assuredly Bryan, great as his own personal advantages were, might have felt proud of being the object of the heart's choice of so lovely a being as Mary O Hara. Her face, of a clear and pure paleness, was shaped into the most perfect oval by the line of her black and luxuriant hair, which was drawn, Madonna-like, from her forehead, and along each cheek, with simple but graceful elegance. Her dress was the plain stuff gown suited to her station, with a thin and fine white handkerchief concealing without confining her bosom. With this poor assistance from art, nevertheless, there was a charm and a beauty which might have excited the envy of many a richly-habited belle in the city around her, for the purity of her mind blushed, as it were, through the transparent veil of her features, and traced an image of its own loveliness on their surface.

She perceived on entering that all was ready. A small table had been moved into the middle of the room, with a bowl of water upon it, and a large and rather richly-clasped volume of devotion lay beside it, its long tas. sels reflecting the full sun as it shone on them. The priest was arrayed in the picturesque robes of his church, having over his cassock the full white surplice which reaches like the ephod of the Jewish priest a little below the middle, and a cope of crimson velvet, deeply fringed with gold lace. On his head rose the high and conical black cap, such as is commonly seen in the streets of many a continental town; and it seemed that with the garments of sanctity, the clergyman had also indued its dignity, his manner having lost its humour and tenderness at once, and adopted that which became the officiating minister of the Church of Rome.

The ceremony, most of which was performed in Latin, was soon over; the minister hearing but a single sob, as he sprinkled the holy water over the pair, and uttered the words, "Conjungo vos in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti." The bride having heen tenderly embraced by her husband, once more retired and when she returned, Father Flynn met her with extended arms, and kissed her with tears running down his cheeks he was again a man and a friend.

A hasty meal was then dispatched, and the hamper having been packed with the residue, the whole party set forth in one of those humble conveyances which in their convenience are the boast and in their equipment the disgrace of Dublin, towards the North wall, being the quay which bounds the north bank of the Liffey at its junction with the bay, and serves as a place of embarkation for the few ships which hold intercourse with the port of Dublin.

The sun was yet high, though midday was past, and as they wound their way through the bright and happylooking throng that filled the principal streets, past the chariots of fashion and the waggons of merchandize, it may be well imagined that the wedded pair felt with painful intensity how little all this was to them-how completely, though yet among them, they belonged to a different state of being→→ a new world.

On the quay, the scene was of a different nature. The large and gaudily-painted barque, with her topgallant masts tapering to the sky, and a bright array of flags streaming from all parts of her, looked every thing that was inviting to the voyager, and creditable to the owners. It required, however, no very close inspection by Bryan to ascertain that though the paint was new, the timbers were old; and as for the flags and spars, he knew how soon after they had cleared the bay all these would be struck, and the clumsy proportions of the hull left to show themselves to the now secured passengers. He did not think it necessary to make these observations to his bride, however one thing he had taken care to ascertain through the priest which was, that they were to sail direct for their destination, without touching at Liverpool-this he had made a sine qua non in taking his passage. The last land, he trusted, they were to set foot on in the old world was to be that wall, the first in the new, the shores of New York.

The quay and deck of the vessel were now covered by a dense and tumultuous throng, in all imaginable states of feeling, spirits, and action. There was the sob and sigh of sorrow, and the busy orders of haste the frantic yell of inebriety, and the as frantic exclamations of separating friends◄◄

the indifferent rudeness of the crew, as they shoved their own passengers to the right and left, for the accommodation of a leg-weary cow or refractory pig-the search of children for parents, and parents for children, lost in the crowd-the scarcely less agonized inquiries of the emigrant after the boy with whom he had left his box in charge; the scream of children, the cursing of men, and the bellowing of cattle-all mingled together in one infernal chorus and concert, caused the timid bride to shudder and draw back, as the little party descended from their conveyance and found themselves in the midst of the throng.

The ship, it had been stated, was to have sailed early, but Bryan soon saw that she was fast aground, and that an hour or two must probably elapse ere she could be got fairly under weigh. This caused him some uneasiness, for it increased the chances of his detection, and, wrapped as he was to the eyes in his seaman's coat, he lost no time in getting his effects on board and wringing the hand of the priest, whom he informed at the same time that if he saw that all was likely to be safe, Mary and he would come on deck again, and have a last word with him, immediately before the casting off of the vessel from the quay-wall.

One affectionate embrace-'twas all he had time for-the good father gave to Mary O'Hara; and indeed the confusion was such that they could scarcely have wished to have remained long together in such a place. She felt illsick at heart-fear, disgust, grief, terror, combined to overwhelm her, and having been conducted below, she sunk, more dead than alive, upon one of their own chests in a corner between decks.

