only can release from vows.

The Conde de M- may set open the Convent-gate, but he cannot make a door-way for conscience; vows registered in heaven cannot be annulled by any earthly tribunal. Isabel, the sisters are all faithful to their vows. You ou are agitated, child!-it is not wonderful go into the garden and breathe the air.' As I left the hall, I heard the Abbess say, You pass not that way, Sir!' I paused a moment, and heard the Conde reply, Recall her, then; I am ordered to ask the pleasure of every sister.' 'I will not recall her,' said the Abbess. The altercation increased, and I fled into the garden. I heard the steps of the Conde, and I had scarcely entered the bower, when he was at my side. Cousin Isabel,' said he, I offer you freedom! your vows are void without a dispensation, for they were taken the day before you were sixteen ; but I have interest to obtain one. A monastic life was not your choice. I offer you freedom-Isabel, dear Isabel!-I offer you love! My brain swam, my limbs trembled; I fell into my cousin's arms, and was carried from the Convent: but I remember the words of the Abbess, as she stood within the gate- Unhappy girl!' said she, thou wilt live to repent.'

My grandfather refused to receive me, and my cousin pressed my immediate union with him; but this I refused, unless a Papal dispensation could be obtained, for I was not satisfied with the Act of the Constitution. I resided, in the meanwhile, with Donna Isabella, who was now married; and, four months afterwards, my cousin brought me a dispensation, and we were immediately united. I loved the Conde, and for some time I was happy; although, even then, sudden doubts would rise in my mind as to the efficiency of even a Papal dispensation, to absolve from vows voluntarily taken, and ratified in heaven; and my mind reverted to the holy exercises that once almost filled up the hours, and to the affectionate sisterhood, and the parting words of the Abbess. These were, alas! destined to be too fearfully and faithfully verified. A year after I had become the bride of the Conde, he fell sick; and, on his deathbed, he implored me to forgive a fraud that love had taught him to practise. Isabel,' said he, I saw that you had one prejudice which stood in the way of our mutual happiness: I was unable to obtain a dispensation, and that which I brought to you was fictitious. Do not be alarmed, Isabel; you have been guilty of no crime. If any error has been committed, you are innocent; I alone am guilty.' These were almost the last words my husband spoke.

"From that moment I was the prey of remorse. I knew that I was still the affianced, but the polluted, bride of heaven; my vows were uncancelled-my marriage had been impiety and sin. I sunk into deep melancholy; and, although I reasoned with myself, and endeavoured to drown the voice of conscience by pleading my ignorance of the fraud that had ruined me, and by calling to memory the tender age at which my noviciate began, and the delusions that were practised upon my unripe understanding, I could not silence the secret whispers of conscience, I could not sweep from my recollection the vows that I had uttered, nor awaken within my breast hopes of pardon and of heaven.

"The reign of freedom passed away, and, with the re-establish

ment of the old Government, my condition became more pitiable. Donna Isabella died; my grandfather spurned me; my father had perished in battle; and even the convents rejected me. I have lived in this house eight years. My grandfather, who died some years ago, left a small fund to support me; and here I wait tranquilly for death. Tell me, now that you have heard my history, if you think I may hope for pardon."

I need scarcely say that I exerted myself to the uttermost, to raise the spirits and dispel the delusion of Sister Isabel. I endeavoured to persuade her that the monastic life could not be acceptable to Heaven-that her profession was made at a time when she was incapable of understanding its meaning-that vows, the result of delusions, and which were not understood, could not be binding-and that, at all events, her breach of the vow was involuntary, since she believed in the genuineness of the Pope's dispensation. I plainly saw that she had never met with a friend before. She listened eagerly to all that I said, wrung my hand, shed some tears, and said I had lighted hope in her breast. I saw her once more before leaving Orihuela, and her health seemed to be improved. She gave me an affectionate blessing; and I feel little doubt that she is, ere this, restored to health and happiness-at all events, to tranquillity.

POLITICAL FABLES.

THE OURANG-OUTANGS AND THE NUTS.

