by judge and jury at the old Bailey, or criti-it. He stood-he knew that he stood-in cally reviewed by Mr. John Ketch at Tyburn. the situation of a murderer who has dropt Francis was the man. Francis was the an inestimable jewel upon the murdered wicked butler within, whom Pharaoh ought body in the death-struggle with his victim. to have hanged, but whom he clothed in The jewel is his! Nobody will deny it. royal apparel, and mounted upon a horse He may have it for asking. But to ask is that carried him to a curule chair of honor. his death-warrant. "Oh yes!" would be So far his burglary prospered. But, as the answer, "here's your jewel, wrapt up generally happens in such cases, this pros- safely in tissue paper. But here's another perous crime subsequently avenged itself. lot that goes along with it—no bidder can By a just retribution, the success of Junius, take them apart-viz. a halter, also wrapt in two senses so monstrously exaggerated-up in tissue paper." Francis, in relation to exaggerated by a romantic over-estimate of Junius, was in that exact predicament. "You its intellectual power through an error of are Junius? You are that famous man who has the public, not admitted to the secret-and been missing since 1772? And you can prove equally exaggerated as to its political power it? God bless me! sir; what a long time by the government in the hush-money for you've been sleeping: everybody's gone to its future suppression, became the heaviest bed. Well, then, you are an exceedingly curse of the successful criminal. This clever fellow, that have had the luck to be criminal thirsted for literary distinction thought ten times more clever than really above all other distinction, with a childish you were. And also, you are the greatest eagerness, as for the amreeta cup of immor-scoundrel that at this hour rests in Europe tality. And, behold! there the brilliant unhanged!"-Francis died, and made no bauble lay, glittering in the sands of a sign. Peace of mind he had parted with solitude, unclaimed by any man; disputed for a peacock's feather, which feather, livwith him (if he chose to claim it) by no- ing or dying, he durst not mount in the body; and yet for his life he durst not touch 'plumage of his cap. From the Quarterly Review. Paddiana; or, Scraps and Sketches of Irish Life, Present and Past. By the Author of A Hot-Water Cure. 2 vols. 12mo. London. 1847. PEOPLE seem at this time rather weary of Irish questions, great and small-and of books about Ireland whether blue folios, 'presented to both Houses of Parliament,' or duodecimos artistically arranged on Mr. Ebers's counter, or pamphlets hawked by unmixed Caucasians at every pork-pie station on the railway. We must therefore beg to inform our readers that, if they suffer a natural prejudice to stand between them and Paddiana,' they will be doing themselves an unkindness. This book is a rarity. It overflows with humor, yet is unstained by vulgarity; and though we strongly suspect the author to have a heart, there is neither rant nor whine in his composition. Sterling humor implies sagacity, and therefore every really humorous book must be suggestive of serious thought and reflection;-no matter what the subject or the form, the masculine element will pervade what it underlies and sustains. It is so here; but we have no particular turn for the critical chemistry that tortures a crumb of medicine from a pail of spring-water. We shall endeavor to give some notion of the writer's quality, and trust whoever will read the book through to draw economical and political conclusions of his own. humble object and agreeable duty is to pay our homage to a pen of genuine ability. A former production mentioned in the titlepage never happened to fall in our way,* and we have no knowledge whatever of the Our *Since this was written we have seen the Hot Water Cure; and in case any of our readers are not acbuainted with that performance, we can promise them good entertainment from it also. It is a lively land-in a totally different style from the 'Bubble of the Binnen,' but hardly less diverting. account of certain travels in and near the Rhine and, unfortunately for men, women, and children, that was not yesterday. There has been abundance of bold grouping, and a superabundance of clever drawing but the whole seldom, if ever, toned and harmonized by the independence and candor of good sense and good breeding, which are as essential to the permanent success of a novelist as atmosphere is to that of a landscape-painter. There has been vigorous romance, striking fragments of it at least, and a most bewildering prodigality of buffoonery-but the serious generally smeared over with a black varnish of fierce angry passion, and the grotesque unpenetrated by the underplay of ever-genial Pantagruelism. author except what we gather from inter-¡ple in their natural colors and attitudesnal evidence to wit, that he is a military the good, the bad, and the indifferent disman of some standing-an old soldier of tributed as they are in the world-we the Duke's-that he is not