stabbed the tyrant to avenge the fate of her lover. Her dress was deranged, her long black hair floated on her shoulders,—the flowers and diamonds that bound it were flung back,—and her bare arms, her dark fixed eyes, the unconscious look with which she grasped the dagger, and the unfelt motion with which from time to time she raised her hand to wipe off the trace of blood from her pale forehead, made the spectators almost tremble for the next victim of one who seemed armed with the beauty, the passions, and the terrors of an avenging goddess. Applauses that shook the house had marked every scene but the last. When the curtain dropt, a dead silence pervaded the whole theatre, and a deep sigh proclaimed relief from oppression no longer supportable.' I. p. 160-164.

It cannot have escaped the intelligent reader, that this superb Queen of terror and sorrow, this mistress of all the movements of the human heart, is the highly accomplished, brilliant, and fascinating Zaira, the mother of the simple, retired, and evangelical Eva; and it can as little escape his penetration, that she is about to become the unconscious rival of her unfortunate child, in the affections of the fickle De Courcy. The death of her wretched husband had left Zaira possessed of the wealth which her talents had acquired, and she was now come to Ireland, with the hope of obtaining from her father, some lights concerning the destiny of her infant child. By his stern injunction, she retained her borrowed name and public character.

De Courcy had a nominal guardian, a silly man of fortune, called Sir Richard Longwood, whose silly wife had presented him with two daughters, whom we must pronounce rather too silly for the rank which they are represented as holding in good society. At the house and the parties of Lady Longwood, De Courcy is thrown into the society of Zaira, rendered doubly dangerous by her various talents and extent of cultivation, as well as her brilliancy of taste, feeling, mind, and manners, forming so strong a contrast with the uniform simplicity and limited character of poor Eva. Yet it was Eva whom he visited after the first evening spent in the fascinating society of Zaira, ere yet he paid his respects to the syren whose image had begun to eclipse her in his bosom.

Eva and her aunt were at work; the room was large; the darkbrown paper, two candles dimly burning on the work-table, the silent. quiet figures that sat beside it, the shelves loaded with volumes of divinity, the still sombrous air of every thing; no musical instrument, no flowers, no paintings; what a contrast to the scene he had last witnessed, and to the scene he was hastening to!' p. 199.

Here he asked for books, and had his choice of Sandeman's Letters, Boston's Fourfold State, Gill on Isaiah, or Owen on the Hebrews. Milton was the only author of genius permitted to

hold a place on these well-purged shelves. Milton De Courcy began to read, but was soon silenced by Mrs Wentworth's severe remarks on the lapse of that great poet into the tenets of Baxterianism. The dulness of the party was disturbed, not enlivened by the arrival of old Wentworth, full primed for controversy, and his pockets stuffed with evangelical pamphlets. His violence and prejudices again hurry the fickle lover to the house of Madame Dalmatiani, where all was light and music, garlands and colours, beauty and genius. The mistress passed through apartments filled with groupes of the gay and the learned, where speech was without effort, and silence without ennui; where rare volumes, rich ornaments, classical statues and pictures, as well as the number of the attendants and splendour of the establishment, showed that the proprietor was the favourite of fortune, as well as of nature. But her own presence was the principal charm. Her beauty, her musical talents, her taste, were alternately taxed for their share of the festival. She conversed with the various professors of the arts of poetry and of general literature, in a style various, as suited their different pursuits, like Cleopatra, giving audience to each ambassador at her court in his own native language.

A friend, by name Montgomery, the same who first conducted De Courcy to a methodist meeting-house, and who himself nourished a hopeless, but most generous passion for Eva, saw with alarm, that De Courcy preferred the dangerous mansion of Madame Dalmatiani, and endeavoured, more zealously than wisely, to reclaim the wanderer. What had Dominic Street to present, that could be opposed to Zaira's palace of enchanted enjoyments? At one time a fierce controversy betwixt Macowen and one of his pupils, a babe in grace' as his spiritual guide termed him, 'to be fed with milk.