It was not till the sun approached its setting that the slow swaying of the vessel showed them that she was at last afloat upon that element which was to be traversed by her to so vast and perilous a distance. The multitude had now divided into two parts→→→ the emigrants, and those who were to remain and most of the former were already on board. The lamentations became louder, the inebriety more outrageous: many of those who hoped to realize independence in other lands exhibited their qualifications by lying in

hopeless drunkenness about the deck; and more than one, who up to that moment had been firm, now gave up. the unavailing struggle against nature and affection, and sprung from the vessel once more into the arms of his relatives and his country, preferring penury and privation-ay, and the sting of ridicule at home-to all that exile could offer of happiness and prosperity elsewhere.

Of this number, however, notwithstanding the heart sickening agony of their minds, Bryan and Mary Delany did not make a part. They ascended to the deck, looked anxiously from the ship's side for their reverend friend, and having at last discovered him, stretched their hands over, and held him until the last rope was cast off, and the vessel began to swing slowly out from the shore. Oh! it was heartbreaking, the whole scene. That was the moment that concentrated in itself days, years of suffering. To the Irish, constitutionally fond of their own country, peculiarly sensitive to the pangs of separation, and tremblingly alive to the influence of the domestic affections, a struggle such as this is little short of a mortal one.

"God Almighty bless ye, my children!" faltered the priest, in a suffocating voice; "I would to Him I was with ye! not that I'd call ye back-ye'll do well, wherever you go!"

"Oh, Father-Father Flynn !" sobbed Mary," 'tis we that have the breaking hearts this minute! God protect you, father, and take my heart's blessing back to-to-home with

you!"

"Write to us, Father Flynn," said Bryan, in a low voice. "We'll want to know about you, to help our hearts. Let go-let go Mary's hand, father,— you'll fall in!"

"I must, I must:-farewell!" he cried, as he suffered the vessel, as it were, to force her from his grasp, and raised both his hands to heaven. "Farewell! I'm older now than I thought to be ten years hence."

The barque, having now cast off its last cords, which might be said to have been formed of the interlacing hands of friends, caught the breeze in a sail or two, and gradually widened her distance from the wall, still, however, not

exceeding a few yards in distance, followed by the crowd, which moved along the bank, with the oft-repeated adieus still uttered from many a mouth. At length the word, "starboard!" was given, and she swung out towards the mid-stream. This was the signal for a cheer, loud and long, to break simultaneously from the crowd on shore, and the answer wrung shrill from the crowded deck of the emigrant ship. It was the expression on both sides that the trial was past, the effort completed, the resolution proved, the grand act accomplished. It raised the hearts of all as if by magic. Enthusiasm beamed in every face, and though Bryan did not join. in the cheer, yet the priest could discern in the glorious beams of the sun which was now setting over the lovely line of the Wicklow mountains, that he took the hand of his bride, and looked in her face with a smile.

The good father saw no more-his eyes swam-and as he turned away, the truth forced itself bitterly upon him, that it was to such as he that the exterior circumstances of life were indeed essential, and that the condition of

that man who could turn from the frown of the world without, and the chances of peril and exile, to a face and a heart beside him, the companion and solace of the worst that could befal him-was not the rigour of misfortune-the true solitude of exile.

"Bryan More has a clear conscience, and a blessed wife. His is the happy lot, even in the wilds of America!"

With these words, he returned slowly back to where he had left his pony, and mounting it, set out upon his long and lonely journey to Rathmore. As he went, he ruminated upon the events that had passed and the causes of them, and ere he arrived at the cottage, had made up his mind to deliver over the keg of "sperrits," which he was to find under the hay in his stable, to the revenue officers, and for the future to make his preaching and practice subservient to the removal of that fatal delusion, which leads the Irish peasant in so many cases, and in that of smuggling in particular, to conceive it not only pardonable, but praiseworthy, to oppose the execution of such laws as may interfere with his prejudices or predilections.

How haughtily he cocks his nose To tell what every schoolboy knows.". Of lyrical poetry it may, however, be very safely said, that it is as old as any other, and perhaps a little older; for what is more likely than that the first simple efforts of passion or feeling, to express itself in numbers, should be for the purpose of singing by the cradle of childhood, or reciting in measured chant to beguile the household even ings of the hunter or the warrior. The usual habit is to trace the cominence ment of lyrical poetry to the Greeks. With Solon, says Frederick Schlegel, "the proper epoch of Grecian literature begins. Before his time the Greeks possessed no more than commonly falls to the share of every people who are blessed with a favourable corporeal organization, while they are animated with the fresh impulse of a youthful society-traditions which hold the place of histories, and songs, and poets, which are repeated and remembered, so as to serve instead of books. Such songs calculated to arouse national feelings, and to give animation in the hour of battle-or to be sung at the festivals of their religion-or to perpetuate the joys of a successful, or the rage and hatred of a slighted lover

or the tears which the poet has consecrated to the memory of his departed m stress-all these were possessed by the Greeks in the utmost variety from the most early period of their existence as a nation.“ Most true, O Frederick! and not less true of other nations which were old before the ancient glories of Greece began. As soon as we become Ere intimate, and on a more favourable and friendly footing with the Chiese, which by the simple method of VOL. XXL-No. 121.

