on the 14th February), the union
of sentiments, interests and hearts be-
tween the people of the two countries
is established, and that the union is not
limited to one of the two Legislative
Chambers. But if the moral reconcili-
ation cannot be established, no matter
from what side it is made impossible , the
project is a failure — the incorporation
of the conquered province, instead of
being a measure of public safety, may
become a fatal one, by introducing a
foreign influence into the state, by
thoinru* ) 1 1 ‘-to 1 of a hostile element
into the political body.

“ The influence of the Irish element
into the British Parliament has not been
foreseen, nor justly appreciated.

*******

“ I do not say that it was possible to
give the land and the tithes to the

former owners ; time is often stronger
than justice ; but as the state reason
( raison d'etat ), good or bad , was an
obstacle for repairing all the wrongs,
why not continue to govern the country
as in the past, as it could not receive
satisfaction ?

“ Why, above all, admit a deputation
from that dissatisfied country to take
part in the supreme power of the British
nation ?

“ The great majority of the Irish
people were opposed to the English
aristocracy, to which the majority of
those who oppressed them be'onged.
The representatives of the people should
be either faithless to the religious
and political sentiments of their
electors, or enemies of the British
Constitution, and particularly of that
class in possession of what ought to
belong to them.

“ The help of these members in the
British chambers, if they could forget
injustice, confiscations, the intolerance of
conquest, and the reconciliation of both
parties would have been a wise measure,
but if they had not forgotten, if the
moral reconciliation did not exist, it
would have been better to wait longer,
and it would have been a hundred times
better for England to leave the Irish
Parliament in the island, than to be ex-
posed to find one day the legislative
scales in London ruled by the represen-
tatives of Ireland.

vj/ vj/ vj/ vj/ ^

“ After so many years England has in
her bosom the wound she gave Ireland ;
to cure that wound the wisdom of her
great legislators is at fault. She strikes
in quite a different way from what is
her object — those who have the same
interest become divided.

“ But when heaven punishes, what
signifies the most skilful policy.

*J> *J> v!> vL*

*y» '•Jn

“ For the honour of humanity, may
justice and tolerance bring a useful
result, and make Pitt’s great measure
his highest title and glory.”

The above was evidently written by
the eminent statesman at the time of the
Union, or soon after. How true much
of it is to day !

J. P. L.

39§

THE HARP.

SISTER MIRENE.

AN EPISODE OF THE SYRIAN MASSACRE.

On a calm autumnal morning two
young girls of twelve or thirteen years
of age amused themselves in a large
garden under the eyes of their parents,
who sat upon a wide terrace which was
reached from the garden by an ample
flight of stone steps ornamented with
flowers and creeping plants.

One of the girls had long and lustrous
blue eyes, hair the colour of ripe oranges
and complexion of the most delicate rose
and ivory. The other was a decided
brunette brown hair, brown eyes, a small
brown hand, brown skin and brown
eye-brows strongly arched.

Both tvere dressed in white but in
totally different fashions. She of the
blue eyes wore a puffed overskirt lace
sleeves, and a light and plain bodice.
She of the brown hair and complexion
wore a tunic of brocaded silk, a gauze
fichu, a cashmere scarf tied round her
waist - , muslin pantaloons gathered round
the ankles with gold circlets and satin
slippers relieved with coral. Two
luxuriant tresses spangled with sequins
encircled her head, whilst bracleets of
an uncouth pattern ornamented her
delicate wrists.

The persons, who kept watch from
the terrace, as dissimilar in dress and
appearance as the children, were a
young man, a young woman, whose
dress and accent bespoke their frankish
origin and an old man with a flowing
beard as white as his turban. This old
man reclined on a heap of cushions ; his
two companions sat on chairs of sandal
wood. Between them was a low table
crowded with sherbets a la neige, con-
serves of fruits and sweetmeats of roses,
which had the smell and color of those
joyous flowers, narjileh filled with
tombaki and microscopic cups holding
not an infusion but a decoction of coffee.

The terrace, the garden and the house
were situated at the outskirts of a city,
which appeared* to be bathed in a flood
of golden light so much did its shining
domes, its sparkling cupolas, its level
roofs turned into flower gardens, its
white mosques’s its minarets like needle
spires, the sculpture of its dentelled
walls sparkle, change colours and above

all dazzle the eye that attempted to
rest upon it for any time. This city
was Damascus, the marvelous Queen of
the East.

As to the persons of whom we have
just spoken the old man was called
Amrou, the young brunette Radjieda
and her blond friend Gabrielle. The
Franks were Mr. and Mrs. Herbelin,
Grabrielle’s parents, and the owners of
one of the largest commercial houses in
Damascus. They were at the moment
the guests ofNad-ji-eda’s grandfather the
Turk. Amrou - ben- Soliman, whose
residence was separated from theirs only
by a street remarkable for its narrowness
even in a city whose streets were none
of the widest.

This venerable old man, these beauti-
ful children, this young mother, and her
loving husband formed a striking pic-
ture, a little too simple perhaps for the
beautiful landscape that lay before
them. This landscape it would be im-
possible to describe. It contained all
that is spoken of as beautiful in Scrip-
ture. The cedars of Lebanon, the
cypresses of Sion, the palm trees of
Cades, tl e roses of Jericho, the olives of
Olivet, the grapes of Engaddi, the
sweetness of the pome-granate, the rich
perfumes of balsam of myrrh and of
cinnamon all appeared to have met to-
gether in that beautiful piece. Without
leaving their seats, Amrou’s guests
could see a vast undulating plain whose
outward extremities were bounded by a
chain of mountains covered with snow.
On this plain could be seen groups of
peasants leading well laden asses carry-
ing douzah water melons legumes and
fruits to the city ; young girls closely
veiled gracefully leading small arab
horses : sultanas carried on litters
screened with silk curtains : bare-footed
camel drivers armed with long
sticks : fellahs, who tilled the fields with
superb indolence.

Amrou’s house was a veritable oriental
palace. Exteriorly its walls were hidden
under a most gaudy colouring, shocking
indeed to the European eye, but which
harmonized perfectly under a sun of fire
and a sky of lapsis-lazuli. The doors
wide open, the window blinds thrown
back — a. grave infraction of oriental
etiquette — allowed* the interior to bo
easily seen. The large well aired rooms

THE HARP.

399

were nearly all paved in mosaics.
Circular divans were the only furniture.
On the inner walls, as white as though
they had been plastered with moulten
silver were fret- works arabesques and
enterlacings in pale lakes, soft blues
and tender rose lined amidst which
could be deciphered arab inscriptions
traced in carmine. Generally these in-
scriptions were taken from the Koran,
but it appeared that Amrou held this
production m of the pretended prophet in
little esteem, as he had substituted for
them in places, soft verses from the
poems of Saadi and Ferdoussi and other
arab poets of less renown.

In most of the rooms jets of water fell
back into basins of green marble, and
these leaping waters cooled the air also
on the terrace, the greater part of which
was covei ed with vases of flowers. A
light breeze shook the snow white petals
of the citron the orange and the Arabian
jassemine, whose clambering boughs
had all the appearance of enormous
reptiles.

A hedge of giant cactuses enclosed the
garden. The pebbles of the walks shone
like silver nodules. The borderings of
the garden beds were of the plant henna,
that herb with which the beauties of
Syria delight to color the tips of their
fingers ; a strange custom which they
appear to have received from the savage
caraibes.

I repeat it ; it was a charming autumn
morning. The sky an azure blue fringed
on the horizon with rose coloured and
lilac clouds. The whole air alive with
song. The camel drivers as they goad-
ed on their patient drudges drew forth
an accompinment of tinkling bells:
large birds skimmed the air passing
and repassing from the heights of
Mount Lebanon to the minarets of the
city mosques. The young children sang
outdn soft cadeuce their morning prayers
to Allah and to Mahomet : invisible
sultanas joined their voices to the sweet
sound of the gazla, or arab guitar.

Whilst Amrou entertained his guests,
the young girls amused themselves
under the shade of a grove of plane
trees, palms and turpentine trees. They
had just made a small altar of moss and
leaves, and stood before it admiring and
criticizing it. The miniature tabernacle
had been decked with the flowers of the

orange, of the aloe, of the pomegranate,
of lilies of Iran, of Damascus roses, of
nopals with their highly grazed leaves
and of the tamerine. Upon it was a
small ivory crucifix, and a statuette of
the Blessed Virgin.

“Is that well? Gabrielle!” asked the
little dame with brown locks, as she
inserted a garland of jasmine.

“ Yes, it is all we can do at present.
But indeed it is neither cross nor
statue that ought to occupy the throne
of the tabernacle.”

“ Neither cross nor statute ? What
should it be then?”

“If I told you Nad-ji-eda — you would
not believe me.”

“ Certainly I should. Can you doubt
it ?”

“ But it is such a great mystery.”
“Never mind — tell it to me.”

“ Well then ; it is God who should be
upon our altar, for it is God, who comes
to rest there.”

“What! God himself?” “ Does your
God come down on earth ?” exclaimed
Nad-ji-eda elevating still more her arch-
ed eyebrows.

“Yes; Nada dear!” “the God of
Heaven, Jesus made man, loves to be
exposed to the adoration of the faithful,
and to listen to their requests.”

“ And each one sees, this God Jesus ?”
“ They recognise him with the eyes of
faith under the merciful veil of the
consecrated species. Have you forgotten
what I have so frequently explained
to you ” — asked Gabrielle with a slight
shade of impatience.

“ Oh yes ! the sacred species — so at
least you say.”

“7 say ; no ; not I, it is God, who
says it. “ This is my body.”

“ I believe it — I belie ^e it with all my
heart,” murmured the young Arab in a
dreamy preoccupied tone, as she raised
her eyes to Heaven in an ecstatic gaze.
“ And when the Lord comes down,,
what do you do, Gabrielle ?

“ Then all heads bow, all hearts are
raised to God — they pray.”

“ And then ?”

“ How — then ? they still pray — pray
until the service is over.”

“ And when the office terminates ?”

“ Well then, they go home,”

“ Ah ! you are not telling me all,
Gabrielle. Do they make you swear to

400

THE HARP.

keep secret the mysteries of your re-
ligion ?”

“To keep secret ?” asked G-abrielle
in astonishment.

“Yes. I see nothing surprising in
that. Do not the Druses conceal their
religious books and even their mosques
as much as they can ? Do they not
6wear never to reveal the mysteries of
their religion to any one? And the
Ackals, who are the best instructed of the
Druses, are they not obliged to keep
this oath at the risk of their lives ?”

“ That shows the falsity of their
doctrine. We Catholics are obliged to
confess our faith whenever questioned
and as far as we can to extend the
worship of our God.”

“ Then why do you not tell me all ?”
“ All what?”

“ All the ceremonies which take place
in the presence of the Saviour Jesus.

Do you not burn perfumes in silver
perfuming pans held by silver chains,
and which the Imans swing about to
scatter the sweet sented smoke which
ascends to the altar ?”

“Yes ; but it is the altar boys who
swing the censers not the priests.”

“And does notan invisible music a
thousand times sweeter than the guitar
swell through the vaults of the mosque ?”
“ Church you mean. Yes that is the
organ.”

“ And does not your Iman speak to
God in the name of the people in an un-
known tongue which is neither Arabic
nor English nor French ?”

“Very true. Our Priest prays in
Latin. But who has taught you these
things so well ?”

