tional pride, as well as the conscientious integrity, which would disdain to hold office for a single moment at the price of a friend betrayed or a promise broken. Our advice to our political friends, then, is simply this trust in the wisdom, in the friendly dispositions, and, above all, in the promises of Lord Derby. You cannot rely upon his singleness and purity of purpose with a confidence too implicit. Forevery reason, depend upon it, he will do the best that can be done for you. Choose Protectionists, by all means, to represent you; but do not tie them up from accepting the alternative relief we have mentioned, in lieu of protective duties. Consider alike the complicated difficulties of the Government and the revolutionary designs of their contingent successors, and let the first pledge you exact from your candidates be one binding them to a liberal support of Lord Derby's measures. No Government has entered office since the Union, with so just a title to the confidence of all that is wise and patriotic among the Irish people. The very pledge to assist the struggling agriculture of the empire is a special promise of good to Ireland. All the past history of the men in power is thronged with bold and masterly schemes of beneficence for Ireland; and even at this moment, a Committee of Inquiry is constructed, the result of whose labours will be the basis of wise, well-considered, and, we trust in God, effectual measures for the extinction of that curse and scandal of Ireland, the Ribbon Confederation. The sympathies of this Government are powerfully enlisted for our country, and, judging from their opposition antecedents, signalised, as they are, by the initiation of more and better measures than ever before originated with an opposition, their genius is as practical as their policy will be generous. THE LATE WILLIAM THOMPSON, ESQ., OF BELFAST. It was only last month that we devoted a portion of our pages to a review of "The Birds of Ireland," by William Thompson; and we then indulged in pleas ing anticipations of what we had yet to expect from the labours of the author. A sadder task now devolves upon us; the hopes we had then fondly cherished are destined never to be realised;-the accomplished naturalist, the high-minded man, the warm-hearted friend, has ceased from his earthly labours; and it now only remains for us to bid memory take the place of hope. The too short career of William Thompson is marked by but little incident. He was born in Belfast, in the year 1805. The commotion of public life had little to recommend it to his quiet and unambitious nature; and from early youth he devoted himself to the unobtrusive pursuits of literature and science. To Natural History his time and energies were especially devoted; and the success which has attended his exertions in that pleasing path, leaves us no reason to be dissatisfied with the department on which his choice fell. Until the commencement of his great work on the natural history of Ireland— the first three volumes of which, embracing the birds, he had just lived to finish the results of Mr. Thompson's investigations were chiefly confided to the pages of our scientific periodicals. The "Annals of Natural History" was his special favourite; and for many years were its numbers, month after month, enriched by his valuable contributions. At the Glasgow meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in 1840, his investigations in Irish natural history were presented to the meeting in the collected form of a "Report on the Fauna of Ireland." The second part of this important report was read at the meeting of the same body, held at Cork, in 1843; on which occasion he filled the office of President of the Natural History Section. And a third part, completing the subject up to the present time, he had in preparation for the approaching meeting at Belfast. The natural history researches of Mr. Thompson were not entirely confined to Ireland; the islands and main-land of Scotland became latterly the scene of frequent visits from him; and on such occasions he always came back with his mind enriched by the most valuable ornithological observations-observa tions for which those regions afford so fine a field. In 1841 he accompanied Professor Edward Forbes to the gean Sea, where the latter instituted his celebrated researches into the distribution in depth of the Marine Fauna; and he there made copious notes on the habits of migratory birds. Many of the observations made during this expedition have been since recorded in the published volumes of his "Natural History of Ireland." It was, however, his native country that constituted the favourite scene of his labours. The coast of Ireland was explored by his dredge, and her moors and mountains by his gun; and materials for a full and complete Fauna of the country were thus accumulated. The history of the Birds of Ireland was to have been immediately followed by that of the Fishes; and for the elucidation of this tribe he possessed a collection of facts of unrivalled interest and extent. The notes he had made on the other departments of Irish zoology were scarcely less complete; and we rejoice to learn that he has, by his will, appointed two of his most intimate friends, in Belfast, fellow-labourers in natural history, to arrange and edit his manuscripts. Additional interest will be given to these forthcoming volumes by the fact, that many of the specimens therein referred to constitute a part of the large and valuable collection, which has been bequeathed by him to the Museum in his native town, and are there, we understand, to be kept apart from the general collection. Many of these specimens are of great rarity; they were accumulated by him during long years of assiduous research, and they are in an especial degree illustrative of the invertebrate fauna of Ireland. An ardent lover of the beautiful, thoroughly gifted with the power of appreciating the excellent in art, Mr. Thompson's greatest delight was to encourage an elevated taste in those