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which too naturally result. The gradual decay of an attachment which was scarcely based on anything better than sensual love-the irksomeness of concealment the goadings of wounded pride-the suggestions of self-interest, which had been hastily neglected for an object which proves inadequate when gained-all these combining to produce, first, neglect, and lastly, aversion, are interestingly and vividly described. An attachment to another, superior both in mind and station, springs up at the same time; and to effect a union with her, the unhappy wife is sacrificed. It is a terrible representation of the course of crime; and it is not only forcibly, but naturally displayed. The characters sometimes express their feelings with unnecessary energy, strong emotions are too long dwelt upon, and incidents rather slowly developed; but there is no common skill and power evinced in the conduct of the tale.' In 1830 Mr Griffin was again in the field with his Irish sketches. Two tales, The Rivals, and Tracey's Ambition, were well received, though improbable in plot and ill-arranged in incident. The author continued his miscellaneous labours for the press, and published, besides a number of contributions to periodicals, another series of stories, entitled Tales of the Five Senses. These are not equal to his Munster Tales,' but are, nevertheless, full of fine Irish description and character, and of that 'dark and touching power' which Mr Carleton assigns as the distinguishing excellence of his brother novelist. In 1832 the townsmen of Mr Griffin devolved upon him a very pleasing duty -to wait upon Mr Moore the poet, and request that he would allow himself to be put in nomination for the representation of the city of Limerick in parliament. Mr Moore prudently declined this honour, but appears to have given a characteristically kind and warm reception to his young enthusiastic visitor, and his brother, who accompanied him.

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Notwithstanding the early success and growing reputation of Mr Griffin, he appears to have soon become tired of the world, and anxious to retreat from its toils and its pleasures. He had been educated in the Roman Catholic faith, and one of his sisters had, about the year 1830, taken the veil. This circumstance awakened the poetical and devotional feelings and desires that formed part of his character, and he grew daily more anxious to quit the busy world for a life of religious duty and service. The following verses, written at this time, are expressive of his new enthusiasm :

Seven dreary winters gone and spent, Seven blooming summers vanished too, Since on an eager mission bent,

I left my Irish home and you.

How passed those years I will not say;
They cannot be by words renewed-
God wash their sinful parts away!

And blest be he for all their good.
With even mind and tranquil breast
I left my youthful sister then,
And now in sweet religious rest
I see my sister there again.
Returning from that stormy world,

How pleasing is a sight like this!
To see that bark with canvass furled
Still riding in that port of peace.
Oh, darling of a heart that still,
By earthly joys so deeply trod,
At moments bids its owner feel

The warmth of nature and of God!

Still be his care in future years
To learn of thee truth's simple way,
And free from foundless hopes or fears,
Serenely live, securely pray.

And when our Christmas days are past,

And life's vain shadows faint and dim,
Oh, be my sister heard at last,

When her pure hands are raised for him!
Christmas, 1830.

His mind, fixed on this subject, still retained its youthful buoyancy and cheerfulness, and he made a tour in Scotland, which afforded him the highest sain the autumn of 1838, and joined the Christian tisfaction and enjoyment. He retired from the world Brotherhood (whose duty it is to instruct the poor) in the monastery at Cork. In the second year of his noviciate he was attacked with typhus fever, and died on the 12th of June 1840.

WILLIAM CARLETON.