_ “No one has taught me them Gab-
rielle. I have seen them.”

“You have been in a Catholic
Church ?”

“ Yes.”

“ Where ? At Damascus ?”

“ No ; not at Damascus,” said Nad-ji-
eda shaking her head.

“ At Beyrout or Saint Jean-d’Acre ?

“ Neither the one nor the other.”

“ But where was it then ? Tell me.
Did your grandfather or your nurse
Sulema, take you ?”

“ My grandfather and my nurse were
both ignorant that I went there. I was
alone with strangers.”

“Alone. You who go out only on a

litter, and who are condemned by
custom to so severe a seclusion ? You
astonish me.”

“ And yet it is so, and if I have never
mentioned it to you before it is because
it is connected with an incident which I
am bound to keep secret.

“ Why ?”

“ Because it concerns the Ackals.”

“ What a great mystery !” said Gab-
rielle laughing. “Be careful not to be-
tray it, Nada ; that would be to expose
yourself to all the fury of your god
Hackem.

“Hackem is not my god, and you
know well that he cannot be anybody’s
god,” replied Nad-ji-eda softly. But the
Ackals. —

“'Well — the Ackals.”

“ Bevenge themselves on those who
reveal the secrets of their doctrine.”

“ So you told me just now, and I
believe it, but what astonishes me is,
that you put so little confidence in your
friend ; you think I would betray your
confidence.”

“ Oh Gabrielle can you think that ?”
cried Nad-ji-eda tenderly embracing
her companion.

“ I have every right to think so, since
you do not “tell me all” to use your own
expression.”

“ It is because — well it is not very in-
teresting.”

“Never mind.”

“ It would be very long.”

“ I have plenty of time to listen.
Mama will not go home for half an hour
at least.”

“ But I do not want my grandfather
or my nurse to hear.”

“Your grandfather is smoking his
nargileh ; Sulema is in her room read-
ing the Koran or counting the beads of
her tesbir ; (musuiman rosary) both
have entirely forgotten you.”

“Well I will risk it; but you must
keep it secret.”

“ As mute as a mouse,” said Gabrielle
sitting down on a footstool of saDdal
wood and beginning her embroidery.

Nad ji-eda, who from her Arab
education knew as little how to embroi-
der as to sit upon a chair, threw herself
upon the grass and began her narrative
playing with the corals of her slippers
to occupy her little indolent hands.
“You know, said she, that I was born

THE HARP.

401

at Esbaya in the mountains and that I
was scarcely four years old when my
mother died.”

“Yes Hada, and it was then that
Amrou, father of your poor mother
brought you to his house.”

“ Exactly. My father, who had cer-
tain plans for me was glad to confide
me to my grandfather, and I arrived ac-
cordingly at Damascus under the charge
of Sulema.”

“ I am sorry to interrupt the first
words of your narrative ; but it will
not appear sufficiently clear to me un-
less you explain to me why your father
Djelaib, who is a zealous follower of
Hackem, if not a fanatic, was glad to
trust his only child to Sheik Amrou,
who is what they call in Europo a free
thinker. This grandfather of yours
believes nothing. He shakes his head
when you speak of Mahomet, he lights
his chibouque with pages of the Koran ;
he loses no opportunity of heaping ridi-
cule upon the impostor Hackem, and if
he bows his head when the Muezzin
cries La Allah ila Allah from the tops of
the minarets, it is only because he does
not wish to brave to its face the custom
of his country.”

“ All which does not prove, that my
good grand papa believes nothing re-
plied Mad-ji-eda, if like me you have
heard him speak of the divine Issa.”

“Of Jesus? what Hada, does your
grandfather believe in the divinity of
J esus ? Oh I rejoice with all my heart.
But that explains less than ever, why a
Druse as exalted as your father has
chosen you such a guardian.”

“ Because my father wishes at any
price to make a wise woman of his
daughter. He intends to initiate her
into the sect of the Ackals who admit
some women to their rite. But he in-
tends something still greater as you
will see. How no one was more fit than
my grandfather to take care of my
education, since he knows many lan-
guages and almost all sciences. And it is
to this circumstance I owe not only the
happiness of not being a little ignorant
girl like all other arab girls, but also
the much greater happiness of having
for a friend a fervent Catholic, who
makes it her duty to instruct me in the
mysteries of her holy religion.”

“ To the great displeasure of Sulema”

said G-abrielle laughing. It appears,
that this zealous musulman understand’s
us, and looks upon me with no favour-
able eye. But continue.”

“ Up to the age of eleven, I did not
return to the mountains. I learnt suc-
cessively of the birth of two or three
sisters, for I forgot to tell you that my
father had contracted a second marriage
shortly after the death of ray mother. I
had the pleasure of seeing my good
father several times. On different oc-
casions he came to pass some weeks in
Damascus, and on each occasion was
delighted to see my diligence and pro-
gress, and encourage me to make it
even greater if possible. Last summer,
after your father had rented the house
next to us, my grandfather said to me
one day in a sorrowful and faultering
voice, ‘ We must part, my little one.’

“ ‘ Must part ?’ I cried with anxiety.

“ ‘ Why so ?’

“ 1 Because your father wishes to take
you to the mountains.”

“ * For always ?’

“ £ Oh no j for some months only ; but
it will appear to me very long.’

“ £ And to me also said I embracing
him.’

“ This news caused a singular sensa-
tion in my heart which was neither all
joy nor all sorrow, but a confused mix-
ture of both. If the idea of leaving my
grandfather disturbed me, I rejoiced to
think that I should return to my father’s
family and should see again that majes-
tic Lebanon, which had been my birth-
place.

“ I left about the beginning of June
and did not return until the middle of
October. My father’s wife received me
kindly and my little- sisters appeared
delighted to make my acquaintance. I
did not feel lonesome at Esbaya
though I must confess that there could
hardly be a rougher or more sombre
habitation.

“ It is a city — is it not ?” interrupted
Gabrielle.

“ Only an important village — that is
all. It contains about 500 houses at the
foot of Djebel-el-Cheik — old man’s
mountain — whose top is always covered
with snow. My father’s house was by
no means elegant, and was far from
being like my grandfather’s palace.
Fancy a flat roofed, square building

402

THE HARP.

without that purple screen which the
vine with its luxuriant tendrons creep-
ing to the roof gives to our houses in
Damascus. The roof was the onty part
of the house which had any appearance
of beauty. It was covered with earth
grown over with grass and formed a
hanging garden in which everything
flourishd from the myrtle and laurel
roses to rhododendrons and humble
violets.

“Though my father was Sheik, he lived
as simply as the neighbouring Druses.
What appeared strange to me was to
see my sisters and their mother djing
household work, a thing that no woman
with any fortune would do in Damascus.
In my father’s house no one ever men-
tioned the name of Allah nor of
Mahomet, neither did they pray at the
sound of the Muezzin nor read the
Koran. At this I was greatly astonish-
ed because 1 did not know at that time
that the Druses had a religion of their
own.

“One day under rather strange circum-
stances, I heard them pronounce the
word Hackem, a name I have so often
heard since. I was jflaying with my
sisters in the street — for we had no
court, nor garden, when a very old
woman, stooping and leaning on a stick
and walking with difficulty, turned out
of a neighbouring street and came
straight towards us. She was dressed
all in black, and the long horns of her
brass tantou (metal ornament in a shape
of a crescent which the Druse women
wear on their heads) shook above her
small wrinkled face in a jaunty manner.

“ ‘ Who is that poor woman ? asked
I of my sisters.

“ ‘She is not a poor woman,’ answered
they in a low voice, not unmixed with
fear : ‘ she is a rich influential woman,
much venerated.’

“ ‘She is a priestess ?’ A priestess ?’

“ ‘ Yes ; that is what they call her.
She is inspired and predestined. Our
god Hackem has taken her under his
protection ; has clothed her with his
spirit and has given her his knowl-

“ The poor children could not tell me
any more, nor explain it any clearer :
but my grandfather, whom I have asked
about it since, has explained it more
fully. It appears that the Druses have

always admitted women to their mystic
meetings; they give them the title of
priestess, and require great respect for
them ; they allow them to instruct, and
claim that they have the power of
prophecy.

“Meantime the priestess had come op-
posite us. She raised her veil, which
she threw back, showing us the wrinkled
face of a woman of eighty years, which
inspired respect rather ihan confidence.

“My sisters devoutly pressed the hem
of her black robe, and then ran to call
their mother. Not only did she come
but my father also, who was smoking
his chibouque upon the flat roof hasetned
to descend. It was to him the old wo-
man with the tan tour addressed herself.

“ ‘Djela-ib,’ said she, pointing towards
me with her withered and wrinkled
hand — ‘ is this the child ?’

“ ‘ Yes, Set-Nefie.’

“ ‘ I recognised her at first sight al-
though the aliledj has blossomed seven
times since you took her to Damascus.
She has all the signs of predestination,
and I do not deceive myself in saying
that Hackem has destined her to suc-
ceed me. Mayl live to see her imitiated
into the sect of the Ackals, and capable
of prophesying in her turn. Has she
any knowledge as yet of our religion.”

“ ‘Well — no; ’ said my father hesitat-
ing. ‘Her grandfather has instructed
her only in the profane sciences.’

“ The little priestess shook her head
indignantly, and her brass tan tour shook
right and left.

“ ‘At least, said she, you have not left
her ignerant of the designs of Hackem
upon her ?’

“ ‘The designs of Hackem ?’ stammer-
ed my father — ‘ no ; that is to say — yes
— I — she is still very young as you see.”
“ ‘ I see, Djela-ib, that you respond
very badly to the confidence we have
placed in you. This child will be taken
from you, if you do not take more care
of her religious education.’

“ ‘Come here, young girl, and listen to
me. I must tell you what your father
has thought proper to be silent to you
about ; I know not why. Know then
that the day you were born Hackem
speaking by my mouth, declared that
he chose you for his priestess and pro-
phetess, to announce his worships and
interpret his oracles. Kejoice then^

THE HARP.

4°J

young woman ; it is you who have to
succeed me.’

“ There is nothing very much to
rejoice in, thought I to myself as I eyed
this strange little woman as she hasten-
ed away cl i pity clop.”

“ My step-mother returned into the
house, my father re-ascended to the
terrace, my sisters and I began again
our play and there was no more said at
the time of this incident. But a short
time after father said to me.

T hope Nad-ji-eda, that you have
not forgotten the words of the pristess.

“ ‘No ; certainly : they w8re strange
enough to print them on my memory.

“ ‘Very well. You see now why I am
so anxious that you should be so well
instructed. In some weeks I shall take
you back to Damascus and as you ought
to be happy and proud of the part that
is destined for you, I am sure that you
will study with more zeal than ever
after what has passed. Meanwhile the
priestess wishes that you should devote
yourself seriously to your religious
duties, and she thinks that you shou.d
assist at the most important of our
ceremonies, the reception of an Ackal.
This will take place to-morrow ; and
you must therefore be ready to leave at
day break.’

H. B.

{To be Continued.')

EOMANCE OF IRISH HISTORY.

GODFREY OF TYRCONNELL.

