the proprietors themselves acquainted with the country and people, and as the dominion of law became more stable and certain, this practice of subinfeudation ceased with the necessity in which it had originated; and on the expiration of their terms, which were often very beneficial interests, the holders found themselves deprived of their sole means of subsistence. Such had been the fate of Barney More O'Neil's progenitors. In each successive generation some characteristic of their former condition was lost, till in him nothing remained but the fantastical assemblage of incongruous qualities, which made him a felon, but make it impossible to think upon his doom without pity. He was the only son of his father, by whom he was left, in the first dawn of manhood, sole master and tenant of the long range of dilapidated buildings which have been before noticed, together with ten acres of wet marshy land on the verge of the great bog in which those buildings stood: these were his possessions, these and the proud inheritance of one of the first names in Irish story. While yet his soul was chastened and humbled by the death of his surviving parent, the toilsome and melancholy labour of his hands won for him from his scanty territory, the rent at which it was held, together with a niggard subsistence; but as the heaviness of grief passed away, his untamed spirit spurned the base occupation, and in sullen desperation he threw down his mattock. Want came, and with it came wilder and fiercer thoughts. He engaged in some enterprise of violence and crime. Its fruits were large, and he enjoyed them in security. His character became fixed: no sense of pride or self-respect checked his career; he roamed abroad a savage without compunction or misgiving. He married; and with reckless satisfaction saw children spring up around him without other prospect than that of engaging in their father's lawless practices. He enjoyed a long course of impunity: all the peasants around were ready and happy to shelter him from his pursuers. He was besides, though fierce and ungovernable, endowed with a great portion of his countrymen's sagacity. In extricating himself from danger he was not less wary, subtle, and provident, than he was rash, careless, and hasty in plunging into it. His influence with his associates was unbounded. Over them all he constantly asserted that supremacy, which, if successfully assumed, is the surest and strongest bond upon human nature. He treated them occasionally with the utmost scorn and contempt; nay, often surrendered individuals to the ministers of justice; yet such was the ascendancy of his character, so complete the thraldom in which he held his companions by alternate insolence and familiarity, by rudely and fiercely scoffing them, or indulging the pleasant comic humour with which Nature also had gifted him, that for a long series of years not one was found to betray where Barney More lay hid, or had been recently seen. When first he entered upon his career he was a bold high-spirited ardent youth, with fierce passions, no doubt, and a determined spirit; but without any alloy of baseness or meanness in his composition. Long habits, however, of crime and outrage, while they farther exacerbated his spirit, deadened the generous spark which glowed in it at first; necessity enforced compliances, which became gradually familiar, and terminated in meanness. Deception was needful, and made him an hypocrite, and a base and fawning liar. Guilt made him fearful, and he became a coward. Pride alone remained of

aught that was even remotely allied to what was good.

Premature old age succeeded habits of alternate toil and riot; and when I saw Barney More in the year 18-, he presented one of the most singular appearances I have ever witnessed. In the summer of that year I made an excursion, in the course of which I became for a short time resident in the neighbourhood of this uncommon man's habitation. His name reached me, and with it many a tale of plundered flocks, rifled bleach-greens, and eloigned cattle. The counties of Monaghan and Armagh are in part divided by a river, which in the fanciful language of the country is called "Owin Cuugger,"—" the Whispering River." A series of hills, of that beautiful undulation for which the high lands of Monaghan are distinguished, skirts its banks; and though no overhanging woods grace them, there are places where some scattered trees and bushes yield their clothing and embellishment. It was a fine summer evening, and the sun was sitting with his last rays full upon the bank, along which I walked with a friend, when the form of a man extended at his full length struck us, as we turned round a projection which introduced us to one. of those favoured spots which I have just described. His quick eye seemed to have anticipated ours, and without discomposing himself he awaited our approach. Some exclamation of surprise broke from my friend's lips as he recognized Barney More; who, raising himself upon his arm, accosted my friend with the usual salutation in Irish, God save you! The response was in English: "Ah, Barney More, you here! a good penny worth this meeting would be to Jem Macken, the constable !"" True for you, master; but the rook scents surely the smell of the powder; and I knew well they who came up the river carried none."—"You're a bold impudent fellow, Barney, and it were a good deed to lodge you in the strong walls of Monaghan a pretty job it was for you to rob Craigh Kuran, after having been let off before by the people.”— "And who says Barney More did it? and if I did, the magers! is an old ewe and her two brats of lambs so mighty a matter, when the children were hungry at home?"—"They said you had left the country, and I think you had better do so you may rely you will be taken and get no mercy."-" And what for should I not get mercy? But be that as it may I'll never leave the old sod, while I have a hand to grasp a hazel that grows on it. I don't matter those Craigh Kuran magers a rush; and if there was nothing else out against me I would not care to face judge and jury to-morrow."-" You're a wicked old fellow-I think the fate of your old companion, Larry Donnellan, ought to warn you."-" Larry Donnellan, the beggar! and well he deserved what he got the vermin! I tell you, master, if there had not been another cord in the province to hang that Larry with, I'd have lent them this;"—and so saying he bared his breast, and exhibited the cord of St. Francis, with which superstitious Catholics sometimes gird themselves, by way of dedicating themselves to the Saint. All the violence of his nature seemed roused by this Donnellan's name; and as if no longer brooking his former inert posture, he arose. He appeared above six feet high, powerfully made, with huge bones, and large coarse lineaments. The character of his form was gauntness; it seemed as if hardship or excess had reduced the huge shape to its present lankness. His complexion appeared to have been once fair, and