IN the island of Borneo, in the shade of a banyan tree which covered five or six acres of ground, an Ourang-Outang family of grave aspect, enormous size, and imposing dignity of mien, was born and domiciliated. The members were sole masters of their leafy empire, and their sway was tacitly confessed by some hundreds of the monkey tribes, who were begotten in and inhabited the same umbrageous dwelling. Together with their difference in size, the breed of the Ourangs was remarkable for the length of their arms. For many years their authority was uncontested. They decided quarrels among the whole community, and, by the superior extent of their reach, were enabled to gather nuts, which would not otherwise have been easily attainable by the other monkeys of the neighbourhood. Notwithstanding this length of reach however, they were, after all, obliged to get on the shoulders of the other monkeys to reach the nuts, or were supported by them with their paws, or held by their tails with one hand, while they plucked the fruit with the other. For a great while no community could thrive better. The Ourang family divided with the commonalty of monkeys whatever they obtained through their assistance. Thus, though taking especial care of themselves, the Ourangs always acknowledged by more than words the bond of mutual obligation: the nuts were shared between them. length the Ourangs ceased to communicate a reciprocity of benefits; they got on the shoulders or held by the tails of the other monkeys when clambering as usual, but grown bold from long habit, arrogant

At

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from the deference paid them, and considering custom as right, they put on airs of more than aristocratic assumption. Still the Ourangs were suffered to proceed as usual. At length nuts grew scarce; discontent arose. Why," said the inferior apes, "should we contribute to the support of those who keep back our right-our share of what is obtained by making footstools of ourselves?" Thus chattered the great body of the baboon-featured gentry-" Since they have forgotten the right we have to a share of the nuts, and keep our property for their own use, though obtained by our instrumentality, we will no longer remain passive, but claim our own." Thus symptoms of dissatisfaction, at first slight, grew in extent, and portended the approach of others more violent. They remonstrated. "Do we not gather the nuts ourselves?" haughtily answered the Ourang-Outangs; may we not do what we will with our own?" One of the community (a reformer-a Lord John Russell, of course,) replied-" If you will not act justly, you shall not gather nuts again through our instrumentality. You have violated the tacit compact which existed between us for our mutual benefit; you have taken what is ours for your own uses you shall continue the practice no longer, Messieurs Ourangs. We will not permit any monkeys to be first among us who do not yield us back some benefit. We claim a restoration of our nuts, or we are strong enough to refuse you our assistance." The Ourangs consulted together-they shuffled and snuffled, and twisted and turned, and chattered, and vapoured, and showed their teeth, and looked big and haughty; but at length they saw that the law of justice was with the other monkeys, that they must become insignificant animals in the nation of apes if they resisted longer. They bowed to irresistible necessity; and the banyan-tree population thrived lustily, and grew more formidable than ever to the other Simian empires in the Bornean forests.

STANZAS.

I LOOK'D upon thy brightness when
I could not think it clay,

Thou wert so full of beauty then

But that was yesterday!

Where art thou now-in what far sphere?

'Tis vain to ask, thou art not here!

O might decay our frames entwine,
And waste in the same tomb,

One foot of earth both mine and thine!-
They'd hardly grudge us room
By the old stream and greenwood side,
Where love, long perish'd, was our pride!

Ω.

IRISH SKETCHES.-No. II.

BY LADY MORGAN.

IRISH HISTORIANS:-MAURICE REGAN, CALLED THE LATINER. THE state of Ireland, moral and political, at the close of the 12th century-the epoch of the Anglo-Norman invasion, presents a page in the history of the middle ages, at once curious and little perused; and a brief reference to its more general outlines may not be bere out of place, as an illustration of the only native lay historian which the ancient literature of the country has produced. A population broken up into septs, distracted by rival chiefs, and divided into castes, marked in perpetuity by hereditary pretensions or transmitted disabilities, (for genius and divine grace, literature and the Church, were the patrimonial properties of particular families,) could not be said to possess a political government. The worst abuses of feudality, which had crept into the institutions of the land by a process so slow and obscure as to baffle the attempts of antiquaries to fix the epoch of their introduction, assisted to strengthen the clannish influence of the toparchy, by adding the blind obedience of the soldier to the devoted submission of the follower. "Every rood" of Irish ground at this period maintained its "king," whose petty, but ruthless, warfare spread desolation over the land. At the head of this wild republic of kings was the titular supreme monarch of Ireland, whose barren sceptre had been wielded for centuries, successively, by the O'Briens and the O'Connors, and was still held, on the arrival of Henry II., by Roderick O'Connor. But the power of the Ard-Riagh (or archking) was a mere abstraction: it never conferred on its fated possessors the means of curbing the excesses of the provincial despots, their tributary princes, or the toparchy at large. The personal genius, or military prowess, of an individual, as in the instance of Brian Boromhe, decided the substantial supremacy; but few even of the most powerful died a natural death. Of two hundred kings," (says a native and very national writer,') one hundred and seventy fell prematurely and by violence." The next in rank to the ArdRiagh, were the provincial kings, or chiefs of the seven provinces.2 These were the monarchs who reigned over a third class of little kings, each the petty tyrant of his own domain, and paid by immense largesses for his military services to his superior. The king of Munster had eighteen of these rebellious roitelets to deal with, who acknowledged in him no jurisdiction over their own immediate subjects, while they themselves abjured their allegiance to him on the most frivolous pretexts. The fourth rank included the tiernachs, or caenfinnies, or heads of clans, the gentry of the realm, influential over their own septs by hereditary devotion and that tie so binding in Ireland-the tie of blood and fosterage. The most miserable and