I have remarked that the Irish chiefs
may be said to have fought each other
with one hand, while they fought the
English with the other. Illustrating this
state of things, I may refer to the story of
Godfrey, King of Tyrconnell, as glorious
a character as ever adorned the page of
history. For years the Normans had
striven in vain to gain a foothold in
Tyrconnell. Elsewhere — in Connaught,
in Munster, throughout all Leinster, and
in southern Ulster — they could betimes
assert their away, either by dint of arms
or by insidious diplomatic strategy.

But never could they overreach the
wary and martial Cinel-Connal, from
whom more than once the Norman
armies had suffered overthrow. At
length the Lord- Justice Maurice Fitz-

gerald felt that this hitherto invulner-
able fortress of native Irish power in
the northwest had become a formidable
standing peril to the entire English
colony, and it was accordingly resolved
that the whole strength of the Anglo-
Norman force in Ireland should be put
forth in one grand expedition. The lord-
justice decided that he himself would
lead and command in person.

At this time Tyrconnell was ruled by
a prince who was the soul of chivalric
bravery, wise in the council, and daring
in the field — Godfrey O’Donnell. The
lord-justice, while assembling his forces,
employed the time, moreover, in skil-
fully diplomatizing, playing the insidi-
ous game which in every century most
largely helped the Anglo-Norman in-
terest in Ii eland, settingup rivalries,
and inciting hostilities amongst the
Irish princes. Having, as he thought
not only cut off Godfrey from all chance
of alliance or support from his fellow-
princes of the north and west, but
environed him with their active hostili-
ty, Fitzgerald marched on Tyrconnell.

His army moved with all the pomp
and panoply of Norman pride. Lords,
earls, knights and esquires from every
Norman castle or settlement in the
land had rallied at the summons of the
king’s representative. Godfrey, isolated
though he found himself, was nothing
daunted by the tremendous odds which
he knew were against him — he was, in
fact one of the most skilful captains of
the age — and he relied implicitly on the
unconquerable bravery of his clansmen.
Both armies met at Credan-Kille, in the
north of Sligo.

A battle, which the Normans describe
as fiercely and vehemently contested,
ensued and raged for hours without
palpable advantage to either side. In
vain the mail-clad battalions of England
rushed upon the saffron-kilted Irish
clansmen ; each time they reeled from
the shock and fled in bloody rout. In
vain the cavalry squadrons — long the
boasted pride of the Normans — headed
by earls and knights whose names were
rallying cries in Norman England, swept
upon the Irish lines. Riderless horses
alone returned. The lord-justice, in
wild dismay, saw the proudest army
ever rallied by Norman power on Irish
soil being routed and hewn piecemeal

404

THE HARP.

before his eyes. Godfrey, on the other
hand, the very impersonation of valor,
was everywhere, cheering his men,
directing the battle, and dealing destruc-
tion to the Normans. The gleam of his
battle-axe or the flash of his sword was
the sure precursor of death to the
haughtiest earl or knight that dared to
confront him. The lord-justice — than
whom no abler general or soldier served
the king — ssw that the day was lost if
he could not save it by some desperate
effort, and at the worst he had no wish
to survive the overthrow of the splendid
army he had led into the field. The
flower of the Norman nobles had fallen
under the sword of Godfrey, and him
the Lord Maurice now sought out, dash-
ing into the thickest of the fight. The
two leaders met in single combat.
Fitzgerald dealt the Tyrconnell chief a
deadly wound ; but Godfrey, still keep-
ing his seat, with one blow of his battle-
axe clove the lord-justice to the earth,
and the proud baron was carried sense-
less off the field by his followers. The
English fled in hopeless confusion, and
of them the chroniclers tell us there
was made a slaughter that night’s dark-
ness alone arrested. The Lord Maurice
was done with j)omp and power after
the ruin of that day. He survived his
dreadful wound for some time. He
retired into a Franciscan monastery
which he himself had built and endow-
ed at Youghal, and there taking the
habit of a monk, he departed this life
tranquilly in the bosom of religion.
Godfrey, meanwhile mortally wounded
was unable to follow up the great victory
of Credan-Kille ; but, stricken as he was,
and with life ebbing fast, he did not dis-
band till he had demolished the only
castle the English had dared to raise on
the soil of Tyrconnell. This being done,
and the last soldier of England chased
beyond the frontier line, he gave the
order for dispersion, and himself was
borne homewards to die.

This, however, sad to tell, was the
moment seized upon by O’Neill, Prince
of Tyrone to wrest from the Cinel-
Connal submission to his power. Hear-
ing that the lion-hearted Godfrey lay
dying, and while yet the Tyrconnellian
clans, disbanded and on their homeward
road, were suffering from their recent
engagement with the Normans, O’Neill

sent envoys to the dying prince demand-
ing hostages in token of submission.
The envoys, say all the historians, no
sooner delivered this message than they
fled for their lives. Hying though God-
frey was, and broken and wounded as
were his clansmen by their recent strug-
gle, the messengers of Tyrowen felt but
too forcibly the peril of delivering this
insolent demand. And characteristic-
ally was it answered by Godfrey. His
only reply was to order an instantaneous
muster of all the fighting men of Tyr-
connell. The army of Tyrowen mean-
while pressed forward rapidly to strike
Cinel-Connal, if possible, before the
available strength, such as it was, could
be rallied. Nevertheless, they found
the quickly-reassembled victors of
Credan-Kille awaiting them. But, alas !
sorrowful story ! On the morning of
the battle Heath had but too plainly
set his seal upon the brow of the heroic
Godfrey. As the troops were being drawn
up in line, read } 7 to march into the field,
the physicians announced that his last
moments were at hand ; he had but a
few hours to live. Godfrey himself re-
ceived the information with sublime
composure. Having first received the
last sacraments of the Church and given
minute instructions as to the order of
battle, he directed that he should be laid
upon the bier which was to have borne
him to the grave, and that thus he
should be carried at the head of his
army on the march. His orders were
obeyed, and then was witnessed a scene
for which history has not a parallel.
The dying king, laid on his bier, was
borne at the head of his troops into the
field. After the bier -came the standard
of Godfrey — on which was emblazoned
a cross with the words, “ In hoc signo
vinces ” — and next came the charger of
the dying king caparisoned as if for
battle. But Godfrey’s last fight was
fought. Never more would his battle-
axe gleam in the front of the combat.
But as if his presence, living, dead, or
dying, was still a potential assurance
of triumph to his people, the Cinel-
Connal bore down all opposition. Long
and fiercely, but vainly, the army of Tyr-
owen contested the field. Around the bier
of Godfrey his faithful clansmen made
an adamantine rampart which no foe
could penetrate. Wherever it was borne

THE HARP.

405

the Tyrconnell phalanx, of which it was
the heart and centre, swept all before
them. At length, when the foe was
flying on all sides, they laid the bier
upon the ground to tell that the day was
won. But the face of Godfrey was
marble pale, and cold, and motionless !
All was over ! His heroic spirit had
departed amidst his people’s shouts' of
victory. — A. M. Sullivan, M.P .

TO ERIN.

I saw thee standing by the shore,

A broken sceptre at thy feet,

And raised thy crownless brow in more
Than mortal anguish to the seat
Of justice— as tho’ thou hadst sought
Surcease of agonising thought.

And spectre-pale thy suffering face,

And dread the lustre of thine eyes
That pierced into the night, to trace
The future in the far-off skies :
Expectancy in that deep gaze,

’Tho never came the morning’s rays.

What hope still holds thy spirit up !

And all in ruin lying there.

For thou hast drained fate’s poisoned cup.
And felt the fulness of despair :

Rut God-like is it to be strong
In bearing undeserved wrong.

I see in all thy matchless woe —

The unearthly beauty of my love —

In vesture robed as white as snow

With wounds like the red stars above—
Clear shining thro’ the vesture white
Out on the seeming-endless night.

Oh, who thy thoughts shall fathom e’er
The past or future in thy brain ?

Thou thinkest with a mother’s care.
Perhaps, upon thy children slain.

Or sleeping ’neath the Atlantic tide,

Or wandering o’er the world so wide.

Or, haply, of the vanished years —

Long vanished — since thy life was young,
Ere thy heart welled unceasing tears—
When melody was on thy tongue,

And all thy children round thee came,

To hear thee tell of Wisdom’s name.

And when in immemorial woods
Sweet voices rose to heav’n in praise ;
When from tliy cloistered solitudes
The lamp of science shed its rays ;

And sadly o’er the ocean’s foam

Thy stranger scholars sought their home.

Or, haply, of the coming time
Led slowly upward by the night,

Thou thinkest with a hope sublime.

But notin all thy future bright,

Thou ’It be more lovely than thou’rt now
With this pale anguish on thy brow.

D. G. M,

SOME RESULTS OF THE LAND
LEAGUE.

“What has the Land League achieved ?”
asked Mr. Redmond, M.P., in the cur-
rent number of Modern Thought. It
has, he says in effect, absorbed the vari-
ous local societies which agrarian discon-
tent had called into an isolated and im-
potent existence in different parts of
Ireland, and united north, south, east,
and west in one vast organization, act-
ing openly, constitutionally, and with
all the strength of union. It has taught
the people to look beyond the three
“E’s” — which, when they were unor-
ganized, no one was willing to concede
to them — to a peasant proprietary,
which statesmen are now declaring to
be the only true solution of the ques-
tion. Within an incredibly short period
it has made the alteration of the Irish
land system, which had been a scandal
for generations, a matter of imperative
and immediate necessity.

This latter result alone, argues Mr.
Redmond, would be more than sufficient
to justify the existence of the Land
League. But that body has other claims
upon the gratitude of its country. The
Land League it was that first sounded
the alarm when the shadow of famine
was spreading over the land. Its lead-
ers, in turning to America for help when
their warnings were disregarded by the
executive at home, achieved the double
gain of calling forth a noble response
from that country, and of stimulating
the attention of the English public and
the English legislature. When actual
famine had been escaped, scarcely a less
danger threatened the Irish peasantry.
The landlords’ “ Crowbar brigade ” had
followed in the wake of the famine of
184U It was only too probable that an
attempt would be made to repeat history
and to drive the impoverished people
from their homes “ to the workhouse,
the fever-ship, and the ditch-side.” So
ominous did things look that the Gov-
ernment endeavored to prevent whole-
sale evictions by introducing the Com-
pensation for Disturbance Bill of last
year. The Government failed to pass
that measure, and therefore failed
to protect the tenantry of Ireland. The
League, on the contrary, by obtaining
for the tenants large reductions of rent

406

THE HARP.

in every province of Ireland, and by
everywhere exhorting them to “ keep a
firm grip of their holding,” saved mil-
lions to the Irish tenants in the shape of
redactions of rack-rents, and succeeded,
where the Government had failed, in
practically patting an end to evictions.

It is to be feared that there is more
truth in Mr. Redmond’s facts than it is
altogether pleasant to have to acknow-
ledge. Indeed, if we were entirely
ignorant of the history of the Land
League we should hesitate before admit-
ting that English denunciation of a
popular movement in Ireland is neces
sarily just because it is unanimous. W-
cannot forget that O'Connell in his daye
was “ the best-abused man alive” ; and
that the Catholic Association was de-
clared to be illegal, and was finally sup-
pressed. Yet to those two forces we
English Catholics owe Catholic Emanci-
pation. All the world for yecirs had been
declaring that the disabilities . under
which Catholics suffered were iniquitous
just as all\he world has for generations
been denouncing the Irish land system.
But the Catholic Association had to bear
the charge of being revolutionary, and
O'Connell was commonly held to be the
embodiment of “blackguardism.” Many
of the advocates of emancipation studi-
ously avoided any word that might be
constructe d into an expression of sym-
pathy withO'Connell or his organization,
just its to-day moderate men, who are
not alsO'Land Leaguers, think it neces-
sary while advocating the reform of the
Irish land laws to be apologetic and
sometimes denunciatory when referring
to the sayings and doings of the
youngest of Irish associations. But time
works wonders. It is now the fashion,
both in Parliament and outside, to hold
up O’Connell to the admiration of his
successors as a model whose conduct
ought to put them to shame. Who can
tell ? Perhaps in these days of greater
speed the Land League and its leaders
may not have to wait even half a century
for political apotheosis.- Weekly Register

A DEATH THAT LED TO LIFE.