killing some's 'seven thousand of them, and taking twenty-seven millions of dollars by way of compensation, it seems we are likely to be, we may possibly learn a good many old songs from them, which were ancient ditties before the wrath of Achilles was heard of. Even now, forth from the dim and shapeless clouds of the remotest antiquity, there seems to come a voice of song, and our faint imaginings of the first periods of the inhabited world, are inextricably associated with the modulated mutterings of ancient crones, or the chants of mysterious bards. The builders of the pyramids must have eaten supper, and of course sung songs. They could not chant hieroglyphics. What and how did they sing? Heaven knows; but if their words were as stupendous as their works, they must have mouthed it rarely.

"The oldest Indian poetry relates to a strange mixture of natural and supernatural personifications-jumbled together in cloudy contention. The Mohabharot, says the German critic already quoted, celebrates an universal struggle in which gods, giants, and heroes, were all armed against each other. In some similar fictions respecting a war between gods and heroes almost every people which possesses any ancient traditions, "has embodied its mysterious recollections of a wilder and more active state of nature, and the tragical suppression of an earlier world of greatness and heroism." The glimpses which passages like these afford, take us back to days of song, in comparison with which the oldest songs of Greece, are, as it were, fresh ballads. Frederick Schlegel, however, shadows forth an idea that time has been so ancient and so grand, that the thoughts of men could find no sufficient vent in oral expression-their ideas were too big for utterance, and so they took to emblematizing in stone. The whole passage which winds up with this idea is so fine, that we shall here transcribe it from Lockhart's translation :—

"The high antiquity of the Indian mythology is in the main sufficiently

H

manifest from the ancient monuments of Indian architecture which are still in existence. These monuments are in their gigantic size, and in their general formation, extremely similar to those of the Egyptians; and it is difficult to suppose that their antiquity is not equally remote. All these monuments, both the gigantic works of Egypt, covered over with hieroglyphics, the fragments of the city of Persepolis with their various shapes and unintelligible inscriptions, and lastly those Indian rocks which we may still see hewn into the symbols of an obscure mythology, have an equal tendency to carry us back to a state of things from which we feel ourselves to be prodigiously removed both in time and in manners. We may almost say that as the traditions of every people go back to an age of heroes, and as nature, too, has had her time of ancient greatness— a time of mighty revolutions whereof we can still perceive the traces, and gigantic animals of which we are every day digging up the remains; even so, both civilization and poetry have had their time also of the wonderful and the gigantic. And we may add, that in that time, all those conceptions, fictions, and presentiments, which were afterwards unfolded into poetry, and fashioned into philosophy and literature; all the knowledge and all the errors of our species, astronomy, chronology, biography, history, theology, and legisla tion, were embodied, not in writing, as among us puny men, but in those enormous works of sculpture of which some fragments still remain for inspection.'

Here, then, we get to "the back of beyond," as we say in Ireland, for notwithstanding the music-emitting statue of Memnon, (upon which, if so minded, we might make an extremely erudite digression,) it would be rather too much to call gigantic sculpture, lyrical poetry. Still, however, being profound philosophers, we must not idly or wantonly give up the theory of the analogy between form, and motion, and sound. And this theory, occult as it may seem to some, appears, either by accident or on purpose, to have found a permanent place in our common English tongue; for we familiarly speak of the music of the spheres, by which we mean assuredly some harmony of motion rather than of sound;

and we recite the couplet in Addison's hymn concerning the stars

"For ever singing as they shine, The hand that made them is divine."

without any shock from a sense of impossibility, and without any idea that "the spangled heavens, a shining frame," actually open their mouths, and pour forth sounds after the manner of Signor Lablache or Miss Adelaide Kemble, now, we trust, living at home at ease with the more matronly name of Mrs. Sartoris. Beaumont or Fletcher (for one never can distinguish) speaks of a swain who accounted the voice of his mistress "far above singing," thereby charmingly estimating a sense of music inspired by love, more exquisite than sound could impart. Byron somewhere has the line

Lyric poetry, as perhaps some very acute persons may discover from the name, means strictly the poetry which is suitable to the accompaniment of the lyre. That instrument, however, not having been in fashion for some time, the term lyrical is fairly applied to all poetry which is fitted for any musical accompaniment, or for being sung with musical cadence and divisions, without instrumental accompaniment. This, however, may be remarked, that though lyrical poetry is suitable for all kinds of music, there are some sorts of music very ill adapted for lyrical poetry. For instance, it is highly inconvenient to play the Scotch bagpipes, and at the same time sing or chant a poem, almost as much so as contemporaneously to eat a hot potato, and whistle an Irish jig. But the Irish pipes offer no such impediment to the utterance of song by him who plays upon them, and there appears to be at least no physical reason why the melting lays of love, or the animating verse which excites to war, might not be accompanied with the music of that