troopers behind him, he added: "This day will the Lord be with us, and in the strength of His arm shall we prevail against them which despise His covenant."

"Yea, smite and spare not," piously responded the baronet. "Adieu, Sir Knight," he continued, in a low tone, addressing the wretched Plunkett, "This day must thou win thy spurs. Sorely doth it grieve me they cannot be buckled on by fairer hands than mine. Haste to return to us victorious; in the banquet of to-night we will celebrate thy deeds of prowess."

As the horsemen passed under the massive portals of the castle, Plunkett noticed his servant in the crowd of idlers assembled to witness the departure of the troopers. "Remember my orders," he whispered, as he rode by; "see that the lad does not quit the castle till I return."

"This injunction recalled to Wilson's mind the command he had received, but which he had been too much occupied to remember. He searched in every direction for their guide of the morning, but that eccentric individual had disappeared. Inquiring from the sentinel of the outer gate, he learned that an Irish boy in every respect like the one he sought had passed through a short time. before Major Storey rode out, and when asked whither he went, had replied that he carried a message from Mr. Plunkett to the doctor of the village.

Meanwhile the receding forms of the troopers grew more and more indistinct in the distance. The eyes of their friends followed them as they dwindled down to a mere mass of waving plumes and glittering armour, until at length they entered the shadow cast by Slieve Bawn upon the moors, and were lost entirely to view.

FAR AWAY.

BY ALICE ESMONDE.

CARCE an hour has passed over, Joe, and I've waked you up again,

cough, and gasp for breath, and the moaning pain;

I count that you're watching me there, full fourteen months long and more;
Oh! the strength of man's love and the depth! Poor Joe! it will all soon be

o'er.

There's the beat of the petrel's wings, in their flight 'neath the silent sky,
There's the whirr of the bandicoote, and the lone potoroo's quick cry;
The slanting casement's lengthened panes I see on the floor less clear;
These nights from the pale moon I mark, when the dawn of the long day is near..

And I thought that I'd die last eve-for I dreamt of the grave and rest,
While I slept as the red sun sank, and flooded with gold all the west;
And sweet was that dream of the end, and of home, and the long ago,
Till waking I felt your hot tears, and could not but weep with you, Joe,

But the end and the rest must come soon, the darkness and chill grow apace;
Joseph, come nearer and give me one earnest, long view of your face;
Ah! the eyes-deep, blue, and kind still-the old honest look on the brow;
The sweet, firm mouth of your boyhood-there seems scarce a change on you

now

Since we climbed up to the young cranes, far out on the old castle's height, And barefoot would wade through the brook, where the speckled trout dived out of sight;

Or chased the swift hare round and round, the meadows and clover fields through, And you lifted me up till I reached where drooping the wild cherries grew.

Ah! there still the crane builds its nest; unaltered the stream flows alongFor ever and ever, no shadow of grief or of pain in its song;

And still, through the long summer eves, other lads (like us then) are at play, And there's health, and there's freshness and life, at home in old Ireland to-day.

For 'tis June, and in the glad sunshine the hillsides from green to gold change, And enraptured the blue mists veil jealous the crest of the far mountain range; I know how the purple heath smiles from the depths of the dry torrent's bed, And summer winds loiter to-day, where the herds to the river are led.

Dear Joe, wipe the damp from my forehead, and soften this hard pillow here; Wet my lips with the cordial. I feel that relief must be near.

Oh! how soothing a strong hand's soft touch, how patient an old friend's true love!

A love such as yours, my poor Joe, a mother's is only above.

Let me lie in the churchyard beyond--the corner that looks to the West-
Say a tired stranger pined far from Erin, and there do his weary bones rest;
And, brother, at some future day, will you go and bring back o'er the wave
Some shamrocks from father's green sod that will grow here again on my grave?

Lift me up-I'm so weary and weak. Ah! once, Joe, in anger I said,
My strength and my youth should not fail, and strange lands would yield me

free bread.