an Irishman- should be well justified in calling attention that he frolicked and flirted away some of to 'Paddiana.' But such a book about his youth in Ireland-and that he has also Ireland is doubly rare and doubly welcome. spent several years there in the more sober- We are not aware that we have had any ed temper of middle age. There are few such since Miss Edgeworth laid by her pen among our regimental officers who have not seen a good deal of Irish life, and we have been obliged to several of them before now for amusing sketches of it but this is not an observer of the common file, and the light cunning of his hand equals the keenness of his eye. He is (as he says of one of his heroes) a man of the world and a gentleman'-and of course there is no finery about him. We doubt if his two volumes contain a single allusion to the aristocracy'--certainly neither lord nor lady figures among his dramatis persona. No lofty quizzing of "the middle classes" -none of that sublime merriment over the domestic arrangements of cits' or 'squireens,' which sits so gracefully on scribes admitted to contemplate occasionally a We wish to recommend a book of amusemarchioness's 'dancing tea' perhaps even ment, and therefore our extracts shall be a duke's omnigatherum Saturday dinner-liberal; but we do not mean to interfere because they may have penned a sonnet for with the interest of the author's stories. her ladyship's picture in the Book of It will satisfy us to take specimens of deBeauty,' or his grace has been told that scription that may be produced without they chatter and pun, entertain drowsy damage to the enjoyment of his skill in dowagers, break the dead silences, and constructing and working out a plot. To 'help a thing off." Nothing of that mi- begin at the beginning-here are some nute laborious dissection of the details of fragments of the chapter in which he deordinary people's absurd attempts at hos-picts his first voyage from Liverpool to the pitality, sociality, carpet-hops, and pic-bay of Dublin. This was before the era nics, which must, it is supposed, be so very of steamboats, so the Waterloo medal gratifying to those who are clothed in pur- could have lost little of its original brightple and fare sumptuously every day-af-ness; but, excepting the new power and fording such a dignified pause of comfort the cabin accommodations, the whole chapamid their melancholy habitual reflections ter, we believe, would apply as well to on the progress of the democratic princi- 1847: ple,' the improvement of third-class carriages, and the opening of Hampton Court. "On the pier above stood some hundreds of Nothing, on the other hand, of that fawn-Irish reapers, uniformly dressed in grey frieze ing on the masses' which, long confined to Radical newspapers and the melodrama of the suburbs, has of late been the chief characteristic of half the light literature' in vogue-the endless number-novels especially, in which all the lower features of Dickens and Thackeray are caricatured -without the least relief of sense of fun, the swarming literature of our gents.' If it were only that here is a book of social sketches unpolluted by adulation of high life or of low, painting peo or coals, corduroy breeches unbuttoned at the knee, and without neckerchiefs; carrying their sickles wrapped in straw slung over the shoulder-and every one with a large, long blackthorn stick in his hand, the knob of the stick being on the ground, contrary to the usage of all other people, and the small end held in the hand. As the vessel was preparing to cast off, a stream of these people began to pour down the ladder to the deck sequently the waist were completely choked up of our little craft, till the whole forepart and subwith them. Still they kept descending, till the cabin-passengers were driven to the extreme afterpart, alongside the tiller; but yet the stream flowed on, till not only the fore-cabin but every available | of turning in for the night. What, however, was pertion of the deck was crammed with a dense mass of human beings-we of the state-cabin forming the small tail of the crowd. "How the vessel was to be worked in this state it was difficult to conjecture, and I heartily wished myself out of it. Indeed, I mentioned something of an intention of forfeiting my passage-money and taking the next packet, but was dissuaded by the captain, who assured me I should have to wait | perhaps a month before all the reapers returned. Sure, we'll shake in our places by and by,' said he; they'll be quiet enough when they're out of the river: it's then we'll pack 'em like herrings, and pickle 'em too. But I believe we won't take any more. Hold hard there, boys; we've no room for ye. Stop that fellow with the hole in his breeches;-no, not him, th' other with the big hole, sure, we can't take ye.