me to eat. It was holding by her gown that I learned to walk; clutching, while I did so, at the great red sun gilding the green hills of Connaught, away, away to the sea. Sometimes she led me to the old castle; and there, while our cow grazed, would hush me with wild legends, tales of other days. She told me how the once proud Conellans, beaten down and subdued, had given way; some flying beyond the seas, some sleeping by their old ancestral walls, till all that was left to betoken their valour and their fame was the one word CONELLAN traced in ancient characters on the riven stone. 66 'Bridget's forefathers were retainers of, had fought, lived, died for, the fallen line. Tears at times relieved her pent-up agonies. Then, drying her eyes, she would clasp me to her heart for thou, too,' she said, 'art one of them.' Imagine, now, this faithful creature, her white hair streaming, her dark eyes flashing sweet love for the child of her adoption, beside me. "You were in London, I knew, and I could not live from you, heart's golden son!' The dear soul, with some vague direction, but my name upon her lips, had traced me out. She talks ever about the 'young mistress;' and, seriously, dearest, I have taken apartments that will suffice for two, in one of the streets leading to the Thames. My chamber opens on the broad river; not so broad or so deeply rolling as our own Shannon. I fancy, surveying the mimic surge, that I could soon gain the open sea, and so on to my own country. Ah me if I were only there, with you- by that river shore, I should never wander more! "Delicious day dreams haunt me. A cottage covered with flowers; leafy slopes, where little ones play; a latticed casement, through which L struggling rays illumine pages on which a pale and serious man doth pore; yet not all so pale and serious, but that his eyes glance and his lips smile, for his love and the darlings of his heart are there." "But the rest," said Cornelius, "where is the rest?" "There is no rest," I replied: "that life's history is finished, done a broken sword, a shattered lyre! Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep; "The high-souled man and gentle maiden rest, sweetly rest, by the old walls of Castle Conellan. The aged foster-mother tended them to the close; and, having placed them in the dust, went late and early to pray by their remains. She, too, one morning, was discovered cold and still-hands clasped, eyes all sightless, turned heavenward! They laid her, the lot she craved, beside those she loved so well: and now the Conellans, chieftain and kern, fosterparent and foster-child, have vanished from the soil. But they are happy in a land fairer than what Shannon waters, sunnier skies than ever lighted Connaught." "Heavens!" exclaimed Cornelius," and they are gone!" "Yes, in sooth are they," replied I; "clan Conellan and all, hushed together and at rest. Long, bravely, but, alas, vainly, did he struggle with disease. She was in time to gather his last confessions, his latest sighs-ah me, to contract the weary malady, and to die! Some day we shall drop a tear to the memory of the wise, the good; those that were, but are not! They died; but, in virtue of the act, entered on a new life, where love, heart's essence, subsists free of convention, or place, or space, for ever. These sheets must now be consigned to the flames. What boots it? The soul that dictated, the sentiments they embody, can never die. Fire may destroy the form, but the spirit is beyond the reach of the elements." THE LABOURER'S HOPE. As Cornelius advanced in years, his zeal did not evaporate in words, nor his desire to do good in vain profession. With him, to think was to do; to project, to execute. It was his desire to signalise life, not by name or fame, but by noble deeds and lofty aspirations for the good of his kind. His leisure was spent in inquiries after the best modes of education, tilling the soil, and reclaiming the waste, as well as in engaging the services of able and experienced men. |