WILLIAM CARLETON, author of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, was born at Prillisk, in the parish of Clogher, and county of Tyrone, in the year 1798. His father was a person in lowly station-a peasant-but highly and singularly gifted. His memory was unusually retentive, and as a teller of old tales, legends, and historical anecdotes, he was unrivalled; and his stock of them was inexhaustible. He spoke the Irish and English languages with nearly equal fluency. His mother was skilled in the native music of the country, and possessed the sweetest and brated for the effect she gave to the Irish cry or most exquisite of human voices. She was cele'keene.' 'I have often been present,' says her son, of some relative or neighbour, and my readers may 'when she has "raised the keene" over the corpse this expression of her sympathy, when I assure them judge of the melancholy charm which accompanied that the general clamour of violent grief was gradually diminished, from admiration, until it became ultimately hushed, and no voice was heard but her own-wailing in sorrowful but solitary beauty.' With such parents Carleton could not fail to imbibe the peculiar feelings and superstitions of his country. His humble home was a fitting nursery for Irish genius. His first schoolmaster was a Connaught man, in the Hedge School.' He also received some innamed Pat Frayne, the prototype of Mat Kavanagh struction from a classical teacher, a tyrannical blockhead' who settled in the neighbourhood, and it was afterwards agreed to send him to Munster, as a poor scholar, to complete his education. The poor scholars of Munster are indebted for nothing but their bed and board, which they receive from the parents of the scholars. In some cases a collection is made to provide an outfit for the youth thus leaving home; but Carleton's own family supplied the funds supposed to be necessary. The circumstances attending his departure Mr Carleton has related in his fine tale, The Poor Scholar.' As he journeyed slowly along the road, his superstitious fears got the better of his ambition to be a scholar, and stopping for the night at a small inn by the way, a disagreeable dream determined the home-sick lad to return to his father's cottage. His affectionate parents were equally joyed to receive him; and Carleton seems to have done little for some years but join in the sports and pastimes of the people, and attend every wake, dance, fair, and merry-making in the

These particulars concerning the personal history of the novelist are contained in his introduction to the last edition of the Traits and Stories.'

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neighbourhood. In his seventeenth year he went to various scenes which passed before him in his native assist a distant relative, a priest, who had opened a district and during his subsequent rambles. In exaclassical school near Glasslough, county of Monaghan, mining into the causes which have operated in where he remained two years. A pilgrimage to the forming the character of the peasantry, Mr Carleton far-famed Lough-derg, or St Patrick's Purgatory, alludes to the long want of any fixed system of excited his imagination, and the description of that wholesome education. The clergy, until lately, took performance, some years afterwards, not only,' he no interest in the matter, and the instruction of the says, 'constituted my debut in literature, but was children (where any instruction was obtained) was also the means of preventing me from being a plea- left altogether to hedge schoolmasters, a class of sant strong-bodied parish priest at this day; indeed men who, with few exceptions, bestowed 'such an it was the cause of changing the whole destiny of my education upon the people as is sufficient almost, in subsequent life.' About this time chance threw a the absence of all other causes, to account for much copy of Gil Blas in his way, and his love of adven- of the agrarian violence and erroneous principles ture was so stimulated by its perusal, that he left which regulate their movements and feelings on that his native place, and set off on a visit to a Catholic and similar subjects.' The lower Irish, too, he justly clergyman in the county of Louth. He stopped remarks, were, until a comparatively recent period, with him a fortnight, and succeeded in procuring a treated with apathy and gross neglect by the only tuition in the house of a farmer near Corcreagh. class to whom they could or ought to look up for This, however, was a tame life and a hard one, and sympathy or protection. Hence those deep-rooted he resolved on precipitating himself on the Irish me- prejudices and fearful crimes which stain the history tropolis, with no other guide than a certain strong of a people remarkable for their social and domestic feeling of vague and shapeless ambition. He entered virtues. In domestic life,' says Mr Carleton, there Dublin with only 2s. 9d. in his pocket. From this is no man so exquisitely affectionate and humanised period we suppose we must date the commencement as the Irishman. The national imagination is active, of Mr Carleton's literary career. In 1830 appeared and the national heart warm, and it follows very nahis Traits and Stories,' two volumes, published in turally that he should be, and is, tender and strong Dublin, but without the author's name. Mr Carleton, in all his domestic relations. Unlike the people of in his preface, assures the public, that what he offers other nations, his grief is loud, but lasting; vehement, is, both in manufacture and material, genuine Irish; but deep; and whilst its shadow has been chequered yes, genuine Irish as to character, drawn by one born by the laughter and mirth of a cheerful disposition, amidst the scenes he describes-reared as one of the still, in the moments of seclusion, at his bed-side people whose characters and situations he sketches prayer, or over the grave of those he loved, it will and who can cut and dress a shillaly as well as put itself forth, after half a life, with a vivid power any man in his majesty's dominions; ay, and use it of recollection which is sometimes almost beyond too; so let the critics take care of themselves.' belief.' A people thus cast in extremes-melancholy The critics were unanimous in favour of the Irish and humorous-passionate in affection and in hatred sketcher. His account of the northern Irish-the-cherishing the old language, traditions, and recolUlster creachts-was new to the reading public, and lections of their country-their wild music, poetry, the dark mountains and green vales' of his native and customs-ready either for good or for evil-such Tyrone, of Donegal, and Derry, had been left un- a people certainly affords the novelist abundant matetouched by the previous writers on Ireland. Arials for his fictions. The field is ample, and it has second series of these tales was published by Mr been richly cultivated. Carleton in 1832, and was equally well received. In 1839 he sent forth a powerful Irish story, Fardorougha the Miser, or the Convicts of Lisnamona, in which the passion of avarice is strikingly depicted, without its victim being wholly dead to natural tenderness and affection. Scenes of broad humour and comic extravagance are interspersed throughout the work. Two years afterwards (1841) appeared The Fawn of Spring Vale, The Clarionet, and other Tales, three Volumes. There is more of pathetic composition in this collection than in the former; but one genial light-wavy motion produced upon its pliant surface by the hearted humorous story, The Misfortunes of Barney Branagan,' was a prodigious favourite. The collection was pronounced by a judicious critic to be calculated 'for those quiet country haunts where the deep and natural pathos of the lives of the poor may be best read and taken to heart. Hence Mr Carleton appropriately dedicates his pages to Wordsworth. But they have the fault common to other modern Irish novels, of an exaggerated display of the darker vicissitudes of life: none better than the Rydal philosopher could teach the tale-writer that the effect of mists, and rains, and shadows, is lost without sunbreaks to relieve the gloom.' The great merit, however, of Mr Carleton, is the truth of his delineations and the apparent artlessness of his stories. If he has not the passionate energy-or, as he himself has termed it, the melancholy but indignant reclamations' of John Banim, he has not his party prejudices or bitterness. He seems to have formed a fair and just estimate of the character of his countrymen, and to have drawn it as it actually appeared to him at home and abroad-in feud and in festival-in the