A leader writer in the Catholic Advo-
cate recount s the story of a nobleman’s
conversion ana death in these words :
“ Dauntless, gallant, brave as a lion, a

soldier, holding the great post of honor
as aide-de-camp to her Majesty Queen
Victoria, the son of the Earl of Long-
ford and the nephew of the Duke of
Wellington — the conqueror of Napoleon
the Great — one evening informed Queen
Victoria that he was about to become a
Catholic and wished to resign his com-
mission. A great favorite at the court,
a great favorite of the Queen, both the
Queen and the princesses expostulated.
He said he was determined, and if leave
were given him by the authorities of the
Catholic Church he would become a
priest. He departed from the palace
and went to Cardinal Wiseman, under-
went a course of preliminary instruction,
sold out all his property for the benefit
of the poor, went to Rome, was ordained
and came back a priest of the order of
Passionists. His death was eminently
tragic. A beautiful speaker, a man of
great name, of noble descent, of daunt-
less chivalry, young, respected in
palaces and in poorhouses, laboring as
a missionary labors, deserted by all his
‘friends and familiars, excluded from his
family, wearing nothing but his habit
and sandals and a shirt of hair. In his
early youth tearing himself away from
what are called the joys of life he ex-
hausted himself among the poor. He
was to preach at the Jesuit Church, a
magnificent church too, in the city of
Dublin, one Sunday morning. It was
crowded to overflowing by the rank and
elite of the city. He had said Mass that
very morning in his own church, but
when the hour came for his sermon,
Father Paul Mary — the Honorable
Charles Pakenham — had gone to heaven.
The cry that broke out from the crowd
of six thousand was appalling when the
Jesuit Father in the crystal pulpit an-
nounced his departure from this world.
The battle was over. God had called
the valiant soldier from the field. He
had won the fight.

A. woman, from her sex and character,
has a claim to many things beside
shelter, food, and clothing. She is not
less a woman for being wedded ; and
the man who is fit to be trusted with a
good wife recollects all which this im-
plies, and shows himself perpetually
chivalrous, sweet-spoken, considerate,
and deferential .

THE HARP.

4° 7

ARCHBISHOP CROKE.

Ireland’s patriot prelate — sketch of his life.

The Irish priesthood, which, since the |
days of St. Patrick to the present time,
has ever been characterized, not alone
by apostolic zeal and learning, but by
the purest and most unyielding patriot-
ism, has ever produced few members in
whom those qualities have been present
in a more eminent degree than in the
subject of our present sketch — the Most
Rev. Dr. Croke, Archbishop ot Cashel.
In point of scholarship and sanctity he

is everywhere regarded as an ornament
to the Irish hierarchy, and in that un-
adulterated and out-spoken patriotism
which is compatible with — indeed en-
hances — the most exalted exercise of
Christianity he yields to none, and is
equalled in all probability by but one
member of that illustrious body — that
Nestor of the Irish Church of our day,
Archbishop MacHale.

Archbishop Croke was born near

408

THE HARP

Charleville, Count} 7 Cork, in the latter
part of the year 1823. The late Very
Rev. Dr. Croke, P. P. and V. G. Charle-
ville was his uncle ; the late Very Rev.
Dean O’Flynn, ofAghada, Cork Harbor,
was grand uncle, and the celebrated
Bishop McKenzie of Queenstown, who
died at a patriarchal age in the last de-
cade of the last century, was his grand-
uncle. Many more of his clerical rela-
tives were among the most prominent,
zealous, and efficient in the ministry of
his native diocese within this century.
One of his uncles, after a distinguished
classical and legal course at Trinity
College, was for many years the Colonial
Attorney-General of Victoria, Australia.
One of the Archbishop’s brothers rose,
within a comparitively short period, to
the highest clerical and social grade in
San Francisco, Cal., after seven } T ears
of missionary privations among the no-
madic Indian tribes of Oregon and
Washington Territory. He is as highly
revered to-day in San Francisco along
the great Pacific Slope as any Irish priest
who cast his lot in foreign lands within
the past fifty years* One of his sisters
reconstructed, physically and religious-
ly, an old Mercy Convent in Charleville,
where her uncle had been an esteemed
pastor for nearly half a century ; and
having distinguished herself in the mili-
tary hospitals of the Black Sea waters
during the Crimean War, established a
most successful convent of her order at
New Inn, County Tipperary. Another
sister, professed in the same religious
community, emigrated some twenty
years ago to the Australian continent,
and founded a most flourishing Mercy
Convent at Bathurst, New South Wales,
the pride of the provincial prelates of'
that promising colony. The observing
tourist who passes to town from the
Charleville Railroad Station will cast a
lingering, mournful look on the beauti-
ful Italian marble monument in the way-
side churchyard, raised by the worthy
people of Charleville to the memory of
the Archbishop’s lamented brother, Rev.
William Croke, who promised a bril-
liant and patriotic career in the ministry
till he fell a victim to professional duties
in the celebrated cholera and fever year
1849.

Archbishop Croke matriculated as a
clerical student in the Irish College of

Paris, when the late Bishop of Kerry,
Dr. Moriarty, assumed the office of
dean and vice-president. Dr. McSwee-
ney, of New York, at that time presi-
dent of the college, generously shared
in the paternal solicitude of Dr. Moriar-
ty, regarding the brilliant promise of
their young ward, who led his humanity
rhetoric, philosophy and divinity classes
till the close of his seventh years’ acade
mic course. After such protracted
studies, being still two years short of
the canonical age for the priesthood,
though already engaged to the Church
by sub deaconship, his college superiors,
his uncle and other clerical friends,
earnestly recommended him to read a
supplemental theological and canonical
course of studies at the celebrated Ro-
man Jesuit College, under the tutorship
of Perrone, and the brilliant Passaglia,
and other eminent professors, till his
scholastic graduation, with genuine
doctor’s honors, in July, 1847. Having
spent a couple of years as professor of
classics and divinity at Carlow, Ireland,
and in his old alma mater at Paris, he
returned to the fever and cholera battle-
field in his native country, where his
brother, in his ministerial apostolic
labors, had succumbed, filling a youth-
ful martyr’s grave. The young profes-
sor apparently aspired to equal the
ministerial zeal and reward of his deep-
ly lamented brother; but Providence
who ordered things sweetly, kindly
spared her child of promise for over
thirty years to take the national leader-
ship of the Irish hierarchy and clergy
in the struggle against their old, power-
ful, and relentless oppressor.

After some seven years of zealous,
brilliant and fruitful ministration as as-
sistant pastor at Charleville, Middleton,
and Mallow, he was promoted in 1857
to the highest responsible office of presi-
dent of St. Colne an’s College, Fermoy,
a newly-founded diocesan establishment.
Hundreds of clergymen in the old land
and spread through English colonial
settlements, and many more in the
United States, can bear witness to the
fact that within eight or nine years of
the opening of this educational institu-
tion its alumni in Maynooth, All Hal-
low’s and in colleges through the Conti-
nent were almost universally the fore-
most students in their respective classes.

THE HARP.

409

Dr. Croke, being rather dangerously
threatened with sciatica, accepted the
pastorship and rural deanship of Done-
rail e, in the northern part of Cork, till
summoned by the late lamented Holy
Father to assume the episcopal respon-
sibilities of Auckland, New Zealand, in
July, 1870, at the closing of the great
Vatican Council.

When leaving Ireland in September
of that year, and when passing through
New York and other great States to
the Pacific Mail steamer from San
Francisco, where his brother was ad-
ministrator and vicar-general, very
many priests and prominent Catholics
lamented that so brilliant and promising
a young Irishman should be “ apostoli-
cally bound,” for the distant land ot
Macaulay’s poetic travelling artist, who
is hereafter doomed to a risky posing on
the broken arch over the classic waters
of old Father Thames.

After five years diocesan administra-
tion, remarkable for financial, intellec-
tual, and spiritual advancement, Dr.
Croke was happily preconized in June
1875, as Archbishop of Cashel and Apos-
tolic Administrator of Emly, and suc-
cessor to the late Most Eev. Dr. Patrick
Leahy, decidedly one of the most learn-
ed, accomplished, zealous, and patriotic
bishops of Irish birth or parentage with-
in this century.

It will be highly gratifying to many
of our readers to be reminded that the
Very Eev. Dr. John Eyan, P. P. and
Y. G., Bailingarry, Tipperary, very pro-
bably the most eminent theologian in
the Irish priesthood after Profs, Murray
and Neville, and an extremely popular
pastor and diocesan official in the
late administration, received an over-
whelming majority of the votes of his
♦ brother pastors in the canonical scrutiny
of Cashel and Emly. However, the
thoughtful and experienced provincial
prelates of Munster, knowing the in-
stinctive humility of Dr. Eyan in assum-
ing at so comparitively early an age,
such a responsibilitjq and the transcen-
dant ability of Dr. Croke for metropoli-
tan duties, expressed a strong desire for
the latter’s promotion to the late Holy
Father, who was a special friend of Dr.
Croke. This earnest presentation of Dr.
Croke’s name, having received the en-
dorsement of the Eoman Consistory in

solemn council, was duly accepted by
the Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX., in June,
1875. As successor to so eminent and
popular an archbishop as Dr. Leahy, of
whom any Catholic hierarchy and
clergy in any nation in Europe would
be proud, and as the choice of the ma-
jority of the provincial bishops, though
not nominated by pastor’s scrutiny, we
can readily understand that nobody,
unless gifted with very exceptionable
talent, zeal, tact, and administrative for-
titude, could control the elements of
natural disaffection among so prover-
bally high-spirited a clergy and people.

And yet, God be thanked, we find
that within a few years Archbishop
Croke has given the very highest satis-
faction in his difficult administration,
and has secured for himself an amount
of affection from priests and people as
genuine and overflowing as if his pater-
nal and maternal ancestors had been
racy of the hills and valleys of Tippera-
ry since Cormac was ruler and bishop
of the royal house and cathedral of “ the
City of Kings.”

When we remember Archbishop
Croke’s great oratorical panegyric on
the centennial aniversary of the Libera-
tor, a few years ago before the most
educated Catholic audience ever gath-
ered within church walls, in old Ireland,
his grand diocesan demonstration on the
consecration ot his costly and mag-
nificent cathedral, worthy of his prede-
cessors and himself, his untiring energy
in raising the standard of efficiency of
his clergy and religious communities,
powerfully reacting on the educational,
industrial, and spiritual interests of his
numerous parochial congregations, from
Slieve-na-Mon to within shadow of the
historic walls of old Limerick, we are
not surprised to find a prelate of his
bold aspirations, worthy of the great
public banquet, diocesan address and
testimonial which awaited him on his
return from the Eternal City. As his
peculiarly gifted pen made many soul-
stirring contributions to the sterling
columns of the Nation in the days of
Young Ireland, our readers will gladly
learn that his powerful pen, his eloquent
tongue, and large Irish heart are as
solemnly consecrated to the cause of
Fatherland, and that he stands to day
pre-eminently the idol of his people,

4io

THE HARP.

the advocate of national independence,
and, we might add, the terror of Eng-
land.