-Starboard your helm; aisy, don't jam the passengers-haul aft the jib-sheet.' And in another minute we were bowling down the river with a powerful ebb-tide, and the wind dead against us. "If the reader has ever passed over London Bridge on an Easter Monday or Tuesday, and happened to notice the Greenwich steamers going down the river, he will be able to form some idea of the state of our decks as to number of passengers, substituting in his mind's eye for the black and blue coats, the glaring satin waistcoats, the awful stocks, the pink and blue ribands, and gay silks of the holiday Cockneys, the unvaried grey of the Irish cargo; and imagining the majority of mouths on board to be ornamented with the doodeen,' instead of the cheroot, or clay, or full-flavoured Cuba, or labelled Lopez. "The captain was right as regarded our passengers settling down into their places: before the first tack was made a great proportion of them were reposing in heaps under the bulwarks and the boat, and a little moving room afforded to the crew. Most of the reapers had been walking all day, and were happy enough in composing themselves to sleep. "About eight o'clock our jolly skipper invited the cabin passengers to supper and a glass of grog, and we stowed ourselves as we best could in the little cabin, though not half the number could get a seat at the table, the remainder bestowing themselves upon carpet bags and portmanteaus about the floor, each with his plate on his knees and his tumbler beside him. The supper was composed of bread and butter and hot potatoes, and followed by whiskey punch, which I tasted then for the first time, and glorious liquor I thought it. As it was my introduction to that beverage, the honest skipper undertook to mix it himself for me, adding, however, a trifle of water to the just proportions, in consideration of my youth and inexperience. "Notwithstanding the seduction of the beverage, I was soon fain to quit the insufferably close cabin, and return to the deck. The wind had nearly died away; it was a cloudy sultry night, and a low growl of thunder came occasionally out of the dark masses to the westward. About ten o'clock we were standing well out to sea, with a freshening wind coming round fair, and I began to think my surprise on going below to find nearly all the dozen passengers stowed away in the six berths, my own peculiar property not excepted, in which were two huge black-whiskered fellows snoring with up-turned noses, while a third was standing in shirt and drawers by the bedside, meditating how he might best insinuate his own person between them! On appealing to the captain I got little consolation: he looked placidly at the sleepers, and shook his head. Faith, ye're better out o' this,' said he; sure there is no keeping a berth from such fellows as them. That's O'Byrne : it's from the O'Byrnes of the Mountains he comes, and they're a hard set to deal with. It will blow fresh presently, and a fine state they'll be in. Get your big coat, and I've a pea-jacket for you. You're better on deck. Faugh! I'd hardly stand this cabin myself, much as I'm used to it.' By this time I began to partake largely in the skipper's disgust, and was glad to make my escape. I have never seen anything equal to those thirty-six hours. Let the traveller of the present day bless his stars that he is living in the age of steam by land and water, and mahogany panels, and mirrors, and easy sofas, and attentive stewards, and plenty of basins, and certain passages of a few hours' duration.-Towards the afternoon of the second day all hands began to feel hungrythe more so as the wind had lulled a little and accordingly the greater part of the evening was spent in cooking potatoes, with a sea-stock of which every deck passenger had come provided. It was not a very easy thing for about two hundred people to cook each his separate mess at one time and at one fireplace; but they tried to do it, and great was the wrangling in consequence. Sundry small fights occurred, but they were too hungry to think of gratifying their propensities that way, and the quarrels were disposed of summarily; but towards the close of the day, when they were more at leisure, and had time to look about them, a cause of quarrel was discovered between two rival factions, whether Connaught and Munster, or Connaught and Leinster, I forget, but it was quite enough of a quarrel to produce a fight. It commenced with talk, then came a bustling in the centre, then the sticks began to rise above the mass, and finally, such a whacking upon heads and shoulders, such a screeching, and tearing, and jumping, and hallooing ensued, as till that time I had never witnessed. The row commenced forward among some twenty or thirty in the bows, and gradually extended aft as others got up from the deck to join in it, or came pouring up from the fore-cabin. In a few minutes the whole deck from head to stern was covered by a wild mob, fighting without aim or object, as it appeared, except that every individual seemed to be trying his utmost to get down every other individual, and when down to stamp him to death. "At the first appearance of the shindy' the captain went amongst them to try and stop it; but finding his pac fic efforts of no avail, he quietly walked up the rigging, and from a safe