Beyond the park, to the west and south, the land trended away into sandy flats, broken by hillocks, where millions of rabbits burrowed and bred; this stretch of warren was half a mile across, and terminated in a hard and sloping sea beach, on which the long bright waves of the Atlantic leaped and thundered heavily day and night; never ceasing their motion, and only varying their sound as the weather roughened or calmed.

All behind the old house were great oak woods, from whence the place had its name of " Darragh," which word I was always told was the Celtic for "The Oaks." This wood was intersected by a hundred paths, and the legend in the country was, that half a century before the commencement of my narrative, the red deer of Ireland had been running free amidst these trees, and "under their high and melancholy boughs." The wood went up for nearly two miles to the base of a mountain range: there was Slieve-na-Quilla, or the Hill of the Eagle; Slieve-na-Kill, or the Church Mountain, where was a ruin anda waterfall; and Slieve-na-Phooca, or the Demon Hill: this chain went off westward, and terminated in some table land, and a bluff head or cliff which beetled boldly over the Atlantic, and where a pair of great sea eagles, which are the largest of that noble tribe of birds, had had their eyrie from time immemorial. Just at the place where the wood came to an end, a rapid stream issued from a gorge, and rushed tumbling and foaming through its boulders and over its rocks, and after running a short and angry course of three miles, brawling and raving amidst the old oaks, as if it were chafing at their imperturbability, it lost itself in the ocean, like the early death of a restless and wayward child.

Such was the landscape which now reddened beneath the slant sunset of the cold evening, and the scene would have well illustrated a picture of solitariness, had not the great iron gates at this moment been swung slowly back, and a large and heavy travelling carriage entered the avenue from the road. It was a plain brown britzka, drawn by four post horses, and containing as many people in the body, besides servants in the dickeys. In a few minutes it had reached the

hall door: forth from this carriage stept lightly a very tall and spare old man, singularly erect and graceful, and combining in his countenance the two adverse expressions of sternness and gentleness, only the former seemed to have been an acquired, the latter a natural quality: the large, bright, brown eye was that of the eagle, while the smile was as sweet as a woman's. And this was my uncle, General Nugent, and the master of "The Darragh." After him descended his niece, my sister; then leaped forth my stripling self; and to complete the partie quarrée, out stepped Mr. Montfort, an Englishman, a kinsman, and a friend. As the servants came to the door to welcome and receive us; as the splashed and dust-stained britzka turned, and went round to the stables to be divested of its boxes; as we all stood on the broad door-steps, silent and very still in the crimson dusky light of the dying day, surveying the scene, and listening to the distant surge and thunder of the sea; boy as I was, and circled by all I loved, I felt a gloom, and a presaging of misfortunes, as if connected with the red light in which we were standing, and the leafless desolation of the landscape which was around us; and the break of the sea on the beach seemed to me to be like dull thunder-drums, beating on to some funeral procession, or scene of ghastly execution.

These feelings-unaccountable at the time, and quite unusual to me, however, rapidly passed away as we entered the house. A large oblong hall received us, low ceiled and having a great billiard table and oak settles by the walls: the drawingroom was on the left, a bright and wholesome little old room, full of worsted screens, hyacinth roots, geraniums, and rare china, and dressed up in chintz furniture of a lively pattern, like an ancient lady affecting juvenility. On the right of the hall was an extensive dining-room, so long that it was a standing complaint of our cooks that the viands were cooled in the length of their transmission from the door to the dinner table! On the left side of the wide fireplace stood an immense black leathern chair, tall backed, deep seated, broad armed, and mounted with dark tin, something in the manner of a coffin. This piece of furniture was never moved;