THE WISE MAN AND
THE FOOL.

A TALE OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE

19TH CENTURY,

(. From the French.

CHAPTER I.

A HARD SHELL PATRIOT.

■I have long had the idea of writing a
long-winded treatise to prove to the
bats that old things are new things and
that new things are old, and thence to
conclude logically that after the storm
comes sunshine, except in the particular
case of a night-storm, when of course it
is the moon that reappears and not the
sun. I was convinced, to use the lan-
guage of all planners of great things, that
a work ot this kind was imperatively
necessary and that a generous and ap-
preciative public would feel duly grate-
ful lor the filling up of so great a hiatus.
I had already pushed my pains-taking
labours even to the fourth volume,
when one of my friends, who had had the
kindness to undertake the revision of my
manuscript — even to the dotting of my
i’s, which I have an ugly habit of omitt-
ing happened to recite to me a little
epic. Coming as it did at that parti-
cular moment, recalling events of the
past and above all touching on ecclesias-
tical topics, I determined to embody it
in my narrative. Here it is.

It was at the end of the year 1804, in
the middle of December, during a hard
frost, keen enough to freeze one’s face,
Minder a sky grey as steel in the good
• city of Turin, that the congealed rain
fell upon the icey pavement with the
patter of a shower of pins upon a pane
of glass. But if the temperature of out-
door Turn was rude, it was mild and
genial in the large apartment, which
might have been taken for a warehouse,
wherein the two brothers Maur and
Chaffred Malbrouch were finishing their
•dinner. Both were sufficiently advanc-
ed in age, though Maur was younger
than his brother by seven years. At
the moment of which we write Maur

wore his hair close-cropped after the
manner of the G-aul, and was proud of
it, believing that thereby he made a
public profession of “ advanced prin-
ciples.” Formerly he had been court
physician, and had worn an embroider-
ed suit and a powdered wig of formid-
able dimensions. On the day after the
King quitted Turin, he encased his once
courtly form in republican costume. As
to his head it had long been full of those
new idea’s which are known to have
flown from the other side of the Alps.
He did not however care to proclaim
these ideas from the house-tops, because
he did not deem it altogether impossible
that King Victor Emmanuel might
return ; in which ease, he hoped to re-
don his broidered suit and powdered
wig, to keep his new ideas to himself
and to re-enact the lucrative and honor-
able role of court physician.

Chaffred was the opposite of his
brother. In such horror did he hold
the new government which had imposed
itself upon his fatherland, that he had
gone voluntarily into exile. His sojourn,
was Rome, where he lavished the
revenues of the many farms he possess-
ed in the territory of Bergamo. His
uprightness and piety were shocked by
the disgraceful events which had taken
place under Pius VI., and which menac-
ed his successor Pius VII. These had
largely contributed to give Chaffred a
strong and unshakable aversion for the
irreligious and revolutionary giddiness
that governed the times. On meeting
him you would have thought him the
halest and gayest old man of the period.
He had a remarkably fine head sur-
mounted by grey locks and underlain
with a superb double chin. His cheeks
were full and ruddy, his whole person
robust, lithe and pronounced ; his sight
was excellent and he still enjoyed ail
his teeth.

Chaffred was ignorant of the secret
errors which infested his brother Maur,
but laughed heartily at his political
weaknesses which were visible to the
naked eye. Unlike Maur, whatever the
government and whoever the governors
Chaffred had not changed one iota of
Piedmontese dress, nor of his Piedmont-
ese customs. A lorg coat reached to
his strong and plump calves. His knee
breeches were held below the knee by

THE HARP.

41 1

large buckles, whilst much larger ones
adorned his shoes. In his vest pockets
he carried two beautiful gold watches to
which were attached two chains enrich-
ed with agate ornaments symmetric-
ally arranged. A double frilled shirt
front crumpled and somewhat stained
with snuff stood out from his ample
chest. He did not take snuff as it is
commonly taken from a snuff-box — by
no means ; Chaffred was true to the
customs of his forefathers. He carried
about him a little mill filled with leaf
tobacco ; two or three turns of the mill,
and he drew from the box a good and
highly prized pinch, well and duly
ground, very fresh and very fragrant.
His neck was envelloped by a heavy
cravat whence issued stiff and straight
the two ends of a spotless collar after
the shape of a latin sail ; from his
shoulders rose a heavy cape of good and
stout cloth. Chaffred had always despised
novelties in dress and foreign fashions.
Hating the modern hat, which of late
has run into so many and such senseless
shapes, he wore a three cornered one,
and a flemish ell of cue. This cue careful-
ly smoothed and tied up by himself was
the one great ornament of that most
reverend white head. Ho took pleasure
in contemplating it when tied at re-
gular intervals with black ribbon and
finished off with a superb bow. This
well beloved cue shook with severe
dignity from the old man’s back ; so
that in Home his usual residence, he
passed under the name of Signor Club.

“ Well indeed ” ! said his friends at
times “ you might dress yourself in
better form. You should adopt the new
style.” —

“ Indeed no !” he would quietly an-
swer ‘-'I was built on the ancient
plan.”

“ But you would lose nothing of your
dignity in following the modern man-
ners. The French fashion.” —

“ Bah !” he would cry out with sup-
reme contempt — “bah !” would you have
me dress like a radical ? I have seen
those fellows. I saw them enter Nice
and Savoy ; they committed all sorts of
disgraceful and cowardly acts: killed
men women and children indiscrimin-
ately : profaned the holy tabernacles,
and placed an impure woman upon our
altars. I saw them on their first entry

into Turin open houses of debauch, and
theatres, which were no better. They
placarded the walls of our loyal city with
infamous caricatures of our King,
whilst they guarded him in his palace as
a prisoner, with cowardly ruffians, who
disgraced the soldiers uniform. These
scoundrels pushed their insolence so far
as to insult our saintly queen Mary
Clotilde ” — and saying this the old man
wept — “I have seen all this and you
expect me to follow the manners and
customs of the murderers of my coun-
tiy-”

“ But at least your cue !”

“My cue! yes my cue. Long live
the cue ! My father wore it at Assietta,
when we left six thousand Frenchmen
with their bellies to the sun ; Victor
Emmanuel my King my only King
wears it this day : Charles Emmanuel
who is in Borne wears it: I saluted them
both right loyally at Foligno the other
day when they came to kiss the feet of
Pius VII. Oh ! you know not what it
is to wear a cue”

Under this name of cue Chaffred un-
derstood many great and good old things
— the old credo , the old politics, the old
probity — the old maxims, and a large
dose of the old gaiety.

Meanwhile things went ill for the old
regime in Turin. For six years this
subalpin race had fought against the
hordes of Bepublican France, and had
at length succumbed to the first Bon-
aparte. From that moment a French
garrison of impious obscene unbrididled
soldiery overran the Sardinian capital.
Her churches, monasteries, colleges
and the treasure dedicated to God and
to his poor became the prey of the god-
less rabble. Chaffred saw all this, and
it cut his noble soul to the quick. Ho
was accustomed every evening to walk
on the bastion. Ostensibly this was to
take the air, in reality it was to discuss
in no measured terms the vile acts of the
foreign soldiery. One evening, whilst
the citizens in more than usual numbers*
were strolling about, there came from
the bastion of the French citadel the
fierce blare of many trumpets celebrat-
ing the triumphs ot the French arms.
This was too much for Chaffred. Ap-
proaching one of the royal grenadiers —
“Lend me your carbine” — said he
seizing it on the moment he took aim at

412

THE HARP.

the leader of the music and fired. — The
women fled, children screamed, the men
gathered in groups, piling up stones and
brandishing their sticks. Report of the
affair reached the royal barracks ; the
soldiers without their officers turned out
en masse. Shots were fired, men fell
killed and wounded. Peace was only
restored by the untiring efforts of both
commanders. A week passed. One day
Chaffred received a letter from the
French Ambassador, requiring his pre-
sence. The republican received Chaffred
with a severe air.

“I hear,” said he, “ that you busy
yourself daily with inflaming the minds
of your fellow citizens against the
French. A report has also come to
me, which I hope is inexact ; and woe
to you ! if it is true. I am told that
you fired a shot on that unfortunate
affair of last Sunday.” —

“ Citizen Ambassador,” answered
Chaffred cooly — “ have you sent for me
to talk with you, or to undergo an ex-
amination at you r hands?”

“ Either the one or the other as it may
be necessary.”

“Well then Citizen, if it be the first
I thank you, if the second I do not re-
cognize you as my judge !”

“ Judge or no judge,” cried Ginguene
in anger, “ I have the right to reproach
you with your conduct, which gives
rise to grave s.uspicions. There are too
many of your kind already. An ex-
ample must be made before these plots
obtain their end. You may be thank-
ful that you have your liberty. You
prepare a new Sicilian Vespers.”

“ You are wrong Citizen. The Pied-
montese respect treaties and the orders
of their King. Faithful to the Conven-
tion, popular movements are forbidden.
Were it otherwise.” —

“ What ! do you dare to thi eaten me ?
Remember to whom you speak.”

“I speak to Citizen Ambassador
Ginguene,” said the Piedmontese firmly.

“ Gp!” said the Ambassador. “At
the first disorder that arises I shall know
upon whose head to visit the vengeance
of France.”

Malbrouch bowed ceremoniously and
withdrew. On his arrival at home he
took pen in hand and wrote : —

“ Citizen Ambassador, in order to
insult women old men and children the

more safely your officers brought an
escort of huzzars on horseback . allow
me for my personal safety to speak to
you a little at a distance. Those who con-
ceived the scene of last Sunday as well
as those who executed it are cowards.
You have taken them under your pro-
tection. If you had a particle of honor
you would grasp with gratitude the
hand, that drew the trigger of that
carbine of which you spoke. But de-
mocratic bile clouds your sight and
brain. Know that if superior force has
put you in possession of our fortress, it
does not give you the right to despise us.
It is by deceit you entered the citadel of
Turin and by violating your word; you
remain there by violence, we detest the
liberty you offer us. At the conclusion
ofour interview, you threatened me with
a prison. [ believe you are capable of
anything, and will spare you this last
act of cowardice, by retireing beyond
your grasp. You will nevertheless be
always sensible of my presence. Bo
not fear for your life. I am not a
jacobin. Iam a citizen of Turin.

“ Chaffred Malbrotjch.”
Two hours after this letter was re-
ceived, the French gensd’armes entered
Chaffred’s house. He had been in safety
an hour and a half. From his refuge
he wrote to Count Prosper Balbo at
Paris, and to such good effect, that
minister Talleyrand moyed either by
political shame or perhaps by some
touch of that gentlemanly feeling, of
which Talleyrand could never wholly
divest himself thought proper to recall
Citizen Ambassador Ginguene to Paris.
As for Chaffred, when Pius VII. invited
Victor Emmanuel to seek refuge in
Rome he followed thither carrying in
his heart an irreconcilable hatred against
the oppressers of his King and country.

