Napoleon, ended the shindy at Waterloo, was re-enacted at the rookann at Ballyporeen-for the closing order of the day there was, "Devil take the hindmost!" A melancholy incident clouded the finale of this pleasant passage of arms. The deep interest which had absorbed the attention of combatants and lookers-on, had prevented the insidious advance of "that green banditti"-as -as poor Burns would have termed the Irish policefrom being remarked, and the cavalry were actually charging, and the fixed bayonets of the footmen making, a derrière, painful demonstrations on the persons of divers concerned, before danger was even apprehended. But one egress was opened for escape; and alas! that led direct over the space before my window, on which the unhappy delftmerchants had arranged their crockery and crystal. On rushed the crowd; and fearful were the exclamations of the proprietors of porcelain. A man, with a bayonet behind him and crockery in his front, seldom halts between two opinions. Within a couple of minutes, jug, mug, and tumbler, were reduced to smithereens an uncracked plate would have been accounted a curiosity in Ballyporeen-and a tea-cup could not be obtained at any price. I had remarked the rejected one in the hour of triumph, and I watched him in that of his reverse; and I must say, that had the staff-surgeon seen him as I did, bound over half-a-dozen delft-crates like a harlequin, his soundness in wind and limb would never have been questioned and the King, God bless him! have been provided with a gallant light dragoon. Whether the police were not desirous of making prisoners, or that the malefactors were too rapid in their movements to be overtaken and secured, I did not observe that any of the demolishers of delft were led into captivity; and save that for an hour after the affray, the chinamerchants, male and female, cried a coronach over the street-full of potsherds which in the morning had been crockery, peace reigned once more in Ballyporeen. The sergeant of dragoons and the rejected recruit again posted themselves under my window, and resumed the conversation which the recent outbreak had interrupted. "You are short of cash," said the sergeant. "I am, indeed," replied the youth. "And have you no relation that would stand a pound or two?—no friend to stump the rowdy?" "Friends I have none-nor, as far as I know, a relation in the world." "Why, d-n it!" returned the dragoon; "have you dropped from the clouds? There never was a man but had a father." "Father or mother I never saw; and, on the wide earth, there is not, I believe, a being so lonely and desolate." A tear trembled in the poor youth's eye, and the sigh which closed the sentence, appeared to issue from a breaking heart. I had taken a lively interest in the unknown-felt for the disappointment he had suffered-watched his reckless gallantry in the factionfight-and had listened with deep sympathy to the brief but touching confession of his destitution. I rang the bell-desired Denis to summon to my presence the sergeant and his young companion-and in a few minutes both were introduced. "I have overheard your conversation. It appears your wish to become a soldier has been disappointed by some real or imaginary cause, which incapacitates you from sustaining the hardships attendant upon military life." "They are imaginary indeed, sir. It would be hard to say that a hunter was worthless in the field, because his legs might exhibit a scratch or two," was the reply. "Your friend, the sergeant, believes that elsewhere you would succeed. Money is required. What sum would serve the purpose?" The youth fixed his dark eyes on mine, as if to read the object of the question. "Merely," he said, "sufficient to sustain life. I can walk forty miles a-day for a fortnight—and I suppose that less than that time would bring me to London." "Good steady action that," observed the non-commissioned officer, "for a lad declared unsound by an old ass, who can't tell a splint from a spavin." I drew my purse from my pocket, and placed three sovereigns in the young man's hand. "Gold, by Heaven!" he exclaimed, and his cheeks grew scarlet. For a moment he held the money in his hand, then respectfully returning it, he muttered his thanks, but modestly declined accepting a pecuniary favour from a stranger. I examined the young Irishman with attention, and a closer investigation of his outer man by no means abated the interest he had created. I should have guessed his age at eighteen, and a finer form never combined activity with strength. Of course, several years would be required to develope the frame-work of the man; but at present, as Sergeant O'Dwyer was pleased to remark, "a smarter stripling, in a