[Picture of an Irish Village and School-house.]

of a long green hill, the outline of which formed a The village of Findramore was situated at the foot low arch, as it rose to the eye against the horizon. This hill was studded with clumps of beeches, and sometimes enclosed as a meadow. In the month of July, when the grass on it was long, many an hour have I spent in solitary enjoyment, watching the

sunny winds, or the flight of the cloud shadows, like gigantic phantoms, as they swept rapidly over it, whilst the murmur of the rocking trees, and the glancing of their bright leaves in the sun, produced & heartfelt pleasure, the very memory of which rises in my imagination like some fading recollection of s brighter world.

At the foot of this hill ran a clear deep-banked river, bounded on one side by a slip of rich level meadow, and on the other by a kind of common for the village geese, whose white feathers during the summer season lay scattered over its green surface. It was also the play-ground for the boys of the village school; for there ran that part of the river which, with very correct judgment, the urchins had selected as their bathing-place. A little slope or wateringground in the bank brought them to the edge of the stream, where the bottom fell away into the fearful depths of the whirlpool under the hanging oak on the other bank. Well do I remember the first time I ventured to swim across it, and even yet do I see in imagination the two bunches of water flagons on

which the inexperienced swimmers trusted themselves in the water.

About two hundred yards above this, the boreen* which led from the village to the main road crossed the river by one of those old narrow bridges whose arches rise like round ditches across the road-an almost impassable barrier to horse and car. On passing the bridge in a northern direction, you found a range of low thatched houses on each side of the road; and if one o'clock, the hour of dinner, drew near, you might observe columns of blue smoke curling up from a row of chimneys, some made of wicker creels plastered over with a rich coat of mud, some of old narrow bottomless tubs, and others, with a greater appearance of taste, ornamented with thick circular ropes of straw sewed together like bees' skeps | with the peel of a brier; and many having nothing but the open vent above. But the smoke by no means escaped by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it bursting out of the doors and windows; the panes of the latter being mostly stopped at other times with old hats and rags, were now left entirely open for the purpose of giving it a free escape.