CHAPTER II.

In leaving his country Chaffred Mal-
brouch might have gone to his estate
at Logne in the territory of Bergamo.
He could not however bring himself to
do this, because the cis. alpine republic
governed that country ; a government
which he called, the Kingdom of frog-
do m croaking in the mud, with Napo-
leon Bonaparte for its king-log.

But why has he come back from Rome

THE HARP.

4i3

his chosen residence ? The old Pied-
montese, so intractable in religion and
in politics, was kind affectionate and
delicate in his affection for his relations.
Having left his younger brother at
Turin, he returned every year to pass
some weeks with him, ITe was kindly
received and his political opinions were
tolerated, at times even flattered, for
Ohaffred was a widower without child-
ren. The good old man had taken
a liking for two little blonde heads,
which grew every year in his brother’s
house, and had given it to be understood
that having no one whereon to place
his affections, he intended to divide his
fortune between his two nieces, the
young Clelie and the still younger
Clotilde.

Thus when uncle Chaffred returned
■evey year on the appointed day, as soon
as the noise of wheels was heard in the
courtyard Maur would be found on the
top step of the doorway, and his little
nieces flying to the carriage, would cry
out in chorus “ Welcome Uncle Chaf-
fred !” They would dance round the
coachman, seize uncle’s valise, his
traveling cap, his umbrella and half an
hour afterwards dinner would smoke on
the table, and the old man between the
wine, the warmth of the fire and the
caresses of his nieces would forget the
fatigues of his long journey. Next day
all the inmates of the house from master
to servants were around him dusting,
cleaning and arranging the parlour,
which was intended for him ; they
divined his every desire, and divining
it put it into immediate execution.
They had at their finger ends the old
man’s little tastes, and prepared them
accordingly. Thus the “ good little
uncle ” pampered, and folded up as it
were in silk paper passed two or three
weeks in his brother’s family, leading a
life, the sweetest and calmest imagin-
able ; very different alas ! from that
at Eome in his solitary dwelling.

On of the first duties of uncle Chaffred
after the bustle of his arrival had sub-
sided was to call his two nieces to him
to see how much they had grown. He
would take their measure very serious-
ly with his walking stick, and would
make a mark upon it with his finger, in
order to compare it with former years ;
and would pretend that his noices had

grown downward at least a good finger
and a half. Thence would arise a grand
discussion in which the young people
would prove by most convincing argu-
ments, that they had grown that much
taller instead of smaller. Uncle would
then change ground, and pretend that
he meant they had grown worse instead
of smaller.

“ Who told you that ; uncle ?”

“ Who? the little angel.”

“ How can that be ? The little angel
does not tell lies.”

“ Well then ! suppose it was the Pope
that told it to me at Eome;”

“ That is impossible ” ; cried out
Chotilde, “ I say a Hail Mary for the
Pope every day, as you told me to do
last year.”

“Then when strong and ample testi-
mony had been borne by the father of
these young people as to their good
conduct, uncle Chaffred would allow
himself to be persuaded, and would com-
mence the distribution of his prizes.
There were dolls dressed as court ladies
as shepherdesses and as nuns ; fans
inlaid with mother of pearl, kept in
ornamental boxes, broaches en mosaique,
odoves and sweetmeats until it was im-
possible to say which was the more
pleased, uncle or nieces. Amongst
these playthings there were always
some objects of devotion, beads, scapul-
aires, a Saint Mary Major framed in
shells. These holy things were distri-
buted by Uncle Chaffred with becoming
seriousness because they had been
blessed by the Holy Father Pius YII.

Maur Malbrouch had little love for
the pious things, but his brother was
rich, a widower, and very old ; it was
necessary therefore to be enchanted and
to let the goodman act as he wished, in
order that he might remember his
nieces all the more generously in his
will. The father smiled when his
brother took the young people to walk
with him. On these walks the good
uncle would speak to them of
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, . of
love for the Pope as the representative
of Christ and head of his church, on the
modesty so becoming in young girls,
on charity to the poor, in a word on all
those subjects which go to make good
Christians. To still further impress
those lessons, he would take them to

4H

THE HARP.

the Church of Consolation, and as he
offered them holy water would say

“ Pray, my children for the Holy
Father !”

But the two nieces did not respond in
the same manner to the good intentions
of their uncle.

“ Do you know ; Maur,” he would say
on his return — “ do you know it ap-
pears to me that Clotilde will become
a good daughter, but the elder/’ — say-
ing this he would shake his head.

“Why ! why ! Clelie appears to me
most gentle and good ; she has the only
fault of being more spirited and more
sensible than her sister : she is also
more witty and lively than Clotilde.”

“ She says many thing I do not ap-
prove of. She loves gewgaws and
nonsense ; she seeks the company of high
dames amongst whom she struts
like a peacock ; she has always some
unkind remark to pass on each one she
meets : this one is too thin ; that has an
awkward gait ; this hat is wrong ; this
platted hair falls without grace : to
please her one must do this and must do
that.”

“ Bah ! I see no harm m all that.
She is growing into a woman and she is
putting on the airs of women.”

“ I do not deny it. But in my opinion
you take her too much into society.
Would you believe it ? Although she is
only fourteen years old, she knows all the
gossip and scandals of the neighbour-
hood. She has discussed before me all
her relations and friends and neigh-
bours ; and has had her ridicule for
each.”

“ What would you have ? Mow-a-days
there are no children .”

“ That is only too true. But we ought
to endeavour to keep her in her own
sphere. Is it as it should be, to see a
young girl pass whole hours at a
window, dressed as a danseuse ? Fancy ;
she had the face to tell me yesterday,
that she liked a certain French Officer,
because he was a true republican ; and
that she did not like a certain young
man of the country, because he was
always taking the part of the King and
his Queen.

To these things Maur answered with
a shrug of his shoulders, exclaiming :

“ The little political creature ! When

she is grown up it will be time enough
to speak of such things.”

“But ought we not to strike at the root
of these things ?” The other day, she
laughed at her sister because she be-
lieved in miracles. This could not
have happened if she had not some evil
companions to give her these ideas of
modern philosphy.”

“ Would you have me shut her up ;
or scold her at every wrong word ?
Clelie is growing up . it is right that
she should begin to think for herself.
So long as she does not exceed the
bounds of a good education, I do not
trouble myself with these trifles ; you
know that I am so constituted.”

Thus by a torrent of words void of
reason did Maur escape from his
brother’s expostulations.

In the year 1S04 l’abbe Lantere to
whom he had confided the task of watch-
ing over his two nieces, thus wrote to
Chaffred.

“ My dear friend, I am sorry to say,,
that your brother is a partizan strongly
bound up with the republicans of this
country and those beyond the Alps. We
can have no hope for him except in
prayer. Clelie has a fund of religion,
which ha3 been instilled into her by a
servant girl, a brave and worthy savoy-
arde. But the young lady is fickle and
worldly ; her father has allowed her her
own way in all things ; she frequents
the company of certain dangerous
friends : French books of an evil ten-
dency have quenched in her every spark
of faith, and of love for the Church and
the Holy Father. To make the matter
worse ; she has a vivid imagination
and feeds it only with novel reading.
May God watch over her !

“ Clotilde on the contrary appears to
me as a blessed lamb ; in the midst of
disorders she sees nothing to scandalize
her ; more over she has a more exalted
and better developed spirit than her
sister; a good sense and kind heart
which shew themselves every moment.
A word, a sign, the slightest indication
suffices to encourage her to do good :
she is never tired of listening to good
advice. From the first steps of her life,
I can easily see the part at which she
will arrive. Happy the man who shall
win her for his wife !”

Chaffred Malbrouch arrived at Turin

THE HARP.

415

some day3 before Pius VII., when he
passed through that city on his way to
crown Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of
the French.

H. B.

( To be Continued.')

TO THE IRISH LAND LEAGUE.

BY KATE GARDENER.

“ My police are four fifths of the Irish people, a*
home and abroad. If he is going to put them all
into prison, he wiU have to build a prison big enough
to hold 20,000,000 people.” — Charles Stuart
Parnell.

One leagued yeoman hand
’Gainst armed legion, ten.

For hearth and home and n enaced land,
Shoulder to shouldor firnfly stand.

And calmly, Irish men !

’Twere grand for country’s right
To draw the sword, but then
’Tis nobler still, in soulful might,
Sheathing a while the weapon bright,

To endure, ye Irish men !

And God, who made you, filled.

Copious, to all men’s ken.

Your hearts will flame-like blood, unchilled
Since freshly from His hand distilled
Through veins of Irish men.

That fine quick flame rose oft
In matchless valour, when,

Sworn round in mountain gorge or croft,
Some grand wild flag dared shine aloft
For freedom, Irish men !

Now sheathe like swords your hearts ;

Be calm with tongue and pen ;

While tyrants tread your fields and marts,
Your moveless will’s the road that parts
This red sea, Irish men !

With fangs all threatening bare
The lion leaves his den ;

He’ll turn back halting to his lair
When once his feet have found the snare, —
Your Union, Irish men !

By martyred Emmet’s fate ;

By all your wrongs since then
Of want and scorn, and jealous hate, —

Of gibbet, exile, dungeon-gate, —

Be calm, ye Irish men !

When one brave leader falls
Let watchful patriots ten,

Ur awed by England’s prison walls,

March to the front where country calls, —
March, calmly, Irish men !

Though robber base and bold,

Let England tremble then,

Beneath her red-cross banner’s fold
Her isle one dungeon-tower to hold
This host of faithful men !

FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS.

THE WITCHE’S CAT.

A FAIRY STORY.

In some weird cave, far distant from
the abodes of mankind, dwelt an old
witch. She was the personification of
all evil and wickedness. Her only com-
panion in her dismal home was a black,
tierce looking cat, with green eyes that
shone with a bright light at night. This
cat had been found twenty-five years
ago in the witch’s cave one morning,
and had ever since lived with her.

At the time of its first discovery it
had been of its present size. It had
never grown. But every day seemed
to add one shade of deeper green to the
color of its eyes.

The witch feasted on children, who
were wafted to her every month in an
evil breeze at her command. All
other breezes of the air had rebelled
against the evil one ; but the witch’s
power had as yet held its own.

For years the good breezes of the air
fought and struggled with this foul
agent of the witch, and at least they
began to hope that their power was
gaining.

One day — it was about the witch’s
dinner-hour — the winds whistled and
the trees shook, the thunder rolled, and
the lightning hissed with a fierce swing ;
two children, a little boy and his sister,
were lodged in the witch’s cave. The
winds did not cease when the poor chil-
dren had come, but howled and whistled
wildly on.

The watch’s fire, on which the poor
children were to be roasted, flickered
half extinguished while the witch rayed
and. cursed at the breezes that were
fighting with the flames. Louder and
stronger grew the moanings and howl-
ings in the air, when suddenly, with
one mighty effort, the children were
lifted in the air and borne away.

The witch cursed, swore, and raved.
The black cat jumped on the burning
fire, uttering sounds blood-freezing in
their woful clamor.

The witch seized her magic staff,
drew a mystic circle in the centre of the
cave, and implored all the demons and
goblins of subterranean kingdoms to aid
her in tracking the missing children.

416

THE HARP.

The winds whistled on, and the witch
who felt her power lessening, was boil-
ing over in paroxysms of rage.