around him; and the Schools of Design recently established in Belfast will look back to him as one of their best friends and most valuable supporters. Indeed, there were few more pleasing features in his character than the interest he always took in the success of the several literary and scientific institutions of his native town. Imbued with a deep and genuine patriotism, and fully recognising in such institutions the means of elevating the moral and physical condition of his fellow-countrymen, he spared neither time nor labour in the promotion of their welfare; and his purse was always freely open in their cause. In 1842 he was elected President of the Natural History and Philosophical Society of Belfast; an office which, with signal advantage to that institution, he continued to hold until his death. Interested in all that could raise the scientific character of Ireland, Mr. Thompson exerted himself in procuring for Belfast the honour of receiving the next meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Of this meeting he was nominated one of the Vice-Presidents, and had gone to London for the purpose of making the final arrangements for the occasion. Having accomplished the object of his mission, he was on the point of returning home, when his health, which for many years previously had been anything but robust, began suddenly to give way; he was seized with symptoms of paralysis, and these in two days terminated fatally. During his illness he was surrounded by friends, labourers in the same fields of science with himself, to whom the worth of his character had, through many years of uninterrupted intercourse, warmly endeared him. In the death of William Thompson, the cultivation of Irish natural History has experienced a loss which we dare not attempt to estimate. It was not alone by his own personal investigations that he advanced the progress of natural history in this country; his delight was to see others carrying out what he had commenced. Utterly free from envy, he was always ready to help onwards in the same paths of science the less experienced searcher after truth; and many a living naturalist owes whatever success has subsequently attended his career, to the encouragement thus cordially given. Possessed of a small, but independent property, with no ulterior object in his pursuits, be devoted all he had to the cultivation of his favourite science, and to the elevation of the intellectual and moral condition of his native land. The love of truth and the love of country were inseparably blended with his nature, and became the leading influences in his simple and unostentatious life. MAGA'S MAY-BUSH. THE DAWN OF MAY-LILIES OF THE VALLEY. COLLINS-MAY. BY ANDREW NICHOLL-MAY-DAY SONG-SONGS. 533 CHAPTER XIII.-A MURDER IS PLANNED WHICH THE LAW CANNOT REACH. CHAPTER XIV. THE RECORD OF A MADNESS Time, May Eve.-SLINGSBY in his Sanctum.—A multitude of MSS. before him.He paceth, thoughtfully, to and fro, and then soliloquiseth. "Оn, beautiful May !—to what shall I liken thee?—the darling of the Poets-the delight of swains. Queen of the months! Nature's best-beloved; whom she decks out in the brightest and the best array of her exhaustless treasure-house. I picture thee to my eye, in fanciful meditation, as I wander forth in the fresh noontide. I see thee, I hear thee, I feel thee. Thy brow crowned with flowers, and the young green leaves of trees falling in tresses adown thy shoulders. Sunlight flashes from thy warm and lustrous eyes-eyes blue, and beaming with the azure dye of the clear heavens. Thy voice is the melody of a thousand birds-the tinkling music of falling waters the murmur of leafy trees, as they bend their heads to each other, and whisper ineffable things of nature. Thy breath is now hot with the languid odour of passionate flowers, now reviving with the freshness of the frolic breeze. On thy bosom repose the lilies in the purity of their whiteness; in thy girdle smiles the ruddy, fragrant rose. Thy green mantle is spangled with dew-drops, and bedecked with the daisy, the cowslip, and the buttercup. From thy home in the sweet South, where thou dwellest throughout the happy year, we trace thee hitherward, thou transient visitor of our northern clime! We trace thee across the broad sea, along the path that thou hast smoothed for thyself through the vexed waters, that now glisten and smile-a liquid highway for thy feet, as leviathan taketh his pastime around thee, and the playful dolphin gambols at thy presence. We trace thee wending up the mighty rivers, that swell and sparkle where thou movest over them, whilst the swallow, on skimming wings, ushers thee along thy way. All along the earth thy steps leave their traces-verdant, and odorous, and flowery. The violet sends forth its perfume where thy foot has fallen, and the spicy herbs exhale their aromatic breath, when thou hast pressed them. As thou approachest the sunny plains, the chrysalis bursts out from its tomb of leaves, and, flinging off the vestments of the grave, soars forth to meet thee in its glorified existence-that beautiful symbol of the human soul, to which the deep-seeing wisdom of Grecian poetry aptly gave the name of Psyche.' In the forests, the ant, sagest of insects, awakes at thy call; and builds up her cities, and establishes that marvellous polity which might put to shame the wisest of human legislators. Upon the mountain side, where the furze puts forth its bright orange blossoms, the bee floats around thee upon humming wings. The mavis and the merle welcome thee in the deep, bosky groves, and the lark, as he circles up into heaven, sings to the angels that thou hast visited the earth! [SLINGSBY pauseth for awhile; he taketh up a volume of divinest Spenser,' and readeth therein the Aegloga Quinta' of the 'Shepherd's Calendar.' He layeth it down, and resumeth his soliloquy]— May, sweet May!-to me thou art Nature's embodiment of a divine sentiment -the sentiment of love! The sister months that have preceded thee are emblems, 20 VOL. XXXIX.-NO. CCXXXIII. |