Alas! the hard words and the boasting, the fierce pride that kept me apartThe crushed love, and yearning and pain, that eat out the life from my heart.

Hush! Joe, old friend -God knows what's best, and I'm happy even now.
Speak kind words for me to Willie, and to Nell with the curly brow;
Give my heart's love to my mother-mind, say her name I breathed last;
Let her and Nellie pray for me, and forgive me all the past.

In the dusk of autumn evenings, when the solemn thoughts will rise,
When the mower's scythe is resting, and in swathes the damp hay lies;
And in winter by the fireside, when the wind is bleak and high,
And the wild geese seek the bogland, with a homeless, lonely cry;

When the young lambs race at twilight, in the first green flush of spring,
And the children pull the primrose, and the glad birds build and sing;
Through the sultry summer nightfalls, when the dead and gone arise,
They'll weep for me then lying 'neath these strange Australian skies.

You'll tell them, Joseph, how we thought to travel home this year.
How spring-time went and came again, and I lay helpless here:-
Ah! on this bed my life's short dream comes clear before my sight,
So hot and restless and astray. Well, death shall set it right.

It seems to me astray and wrong, all out of tune and time-
A song that promised well, but failed-a strange, unmeasured rhyme;
Ah! hope is false, and promise vain, and life runs quickly o'er—
And never now-ah! never now, I'll see poor Erin more.

We'd travel westward in the spring, you'll tell them so we said,
And I was ill, and tidings came, the news that he was dead.
Oh, father wronged! oh, father lost! too late, too late!—since then
I'd give whole worlds to hear one word from your cold lips again.

Yes, I thank God, now I'm dying, in life's glory and full prime,

For, Joe, perhaps,-ah, yes! God knows, feelings change and hearts in time. And when I'm gone you must be brave, nor fret here all alone,

For we will meet again, old friend, where no death nor parting's known.

You'll dig my grave close by the hedge-where the winds blow from the West,
Say a stranger died from Erin, and there he begged to rest.

And, brother, when, in years to come, you go across the wave,
Send shamrocks from my father's clay to grow here on my grave.

HÔTEL PANIER D'OR.

(OUR FOREIGN Post-bag.)

THEN you remember what a charm a peal of bells has for your

surely a lover of the carillons loses

interest even in the most profitable conversation once their message, melodious and divine, rings out from the dizzy eminence of some cathedral spire; how much on one occasion I missed in France, after a sojourn in Belgium, "the deep sonorous clangour," "the beautiful wild chimes" that had so lately showered music on the hours as they passed-when, again, you recollect my love for heaven-reaching heights, whether mountain peaks or aspiring campanili, you will understand how happily situated I consider myself to be in the capital of West Flanders, planted right opposite the Belfry of Bruges. On my return home I may be called on to explain why it was I preferred lingering in these parts to hurrying southward; why I was satisfied with a voyage autour de ma chambre, when I might have enjoyed a sail down the Danube and a visit to the Kaisar's capital. But I am not now going to waste your time and mine with a statement of my excellent reasons. One thing I know-if I shall not have many traveller's tales to relate, I shall at any rate be able to

boast that I remained a whole week in Bruges; and is not this more than one in a thousand of your travellers can say ?

On Sunday we landed at cock-crow; heard first Mass in the old church at Ostend; breakfasted at our leisure; sauntered up to the station, and took our places in the convoi, which, in the manner of trains in this country, proceeded with considerable caution over the dead level, avoiding all risk of an upset through excessive speed, or a blow up from over excitement. In about half an hour our old friends, the tower of S. Saviour, the steeple of Notre Dame, and the historic Belfry were fully in sight; and by-and-bye we stepped out on the platform among a crowd of the townsfolk in their Sunday blouses and hooded cloaks. I looked over the heads of the people, eagerly, for one friendly face, and was not disappointed. B, who arrived the previous evening, had come down to meet the train, and you may guess how cordial was the greeting between Celt and Saxon.