She seized her cat, placed it before
her on a rock of the cave, and spoke in
a voice that seemed to issue from the
centre of the earth :

“ Slave of my power, with all-seeing
eyes, I command thee lead me to where
the stolen young ones are hidden ! ”

The cat leaped wildly in the air when
the witch had finished her command,
and came to the ground with a deafen-
ing cry.

Again it leaped into the air, and again
it came to the ground with the same
dreadful shriek.

Soon after the witch set out with her
green eyed guide. Then the cat disap-
peared. The witch came to a babbling
brook; the lightning hissed, and the
thunder rolled anew. When the tur-
moil in the sky was over, the babbling
brook ran along, and said in dismal
tones :

“ Follow me, follow me, follow me !”

On, on, over the rocks and shell
wooden branches, and stumps of rotten
trees — on over rugged roads the witch
ursued her course along the babbling
rook, while the birds of the air were
darting around her in wild confusion.
The cat wms far in advance ; whenever
its feet touched the ground the earth
seemed to glow and kindle. The witch
hurried on. At last she saw her cat
ahead. She rushed forth at a faster
pace.

Soon they came to a dark, dark spot.
Nothing save the green light sparkling
from the cat’s eyes was visible. The
witch followed on. They approached a
rough stone staircase. A caldron near
the green-eyed cat immediately began
to fume. The light coming from the
fire in the heated caldron illuminated
the scene. In a corner of this horrible
place were the two children. The little
girl had fallen asleep upon her brother’s
knees. As the boy saw the green eyes
of the cat coming down the steps, and
the witch’s frame illumined by the
caldron, following them, he elapsed his
little hands convulsively and prayed for
mercy.

But there was no mercy. The good
breeze that had borne the children
from the witch’s home had been con-

quered at the moment the witch reached
the babbling brook:, for the goblins to
whom the witch had appealed exerted
their power, and the lightning-flash dis-
pelled the breeze and dropped the chil-
dren into a cave, which was the witch’s
deserted home.

She now seized the boy and his ap-
parently lifeless sister and took them
home. The winds whistled on, and the
air grew oppressive. Still, however,
the witch proceeded, and finally reach-
ed her cave. She took the boy and
laid him upon the fire, and danced in
glee as she heard his bones crackle.

She next turned to the girl. But she
was a corpse.

The witch and her cat seized the
roasted body and began tearing it to
pieces.

They had nearly finished it all when
suddenly the green-eyed cat gave a
woful moan and fell dead.

The witch dropped the uneaten bones
and looked at her cat. In another mo-
ment she, too, uttered a scream and sank
lifeless upon the floor of the cave.

The children had eaten the poisonous,
slimy plants that grew in the cave
where they had been left. The girl had
died from the effects, and the poisoned
flesh of the roasted boy proved fatal to
the witch and her green-eyed cat.

The lifeless forms of the two evil ones
sank deeper and deeper into the ground
of the cave, and finally were lost sight
of. In their place sprang up a number
of deadly plants to mark the scenes of
their wicked ways.

The little girl was wafted away by the
good breeze, triumphant now, and hid-
den in a distant spot in some pleasant
grove, where to this day delightful
breezes play in calm and holy peaceful-
ness.

RELY ON YOURSELF,

It is related of Stephen G-irard that he
had a favorite clerk, and he always said
he intended to do well by Ben Lippin-
cott. So when Ben got to be twenty-
one he expected to hear the governor
say something of his future prospects
and perhaps lend a helping hand in start-
ing him in the world. But the old fox
carefully avoided the subject. Ben must-
ered courage . “ I suppose I am now

THE HARP.

4i7

free, sir,” said he,“ and I thought I
would say something to you as to my
course. What do you think I had bet-
ter do ?”

“ Yes, yes. I know you are,” said
the old millionaire, “ and my advice is
to go and learn the cooper’s trade.”

This application of ice nearly froze
Ben out ; but recovering his equilibrium
he said if Mr. Girard was in earnest he
would do so.

“ I am in earnest.”

And Ben forthwith sought the best
cooper in Spring Gardens, became an
apprentice, and in due time conld make
as good a barrel as the best. He an-
nounced to old Stephen that he had
graduated, and was ready to set up in
business. The old man seemed gratified,
and immediately ordered three of the
best barrels he could turn out. Ben
did his prettiest, and wheeled them up
to the old man’s counting-room. Old
Girard pronounced them first-rate, and
demanded the price.

“ One dollar each,” said Ben, “ is as
low as I can live by.”

“ Cheap enough ! Make out your bill.”
The bill was made out, and old Step-
hen settled it with a check for $20,000
which he accompanied with this little
moral to the story :

“ There, take that and invest it in the
best possible manner ; and if you are
unfortunate and lose it, you will have a
good trade to fall back upon, which
will atford you a good living.”

HINTS TO PARENTS.

Few parents realize how much their
children may be taught at home by de-
voting a few minutes to the instruction
of them every day. Let a parent make
a companion of his child, converse with
him familiarly, put to him questions,
answer enquiries, communicate facts,
the result of his reading or observation
awaken his curiosity, explain difficulties
the meaning of things, and all this in
an easy, playful manner, without seem-
ing to impose a task, and he will be
astonished at the progress which will
be made. The experiment is so simple
that none need hesitate about its perfor-
mance.

THE WORTH OP A GOOD COMPANION.

A companion that is cheerful, and free
from scurrilous discourse and free from
swearing, is worth gold. I love such
mirth as does not make friends ashamed
to look upon one another the next morn-
ing ; nor men that cannot well bear it
to repent the money they spent when
then be warmed without such times and
companions, that to make yourselves
merry for a little, than a great deal of
money, for it is the company and not
the change that makes the feast.

POUR GOOD HABITS.

There were four good habits a wise and
good man earnestly recommended in his
counsels, and also by his own example
and which he considered essentially ne-
cessary for the management of temporal
concerns ; these are, punctuality, ac-
curacy, steadiness, and despatch. With-
out the first of these time is wasted ;
without the second mistakes the most
hurtful to our own credit and interest
and that of others may be committed ;
without the third nothing can be well
done , and without the fourth oppor-
tunities of great advantage are lost
which it is impossible ts recall.

What made Michael Davitt a
Hater op England. — One of the lead-
ing counsel of England asked Mr. Davitt,
after his condemnation, why he, who
had lived so long out of Ireland, should
be so eager to redress her grievances.
He replied “When I was three years
old the roof was taken off my mother’s
house. We were then placed in an op-
en cart and taken through the snow to
a port, where we took ship for America.
I have never forgotten this, and have
vowed to devote my life to putting an
end to a system which subjects others
to a like fate.” Curiously enough, one
of the first speeches Mr. Davitt deliver-
ed on the Land League was from a plat-
form erected on the exact spot where
his mother’s house used to stand.

418

THE HARP.

USEFUL HOUSEHOLD RECEIPTS.

Squash Pie. — Stew the squash with
a little salt ; rub it through a colander,
and have it perfectly smooth ; mix the
squash with sweet milk ; if you have
cream it will be all the better ; make it
about as thick as batter, adding the
yolks of two eggs ; sweeten with pul-
verized sugar to taste ; flavor with rose-
water, or with nutmeg ; line a pie dish ;
fill with squash, and bake for half an
hour ; if you do not want a pie, make
fritters, and fry brown, with good
butter ; when about to serve, sprinkle
a little sugar on them ; squash does not
require much sweetening.

Irish Stew. — Cut some potatoes and
onions into slices, and put a layer of
them at the bottom of the sauce pan ;
add some pieces of mutton with a little
pepper and salt ; put in more potatoes
and more chops in the same way, until
the saucepan is full ; and let it stew very
slowly until done ; but the potatoes
should be slightly boiled before they are
put with the weat, as the water potatoes
are boiled in is very detrimental to the
health.

For Neuralgia. — Steep green horse-
radish root in cold vinegar, warm the
liquid slightly, and bathe the parts af-
fected.

Foe Constipation. — One ounce of
senna, the same quantity of peppermint
leaves, one-half pound figs, all chopped
fine and mixed with a few spoonfuls of
molasses. Take a small piece after each
meal.

Diphtheria. — Dr. C. R. S. Curtis, of
Quincy. 111., reports in the Boston Med-
ical and Surgical Journal the results of
the local use of a decoction of leaves of
black walnut in diphtheria. The reme-
dy was chiefly employed as a gargle or
applied with a swab to the throat and
fauces. A poultice of the leaves was
also resorted to in some instances. Dr.
Curtis adopted the same remedy in con-
sequence of the recommendation by
Prof. Nelaton in malignant pustul.
The use of the gargle was unattended
by discomfort, no patient objecting to it.
Improvement in each instance was rapid,
the ash-colored spots disappearing;

Lime Water and Milk. — Experience
proves that lime water and milk are not
only food and medicine at an early peri-
od of life, but also at a later, when the
functions of digestion and assimilation
are feeble and easily perverted. A stom-
ach taxed by gluttony, irritated by im-
proper food, inflamed by alcohol, enfee-
bled by disease, or otherwise unfitted
for its duties — as is shown by the vari-
ous symptoms attending upon indiges-
tion, dysgepsia, diarrhea, dysentery and
fever — will resume its work, and do it
energetically, on an exclusive diet of
bread and milk and lime water. A bowl
of cow’s milk may have four tabic
spoonfuls of lime water to it with good
effect.

Pitch-paper, the same as that used in
covering roofs, when cut into slips and
placed in convenient situations under
carpets and behind sofas and chairs in a
room will effectually repel the moth
miller from depositing its eggs. If
similar strips are placed inside the backs
and seats of parlor suits they will render
the furniture moth-proof.

If a person is on fire, the best way to
extinguish the flames is to lay the per-
son down on the floor of the room, and
throw the tablecloth, rug, or other large
cloth, over him, and roll him on the
floor.

Roast Turkey. — Wash dry and stuff
with a dressing of dry bread soaked in
water, pressed out and mixed with salt,
pepper, thyme, butter and an egg ; sew
up the turkey snugly, and put in the
pan with a little water ; roast slowly,
allowing three hours for a ten-pound
turkey; when commencing to brown,
rub over with a little butter to keep the
skin from blistering : boil giblet in

water, chop fine and put in gravy.

Oatmeal and Beef Tea. — This is
quite useful to give strength to weak
patients. Take two tablespoonfuls of
tine oatmeal and make it perfectly
smooth in two spoonfuls of cold water ;
pour into this a pint of strong beef tea ;
boil it eight minutes ; keep stirring
all the time ; it should be very smooth ;
if lumpy pass through a sieve.

FORGET NOT THE FIELD.

AIR-TEE LAMENTATION OF ATJGHRIM,

GO

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tz

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P

IL Despondingly. K | I GO i

MH-f 2 *i«I*-*§*H Jrf

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lucres

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1

2 Oh ! could we from death but recover
Those hearts, as they bounded before,
In the face of high heav’n to fight over
That combat for Freedom once more: —

$ Could the chain for an instaat be riven
Which Tyranny flung rouud us then.
Oh ! ’tis not in man, nor in Heaven,

To let Tyranny bind it again '

4 But ’tis past, and tho’ blazon’d in story,

The name of our Victor may be,

Accurst is the march of that glory

Which treads o’er the hearts of the free.

5 Far dearer the grave or the prison,

Illumn’d by one patriot name,

Than the trophies of all who have risen
On Liberty’s ruins, to fame!

