bed on the ground floor. Then, his servants are so well aware that I should dismiss them all after the funeral, that they take the greatest care to preserve their present master alive, in order that they may retain their high wages for continuing to mismanage his household. Every way the chance has been against me; and now, should the old boy, in a goodnatured fit, take to slipping his wind, I should profit but little by his tardy repentance. Too advanced in life for love, the gout won't let me drink, and of gambling I have long been cured. What pleasures, then, can money now procure? At best I can but save for the benefit of the young chap who is called my son, or make improvements on the estate, which I cannot hope to enjoy. As for the weekly spectacle of my old enemy's tomb in the parish church, that might once have been something; but, now, what will it be but a memento mori to one who has, in his turn, become "the governor," and that, too, over an intruder into the family, "non nostri generis puerum nec sanguinis?"

These are a few of the misfortunes attendant on being an elder son. As for the bore of providing for younger brothers, that burthen fell of course wholly on my long-lived predecessor. The army and the navy carried off two of these incumbrances; and my youngest brother, having early retired to Ireland on a bishopric, has long ceased to correspond with the family. But other properties are not so well circumstanced; and the evil is daily increasing in weight and importance. Against these abuses I see but one remedy, and that is to provide that all fathers shall be compelled to surrender possession to their heirs, and retire on a dowry, as soon as they reach the age of twenty-one. Under this obligation, country gentlemen will not be in such a hurry to perpetrate matrimony, the aristocratic stock will be kept within wholesome bounds, the state will be relieved from a disagreeable pressure, and parents stand a better chance of living on decent terms with their children. But, above all, society will be saved from those manifold and intolerable oppressions, which the feudal law of succession, as it stands, has entailed upon expectant heirs, such as the miserable example, who now relieves his mind, and vents his discontent, in dictating these personal reminiscences.

cr

BY T. C. GRATTAN, ESQ., AUTHOR OF HIGH-WAYS AND BYE-WAYS."

It required no great skill to discover that it was an Irishman who stood at the corner of the street, within a few yards of the door of the house I occupied in Ostend during the bathing season of 1834, and out of which I was proceeding on my way for a promenade on the digue, on the evening in question. Who, with the instinct of nationality within him-even modified by an absenteeism of near a score of years-could fail to recognize a countryman in the lounging, cringing, half-foolish, half-cunning-looking fellow, who accosted me, first with a servile leer, and then with a whining tone of sycophantic nonchalance, as though he both hoped and feared to deceive me?

Why, thin, might I make bould to ax your Honor which is the way to the Quay ?" said he, taking off at the same time his old slouched hat with both hands, and looking at me with that chop-fallen expression of countenance that is common to the most finessing as well as the finest peasantry in the world.

"To the Quay! In search of a ship, I suppose, to take you to Ireland ?"

“Och, thin, murther an' 'ounds! how did your Honor find out that I was an Irishman at all at all?" exclaimed he, with all the simplicity, real or affected, of our common country, and in an ell-wide breadth of brogue of the purest Munster manufacture.

66

Oh, something told me so," answered I.

"By my sowl, thin, that's what jist tould me that your Honor's another," retorted he, with a melancholy grin, which he did not however suffer to rest on his countenance for a moment. Now, Irishmen are rarely vexed, though ashamed sometimes at being taken for Irishmen by one of their countrymen. But it is funny enough to mark the contortions of muscle and distortions of voice with which some of them strive at times to conceal the horrid truth from English auditors. I had no object in suppressing it now any more than the laugh which arose at the above-mentioned way of his telling me that I was found out.

"But the devil's cure to the harm in that, Sir," continued he, cheeringly, "there's many a worse man than an Irishman in the world yitand who knows- "

"And so you think I am one ?"

"Indeed an' I don't, Sir-bekase I'm sure of it-and I know your name, too, Sir; an' it's one that you needn't be ashamed of any how!" "And how did you find all this out?"

66

Why, thin, not to tell a lie to your Honor this blessed summer's evenin', it's jist a minit ago that I was walkin' up an' down the sthreet in the greatest disthraction, that I axed a civil, dacent nian that was passin' by here if he knew where I could find out a countryman? Maybe it's an Irishman you want,' says he. Oh, thin, musha! how did you find that out?' says I. 'Oh, somebody tould me,' says he-jist what your Honor said to me- and if you'll wait a bit,' says he, you'll ketch one o' thim comin' out o' that house.' And upon that I thanked him for his civility, and I jist made bould to ax him your Honor's name that I mightn't appear sthrange when I'd up and spake to you— an' that's the thruth, your Honor."

