evening was in my favour; and although volunteers were enlisted in the chase at every corner and turning, I distanced them, and held on my way in advance. My great object being not to turn on my course, lest I should come back to my starting point, I directed my steps nearly straight onward, clearing apple-stalls and fruit tables at a bound; and more than once taking a flying leap over an Indian's fire, when the mad shout of the red man would swell the chorus that followed me. At last I reached a network of narrow lanes and alleys, by turning and wending through which, I speedily found myself in a quiet secluded spot, with here and there a flickering candle-light from the windows, but no other sign of habitation. I looked anxiously about for an open door; but they were all safe barred and fastened; and it was only on turning a corner I spied what seemed to me a little shop, with a solitary lamp over the entrance. A narrow canal, crossed by a ricketty old bridge, led to this; and the moment I had crossed over, I seized the single plank which formed the footway, and shoved it into the stream. My retreat being thus secured, I opened the door, and entered. It was a barber's shop; at least, so a great chair before a cracked old looking-glass, with some well-worn combs and brushes, bespoke it; but the place seemed untenanted, and although I called aloud several times, none came or responded to my summons.

I now took a survey of the spot, which seemed of the poorest imaginable. A few empty pomatum pots, a case of razors that might have defied the most determined suicide, and a half-finished wig, on a block painted like a red man, were the entire stock in trade. On the walls, however, were some coloured prints of the battles of the French army in Germany and Italy. Execrably done things they were, but full of meaning and interest to my eyes in spite of that. With all the faults of drawing and all the travesties of costume, I could recognise different corps of the service, and my heart bounded as I gazed on the tall shakos swarming to a breach, or the loose jacket as it floated from the hussar in a charge. All the wild pleasures of soldiering rose once more to my mind, and I thought over old comrades who doubtless were now earning the high rewards of their

bravery in the great career of glory. And as I did so, my own image confronted me in the glass, as with long, lank hair, and a great bolster of a white cravat, I stood before it. What a contrast!-how unlike the smart hussar, with curling locks and fierce moustache! Was I as much changed in heart as in looks. Had my spirit died out within Would the proud notes of the bugle or the trumpet fall meaningless on my ears, or the hoarse cry of Charge!" send no bursting fulness to my temples? Ay, even these coarse representations stirred the blood in my veins, and my step grew firmer as I walked the room.

me.

In a passionate burst of enthusiasm I tore off my slouched hat and hurled it from me. It felt like the badge of some ignoble slavery, and I determined to endure it no longer. The noise of the act called up a voice from the inner room, and a man, to all appearance suddenly roused from sleep, stood at the door. He was evidently young, but poverty, dissipation, and raggedness made the question of his age a difficult one to solve. A light-coloured moustache and beard covered all the lower part of his face, and his long blonde hair fell heavily over his shoulders.

"Well," cried he, half angrily, "what's the matter; are you so impatient that you must smash the furni ture ?"

Although the words were spoken as correctly as I have written them, they were uttered with a foreign accent; and, hazarding the stroke, I answered him in French by apologizing for the

noise.

"What! a Frenchman," exclaimed he, and in that dress; what can that mean?"

66

If you'll shut your door, and cut off pursuit of me, I'll tell you everything," said I, "for I hear the voices of people coming down that street in front."

"I'll do better," said he, quickly, "Ill upset the bridge, and they cannot come over."

"That's done already," replied I; "I shoved it into the stream as I passed."

He looked at me steadily for a moment without speaking, and then approaching close to me, said, “Parbleu! the act was very unlike your costume!" At the same time he shut the door, and

This

drew a strong bar across it. done, he turned to me once more,"Now for it: "who are you, and what has happened to you?"

"As to what I am," replied I, imitating his own abruptness," my dress will almost save the trouble of explaining; these Albany folk, however, would make a field-preacher of me, and to escape them I took to flight."

"Well, if a fellow will wear his hair that fashion, he must take the consequence," said he, drawing out my long lank locks as they hung over my shoulders. "And so you wouldn't hold forth for them; not even give them a stave of a conventicle chant." He kept his eyes riveted on me as he spoke, and then seizing two pieces of stick for the firewood, he beat on the table the rantan-plan of the French drum. That's the music you know best, lad, eh?— that's the air, which, if it has not led heavenward, has conducted many a brave fellow out of this world at least: do you forget it?"

Forget it! no," cried I; "but who are you; and how comes it thatthat "I stopped in confusion at the rudeness of the question I had begun.

