fair cousin; he raved of her, and fumed with impatience, when he found she had gone to Mrs Innes's party, and that he could not see her again that night. He lost no time, however, in writing out the schedule of a contract, a most liberal one, and to this scroll he put his name, desiring his friend to show Miss Campbell the writing preparatory to his visit the next day. The clothier did this, and found his lovely ward delighted with the match, who acknowledged that the annual sum settled on her was four times what she expected with such an agreeable husband; and although she begged for time and leisure to make some preparations, yet, at her kind uncle's request, she unhesitatingly put her name to the document by way of acquiescence; and thus was the agree ment signed and settled, and wanted only the ratification of the parson to render it permanent. He then in formed her that the Doctor would wait on her next day to ask her formally, and then they might settle on such time for the marriage as suited both.

Next day the Doctor arrived at an early hour, and found the young lady dressed like an Eastern princess to receive him, and in the highest glee imaginable; but as he did not then know the success of his offer, he kept aloof from the subject till the arrival of his friend the clothier. The latter, perceiving his earnest impatience, took him into another apartment, and showed him the lady's signature and acceptance. Never was there a man so uplifted. The intelligence actually put him beside himself, for he clapped his hands, shouted -hurra! threw up his wig, and jumped over one of the chairs. His joy and hilarity during dinner were equally extravagant-there was no whim nor frolic which he did not practise. He drank tops and bottoms with the young lady every glass, and at one time got on his legs and made a long speech to her, the tenor of which she did not, or pretended that she did not, comprehend; but all the family group applauded him, so that he was elated, and even drunk with delight.

Not being able to rest, by reason of the fervour of his passion, he arose shortly after dinner, and, taking his friend the clothier into the other room, requested of him to bring matters to a verbal explanation forthwith.

He accordingly sent for Eliza, who looked rather amazed when she entered, and saw only these two together.

"Come away, my dear Eliza," said her uncle; "take a seat here, and do not look so agitated, seeing the business is already all but finished. My friend, Dr Brown, has come down today for the purpose of having a ratification of your agreement from your own hand, and your own mouth."

"Very well, my dear uncle; though I see no occasion for hurrying the business, I am quite conformable to your will in that respect. Why did not Dr Brown come to dinner? Where is he?”

I wish I had seen the group at this moment; or had Mr David Wilkie seen it, and taken a picture from it, it would have been ten times better. The Doctor's face of full-blown joy was chan-` ged into one of meagre consternation, nothing of the ruddy glow remaining, save on the tip of his nose. The internal ligaments that supported his jaws were loosened, and they fell down, as he gazed on the clothier; the latter stared at Eliza, and she at both alternately. It was a scene of utter bewilderment, and no one knew what to think of another. The clo thier was the first to break silence.

"What ails you, my dear niece ?" said he. "Are you quizzing? or are you dreaming? or have you fallen into a fit of lunacy? I say, what is the matter with you, child? Is not this my friend, Dr Brown, whom I have known from his childhood?-the gentleman whom I sent for to be introduced to you, and the gentleman, too, to whom you have given yourself away, and signed the gift by an irrevocable deed?"

"What! To this old gentleman? Dear uncle, you must excuse me, that I am in a grievous error, and a quandary besides. Ha, ha, ha !—Hee, hee, hee! Oh, mercy on us! I shall expire with downright laughing."

"What do you mean by such insulting behaviour, madam? Have I come here to be flouted, to be cheated, to be baited by a pack of terriers, with an old fox-hound at their head? But beware, madam, how you press the old badger too hard. I have your signature here, to a very serious deed, signed before witnesses, and if you do not fulfil your engagement to inc, I have you at my mercy; and I'll

"Mercy on us!" exclaimed the clothier. "We shall all go in a flame together, and be consumed by collision. My dear niece, you know not what you are doing or saying. This is no person to be despised, but the celebrated Dr Brown from India, chief of the medical staff of a whole Presidency-your own kinsman-my friend, of whom you approved in your note to me, and in conjunction with whom you have signed a contract of marriage. So none of your bantering and flagaries; for have him you must, and have him you shall. The deed cannot now be annulled but by mutual consent."

"Well, then, it shall never be farther ratified by me. This may be your Dr Brown, but he is not mine; and however worthy he may be, he is not the man of my choice."

"Is not this the gentleman of whom you wrote to me in such high terms of approval ?"

"That the gentleman! Dear uncle, where would my seven senses have been, had that been he?"

"And is this not the lady, sir, whom you met in Edinburgh ?”

"I know nothing at all about it. If this be not she, I like her worse than the other."

"There is some unfortunate mistake here. Pray, Dr Brown, who was it that introduced you to the lady, with whom you met?"

"Your friend, Mrs Wright, to be sure; whom else could it have been?" "And you did not see Mr Anderson, then?"