elevation on the shrouds he was calmly looking down upon the scene below. With great difficulty, and town. On denot without an awkward thump or two, I contrived that "good Brunswicker," George IV., to follow his example, and took up a position nominated by Paddy acclamation, at the alongside of him. The crew were already either late Mr. O'Connell's prompting, Kingsin the top or out upon the bowsprit; and even the man at the helm at last abandoned the tiller, and, There are some excellent little sketches getting over the side, contrived to crawl by the chains till he reached the shrouds, and so escaped of private life and garrison larking in Dubaloft. At the time the row broke out the vessel lin; but the subaltern on Irish duty spends was lying her course with the wind a point or but a small proportion of his time in either two free. When the man left the helm she came that or any other well-built city. of course head to wind, and the mainsail jibbing first landing, be it at the capital, at Cork, swept the boom across the deck, flooring every-or at Belfast, the corps are all together; body abaft the mast. Hardly were they on their legs again before the boom came back with still greater force, and swept them down in the opposite direction. If it had not been for the imminent risk of many being carried overboard, it would have been highly amusing to witness the traversing of the boom backwards and forwards, and the consequent prostration of forty or fifty people every minute. Notwithstanding the interruption they still continued fighting, and stamping, and screeching on; and even some who were actually forced over the side still kept hitting and roaring as they hung by the boom, till the next lurch brought them on deck again. I really believe that, in their confusion, they were not aware by what agency they were so frequently brought down, but attributed it, somehow or other, to their neighbors right and left, and therefore did all in their power to hit them down in return. "Meanwhile the jolly skipper looked down from bis safe eminence, with about as much indifference as Quasimodo showed to the efforts of the Deacon while he hung by the spout. He rather enjoyed it, and trusted to time and the boom-as the head pacificator to set things to rights. He was not wrong: a lull came at last, and there was more talking than hitting. Taking advantage of a favorable moment, he called out, Well, boys, I wonder how we'll get to Dublin this way. Will ye plaze to tell me how I'll make the Hill o' Howth before night? Perhaps ye think we'll get on the faster for bating, like Barney's jackass? I hope the praties will hold out; but, at any rate, we'll have no water to boil them in after to-morrow. Better for me to hang out a turf, and say, Dry lodging for dacent people."-vol. i., p. 15. and the troubles of the day or the night, whatever they may be, are compensated by the hearty hospitality of the natives, or at any rate by the easy jollity of the well-peopled mess-room. But soon the head-quarters are transferred to some petty town in the interior, and three-fourths of the regiment perhaps billeted throughout the villages of a large disturbed county or barony; seldom more than two officers together-and always several of the juniors dominating over very small detachments each gentleman condemned to utter solitude at every meal, unless when by chance there is some considerable squire or clergyman of the Established Church in his immediate neighborhood. No one who has travelled through Ireland but must have often been moved to pity at the apparition of the poor stripling in his foraging cap and tight surtout, lounging desolately on the bridge, cigar in mouth of course, or disturbed in the laborious flute practice of his little dim companionless parlor by the arrival of the coach at the inn-door. Of late we all know, or may pretty well guess, what very serious and harassing business has occupied sufficiently the quondam leisure of these forlorn epaulettes. In the earlier days of our author's experience, nightly still-hunting came occasionally-nightly Whiteboy-hunting not rarely combined with it; but unless for such interludes in the way of duty, with now and then a bachelor landlord's festivity in some ruinous tower among the bogs, or the grand scene of a fair or a race, with its inevitable row and necessary attendance of "the army," a more wearisome, objectless, diversionless, humdrum dreariness of ex What with the eloquence of this "vir pietate gravis," and a gallon or two of whiskey from the Saxon passenger, who, by taking refuge on the rigging, had become legally liable to a claim for footing, this formidable shindy was at last got under; and during the rest of the passage all was brotherly kindness, and pasting and butter-istence could hardly have been pictured by ing of the cracks and contusions about each other's intellectual and moral developments. Shakspeare never invented an opening scene that set the chief dramatis persone before the pit in a more satisfactory fashion. The reader, like our young