his hair, where age had not impressed its own colour was of the fiery red which characterized the O'Neils. He was meanly clad, and upon his shoulders hung, in the Spanish fashion, a large frize cloak of the grey colour usual in the garments of the Irish peasantry. I marked his visage intently; and methought could read there all that formed the character of the owner: I saw the ferocity about the nose; and in the flexible expressive mouth could trace the eloquence and quick sensibility; in the brow I observed the pride and sternness and determination; and in the glowing quick-moving eye all the unquenchable ire and wild profligacy which belonged to him. We passed forward; and my friend explained to me that Donnellan, the person in whose punishment Barney More signified so much satisfaction, had been a contumacious member of his gang; and had, by treachery, put his leader into considerable jeopardy. I learned also the meaning of the cognomen, More-which means large, and had been acquired from his bulk by Barney. Nothing, my companion assured me, could subdue the native wildness of that man's disposition; nothing could reduce him to the condition of a regular and industrious labourer. His delinquencies had been a thousand times overlooked, and had even served to introduce him to the notice of, and to procure him the good offices and counsels of, the objects of his depredations. He had been often in prison, often tried, frequently acquitted from default of prosecution, and at other times dismissed with punishments of peculiar leniency. Over all, kindness and forbearance, and the most earnest exertions for his benefit, the indomitable barbarity of his nature had prevailed. In the enterprises which fell within his sphere there was little occasion for the exertion of those qualities of courage and intrepidity which, under all circumstances, have something in them grand and interesting; but if there was no romance in his pilferings and thievings there was much in his habits. He was not, like the mean vagrant of more civilized countries, addicted to frequenting pot-houses, and the company of the vile refuse of society. Barney More did, it must be owned, indulge in an occasional debauch, and he was necessarily often in the places appropriated to the reception of the wretches with whom he concerted his schemes of plunder; but his inclination led him to haunt scenes of a different character. It was his chief delight to loiter along the banks of the softflowing river I have mentioned, and he would pass whole days in a favourite dell, watching the shadows as they fell upon the waters. He loved to bask in the noontide sun; and at night would often pass many an hour at the end of his sheeling looking upon the moon. But nothing would induce him to work; and he was heard to say, with something of pride, that though a poor cotter, his hand had not grasped a spade for forty years. Of his name and descent he was vain to the highest degree; and notwithstanding all his crimes and wretchedness, there was that about him which distinguished him from the herd of ignoble malefactors.

Shortly after my rencontre with this wild Irishman, a gentleman from a distant part of the country arrived at the house of my friend one evening at a very late hour. His stable had been broken open a few nights previous, and two valuable horses stolen; information had reached him that Barney More was concerned in the robbery, and his