1 Peter Welch.

2 Some historians say five, others seven.

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3 These form the subject of a census often quoted by antiquaries—the "Leabharna-gceart," or Book of Rights.

Down to a very recent period these chiefs were known as the Clan-Brasil, Clan-Rikard, Clan-Boys, &c. &c., which have now passed into modern titles.

squalid of the same name, as the chief was qualified by his gentility for idleness or war, once felt, in common with him, an utter contempt for mechanic labour. The fifth class were the victims of soccage and villanage,—the mass of the people, who were as "taillables et corvéables à merci et miséricorde,' as the French serfs, or Saxon villains, of the same epoch. The sixth class were slaves: military subordination (tempered by the occasional interference of the Church, which maintained by its canons the privilege of giving shelter to the oppressed,) was in full activity; while the laws of tanaistry and gavel-kind (no longer applicable to the state of society) rendered confusion worse confounded, and were subversive of all order and peace; "so that no prince was safe in his little kingdom, no toparch in his rath; no man could enjoy his life or wife, his lands or goods, if a mightier than himself had an appetite to take them." In addition to this naked exertion of brute force, were many conventional and traditional institutes, which drove the people to beggary and despair, and made civilization retrograde. These were the wellknown bye-laws of bonnaght-borr, or free-quarters at discretion, for the toparch and his army, or an equivalent in money: bonnaghtbeg, or a commutation of free-quarters by provisions, or payment in kind, sent to the chief: gilly-corn, or entertainment for man and beast, gratis: cuddy, or bed and supper for the chief and suite, when travelling; and lastly, coshering, or the visitation of progressing kings, and their kernity (or cavalry) horses, and horse-boys; with cuttings, and taillage, and cessing,-the wasting and spoiling the property of the industrious at the pleasure of the chieftain.1 It was thus that the standing army of Ireland, the "Kerns and Gallowglasses," were paid; while regular imposts were levied on the people four times a year;--the whole combining such a mass of oppression, as rendered not only the people, but the majority of the toparchs, ready for the admission of any invader who might bring change, or disturb the social order" then established.

The "poor Irish" of the twelfth century, like the poor Irish of the eighteenth, consoled themselves by talking of their fine old brehon laws, of their heroic pagan times, and of the learning and piety of their first Christians; and they too, like their modern antitypes, reposed upon remote epochs of historic greatness, though none could fix the period to which they referred by cotemporary authority, or by collateral proof. The brehon laws, even at this time, were falling into abuse or desuetude; partly perhaps by their inapplicability to existing circumstances, and partly through the want of a key to the ancient or Pheneian dialect, in which they are said to have been composed. This dialect O'Connor states to have been confined to the brehons (or lawyers) themselves, and to have been lost to the community. A key for expounding the mystic tongue was said to have been in the keeping of a branch of the sept of Mac

Traces of all these customs were observable in Ireland as recently as the middle of the last century. Even still, every one of the terms are in use among the provincial peasantry.

2 The Church led the way in submission; and in the famous synod held in King Cormac's Chapel at Cashel, the bishops of Ireland gave a sealed charter to Henry II., conferring on him and his heirs the kingdom. This charter was confirmed by Pope Alexander.