soldier (now, we hope, a Major at the least), is ready for landing at Dunleary-since, in honor of a fanciful deviser of secondary punishments. No wonder that the rare interruptions of the dulness should find an eager welcome, and after the lapse even of many years, as in this case, be chronicled with the life-like accuracy of memorial gusto. We have been well entered as to the great business of head-breaking let us indulge ourselves in a little more on that subject from one of the later chapters: a few minutes more he is on the floore' in a jig, as if nothing had happened. lavished-every man'finds himself encircled with at least one pair of fair but powerful arms; dishevelled hair is flying, pretty faces in tears, caps "An Irishman may be called par excellence the awry, handkerchiefs disarranged. Pat is a softbone-breaker amongst men, the homo ossifragus of hearted fellow-he can't stand it at all-they still the human family; and in the indulgence of this squeeze him close; so he lowers his stick, and is their natural propensity there is a total and syste-led away captive to some distant booth, where in matic disregard of fair play: there is no such thing known whether at a race or a fight. Let an unfortunate stranger-a man not known in the "The jockey who rides against a popular horse town or village-get into a scrape, and the whole undertakes a service of some danger, for there population are ready to fall upon him, right or are no means, however unfair, which they will wrong, and beat him to the ground; when his not adopt to cause him to lose the race. They life depends upon the strength of his skull or the will hustle him-throw sticks and hats in his way, interference of the police. There is no ring, no in the hope of throwing over horse and rider. I scratch, no bottle-holder. To set a man upon his had once an opportunity of seeing a little sumlegs after a fall is a weakness never thought of mary justice done. The rider of a steeple-chase 'Faith, we were hard set to get him down, and was struck heavily by some of the mob as he rode why should we let him up again? Sure, it's over a fence, and the circumstance reported to a Moynehan!" was repeated by fifty voices in a the priest, who properly required that the offender row at Killarney, where all who could come near should be pointed out to him. His reverence was enough were employed in hitting, with their long a hearty, powerful fellow, mounted on a strong blackthorn sticks, at an unfortunate wretch lying horse, who, report said, was much given to run prostrate and disabled amongst them. Fortunately, away with his master on hunting-days, and could the eagerness of his enemies proved the salvation seldom be pulled up till the fox was killed. Ridof the man, for they crowded so furiously to- ing calmly up to the offender, he inquired if the gether that their blows scarcely ever reached their report were true, and, taking the sulky shuffling intended victim. It was ridiculous to see the wild of his parishioner as an affirmative, he proceeded way in which they hit one another; but so infu- to lash him heartily over the head and shoulders riated were they, that no heed was taken of the with a heavy hunting whip. The culprit writhed blows, or probably in their confusion the hurts and roared in vain; his reverence, warming with were ascribed to the agency of the man on the the exercise, laid on thicker and faster, now ground. It was no uncommon thing to see co-whacking him heavily with handle and lash toTumns, of many hundred strong, march into Killar-gether, then double-thonging him upon the salient ney from opposite points, for the sole purpose of fighting, on a market-day. Why they fought nobody could tell-they did not know themselves; but the quarrel was a very pretty quarrel, and no people in the best of causes could go to work more heartily. The screams, and yells, and savage fury would have done credit to an onslaught of Blackfeet or New Zealanders, whilst the dancing madness was peculiarly their own. But in spite of the vocal efforts of the combatants, and the constant accompaniment of the sticks, you could hear the dull thud which told when a blackthorn fell upon an undefended skull."-vol. i., p. 223. Even wilder were the scenes at the races near Clonakilty-the very name is redolent of roww-where there were no rival factions whatever, unless those originating in the grand old principle of living across the book, or in national politics, as mixed up (mirabile dictu) with horseflesh : "Painfully ludicrous to see a man rush from a tent, flourishing his stick, dancing about, and screaming "High for Cloney!' He is speedily accommodated with a man who objects to the exaltation of Cloney, and pronounces a High' for some other place. A scuffle ensues, and many hard blows given and taken by those who know nothing of the cause of the row. But in this case the fight is soon over. The women rush in, in spite of the blackthorns-tender Irish epithets are points as he wriggled and twisted; and when the the scene is fine. No sooner did a certain chest- |