Before the doors, on right and left, was a series of dunghills, each with its concomitant sink of green rotten water; and if it happened that a stout-looking woman with watery eyes, and a yellow cap hung loosely upon her matted locks, came, with a chubby urchin on one arm and a pot of dirty water in her hand, its unceremonious ejection in the aforesaid sink would be apt to send you up the village with your finger and thumb (for what purpose you would yourself perfectly understand) closely, but not knowingly, applied to your nostrils. But, independently of this, you would be apt to have other reasons for giving your horse, whose heels are by this time surrounded by a dozen of barking curs, and the same number of shouting urchins, a pretty sharp touch of the spurs, as well as for complaining bitterly of the odour of the atmosphere. It is no landscape without figures; and you might notice-if you are, as I suppose you to be, a man of observation-in every sink as you pass along aslip of a pig' stretched in the middle of the mud, the very beau ideal of luxury, giving occasionally a long luxuriant grunt, highly expressive of his enjoyment; or perhaps an old farrower, lying in indolent repose, with half a dozen young ones jostling each other for their draught, and punching her belly with their little snouts, reckless of the fumes they are creating; whilst the loud crow of the cock, as he confidently flaps his wings on his own dunghill, gives the warning note for the hour of dinner.

As you advance, you will also perceive several faces thrust out of the doors, and rather than miss a sight of you, a grotesque visage peeping by a short cut through the paneless windows, or a tattered female flying to snatch up her urchin that has been tumbling itself heels up in the dust of the road, lest the gintleman's horse might ride over it; and if you happen to look behind, you may observe a shaggy-headed youth in tattered frize, with one hand thrust indolently in his breast, standing at the door in conversation with the inmates, a broad grin of sarcastic ridicule on his face, in the act of breaking a joke or two upon your self or your horse; or perhaps your jaw may be saluted with a lump of clay, just hard enough not to fall asunder as it flies, cast by some ragged gorsoon from behind a hedge, who squats himself in a ridge of corn to avoid detection.

Seated upon a hob at the door you may observe a toil-worn man without coat or waistcoat, his red muscular sunburnt shoulder peering through the remnant of a shirt, mending his shoes with a piece of twisted flax, called a lingel, or perhaps sewing two

A little road.

footless stockings, or martyeens, to his coat, as a substitute for sleeves.

In the gardens, which are usually fringed with nettles, you will see a solitary labourer, working with that carelessness and apathy that characterise an Irishman when he labours for himself, leaning upon his spade to look after you, and glad of any excuse to be idle.

The houses, however, are not all such as I have described-far from it. You see here and there, between the more humble cabins, a stout comfortable-looking farm-house with ornamental thatching and wellglazed windows; adjoining to which is a hay-yard with five or six large stacks of corn, well-trimmed and roped, and a fine yellow weather-beaten old hayrick, half-cut-not taking into account twelve or thirteen circular strata of stones that mark out the foundations on which others had been raised. Neither is the rich smell of oaten or wheaten bread, which the good-wife is baking on the griddle, unpleasant to your nostrils; nor would the bubbling of a large pot, in which you might see, should you chance to enter, a prodigious square of fat, yellow, and almost transparent bacon tumbling about, to be an unpleasant object; truly, as it hangs over a large fire, with well-swept hearthstone, it is in good keeping with the white settle and chairs, and the dresser with noggins, wooden trenchers, and pewter dishes, perfectly clean, and as well polished as a French courtier.

As you leave the village, you have, to the left, a view of the hill which I have already described, and to the right a level expanse of fertile country, bounded by a good view of respectable mountains peering decently into the sky; and in a line that forms an acute angle from the point of the road where you ride, is a delightful valley, in the bottom of which shines a pretty lake; and a little beyond, on the slope of a green hill, rises a splendid house, surrounded by a park well-wooded and stocked with deer. You have now topped the little hill above the village, and a straight line of level road, a mile long, goes forward to a country town which lies immediately behind that white church with its spire cutting into the sky before you. You descend on the other side, and having advanced a few perches, look to the left, where you see a long thatched chapel, only distinguished from a dwelling-house by its want of chimneys, and a small stone cross that stands on the top of the eastern gable; behind it is a grave-yard, and beside it a snug public-house, well white-washed; then, to the right, you observe a door apparently in the side of a clay bank, which rises considerably above the pavement of the road. What! you ask yourself, can this be a human habitation? But ere you have time to answer the question, a confused buzz of voices from within reaches your ear, and the appearance of a little gorsoon with a red closecropped head and Milesian face, having in his hand a short white stick, or the thigh-bone of a horse, which you at once recognise as 'the pass' of a village school, gives you the full information. He has an ink-horn, covered with leather, dangling at the buttonhole (for he has long since played away the buttons) of his frize jacket-his mouth is circumscribed with a streak of ink-his pen is stuck knowingly behind his ear-his shins are dotted over with fire-blisters, black, red, and blue-on each heel a kibe-his 'leather crackers'-videlicet, breeches-shrunk up upon him, and only reaching as far down as the caps of his knees. Having spied you, he places his hand over his brows, to throw back the dazzling light of the sun, and peers at you from under it, till he breaks out into a laugh, exclaiming, half to himself, half to you-

You a gintleman!-no, nor one of your breed never was, you procthorin' thief you !'