shell-jacket, never destroyed a milliner's apprentice at first sight." To a faultless, although an unformed figure, the stranger united a face decidedly handsome. The outline was a gentleman's-while dark of singular intelligence, gave an animation to the countenance, which regular features so often want. eyes I ordered the waiter to bring whiskey. The sergeant turned down a bumper, which the younger Irishman politely declined. "Pon my conscience," observed the dragoon, "after that lively rookawn in the street, if I were you, I would be inclined to wet my whistle. Come-sorrow's dry. Who knows what luck's before us; and when a goose is grazing over the carcass of O'Drench, you'll be sitting snug and warm on a saddle at the Horse Guards. Fill-yer sowl! and drink his honour's health." "That from the bottom of my heart will I do," returned the candidate for military honours; and he tasted the whiskey, and replaced his glass upon the table. "You have excited my curiosity," I said. "Deem it not idle curiosity if I trouble you with a few questions." The youth bowed respectfully, and replied that he had no secret that needed concealment. "You are an orphan ?" "That question I cannot answer." "Well, you have no parents, if I understood you rightly." "If I have, I am ignorant of them." No relations?" "None upon the earth." "I must give you an assumed one." 66 Egad!" observed the sergeant, "I never heard a cross-examination that produced so little evidence, and I have been present before now at a court-martial." "In a word, sir," said the youth, addressing himself to me, 66 you seem to take some interest in the fortunes of an outcast. To plain inquiries I have returned simple answers, and yet they throw no light upon my history. If the story of so humble an individual as myself can be worth the brief space that will be consumed in its narration, I am most willing to relate it." I bowed assent. To enable him the better to comprehend the autobiography of the rejected recruit, Sergeant O'Dwyer supplied his glass anew. Í signalled the strangers to be seated,-my order was obeyed, -and Brian O'Linn thus told the earlier passages of a life, whose manly career it shall be our task to place hereafter before the gentle reader. THE LONE CHURCHYARD. THE lone churchyard! the still churchyard! How sweet the sound of the winds that stir I love to walk on its verdant glade, That yields to the passing tread, With thoughts that a thousand fancies weave, Or, seated upon a time-worn stone, I think how calm in the earth's warm breast The child with its locks of flaxen hair, The maid with a brow as pale As the snowdrop meek, whose fragile stem The strong man shorn of his pow'r and might, With limbs that a breath might scatter wide, The mother sharing her infant's bed, And the old church bell, whose low, soft tone, It seems the voice of the early known, It speaks to my heart of other days,— And smiled at its mournful swell; The lone churchyard! the still churchyard! How sweet the sound of the winds that stir DR. MAGINN. A LITERARY RETROSPECT BY A MIDDLE-AGED MAN. BEFORE I close my desk, as I sit in my moonlit chamber this fine summer evening, let me recall one sufferer, now at rest,-slightly known to me, indeed, but remembered with a fearful distinctnessso slightly, that if you were to ask me his Christian name I could not tell it. A clear remembrance of his blanched cheek and wandering eye dwells in my memory. Who, when I add the faltering voice, the symmetrical features, the grey hair, even in comparative youth,the slashing reply, the sweet, good-natured smile,-who will not recall the name of Dr. Maginn? I saw him one evening-how well I remember it, and with what throes and throbs the remembrance is even now recalled!-yes, even now. It was in an evening-party where; - but what has the world to do with our private reminiscences? And what am I, a stupid old man, (to night in one of my low-spirited seasons,) that I should aim at exciting the interest of the bright-eyed, blooming creatures who will bend over this page next month, perhaps as the travelling-carriage carries them far from London and distraction, to read the newspaper to papa, maybe, in some country parsonage, or to listen to the recital of Brother Tom's first essay in hunting and shooting, or to be the hand-maiden of mamma's charities, or the happy representative of Aunt Bountiful at the Sunday-school. How have I digressed!