indeed I believe most of our servants considered it to be incapable of mobility; and to be rooted to the floor as firmly as the oldest oak of the Darragh; and this was the belief of my childhood also. Its face was two thirds to the fire, its long black back stared at the door; and here on each winter evening sat the general, with his length of limb extended on the hearthrug, while the wood billets crackled and roared up the chimney. This chair had a terrible association with it, which was whispered in the servants' hall, which was murmured in the kitchen, which was smiled at in the parlour. Some ten years ago a young housemaid of an hysterical temperament had gone into the parlour at midnight, intent on the recovery of a missing duster, when what should meet her eyes but the figure of old Admiral Nugent, the builder of the house, and who had been dead for half a century, sitting up in the chair with his wooden leg protruding from its seat; dressed in full uniform -blue and gold, and cocked hat: "the very moral of his picture on the landing place," said the alarmed damsel, who had instantly faced about and fled, but assured her credulous hearers that she saw the figure in the chair turn round, and slowly get up; and as she clapt the door, and made all sail down the kitchen stairs, she protested she heard the Admiral with his wooden leg go hop-hop-hop along the floor, in hurried pursuit after her. True it was that next morning the General indulged in a most sceptical burst of laughter when he heard it, saying like Hamlet, "I would I had been there," and his mirth was confirmed when Martin the footman confessed to his having been in the parlour late that night, "putting the table to rights," and to his having left his livery coat over the arm of the chair, and the hearth-brush on the seat, through a mere chance yet for all this, Susan's story found favour and great acceptance, and if a door chanced to rattle in the house after midnight, "oh it was the old Admiral on his dreadful wooden leg, stumping up and down the large parlour, mistaking it no doubt, the craythur-for the deck of his own ship." Or if the wind would blow through some ill-closed casement, or come roaring down the chimney, "sure it was himself humming or whistling

his wicked sea songs," as imagination painted him lolling up in the chair all night, drinking ghostly grog, and beating time to his own music against the hearthstone with his formidable lignean leg.

This old officer had been famous for his bravery, his eccentricity, and I am sorry to say his wickedness; he had purchased this place nobody knew why; and lived here every body knew how. The house originally had been a shooting lodge of Lord but when the "ancient Mariner" took possession of it, he built it out at both sides; adding considerably to its breadth and depth; patching it from year to year with returns, and wings, and new erections, till it had attained to its present outward condition of ugly respectability. The house at first contained as many windows as Argus had eyes, and within, innumerable landing places, lobbies, narrow galle ries and gangways, spiral staircases, and ups and downs of all shapes, and such odd contrivance, that it required the exercise of a strong organ of locality to enable a stranger guest, on the morning after his arrival, to make his way with any degree of geographical accuracy to the reception room where he had supped on the previous night. It was also full of lockers, cupboards, and closets of all kinds, mano'-war fashion. Bulkheads loomed at you from the end of every corridor; figure-heads grinned at you from above the bed-room doors; with all its windows there was little light; there were very many rooms for all, but no room for any, and a tarey atmosphere pervaded the whole house; and thus this brave admiral, but bad artificer, had left it, spending the last ten years of his life ever cobbling and contriving and changing; and, dying at last, he bequeathed it to his heir; in all that concerns internal arrangement, a standing satire on architecture, and a lath-and-plaster libel on every domicilary convenience. His heir was my uncle at that time at a military college; and he often told me of the number of cartloads of rubbish he had to draw away before the mansion had acquired the very tolerable degree of comfort which it now possessed. The Admiral had died rich, and when his" testamentary dispositions" came on the tapis, (to use the language of his man of business, who I presume

was a butcher's son) "had cut up well." The same passion for patchwork which originated his architecture at home actuated his purchases abroad, and much money and care were spent in buying up land and farms all around him, as old leases fell in, or people left the country; so that my uncle became a considerable landed proprietor on the death of his relative; and as he had six years of a minority to elapse, he found himself a wealthy man on the day he came into possession of his estates and their savings.

And as he sits at the head of his own dinner-table, the perfect model of a high bred and noble hearted old Irish gentleman, bear with me while I sketch him, and those who were now with him, the guests of his pleasant and his plenteous board.

General Almericus Nugent, colonel of the Hussars, was the scion of a most noble family who had come to Ireland at the time of her conquest in 1160, when Henry the Second enslaved her civilly, and sold her spiritually to his countryman Adrian Breakspere, the Pope of Rome : this Nugent or Nogent had intermarried with De Lacie," the great constable's" family, and had acquired large lands in an internal county. He is mentioned by all the chroniclers, Stanihurst, Holingshed, and Camden. One of his descendants, and the immediate ancestor of my uncle, when a young officer travelled in Sweden, and having been introduced at court, became a favorite with Gustavus Adolphus, who made him his aid-de-camp. Changing his religion, he married a Lutheran countess, an attachée of the Queen's court, and was present at Leipsig, Nuremburgh and Lutzen; after which last disastrous day he came to London, being well received at the court of King Charles; and his picture, painted by Vandyke, is at this moment looking down at me from my library wall, with its stern swarthy features, its large melancholy eyes, its thin and determined lip, and its low but broad shoulders, exhibiting a cuirass of blue steel, relieved by a white collar of point lace, elaborately worked and beautifully painted. This Count Nugent seems to have transmitted the military spirit through all his descendants my uncle's father had been a

