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"Macbeth" and

The author of the

when Shakespeare was finishing the last of his plays. "Hamlet" had been for some years before the public. Essays and of this dedication had been a witness of the lives of the famous men of Queen Elizabeth's reign. It was a golden age of English greatness, and it was a time when the Anglo-Saxon language, having been put to as severe a test as ever tongue was tried by, had been found to be a sufficient engine in the hands of a host of eminent writers, one of whom for genius has never been matched in ancient literature or modern. Bacon himself was a great master of English, and knew all its range, its flexibility, and its resources. But in the face of all this Lord Bacon thought that, whatever might become of his works written in English, his volume in Latin, because of the language, might live for ever. Buckle, Auguste Comte, De Tocqueville, and some others have recognised the truth that the power to form a conception of progress is limited by the conditions of the age in which a man lives. If Bacon in the seventeenth century could so far remain under the shadow cast over the Middle ages by the old Roman Empire, How can any of us hope to form even an approximately trustworthy estimate of the present position of things in relation to the past and the future?

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

MAY, 1872.

SATANELLA.

A STORY OF PUNCHESTOWN.

BY G. J. WHYTE MELVILLE, AUTHOR OF "THE GLADIATORS," &c

CHAPTER XIX.

"THE RIVER'S BRIM.'

AISY was sick of the Channel. He had crossed and re-crossed it so often of late as to loathe its dancing waters, yawning in the face of Welsh and Wicklow mountains alike, wearied even of the lovely scenery that

adorns the coast on either side.

He voted himself so tired in body and mind, that he must stay a day or two in Dublin to refresh.

A man who balances on the verge of ruin always has plenty of money in his pocket for immediate necessities. The expiring flame leaps up with a flash; the end of the bottle bubbles out with a gush; and the ebbing tide of wealth leaves, here and there, a handful of loose cash on the deserted shore.

Daisy drove to the most expensive hotel in Dublin, where he ordered a capital breakfast and a comfortable room. The future seemed very uncertain. In obedience to an instinct of humanity, that bids men pause and dally with any crisis of their fate, he determined to enjoy to-day and let to-morrow take care of itself.

Nobody could be more unlikely to analyse his own sensations. It was not the practice of the regiment; but had Daisy been given to self-examination, it would have puzzled him to explain why he felt in VOL. VIII., N.S. 1872.

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such good humour, and so well-satisfied - buoyed up with hope, when he ought to have been sunk and overwhelmed in despair.

"Waiter," said the fugitive, while he finished his tea and ordered a glass of curaçoa, "Has Mr. Sullivan been here this morning?" "He did, sur," answered the waiter, with a pleasant grin. "Sure he brought a harse for the master to see. Five years old, Captain. There's not the aqual of

A clane-bred one, like what ye ride yerself. him, they do be braggin', for leppin', in Westmeath, an' thim parts, up there, where he was trained."

Now Daisy wanted a horse no more than he wanted an alligator. He could neither afford to buy nor keep one, and had two or three of his own that it was indispensable to sell, yet his eye brightened, his spirits rose, with the bare possibility of a deal. He might see the animal, at any rate, he thought, perhaps ride it-there would be others probably to show; he could spend a few pleasant hours in examining their points, discussing their merits, and interchanging with Mr. Sullivan those brief and pithy remarks, intelligible only to the initiated, which he esteemed the essence of pleasant conversation. Like many other young men, Daisy was bitten with hippomania. He thoroughly enjoyed the humours of a dealer's yard. The horses interested, the owner amused him. He liked the selection, the bargaining, the running up and down, the speculation, and the slang. To use his own words-"He never could resist the rattle of a hat!"

It is no wonder then, that "the Captain," as Mr. Sullivan called him, spent his whole afternoon at a snug little place within an easy drive of Dublin, where that worthy, though not by way of being in the profession, inhabited a clean white-washed house, with a few acres of marvellously green paddock, and three or four loose boxes, containing horses of various qualities, good, bad, and indifferent. Here, after flying, for an hour or two, over the adjoining fields and fences, Daisy, with considerable difficulty, resisted the purchase (on credit) of a worn-out black, a roan with heavy shoulders, and a threeyear-old, engaged in the following autumn at the Curragh; but afforded their owner perfect satisfaction by the encomiums he passed on their merits, no less than by the masterly manner in which he handled them, at the formidable fences that bordered Mr. Sullivan's domain.