-Let me return to Dr. Maginn; and for an instant mingle with the thoughts of him the recollections still dear to this elderly heart. It was a low, long, narrow room through which I made my way into the throng of a party. That gentle confusion prevailed which shews that all is "going off" well. That Trophonius's-cave look which we sometimes see on the faces of those who are coming out as you go in, and which appears to proclaim that they are never to smile again, was not to be observed. And yet there was no singing, no dancing, no charades—and yet,—it was that hateful assemblage known by the name of a literary coterie. I made my way into the very thick of the throng; elbowed a poetess to the right, trod upon the slipper of a lady historian, touched the saintly shoulder of some Charlotte-Elizabeth of the day, and oh! more formidable than all, brushed, may be, the sacred dust off the sleeve of a Reviewer. All were standing, all were listening to some one who sat in the middle of a group; a low-seated man, short in stature, was uttering pleasantries, and scattering witticism about him, with the careless glee of his country-this was Maginn. His articulation was impeded by a stutter, yet the sentences that he stammered forth were brilliant repartees, uttered without sharpness, and edged rather with humour than with satire. His countenance was rather agreeable than striking; its expression sweet, rather than bright. The grey hair, coming straight over his forehead, gave a singular appearance to a face still bearing the attributes of youth. He was thirty or thereabouts, (yes, saucy niece of mine, thirty is still young;) but his thoughtful brow, his hair, the paleness of his complexion, gave him many of the attributes of age. I am, however, a firm believer in the axiom, that age can never be concealed upon a careful inspection,-we may look older than we are, but we rarely, alas! look younger. True, the first impression may deceive; but there is always some line, some tell-tale change somewhere, which betrays the ugly truth. I looked on for a moment, as the crew of authors, reviewers, play-wrights, and novel-weavers paid homage to Dr. Maginn. He was then in the zenith of his glory-the glory which radiated from John Bull or sent forth a rich stream of light from the pages of Fraser. His conversation was careless and off-hand, and, but for the impediment of speech would have had the charm of a rich comedy. His choice of words was such as I have rarely met with in any of my contemporaries; for, indeed, in my day it has become the vogue to corrupt English in many ways, to bring down your subject by homely, if not coarse phrases, and to neglect all those adjuncts to reasoning and to wit which a true use of our language affords. I passed on, the circle closed around Maginn, and that evening I saw him no more. Henceforth his career was a bright and perilous one, exercising a considerable, though ephemeral influence on the age in which he lived. No modern writer in periodicals has ever given to satire a less repulsive form of personality. No private venom seemed to direct the awful pen which spared not affectation, and lashed presumption till she bled to death. Why are not his essays collected? What holds them back from an expectant public? He wrote when our periodical literature was in its zenith; yet he bore away the palm; and his clear, firm hand might be discerned amid a host of inferior writers. There was no mistaking that emphatic, pure, and stately English of his-poor Maginn! The next time I saw this ill-starred son of genius was in a friend's house, very early one morning, as Dr. Maginn was going away to France. He and I were for some minutes alone in a room together, It was a dingy, London morning, and the room corresponded to the day-a lodging-house room. It was not dirty, to speak individually; but a general air of antiquity, of long-established dustiness, of confirmed, ingrained, never-to-be-effaced uncleanliness sat upon every article in the apartment, even to the top of the bell-ropes. The fire was not lighted-it was September; the window was open sufficiently to chill the susceptible frame of the great reviewer as he paced to and fro, never looking towards me, waiting for our common friend. I shut the window. He looked towards me for an instant, stammered out a "Thank you." His face was then of a leaden, ashy hue; his grey hair had become thin; his dress-but why expatiate upon that ;-yet it looked sorrowful, and shattered like its wearer, and I fancied it meant much. Our friend came into the room. I heard Maginn say, "I am going out of town;" and even those few words sounded ominous in my presaging mind-going out of town! Alas! how many reasons are there for which one may go out of town. Sorrow, sickness, weariness of spirit, embarrassed circumstances, and a long and mournful list of etceteras. I ran down the dingy stairs with a mournful conviction that Adversity, with her rapid strides, had overtaken poor Maginn-and I was not wrong; perhaps he pro |