6

Well, now that you know so much about me, what do you want with me?—because any one as well as a countryman' could have told you the way to the Quay ?"

"Why, thin, what I want your Honor to tell me, Sir, is something about my son-that's the thruth."

"And pray who is your son? and why do you suppose that I know anything about him ?

"I ax your Honor's pardon for my bouldness; I didn't think you'd know anything at all about the blackguard, nor the likes of him, but, upon my salvation, Sir, I am half mad-that's God's thruth; and if you knew what an unfortunate crathur I am, you'd pity me entirely."

"Who and what are you, then? Let me see if I can be of any use to you."

Why, thin, Sir," blubbered he, "I'm an honest, dacent, hardworking man-though it's myself that says it that shouldn't say it-an' a bookbinder by trade intill that young villian, with a man named Dimpsy, robbed me of two hundred and twilve pounds in handsome Frinch money, and three tin pound notes that the woman put by for savin's, which the thieves bruk out of her tay-chist-an' it's afther him I'm going from place to place for the last fourteen weeks-but I'm sure of him now, any how-and maybe I won't make him an' that desaver, Dimpsy, jump for it whin I ketch them!"

These words were accompanied by a flourish of the shillelah he held as a walking-staff, which, coupled with his dust-covered apparel, convinced me he had come rather a long journey. To my questions, put in a desultory way, whenever I could snatch an opportunity of slipping one into the interstices of his fluent revelations, he answered me that "he had been jist eighteen minits in the town when he met my Honor -that he had walked from Dunkirk, where his son and Dimpsy had slipped through his fingers by a quarter of an hour-that he had come from Calais the day before, where they escaped him by a miracle-that his own name was Tim Conolly-that his wife was an O'Reardon, one of the best families in Limerick, barrin' the quality-and that he himself had not ait bit or sup for the last thirty-six hours.'

"In that case," said I, more affected by this assertion than by all the rest, "you had better come into the house and take something."

"Oh, thin, musha! long life to your Honor's ginirosity-an' it's av the right sort you're come-an' it isn't less that I'd expict of your Honor or your people. They were always the true breed for doin' a good turn to a poor man.

"You have known some of my family, then?" asked I, tickled by his flattery.

"Is it know thim? By my sowl, thin, it's I that ought to know thim-there was fourteen of them at laste wint to the same school with myself in Limerick city! Know thim! Why, thin, may be I didn't! Wasn't there the Honorable George, him that kept the staghounds, that many's the time I folly'd the same on fut when he and his seven sons were ridin' their fine hunthers an' chargers acrass the counthry―and sure enough it's myself that comed up one day with two villians that was cuttin' the stag's throath in a bog-hole: An' hould your hands, you villians!' says, 'an' have the mauners to wait till the Honorable George himself is to the fore.' An' sure enough it's his Honor that soon came tearin' along in full dhrive—an' why, thin, isn't it thrue, Sir?-'pon my conscience it's this minit it sthrikes me-warn't you the jintleman that led the hunt that blessed day, on the grey rot tail horse, in the bog of Borenabraddoch, an' bate even the Honorable George himself-great a ridether as he was-out an’ out?"

At this climax I burst out laughing, in "rale airnest," as Tim Conolly would have said, for there never was a finer illustration of the blarney than the whole of the speech I have just feebly reported, and the inimitable accompaniment of looks and gestures-earnest, coaxing, and animated-by which the flatterer strove to victimize me into a belief in his humbug balderdash, or at any rate to persuade me into a conviction of his sincerity. Instead of the overflowing population of fourteen

schoolfellows of my family in the ctiy of Limerick, I doubt much if one of the name ever sojourned there, but as it was the head-quarters of a marching regiment or the station of a troop of dragoons. And as to the "Honorable George," I can but say that though the name has produced some "honorable men," and ONE whose very name it is an undoubted honour to bear, yet the title has never yet been coupled to a family whose nobility must be sought at some higher source than the Herald's office. And as to the stag-hounds! Heaven only knows what excess of fanciful exaggeration drove them into the head of this wholesale palaverer. Such, however, as he was, I was greatly amused with him; and as I know that