"And where are we to take up our quarters ?" I inquired, when the first few words had been exchanged.

"Oh, at the Panier d'Or," was the reply. "I went there last evening according to your suggestion; and certainly I do not think we can do better than establish ourselves among the quaint gables and eccentric chimney tops of the Grande Place in view of the belfry tower."

"And is it tolerably comfortable there?" put in G—, who wanted to satisfy himself that in our search for the picturesque we should not be left without the necessaries and comforts of life." "Oh, yes;" said B-, "comfortable enough-though rather sandy!"

When the train moved off to the sound of the guard's bugle, taking G―, who, having his face resolutely turned to Vienna, could do no more than wish us an agreeable holiday among the canals, we took our way, arm in arm, to the centre of the town, a Belgian lad following with my very light baggage. The bells and the carillons were at their usual Sunday's work-doing double duty. The Cathedral was proclaiming to the ancient city and the surrounding country that all who desired to attend high mass within its venerable walls should forthwith put themselves in motion. Notre Dame kept on announcing something, manifestly important, the sense of which, however, I could not exactly catch. Bells of less pretension were communicating intelligence in an undertone across the canals; and the Belfry, which can do everything but hold its tongue for one quarter of an hour, in its usual style chimed in with the rest. As we passed the churches, we met the people with their large prayer books and rosaries slowly hastening in their peculiar fashion. Grandmothers in sabots clattered under the porch; soldiers of the line marched boldly in; young women looking so pretty, many of them, in their faultless caps and long black

cloaks, paused to exchange a friendly word with their acquaintances, and to form, as it appeared to us, a group of figures artistically disposed in the foreground; while two or three broughams, drawn by stout well-groomed horses, rolled over the heavy pavement, taking the burgher aristocracy to church.

"Is it not delightful," we said to one another, "to hear these bells talking of heavenly things to the silent old city? Is it not pleasant to see these people who appear neither to want common comforts, nor to be choked with the cares, and riches, and pleasures of the world? Is it not a relief to see people with peaceful faces taking their way with Christian sobriety through life; and does not all this rest one greatly?"

On turning into the smoothly paved square, which is the market-place on Saturdays, but the Grande Place on other days, I glanced towards the Panier d'Or and saw the windows in one of the peaks of the frontage which were to be ours. Then we walked into the centre, turned round, and surveyed the Belfry, rising from the comparatively low, battlemented, red brown structure called Les Halles, and ascending in successive storeys with Gothic openings, corner pinnacles, flying buttresses, and surmounting balustrade up to a height of 290 feet. I recognised the family of bells in their breezy abode in the upper storey, and saw, somewhat lower down, as indeed the entire city of Bruges can do, one face of the clock which presents a dial to each of the cardinal points. It did not require much time to run up the crooked stairs of the Panier d'Or and take possession of my apartment. Presently we were out again hoping to be in time for High Mass at S. Saviour's; and in this we were not disappointed.

I do not know whether the organ, the band, and the voices are particularly good in the cathedral, but I know the effect of the music is very fine. The orchestra is placed opposite the altar, on the rood that crosses the church; and you can see the conductor waving his baton as he stands foremost in that elevated position. It is here as in most of the foreign cathedrals: the music, like the congregation, has room enough. Thus the tide of sound floats down the nave, thunders along the aisles, reverberates from the roof, winds in and out of distant chapels, and breaks in rippling echoes among the monuments of the forgotten dead.

After Mass we walked in the little garden called the Park, to which the townsfolk resort at that hour to hear the band play; and by twelve o'clock we were just as ready as the rest of the world hereabout for dinner. That duty discharged, and an hour's rest enjoyed, we were on our rambles again. I think we must have been in and out of half the churches in Bruges: and that is saying a good deal. We crossed I do not know how many bridges; passed under two or three of the city gates; and were out on the ramparts with the windmills. In fact we did the very thing we so often have thought it a hardship to be obliged to do: we never sat down, and