66 No; but I left your letter at his office, thinking there might be something of business."

"There it goes! Mrs Wright has introduced you to a wrong Miss Campbell, and Mr Anderson has introduced a wrong Dr Brown to her.-Plague on it, for you cannot now throw a stone in Edinburgh, but you are sure to hit either a Brown or a Campbell."

This was simply the case: The clothier wrote to his friend, Mrs Wright, to find means of introducing the bearer, Dr Brown, to their mutual friend, Miss Elizabeth Campbell. Mrs Wright, having an elderly maiden sister of that name, mistook, in perfect simplicity of heart, the term mutual friend, and, without more ado, introduced the Doctor to her sister. Now, the Doctor knew perfectly well that the other letter, which he carried to Mr Anderson, related likewise to some meeting with Miss Campbell, but not caring about any such thing, he merely popped the letter into the shop as he passed; and Mr Anderson, knowing nothing about Dr Brown's arrival from India, sent for the only unmarried Dr Brown whom he knew, and introduced him to Mr Burton's niece, as desired, and there the attachment proved spontaneous and reciprocal. Miss Campbell, finding now that she was in a bad predicament, having given her heart to one gentleman, and her written promise to another, threw herself on the old Doctor's mercy, explained the mistake, and the state of her affections, and besought him to have pity on a poor orphan, whose choice might be wrong, but which she was incapable of altering. The worthy Esculapius of the East was deeply affected. He took both the young lady's hands in his, kissed first the one and then the other, and, invoking on her all earthly happiness, he not only returned her the bond, but alongst with it a cheque on his banker for a considerable sum, as a marriage-present.

Miss Campbell was shortly after married to a dashing student of medicine, and they now reside in a distant province, very poor, and not over happy; and Dr Brown married the eldest daughter of his old benefactor, a simple, modest, and unassuming young creature, whom he carried off with him to the paradise of India, and placed her at the head of a magnificent Eastern establishment. I have seen several of her letters, in all of which she writes in the highest terms of her happiness and comforts. The two old friends quarrelled every day while together, but at parting, they both shed the warm tears of affection, and words of regret passed between them such as to be remembered for ever.

LIMERICK is a sickly disagreeable place, where gloves and pretty women are much more scarce than pigs or papists. This somewhat reconciled me to being started off at break of day, one fine windy morning, with a detachment, to the borders of Kerry; and when I had completed my returns of neighbouring roads, hills, bridges, and blacksmiths' shops, pursuant to the order of the commandant of our district, a good-natured, intelligent, fussy, particular, old gentleman, I stole a march between the 10th and 24th of October, to pull an oar across the far-famed lakes, and scale Mangerton.

The first village of note on the road from Limerick to Killarney, is Adare -a pretty place, by the by, and a grand trout stream running through it, with countless wild-duck thereupon. Here was of old a strong-hold of the Desmonds; and the Castle, with its keep and ivy mantled tower, still forms a splendid ruin. The old Abbey is more to my taste though; the tall, narrow, taper, arched windows peep so gracefully from beneath the green festooning of matted ivy, and form a delicate and almost gay relief to the sombre stillness of the massive cloisters. The property is Lord Dunraven's, a worthy man, Mr North, a resident landlord too, who preserves his game like a gentleman, and has imported a hundred brace of pheasants to stock his woods. I hope to see him in the House of Lords yet: he would be in his place there, for he has a fastidious delicacy of cultivated taste, that unfitted him for the rough and round proceedings of the Lower House. I am afraid George Moore, our Dublin member, will break down from a deficiency, or delicacy, or what you will, of the same sort, and all men see how over education has spoiled North-Not thee, my most illustrious friend, but he of Lord Anglesey's borough.

The first full burst of the lower Shannon is superb-'Tis just after passing a little village called Foynes, about twenty miles from Limerick, and forty from the sea. The road winds along beneath a lofty cliff of rock, through which, indeed, it has

been cut, the stone having been originally soft and friable, though it has become indurated by exposure to the air. Even thus far inland, the river is from three to four miles broad, and just here, the banks are planted.-On the Clareshire side, by the wood of Cahircon, the estate of Mr Scott-a gentleman whom I name with honour, for he is proprietor of that Burrin, the relish of whose far-famed oysters is yet upon my palate. The Limerick shore is clothed with the planting of Mount Trenchard, the residence of Mr Rice-father, I believe, of the Home Under-Secretary.

Next came I to Glyn, from which one of the three anomalous titles of knight is taken. The story runs, that one of the Earls of Desmond-they say so lately as in the days of good Queen Bess-bestowed on his three sons the titles of White Knight, Green Knight, and Knight of the Valley. The heirs male of the White Knight failed, but the title is still claimed, from intermarriage with the French line, by the Earl of Kingston. In him it seems a lucus a non lucendo sort of derivation, and not a nomen ex re inditum, for his lordship is a singularly darksome-looking man, and as he strides in his hairy strength among his tribes of tenantry and workmen at Mitchellstown Castle, flourishing a huge blackthorn sapling, he looks like the very moral of an O'Sullivan, or an O'Donoghue-More; started to life, to make the living start. The Green Knight's title, transformed to that of Knight of Kerry, is borne by a Mr Fitzgerald, and this too is the name of the Knight of Glyn, the modern version of Knight of the Valley.