object was to proceed with my friend to the house in the bog, and endeavour to recover his horses. Before breakfast, the following morning, we set out with this purpose. Long ere we reached the house its inmates seemed apprised of our approach; and several persons successively appeared to reconnoitre us from the door. When we reached it, we found Barney More's youngest boy, a fine child of twelve years old, awaiting our arrival. My friend asked for his father; and the boy replied, while he sharply scrutinized the other stranger and myself, that he "was not at home." But the tear in his fine blue eye seemed to belie his words. We entered the house; and were received by the wife of the wretched offender we sought, with an eager courtesy and show of welcome which could not be outdone by the most accomplished hypocrite of a court. As soon as my eyes recovered from the first effects of the smoke which filled the apartment, and I could discern the objects within, I was struck by the appearance of a large quantity of dried beef and bacon suspended in goodly show from the ample chimney-balk. While my companions addressed their interrogatories to the woman, who assured them her husband had no participation in the alleged robbery, and was "just gone out," I was occupied in observing a fine comely young woman, whe sat at her spinning-wheel apparently regardless of our presence. Her face was turned away; but her shape appeared particularly fine. At some order of her mother's she arose, and as in crossing the floor she afforded me a better view of her countenance and person, I was much affected with the loveliness of both. She was poorly, but not sordidly, clothed; and her attire had the merit, which prouder fashions want, of displaying the form in all its natural grace and beauty. Her costume was made up of a petticoat and a cotton jacket, reaching nearly to the knee, open in front, and confined round the waist by the strings of an apron which hung before. She wore no stays, nor shoes, nor stockings; but her hair was carefully tied up in a tasteful yet simple manner. I suppose she had learned to repress her emotions; for I could scarcely discover in her countenance an indication of concern at our visit. In my friend I fancy she thought her father would find a merciful enemy, and that she trusted he would not accompany the stranger if personal injury were intended to him; and I remarked, that with intent I suppose to secure his good offices, she dropped a curtsey as she passed his seat, and bestowed on him one merry glance of favour from eyes which were well calculated to do the work of coquetry. I am happy to say we left Barney More's house, and his wife, and boy, and lovely daugh ter, without being able to discover any thing against him. But his destiny was not to be averted: he was shortly after apprehended on a different charge, and though acquitted on it, convicted upon another, and sentenced to transportation.

In addition to all his other accomplishments, Barney More was an excellent crown lawyer-that peculiar aptitude for law which the Irish peasants universally display; and long and bitter experience, the best of all tutors, had enabled him to understand most of the points which arise on criminal prosecutions, and to calculate the effect of the evidence to be adduced against himself. From the first he foretold his conviction on the particular accusation which terminated in that event. He was tried at the same assizes for various other offences; but the

proofs of all were defective, as he himself had previously asserted they would be found. He was convicted; and a bitter sentence transportation was to Barney More. In vain did he seek to avert or commute it; with incredible address and perseverance he had applications made in every accessible quarter; his wife, his daughter, and numerous other emissaries were incessantly engaged in negotiation set on foot by his fertile ingenuity all, all were vain; and the last of the O'Neils was conveyed upon a cart to a transport at Cork, which bore him far from the land he loved as his own heart's blood. He is gone, and for ever; and has perhaps left behind him no such example as he presented of the strange union of the highest barbaric qualities, with the lowest meanness of the worst specimens of civilized society. S. M. T.

THE STATUE OF A FUNERAL GENIUS*.

THOU shouldst be look'd on when the starlight falls
Through the blue stillness of the summer-air;
Not by the torch-fire wavering on the walls,

It hath too fitful and too wild a glare;

And thou!-thy rest, the soft, the lovely, seems
To ask light steps, that will not break its dreams.

Flowers are upon thy brow; for so the Deadt

Were crown'd of old, with pale spring-flowers like these:
Sleep on thine eye hath sunk; yet softly shed,
As from the wing of some faint southern breeze :
And the pine-boughs o'ershadow thee with gloom,
Which from the grove seems gather'd, not the tomb.

They fear'd not Death, whose calm and gracious thought
Of the last hour, hath settled thus in thee!

They, who thy wreath of pallid roses wrought,

And laid thy head against the forest-tree,

As that of one, by music's dreamy close,

On the wood-violets lull'd to deep repose.

They fear'd not Death!-yet who shall say his touch
Thus lightly falls on gentle things and fair?

Doth he bestow, or can he leave so much

Of shaded beauty as thy features wear?

Thou sleeper of the bower! on whose young eyes
So soft a night, a night of summer, lies!

Had they seen aught like thee?-did some fair boy
Thus, with his graceful hair, before them rest?
His graceful hair, no more to wave in joy,
But drooping, as with heavy dews oppress'd?
And his eye veil'd so softly by its fringe,

And his lip faded to the white-rose tinge?

"The figure which particularly affected Combabus, was a funeral genius, under the form of a beautiful boy, standing erect, his eyes closed with an air of languor between death and sleep, his legs gracefully crossed at the ancles, his hands meeting above the head, and his back resting against a pine-tree, the branches of which were spread above him, as if to cast their funeral shade over the tranquillity of his eternal repose."-See Vol. V. p. 115, of this Magazine.

+ The Funeral Genius of the Louvre was crowned with flowers.-See Visconti's Description des Antiques du Musée Royale.