soldier; and so had mine also. He was a colonel of infantry, and was shot in a storming attack in the breaches of , dying gallantly

at the head of his regiment. Almost at the same time that he departed this life, I commenced to live: my mother survived her husband but a few years, and then my sister and I took up our happy residence with our dear and generous uncle. He was, indeed, a worthy descendant of the old iron "thirty years wars" man, and was, "ay, every inch, a soldier." He was esteemed a very brilliant dragoon officer, and had headed one or two dashing cavalry charges in the early campaign of the Peninsular war. He had been frequently wounded, and few who saw him on the evening I speak of, looking so graceful and so eminently handsome, and with such ease of motion in that spare but erect form-could ever have supposed that his body was covered with cicatrices, and that he would often pass a sleepless night from pain, at any change of weather.

On his right hand sat my sister Madeline. She was much my senior in years, and had been to me in loco matris during my whole life. She was a handsome graceful woman of thirty years or more. Courtesy must needs be an indifferent chronicler after a lady has passed her majority. She was dark eyed, and was of stately presence, had a small and well set head, like the general's,and was an equestrian du premier rang, having ridden since ever she was a child; and, trust me, no woman ever sits her horse either gracefully or firmly, unless she has been accustomed to it from her very early years. My sister was often considered by strangers as haughty, but this was an error; there was no gentler being than Madeline, and the breaking forth of a sportive and happy temper, combined with affections of a rare warmth, rendered her an object of great endearment to her intimates, while her active and liberal benevolence, for she was my uncle's almoner, made her to be regarded with great love and respect among the poor.

Opposite to her sat John Montfort, Esq. of the County of Salop—a warm friend; a keen sportsman; well born; not quite so well bred; and only tolerably well looking a rough,

:

manly, honest Englishmen, about forty years of age, a great admirer of the general, including his preserves, his fishing river, his grouse mountain, and, if observation could be trusted, of his fair niece also; who, I believe, was now the chief attraction, and the cause of his coming to settle in this solitary county of ours.

It only remains to describe myself, a boy of eighteen, sitting at the foot of my uncle's table, and his reputed heir. In person I was nearly as tall as the general, whom I much resembled in outward appearance. It may seem vain in me to say so, but it was the old trick of kind nature, and both my sister and I could not help it that we participated in the advantages of being personally like our dear uncle. My mind was unformed, or, rather say, was in a process of formation. I was fond of books, music, scenery, and horses; had over-strained and romantic notions of human worth, fidelity, love, friendship, honour, &c., &c., and wished for nothing more than that my character and conduct should be conformed to that of the general, whom I justly regarded as a pattern of all that was noble and upright.

I would not close my tableau without the introduction of two other inferior figures, who had lived with us so long and served us so well, that they were regarded as a portion of our integral selves. One was my uncle's grim valet, Lemuel Bickerdyke by name; Yorkshire by birth; a soldier from his boyhood; as slender and as stiff as a ramrod; on the churchyard side of sixty; an inveterate martinet in punctuality, person, and habits; a determined old bachelor if not altogether a mysogynist, with a set of dark features as immovable as if they had been made to order in Sheffield, and cast in an iron mould: seldom smiling, and then, like the Sardonic gentleman in Julius Cæsar, "in such a sort as if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit that could be moved to smile at anything." But rarely speaking, and then invariably in monosyllables, or if a longer word was inevitable, paring it down before and behind as closely as he could to his own standard of abbreviation: thus, when speaking to my uncle, he would pronounce his title as if it was spelt gen'r'l; and indeed often omitting the two last letters altogether. Yet this

man was brave, honest, sober, and shrewd, and greatly attached to my uncle, having served all the campaigns with him, and riding in the ranks of his regiment, where, from his odd habit of verbal elision, he obtained the nickname of "Corporal Monosyllabic," which, in imitation of his own style, was curtailed to " Corporal Mon;" so that even in our family he was called nothing but "Mon," or "The Corporal," which appellation seemed to please him well, he shewing no more dissatisfaction at the sobriquet, than he evinced satisfaction at my uncle, who alone persisted in always giving him the respect of addressing him by his proper name of Lemuel.