You are now immediately opposite the door of the seminary, when half a dozen of those seated next it notice you.

Oh, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse!-masther, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse, wid boots and spurs on him, that's looking in at us.'

'Silence' exclaims the master; 'back from the door-boys rehearse-every one of you rehearse, say, you Boeotians, till the gintleman goes past!' I want to go out, if you plase, sir.' " No, you don't, Phelim.'

'I do, indeed, sir.'

'What is it afther conthradictin' me you'd be? Don't you see the "porter's" out, and you can't go.' 'Well, 'tis Mat Meehan has it, sir; and he's out this half-hour, sir; I can't stay in, sir!'

You want to be idling your time looking at the gintleman, Phelim.'

'No, indeed, sir.'

loftier order proceeding from the same pen; that young writers, English and American, began to imitate so artless and charming a manner of narration; and that an obscure Berkshire hamlet, by the magic of talent and kindly feeling, was converted into a place of resort and interest for not a few of the finest spirits of the age.' Extending her obIservation from the country village to the markettown, Miss Mitford published another interesting volume of descriptions, entitled Belford Regis. She also gleaned from the new world three volumes of Stories of American Life, by American Writers, of which she remarks-The scenes described and the personages introduced are as various as the authors, extending in geographical space from Canada to Mexico, and including almost every degree of civilisation, from the wild Indian and the almost equally wild hunter of the forest and prairies, to the cultivated inhabitant of the city and plain.' Besides her tragedies (which are little inferior to those of Miss Baillie as intellectual productions, while one of them, Rienzi, has been highly successful on the stage),

I

'Phelim, I know you of ould-go to your sate. tell you, Phelim, you were born for the encouragement of the hemp manufacture, and you'll die promoting it.'

In the meantime the master puts his head out of the door, his body stooped to a 'half-bend'-a phrase, and the exact curve which it forms, I leave for the present to your own sagacity-and surveys you until you pass. That is an Irish hedge-school, and the personage who follows you with his eye a hedgeschoolmaster.

MISS MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.

MISS MARY RUSSELL MITFORD, the painter of English rural life in its happiest and most genial aspects, was born in 1789 at Alresford, in Hampshire. Reminiscences of her early boarding-school days are scattered through her works, and she appears to have been always an enthusiastic reader. When very young, she published a volume of miscellaneous poems, and a metrical tale in the style of Scott, entitled Christine, the Maid of the South Seas, founded on the discovery of the mutineers of the Bounty. In 1823 was produced her effective and striking tragedy of Julian, dedicated to Mr Macready the actor, for the zeal with which he befriended the production of a stranger, for the judicious alterations which he suggested, and for the energy, the pathos, and the skill with which he more than embodied its principal character.' Next year Miss Mitford published the first volume of Our Village, Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery, to which four other volumes were subsequently added, the fifth and last in 1832. Every one,' says a lively writer,* 'now knows Our Village, and every one knows that the nooks and corners, the haunts and the copses so delightfully described in its pages, will be found in the immediate neighbourhood of Reading, and more especially around Three-Mile Cross, a cluster of cottages on the Basingstoke road, in one of which our authoress has now resided for many years. But so little were the peculiar and original excellence of her descriptions understood, in the first instance, that, after having gone the round of rejection through the more important periodicals, they at last saw the light in no worthier publication than the Lady's Magazine. But the series of rural pictures grew, and the venture of collecting them into a separate volume was tried. The public began to relish the style so fresh, yet so finished, to enjoy the delicate humour and the simple pathos of the tales; and the result was, that the popularity of these sketches outgrew that of the works of

*Mr Chorley-The Authors of England.