He was a man turned of fifty, six feet two inches high, broad and bulky in proportion, with an atrabilious complexion, a voice of thunder, and a tread that shook the room. The contrast was unspeakably ridiculous. "Babe!" murmured De Courcy; "Babe!" echoed Montgomery, and both had some difficulty in subduing their rebellious muscles to the placid stagnation that overspread the faces around them. But the calm was of short continuance.-This Quinbus Flestrin, this man-mountain of a catechumen, came, not to sit with lowly docility at the feet of his teachers, but to prove that he was able to teach them. If he was a babe, as De Courcy said, "tetchy and wayward was his infancy;" no ill-nursed, ill-tempered, captious, squalling brat, was ever a greater terror and torment in the nursery. He resisted, he retorted, he evaded, he parried, be contradicted, carped, and "cavilled on the ninth part of a hair

Macowen lost his ground; then he lost his breath; then he lost

his temper; scintillating eyes, quivering lips, and streaks of stormy red marking their brown cheeks, gave signal of fierce debate. All the weapons of fleshly warfare were soon drawn in the combat, and certain words that would have led to a different termination of the dispute among men of this world, passed quick and high between them. Struck with shame, they paused-a dreary pause of sullen anger and reluctant shame." Now, shan't we have a word of prayer, said Mr Wentworth, who had been watching them with as much deliberate enjoyment as an ancient Roman would a spectacle of gladiators.' p. 239-241.

A more edifying scene was that of Eva herself engaged in teaching a school of little orphans, whom she maintained out of her allowance, and educated from her own lips. Yet, even amid this most laudable employment, could the fantastic delicacy of De Courcy, rendered more punctilious by the society of Žaira, find matter of offence. The dulness of the children, their blunders, their mingled brogues, their dirt, and all else that was unpleasing to the sense and the imagination, rendered the task even of clothing the naked, and instructing the ignorant and fatherless, disgusting in the eyes of a delicate and somewhat selfish lover of the fine arts.

These and similar scenes of contrast succeed to each other with great effect; and the feeble and vacillating mind of De Courcy is alternately agitated by returning affection for Eva, aided by compassion and by a sense of the cruelty and dishonour of deserting her, and by the superior force of character of her more accomplished rival. It becomes daily more and more plain, that the weaker feeling must give way to that which was more strong and energetic, especially when Zaira, after one or two trying interviews, agrees to banish the name of love from their intimacy, and to term it only an intimate friendship, resolves herself to adopt the task of preceptress to the bride of De Courcy, and transfer to her those accomplishments which too visibly enchanted the heart of her susceptible friend. This specious arrangement is well ridiculed by Zaira's correspondent, a French lady of fashion, having all the frivolity, the good nature, the tact and perception of character proper to one who filled a high place in the Parisian beau monde; and Zaira's eyes became opened to the real state of her affections. Meanwhile, the continued operation of contrast alienates De Courcy still further from the gentle Eva, and attaches him more firmly to her brilliant rival. A thunder-storm frightens Eva into a state of insensibility. Another thunder-storm surprising a party of pleasure, amid the romantic region of the Wicklow mountains, gives Zaira the opportunity of exhibiting courage at once heroic and philosophical. All circumstances combine to show

that De Courcy's hastily formed engagement with Eva will not and cannot come to a good issue. The fiendish hag from whose power De Courcy had delivered her, appears upon the scene, again and again crossing the stage like an evil-presaging apparition. One of the most frightful of these appearances takes place during a great fire in Dublin, to the progress of which Zaira and De Courcy are witnesses. The scene is described with much terrible grandeur.