"Even love itself can't live on flowers,"

it was not to be expected that a poor wandering Irishman could live on mere flowers of rhetoric, though he made a nosegay of them in the hope of living by them. Into the kitchen, therefore, Tim Conolly was duly inducted, and after a comforting repast of "bit and sup," he came at my call," like the little bird in the song, to chirp forth some more of his marvellous recitations. And astounding was the account of his adventures, from the day that he discovered the loss of his "handsome Frinch money, ," above three months before, and of the travels by flood and field, through various parts of England and France, in search of his truant son, and the runaway comrade who had inveigled him into crime and flight. No pig, with a soaped tail, had ever so many narrow escapes of being caught as had this couple of young pilferers, according to the account of the loving parent, who pursued his offspring with such a laudable desire of " bringing him to raison," after the fashion already alluded to. Most marvellous were the "slippings out of one door while the pursuer came in at the other," something like Love and Poverty in the song above quoted; and frequent were the occasions of "the bed being warm where the rascals had slept," and "the plates being on the table in the very room where they dined, or supped, or breakfasted,"

when the

"Still pursuing, never cloying" Tim Conolly had always just contrived to come up late.

"ten minnits" too

"But, are you, after all, sure that you have been so near catching these fellows?" asked I, my natural credulity and love of the marvellous being almost too hardly pressed.

"Is it sure of it, your Honor? By my sowl an' it's myself that is sure of it to my cost, for it's my good seventeen pounds it has taken out of my pocket, besides the money that was stole from me, an' my silver watch whin I fell sick o' the faver at Abbeyeville jist afther Easther."

I did not think those reasons very germane to the matter of my question, but I let that pass.

"And how do you account for their many narrow escapes of being caught?" said I.

"Och, Sir, they're very judicious!" exclaimed he, with most ludicrous emphasis. "There's no coming up to them for thricks intirely; they spake Frinch like anything, an' they're as 'cute as-as-I don't know what!"

"How has your son learned to speak French so well?"

"Why, thin, that's jist what myself can't tell, Sir; for though I'm

longer in Paaris than he is, I can't get my tongue round it at all. But he has iddicated himself wonderful, your Honor. He spakes Latin as fast as a horse can throt, an' th' Irish an' the Inglish by coorse (of course), an' Misther Gallynani, the big bookseller, could tell your Honor all about him, and me too, Sir, an' my woman, an' the whole kit of us; an' it's nawthin' bad he'd say of us, and he wouldn't av he could, for he's the rale sort."

66 Did you tell him of your son having robbed you?"

"To be shure I did, Sir; and it's he that was in a rage, and Lord Granville too. Bring him back, Tim Conolly,' said his lordship, 'dead or alive'-'Don't put your feet in Paaris agin without the villian,' said Misther Gallynani-and it's thrue for them I won't-for, bad luck to thim! I have them now sartin."

"How is that?—what do you mean ?"

"Mane, your Honor! why I mane that they jist come into the town not twenty minutes afore me, an' that I have them here snug."

"And why then have you lost so much time prating to me here?" said I, out of patience at the fellow's stupidity.

"Not at all, your Honor," said he, quite coolly, "not at all, I lost no time whatever; for I've only jist to go to the perllice, and take the villians up."

do

"Well, go along then," replied I, impatiently; "but tell me how you know they are really here in Ostend ?"

"Lord love you, Sir! they couldn't desave me. bridge, who described thim to me by their hats."

I met a man on the

"Their hats!" exclaimed I. "And don't you think your son has bought a new hat out of your handsome Frinch money' in the course of his three months' ramble?"

"Not he, your Honor; he's a thrue Conolly ivery bit of him, and we always wear our hats a year an' a half."

I stared at him as he said this.—I examined his countenance closely, to find out if some lurking, smothered expression might betray his sense of the ludicrous, or any other kind of sense that might lead me to know whether he was in joke or earnest. But there was a solemn simplicity in his face that puzzled me altogether. I'd back an Irish bog-trotter against any other being in the world for keeping his countenance when he does not want any one to catch his meaning.

My countryman soon sallied forth on his way to the Commissaire de Police, and ere long he returned to me with a woful countenance to tell me that the two culprits had just started for Ghent, where he was resolved to trudge after them immediately. And he begged" my Honor to lend him a small thrifle of money till he could get a letther from Paaris." I complied with his request, perhaps not sorry to get rid of him on easy terms. I procured a vise to his passport, with a recommendation from the English Consul to the police authorities, to aid his efforts for the recovery of his property-and away he went.

A few days afterwards, on my road to Brussels, and not far from the town of Alost, a man came running up to the carriage as we ascended a gentle hill, and thrusting his hat up to the window, exclaims in a well-known voice, and a not-to-be-mistaken accent, to use a gentle epithet

"Ah, thin, if it's an English or an Irish jintleman that's inside, may