Miss Mitford has written numerous tales for the

annuals and magazines, showing that her industry is equal to her talents. It is to her English tales, however, that she must chiefly trust her fame with posterity; and there is so much unaffected grace, tenderness, and beauty in these rural delineations, that we cannot conceive their ever being considered obsolete or uninteresting. In them she has treasured not only the results of long and familiar observation, but the feelings and conceptions of a truly poetical mind. She is a prose Cowper, without his gloom or bitterness. In 1838 Miss Mitford's name was added to the pension list--a well-earned tribute to one whose genius has been devoted to the honour and embellishment of her country.

COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.

This lady, well known in the world of fashion and literature, is a native of Ireland, daughter of Edward Power, Esq., late of Curagheen, county Waterford. At the age of fifteen she became the wife of Captain Farmer of the 47th regiment, after whose death, in 1817, she was united to Charles John Gardiner, Earl of Blessington. In 1829 she was again left a widow. Lady Blessington now fixed her residence in London, and, by her rank and personal tastes, succeeded in rendering herself a centre of literary society. Her first publication was a volume of Travelling Sketches in Belgium, very meagre and illwritten. The next work commanded more attention: it was her Conversations with Lord Byron, whom she had met daily for some time at Genoa. In 1833 appeared The Repealers, a novel in three volumes, but containing scarcely any plot, and few delineations of character, the greater part being filled with dialogues, criticism, and reflections. Her ladyship is sometimes sarcastic, sometimes moral, and more frequently personal. One female sketch, that of Grace Cassidy, a young Irish wife, is the only one of the characters we can remember, and it shows that her ladyship is most at home among the scenes of her early days. To The Repealers' succeeded The Two Friends, The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman, The Confessions of an Elderly Lady, Desultory Thoughts, The Belle of a Season, The Governess, The Idler in Italy (three volumes, 1839-40), The Idler in France (two volumes, 1841), The Victims of Society, and Meredith. Her recollections of Italy and France are perhaps the best of her works, for in these her love of anecdote, epigram, and sentiment, has full scope, without any of the impediments raised by a story.

MRS S. C. HALL.

MRS S. C. HALL, authoress of Lights and Shadows of Irish Life, and various other works, 'is a native of Wexford, though by her mother's side she is of Swiss

Uma Maria Hall

descent. Her maiden name was Fielding, by which, however, she was unknown in the literary world, as her first work was not published till after her marriage. She belongs to an old and excellent family in her native county. She first quitted Ireland at the early age of fifteen, to reside with her mother in

England, and it was some time before she revisited her native country; but the scenes which were familiar to her as a child have made such a vivid and lasting impression on her mind, and all her sketches evince so much freshness and vigour, that her readers might easily imagine she had spent her life among the scenes she describes. To her early absence from her native country is probably to be traced one strong characteristic of all her writingsthe total absence of party feeling on subjects connected with politics or religion.' Mrs Hall's first work appeared in 1829, and was entitled Sketches of Irish Character. These bear a closer resemblance to the tales of Miss Mitford than to the Irish stories of Banim or Griffin, though the latter may have tended to direct Mrs Hall to the peculiarities of Irish character. They contain some fine rural description, and are animated by a healthy tone of moral feeling and a vein of delicate humour. The coquetry of her Irish girls (very different from that in high life) is admirably depicted. Next year Mrs Hall issued a little volume for children, Chronicles of a SchoolRoom, consisting also of a series of tales, simple, natural, and touching. The home-truths and moral observations conveyed in these narratives reflect great credit on the heart and the judgment of the writer. Indeed good taste and good feeling may be said to preside over all the works of our authoress. In 1831 she issued a second series of 'Sketches of Irish Character,' fully equal to the first, and was well received. The Rapparee is an excellent story, and some of the satirical delineations are hit off with great truth and liveliness. In 1832 she ventured on a larger and more difficult work-a historical romance in three volumes, entitled The Buccaneer. The scene of this tale is laid in England at the time of the Protectorate, and Oliver himself is among the characters. The plot of The Buccaneer' is well managed, and some of the characters (as that of Barbara Iverk, the Puritan) are skilfully delineated; but the work is too feminine, and has too little of energetic passion for the stormy times in which it is cast. In 1834 Mrs Hall published Tales of Woman's Trials, short stories of decidedly moral tendency,

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larity. The principal tale in the collection, The Groves of Blarney, was dramatised at one of the theatres with distinguished success. In 1840 Mrs

* Dublin University Magazine for 1840.

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