All was life, though it was the hour of repose; and all was light, terrible light, though the sky was as dark as December midnight. They attempted to ascend Cork-hill; that was rendered impossible by the crowd; and winding another way through lanes, of which the reader may be spared the names, they got into Fishamble Street. Many fearful intimations of the danger struck them there.-The hollow rolling of the fire-engines, so distinct in their sound;-the cries of" clear the way," from the crowd, who opened their dense tumultuous mass for the passage, and instantly closed again;—the trampling of the cavalry on the wet pavement, threatening, backing, facing among the crowd;-the terrible hollow knocking on the pavement, to break open the pipes for water, which was but imperfectly supplied; -the bells of all the neighbouring churches, St John's, St Werburgh's, St Bride's, and the deep tremendous toll of Christ-church, mingled with, but heard above all, as if it summoned the sufferers to prepare, not for life but for death, and poured a kind of defiance on the very efforts it was rung to invite them to. All this came at once on them, as they entered Fishamble Street, from a wretched lane through which they had been feeling their way. They emerged from it; and when they did, the horrors of the conflagration burst on them at once. The fire, confined in the sphere of its action, amidst warehouses thickly enclosed, burst in terrible volumes above the tops of the houses, and seemed like a volcano, of which no one could see the crater.

On the steps of St John's Church, a number were collected. They had snatched the furniture from their miserable lodgings; piled it up in the street, where the guard were watching it, and now sat patiently in the open air to see their habitations reduced to ashes, anknowing where they were to rest their heads that night.

All the buildings in the neighbourhood were strongly illuminated by the fire, and still more strongly (though partially from time to time) by lights held out by the inhabitants from their windows, from the shops to the attics, six stories high; and the groupes below flashing out in the light, and disappearing in the darkness, their upturned faces, marked with the shifting traces of fear, horror, defiance, and despair, presented a subject for Salvator. No banditti, in the darkest woods of the Appennines, illuminated only by lightning, ever showed more fearful wildness of expression, or more picturesque distortion of attitude. Just then the flames sunk for a moment, but, rising again, instantly poured forth a volume of light, that set the whole horizon

in a blaze. There was a shriek from the crowd, that seemed rather like the cry of triumph than despair. It is certain, that a people like the Irish, whose imagination is stronger than any other of their intellectual faculties, can utter cries of delight at the sight of a splendid conflagration that is consuming their dwellings.

The last burst of flames produced a singular effect. The buildings in Castle Street (below the range of the illumination) lay in complete darkness-darkness more intense from the surrounding light, and the tower and spire of St Werburgh's, (it had then a fantastically elegant spire), by their height in the horizon, caught the whole effect of the fire, and appeared like a fairy palace of flame, blazing and built among the clouds. II. p. 101-105.

Amidst this scene of horror and sublimity, rushes forth the beggar maniac, bursting through the crowd with irresistible force, and planting herself opposite to Zaira.

She was, as usual, in rags, and as the strong light gleamed on her hoary streaming hair, her wild features, and her wilder attire, she seemed fit to act the prompting and exulting fury who stood by Nero when he surveyed from his tower Rome in flames, which his own orders had kindled, and which his own orders (it is said) forbid to be extinguished. She began her usual wild dance, regardless of the crowd, and of the terrible cause of their assembling, and mingled, from time to time, exclamations in a voice between recitative and singing, that seemed modulated to the music of invisible and infernal spirits. It was very singular of this woman, that though her accent was perfectly Irish, her expressions were not so; her individual feeling seemed to swallow up and overwhelm her nationality. Wherever she was, she seemed perfectly alone-alone alike amid the mountains of Wicklow or the multitudes of Dublin; all times, circumstances, and persons seemed to yield to the single, mysterious, undefinable feeling that always governed and inspired her; and while it made her an object of supreme terror to all others, made all others objects of supreme contempt to her.' II. p. 107, 108.

As she attempted to seize upon Zaira, of whose individuality she retained some imperfect recollection, she was forced back by De Courcy.

"Have you no touch of nature in ye?" said the woman, suddenly and fearfully altering her tone, and clinging close and closer to Zaira. "Do you know who (whom) it is you drive away?-Have ye no touch of nature in ye?-Oh, these hands are withered, but how often they have clasped you round that white neck!-Oh, these hairs are gray, but how often have you played with them when they were as black and as bright as your own!-Sorrow for you has turned them white. Oh, look upon me,-look upon me on my knees. I don't know your name now, but you should never have forgot mine. Oh, have ye no nature in you, and I kneeling on the cold stones before my own!" II. 112, 113.