The other person I would fain speak a few words of was Rebecca Elliot; or, as she invariably styled herself in her bald northern fashion, Backy Ellott. She had been Madeline's and my nurse; was flat-faced and faithful: loving as a whole cagefull of doves, yet obstinate as a stable full of mules; generally in the wrong in the opinion of others, yet universally in the right in the estimation of herself; having a preposterous idea of her own importance, respectability, family, and so forth, and at all times keenly, though without noise, contending for the establishment of the ascendancy of self among the other servants; who, if they at all resisted her encroachments, she would in tones of contemptuous commiseration designate as 66 puir foolish bodies! ignorant craythurs! they ken na better." Or if the domestics were English, or stars of a higher order, like Madeline's maid or "The Corporal,” she would then say in rather a gentler voice, "Egh, but it's a peety, puir thing: she's sae cocked up ;" or, "The Lord save us, but that ould dragoon is grand and steff. Well, but he's a decent body for a' that."

And indeed there should have been more sympathy between these two domestics, as Becky's moral qualities were fully equal to those of "The Corporal;" both their tempers were a little rusty, no doubt, and Montfort who said hard things called them "the two Kitchen Bulldogs." ever, to each other they were invariably civil, though distant and chilly.

How

My uncle had come to the country, deeming his presence necessary, for

his agent had apprized him that the peasantry were restless, and the district disturbed. One of those sudden volcanic throes which come on at periods among this impulsive people was now beginning to shake the neighbourhood. Cattle were houghed at night, water-courses destroyed, and threatening letters received; and the Government had sent to the neighbouring village a reinforcement of police but, said the gentler mind of many, "there is distress in the country; wages are low, food dear, and but little employment given: we shall see better things when better times arrive." So said many, and so said General Nugent, who was a thoroughly kind and generous landlord, and was here now actuated by the desire to benefit by his influence, his care, and his purse the poor people he had heard so evil a report of.

Our dinner was over, and my sister had just left the room, when the tramp of a horse was heard on the gravel, and immediately afterwards the servant ushered in another member of the family, and one destined to fill an important niche among the living characters of this narrative. The new comer was short and set; well dressed, and neatly limbed; with light hair, pale face and soft grey eyes; being rather well looking, if not so effeminate; something wild in his manner, but with the wildness well concealed: a master of arts indeed as to his power of reserve; with a walk which he appeared to be always labouring to keep from breaking into a strut; with an air of almost irrepressible self-satisfaction, coupled with the most deferential voice, humble bearing, and the meekest expressions with a courtesy chronic and unfailing, but artificial, as if he had put it on with his cravat every morning: a keen but cool man of business; and a devoted worshipper of the God Plutus, and of all those whom that Deity honored. Such was Gilbert Nugent Kildoon, my uncle's nephew, and now sole agent for his estate. His mother was the General's eldest sister, and resided at the Darragh during his long absences with his regiment. Here she had met Gilbert's father in the way of business. was a low attorney, and practised in the neighbouring village; but he was a young man and comely to behold ;

VOL. XLVII.-NO. CCLXXXI.

He

she had 40 years on her shoulders, 400 grey hairs in her head, and 4000 charms in the pages of her banker's book and so she married him for his person, and he wedded her for her pelf, and both had their reward; for he was an ill-conditioned fellow, and having spent all her money, and broken her heart by ill usage, he killed himself shortly afterwards, dying of the combined effects of drunkenness and madness, and ending his days in a lunatic asylum. His only child was this Gilbert, whom my uncle at once took into his house, giving him a good education as a boy; and a good farm when he attained to manhood-and finally appointing him his agent, with a liberal per centage on his rents, on condition that he should be a constant resident on the property.

He greeted us all most warmly, except Mr. Montfort, whom he seemed to dislike, and who, truth to say, treated him with superlative nonchalance.

"Well, Gilbert," said my uncle, "sit down and have some wine: we have to thank you for all our house arrangements being so nice; nothing has been forgotten. Now tell me how are the people behaving; and have they employment? Nothing brought me from London, where I am really wanted just now, but the wish to do some little good among them. I intend to spade up the eight-acre meadow, and if you can find me 30 or 40 able bodied diggers willing to work hard, I will pay them a high rate of wages till the spring and summer work comes on. I intend also getting up a soup kitchen in my yard for the very poor, and as long as I am here no man or woman shall want a meal's meat."

Kildoon replied by expressing his satisfaction at the General's plans. "At present the people were suffering; agrarian outrage much on the increase; work not to be had, food scarce, and feelings bitter. See," said he, producing a pair of small screw pistols from his breast-pocket, “I cannot ride over here without these friends to take care of me." The General shook his head sadly.

"I am sure," added Gilbert, "that other causes are agitating the people, which we can't reach either by the pressure of kindness or of force: emissaries from distant counties have been Q 2