"An' ye'll take nothing away with ye but a fishing-rod!" said the latter, pressing on his visitor the refreshment of whiskey, with or without water. "Ye're welcome to't, annyhow-more by token that ye'll bring it back again when ye've done with it, Captain, and proud I'll be to get another visit from ye, when ye're travelling the country,

to or from Dublin, at anny time. May be in the back end of the year I'll have wan to show ye in thim boxes that ye niver seen the likes of him for lep-racin'. Whisper now. He's bet the Black Baron in a trial; and for Shaneen, him that wan the race off your mare at Punchestown-wait till I tell ye-at even weights, he'd go and lose little Shaneen in two miles!"

Promising to return at a future time for inspection of this paragon, and disposing the borrowed fishing-rod carefully on an outside car he had chartered for his expedition, Daisy returned to Dublin, ate a good dinner, drank a bottle of dry champagne, and went to sleep in the comfortable bedroom of his comfortable hotel, as if he had not a care nor a debt in the world.

Towards morning, his lighter slumbers may have been visited by dreams, and if so, it is probable that fancy clothed her visions in a similitude of Norah Macormac. Certainly, his first thought on waking was for that young lady, as his opening eyes rested on the fishing-rod, which he had borrowed chiefly on her account.

In truth, Daisy felt inclined to put off as long as possible the exile for he could think of it in no more favourable light—that he had brought on himself in the Roscommon mountains.

Mr. Sullivan, when the sport of fly-fishing came in his way, was no mean disciple of the gentle art. Observing a salmon-rod in that worthy's sitting-room, of which apartment, indeed, with two foxes'brushes and a barometer, it constituted the principal furniture, Daisy bethought him, that on one of his visits to Cormac's-town, its hospitable owner had given him leave and licence to fish the Dabble whenever he pleased, whether staying at the Castle or not. The skies were cloudy-as usual in Ireland, there was no lack of rainsurely, this would be a proper occasion to take advantage of Macormac's kindness, protract his stay in Dublin, and run down daily by the train to fish, so long as favourable weather lasted, and his own funds held out.

We are mostly self-deceivers, though there exists something within each of us that is not to be hoodwinked nor imposed upon by the most specious of fallacies.

It is probable Daisy never confessed to himself how the fish he really wanted to angle for was already more than half-hooked; how it was less the attraction of a salmon than a mermaid that drew him to the margin of the Dabble; and, how he cared very little that the sun shone bright or the river waned, so as he might but hear the light step of Norah Macormac on the shingle, look in the fair face that turned so pale and sad when he went away, that

would smile and blush its welcome so kindly when he came again.

He must have loved her without knowing it; and perhaps such insensible attachments, waxing stronger day by day, strike the deepest root, and boast the longest existence-hardy plants that live and flourish through the frowns of many winters, contrasting nobly with more brilliant and ephemeral posies, forced by circumstances to sudden maturity and rapid decay

As flowers that first in spring-time burst,

The earliest wither too.

Nevertheless, for both sexes

'Tis all but a dream at the best:

and Norah Macormac's vision, scarcely acknowledged while everything went smoothly, assumed very glowing colours when the impossibility of its realisation dawned on her, and Lady Mary pointed out the folly of an attachment to a penniless subaltern, unsteady in habits, while addicted overmuch to sports of the field.

With average experience and plenty of common-sense, the mother had been sorely puzzled how to act. She was well aware that advice in such cases, however judiciously administered, often irritates the wound it is intended to heal; that "warnings"-to use her own words" only put things in people's heads ;" and that a fancy, like a heresy, sometimes dies out unnoticed, when it is not to be stifled by argument nor extirpated with the strong hand. Yet how might she suffer this pernicious superstition to grow, under her very eyes? Was she not a woman, and must she not speak her mind? Besides, she blamed her own blindness, that her daughter's intimacy with the scapegrace had been unchecked in its commencement, and, smarting with self-reproach, could not forbear crying aloud, when she had better have held her tongue.

So Miss Norah discovered she was in love, after all. Mamma said so; no doubt mamma was right. The young lady had herself suspected something of the kind long ago, but Lady Mary's authority and remonstrances placed the matter beyond question. She was very fond of her mother, and to do her justice, tried hard to follow her ladyship's advice. So she thought the subject over, day by day, argued it on every side, in accordance with, in opposition to, and independent of, her own inclinations, to find a result, that during waking and sleeping hours alike, the image of Daisy was never absent from her mind.

Then a new beauty seemed to dawn in the sweet young face. The

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