Halted for dinner at Tarbert-the Berwick-upon-Tweed, which separates the Kingdom of Kerry from the Levant, but was so little satisfied with the boasted mutton of that ancient place, that I rejoiced to come upon a wight some two hours after, just as he hooked a respectable sort of a salmon out of the Listowell river;

From forth my pocket's avaricious nook, "Then, well pleased, I shook,

Some certain coins of silver," which I gave the man, not as 'twere

per force, but with hearty good-will; and deposited the finny treasure in the body of my dog cart, anticipating a delicious supper.

Kerry, as you approach Listowell, presents the appearance of a prodigious interminable plain. Low and boggy lands form on every side the melancholy prospect. Just before entering the town, you pass Ballinruddery, the place where the Knight of Kerry aforesaid does not reside. Listowell itself looked well, enlivened by the glowing beams of the sun, which was just then sinking in a volumed mass of rich and amber clouds, gorgeous and bright as the fat on the sirloin of a prize bullock. Ecstatic thought!-peace to the manes of the merry monarch, who dubbed that knight of knights, Sir Loin. They are building a handsome bridge over the river here. If Moore had called this pleasant world "bleak" in a song written during a pilgrimage from Tarbert to Tralee, instead of, when sitting under a big tree, near Castle Howard, in the delicious vale of Arklow, there would have been some sense in it; but Waller has said, that poets succeed better in fiction than in truth.

I had not the least idea that any Christian people could be so utterly destitute of the first elements of civilization, as I soon discovered them to be in the Albergo Reale of this metropolitan city of the kingdom of Kerry. Celebrated as I knew this capital to be for its intercourse in fish, I did deem it sufficient to recommend my protégé, through the intermediation of the waiter, to the especial notice of the maitre de la cuisine, entreating that the same might grace my supper table, summa diligentiâ, signifying, as we at Eton construed the words in Livy's very unhandsome account of "ould general" Hannibal, and his passage across the Alps, "with some diligence," and not by any means 66 on the top of a diligence," as the Harrow men suppose. Indulging in pleasing dreams of coming bliss-I threw myself into a chair; videlicet, I sat down with all the cautious gentleness a long drive, and a somewhat jaded nether end, suggested, and summoning up all my resolution, tried to read the Epicurean, which lay at the top of my port manteau, straight on till supper should be announced. I made a conscience VOL. XXIII.

of this, because I had already been obliged to give a very decided and detailed opinion on its merits and defects to various young and ancient ladies, in several cut-mutton quadrilles ; and as yet I had not dipped beyond the title-page. When the waiter awoke me for supper, it lay open on the table at page 19. Rubbing my eyes, and muttering weak stuff-paucity of ideas -eau sucré-I tripped down stairs, and bade the man uncover the salmon first. Gently did I lay the trowel to the bosom of the sleeping beauty, and displaced the breast back to the shoulder-but let me not dwell upon the harrowing recollection. Suffice it, that after the first thrill of anguish, horror, and amaze, had subsided into that dull stupifying sense of calamity which succeeds, I asked the waiter in a voice of mingled anger and emotion→→→ "Where the devil is the curd ?" "Cucur-curd, sir ?" stammered the fellow with an air of stupid astonishment; "is it curds and whey you mane?" The rascal actually did not know-aye, here in Tralee, where turbot are sold for three shillings a-piece, and salmon at fourpence the pound avoirdupois, the scoundrel had never heard that salmon had a curd!" Sirrah," cried I, "who spoiled my fish?" "The cook biled it, sir.” Who, which, where, how-what person, assuming so proud a title, has disgraced that honoured name?" "Is it the cook's name, sir?

Biddy Molony, sir." " Enough, enough, good fellow," I replied, with an hysteric laugh-" I see it all—she has popped my enfant cheri into cold instead of boiling water-A woman cook!-a female fury." But Virgil has already shadowed forth this calamity, Harpyiæ adsunt, (i. e.) the devil sends bitch cooks

"Diripiantque dapes, contactuque omnia fœdant."

"Thus, ever thus-from manhood's dawn,
I've seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never carved a haunch or brawn,
But all the fat was help'd away.
I never nursed a turkey pout,
To glad me with its plump white thigh,
But, when I came to help about,

The tit-bits-all-were sure to fly." Indignation and sorrow are more thirsty than hungry evils, so, after two pounds of tolerable rump-steaks, as a pis-aller, I betook myself to a small case of Bordeaux brandy, which I had

G