420

THE HARP.

FIRESIDE SPARKS.

Chemistry recitation : Professor —
“ What is water ?” Student — “ Water
is an article used by some as a drink.”
Professor, interrupting — “ Can you
name any of its properties ?” Student —
“ Well, it occasionally rots boots.”

“ Do bats ever fly in the day time ?”
asked a teacher of his class in natural
history. “ Yes sir,” said the boys, con-
fidently. “ What kind of bats exclaim-
ed the astonished teacher. “Brickbats !”
yelled the triumphant boys.

Pride takes an early start in San
Francisco. When a lad breaks loose
from his mother’s apron-strings and
secures a position at three dollars per
week, the first thing he does after that
is to hire a Chinaman to run errands for
him.

Ohio is said to be excited because the
son of a Baptist minister has married
the daughter of a Jewish rabbi. Any-
thing that tends to retard the consump-
tion of pork is certain to create an ex-
citement in Ohio. — Philadelphia Chron-
icle Herald.

A woman returning from market got
into a South Hill street car, the other
day, with a basketful of dressed poultry.
To her the driver, speaking sharply,
said, “ Fare !” “ No,” said the woman,
“fowl,” — And everybody cackled.—
Burlington Hawheye.

A poor excuse is better than none.
We hear of a man who justifies his mean-
ness toward his wife by asserting that
he and she are one, and therefore by
refusing to furnish her with money he
practices the heroic virtue of self-denial.
— Boston Transcript.

At a fire in Paris a fireman who was
about to save a child asked for some-
thing to protect his eyes. “ Who’s got
a pair of spectacles ?” he cried. A
gentleman very politely took from his
nose a fine pair of Brazilian pebbles,
wiped them carefully and, handing
them amiably to the fireman, remarked,
“ I hardly know whether these are your
exact number ?” — Figaro.

During the last session of the court at
— Wis., Lawyer Blank had been trying
for two long hours to impress upon the
minds of the jury the facts of the case.

Hearing the dinner-bell, he turned to
the Judge, and said : “Had we better
adjourn for dinner, or shall I keep right
on ?” Weary and disgusted, his Honor
replied, “ Oh, you keep right on, and
we will go to dinner.”

Accuracy of expression necessary ,
When you say that a girl’s hair is as
black as coal it is just as well to specify
that you do not mean a red hot coal. —
Washington Republican.

A stranger in St. Louis, thinking he
recognized his coat on the back of a
pedestrian, shouted, “ Stop Thief!” and
about thirty of the inhabitants suddenly
disappeared down a side street.

On hearing a. clergyman remark that
“the world is full of changes,” Mrs.
Partington, said she could hardly bring
her mind to believe it, so little found its
way into her pocket.

“ Marriage with a tinge of romance ’
is what they call it in Kansas, when the
old man rides after the couple, and
shoots the hat oft the bridegroom’s head
with an army carbine.

A man in Boston, in his hurry to assist
a fainting ladj 7- , got a bottle of mueilage
instead of camphor, and bathed her face
with it. She was a good deal stuck up
with his attention.

An Iowa weekly newspaper having a
a circulation of 350 copies feels its per-
fect right to begin an editorial with :
“ As we advised him last week, Gladstone
is shaping out anew policy.”

A fashionably- dressed woman entered
a drug store the other day, and inform-
ed the clerk that her husband had over-
loaded his stomach, and that she desired
to get an epidemic to relieve him.

A client says to his wine dealer who
proposes to sell him a brand of new
wine : “ Tell me, now, this wine is not
too heady ?” Wine seller with alacrity;
“ P,eady ? Why, it’s not even wine !”
— Figaro.

“ Have you any nice, fresh, farm-
house eggs !” inquired a precise old lady
at a grocery store. “No, ma’am,” re-
plied the practical clerk, “ but we have
some very good hen’s eggs.” She took
three to try.

THE HARP

PUNCTUALITY.

It is astonishing how many people
there are who neglect punctuality, and
thousands have failed in life from this
cause alone ; it is not only a serious vice
in itself, but it is the fruitful parent of
many other vices, so that he who be-
comes the victim of it gets involved in
toils from which it is almost impossible
to escape. It makes the merchant waste-
ful of time ; it saps the business reputa-
tion of lawyers, and it injures the pros-
pect of the mechanic, who might other-
wise rise to fortune ; in a word, there is
not a profession, not a station in life,
which is not liable to the canker of the
destructive habit. It is a fact not always
remembered, that Napoleon’s great vic-
tories were won by infusing into his
subordinates the necessity of punctuali-
ty to the minute. It was his plan to
maneuver over large spaces of country,
so as to render the enemy uncertain
where he was about to strike a blow
and then suddenly to concentrate his
forces and fall with irresistible power or-
some weak point of the extended lines
of the foe. The execution of this system
demanded that each division of the army
should arrive at the specified time
punctually; for, if any part failed to
come up, the battle was lost. It was by
imitating this plan that the allies finally
succeeded in overthrowing the emperor.
The whole Waterloo campaign turned
on these tactics. AtMt. S^. Jean, Blu-
cher was punctual, while Grouchy was
not ; and the result was that Napoleon
fell and Wellington triumphed.

In mercantile affairs punctuality is as
important as in military. Many are the
instances in which the neglet to renew
an insurance punctually has led to seri-
ous loss. With sound policy do the
banks insist, under the penalty of a
protest, on the punctual payment of
notes, for were they to do otherwise,
commercial transactions would fall into
inextricable confusion. Many and many
a time has the failure of one man to
meet his obligations brought on the
ruin of a score of others, just as the top-
pling down in a line of bricks of the
master brick, causes the fall of all the
rest. Thousands remain poor all their
lives, who, if they were more faithful in
their word, would secure a large run of

421

custom, and so make their fortunes. Be
punctual if you would succeed.

REVIEWS.

“ The Story of Ireland,” by Dion Bou-
cicault. Boston : James R. Osgoode &
Company.

This is a neat pamphlet of 24 pages in
which the eminent actor and dramatist,
Dion Boucicault in a brief but perspicu-
ous and forcible manner tells the tale
of atrocious deeds of spoliation, tyranny
and bloodshed perpetrated in Ireland by
England from the advent of the Norman
filibusters down to the present day
when the Irish are still struggling
against the avowed object of their alien
rulers “ to root them out from the soil.”

The writer recalls to us in a summary
but succinct form, the four remarkable
periods of Irish history : 1. Prior to the
Norman invasion. 2. From the feudal
occupation under Henry II. to the Re-
formation under the Tudors. 3. Pro-
testant Ascendency, under Elizabeth
until the rebellion of ’98. 4. From the

“ Union ” to this year of grace 1881.
Mr. Boucicault tells how the work of
confiscation was effected in Ireland by
three great grabs : the church grab , the
periodical land grabs and the office grab ;
and in reading these pages we see once
more the nefarious designs which
brought into operation that abominable
penal code which the celebrated Edmund
Burke said was “ a complete system, full
of coherence and consistency, well
digested and well composed in all its
parts a machine of wise and elaborate
contrivance, and as well fitted for the
oppression, impoverishment, and de-
gradation of a people, and the debase-
ment in them of human nature itself,
as ever proceeded from the perverted
ingenuity of man.”

The pamphlet is a stirring effective
one, and it will certainly, attain its
object as an indictment of the British
governing class before the bar of public
opinion not only in England, but wher-
! ever the English language is read the
world over.

Largest Book Published. — The new
edition of Webster’s Unabridged Dic-
tionary, just issued, is believed to be, in
the quantity of matter it contains, by
far the largest volume published. It
now contains about 118,000 words de-
fined, and nearly 15,000 words and
meanings not found in any other one
dictionary. The Biographtcal Diction-
ary, just added, supplies a want long
felt by the reader and student, in giv-
ing the desired information so briefly.
Never was any one volume so complete
as an aid in gettiug and education.

Rest and Comfort to the Suffering.

Brown’s Householo Panacea, has no
equal for relieving pain, both internal and
external. It cures Pain in the Side, Back or
Bowels, Sore Throat, Rheumatism, Tooth-
ache, Lumbago, and any kind of a Pain or
Ache. “ It will most surely quicken the
Blood and Heal, as its acting power is won-
derful.” <e Brown’s Household Panacea,”
being acknowledged as the great Pain Reliev-
er and of double the strength of any other
Elixir or Liniment in the world, should be in
every family handy for use when wanted, “ as
it really is the best remedy in the world for
Cramps in the Stomach, and Pains and Aches
of all kinds,” and is for sale by all Druggists
at 25 cents a bottle.

Mothers ! Mothers ! ! Mothers ! ! !

Are you disturbed at night and broken of
your rest by a sick child suffering and crying
with the excruciating pain of cutting teeth ?
If so, go at once and get a bottle of MRS.
WINSLOW’S SOOTHING SYRUP. It will
relieve the poor little sufferer immediately —
depend upon it; there is no mistake about it.
There is not a mother on earth who has ever
used it, who will not tell you at once that it
will regulate the bowels, and give rest to the
mother, and relief and health to the child,
operating like magic. It is perfectly safe to
use in all cases, and pleasant to the taste, and
is the prescription of one of the oldest and
best female physicians and nurses in the
United States. Sold everywhere at 25 cents
a bottle.

flATHOLIC Men and Women furnished employment.
W $5 a day. Terms free. T. F. Murphy, Augusta, Me.

COYLE & LEBLANC,

ADVOCATES,

No. 54 ST. JAMES STREET.
-O.Ticj hours from 9 a. m. to 5 p. m.

—GRAY’S—

DENTAL PEARLINE,

A SANITARY TOOTH WASH.

Highly recommended for daily use . It whitens the teeth
destroys parastic growth ; has an excellent tonic effect on
the gums, and removes all unpleasant odour from the breath

SOLE MANUFACTURER

HENRY E. GRAY, CHEMIST,

144 St. Lawrence Main St.

MONTREAL.

Established 1859.) 25c. per Bottle.

RE-OPENING

— OF THE —

ST. LAWRENCE HALL.

THE ABOVE HOTEL WAS OPENED
on the

FIRST OF MAY, 1819.

by the former Proprietor, so long and
favorably known throughout Canada,
the United States and British Empire,
who has spared no expense in entirely
RE-FURNISHING the whole house;
also adding

ill Modern Improvements,

which will considerably enhance the al-
ready enviable popularity of this First-
class Hotel.

H. HOGAN,
Proprietor.

S. MONTGOMERY,

Manager.

VICK’S

Illustrated Floral Guide

For 1881 is an Elegant Book of 120 Pages,
One Colored Flower Plate, and 600 Illustra-
tions, with Descriptions of the best Flowers
and Vegetables, and Directions for growing.
Only 10 cents. In English or German. If
you afterwards order seeds deduct the 10

VICK’S SEEDS are the best in the world.
The Floral Guide will tell how to get and
grow them.

Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden,
175 Pages, 6 Colored Plates, 500 Engravings.
For 50 cents in paper covers; $1.00 in
elegant cloth. In German or English-
Vick’s Illustrated Monthly Magazine — 32
Pages, a Colored Plate in every number and
many fine Engravings. Price $1.25 a year ;
Five Copies for $5.00., Specimen Numbers
sent for 10 cents ; 3 trial copies for 25 cents.
1*0 ss

JAMES VICK, Rochester, N. Y.