"That I stand here, half-fed, and all but naked; a barber in a land where men dont shave once a month. Parbleu! they'd come even seldomer to my shop if they knew how tempted I feel to draw the razor sharp and quick across the gullet of a fellow with a well-stocked pouch."

As he continued to speak, his voice assumed a tone and cadence that sounded familiarly to my ears as I stared at him in amazement.

"Not know me yet," exclaimed he, laughing; "and yet all this poverty and squalor isn't as great a disguise as your own, Tiernay. Come, lad, rub your eyes a bit, and try if you can't recognise an old comrade."

"I know you, yet cannot remember how or where we met," said I, in bewilderment.

"I'll refresh your memory," said he, crossing his arms, and drawing himself proudly up. "If you can trace back in your mind to a certain hot and dusty day, on the Metz road, when you, a private in the seventh Hussars, were eating an onion and a slice of black bread for your dinner, a young officer, well looking and well mounted, cantered up, and threw you his brandy flask. Your acknowledgment of the

civility showed you to be a gentleman; and the acquaintance thus opened soon ripened into intimacy."

"But he was the young Marquis de Saint Trone," said I, perfectly remembering the incident.

"Or Eugene Santron, of the republic army, or the barber at Albany, without any name at all," said he, laughing. “What, Maurice, don't you know me yet ?"

"What, the lieutenant of my regiment! The dashing officer of Hus

sars!"

"Just so, and as ready to resume the old skin as ever," cried he, "and brandish a weapon somewhat longer, and perhaps somewhat sharper, too, than a razor."

We shook hands with all the cordiality of old comrades, meeting far away from home, and in a land of strangers; and although each was full of curiosity to learn the other's history, a kind of reserve held back the inquiry, till Santron said, "My confession is soon made, Maurice; I left the service in the Meuse, to escape being shot. One day, on returning from a field manœuvre, I discovered that my portmanteau had been opened, and a number of letters and papers taken out. They were part of a correspondence I held with old General Lamarre, about the restoration of the Bourbons, a subject, I'm certain, that half the officers in the army were interested in, and, even to Bonaparte himself, deeply implicated in, too. No matter, my treason, as they called it, was too flagrant, and I had just twenty minutes' start of the order which was issued for my arrest, to make my escape into Holland. There I managed to pass several months in various disguises, part of the time being employed as a Dutch spy, and actually charged with an order to discover tidings of myself, until I finally got away in an Antwerp schooner, to New York. From that time my life has been nothing but a struggle, a hard one, too, with actual want, for in this land of enterprise and activity, mere intelligence, without some craft or calling, will do nothing.

"I tried fifty things-to teach riding, and when I mounted into the saddle, I forgot everything but my own enjoyment, and caracolled, and plunged, and passaged, till the poor beast hadn't a leg to stand on; fencing, and I got into a duel with a rival teacher, and ran him through the neck, and was

obliged to fly from Halifax; French, I made love to my pupil, a pretty looking Dutch braulieu, whose father didn't smile on our affection; and so on, I descended from a dancing-master to a waiter, a lacques de place, and at last settled down as a barber, which brilliant speculation I had just determined to abandon this very night, fortomorrow morning, Maurice, I start for New York and France again; ay, boy, and you'll go with me. This is no land for either of us.”

"But I have found happiness, at least contentment, here," said I, gravely. "What! play the hypocrite with an old comrade! shame on you, Maurice," cried he. "It is these confounded locks have perverted the boy," added he, jumping up; and before I knew what he was about, he had shorn my hair, in two quick cuts of the scissors, close to the head. "There," said he, throwing the cut off hair towards me, "there lies all your saintship; depend upon it, boy, they'd hunt you out of the settlement if you came back to them cropped in this fashion."

"But you return to certain death, Santron," said I; "your crime is too recent to be forgiven or forgotten."

Not a bit of it; Fouche, Cassaubon, and a dozen others, now in office, were deeper than I was. There's not a public man in France could stand an exposure, or hazard recrimination. It's a thieves' amnesty at this moment, and I must not lose the opportunity. I'll show you letters that will prove it, Maurice; for, poor and ill-fed as I am, I like life just as well as ever I did. I mean to be a general of division one of these days, and so will you too, lad, if there's any spirit left in you."

Thus did Santron rattle on, sometimes of himself and his own future; sometimes discussing mine; for while talking, he had contrived to learn all the chief particulars of my history, from the time of my sailing from La Rochelle for Ireland.

The unlucky expedition afforded him great amusement, and he was never weary of laughing at all our adventures and mischances in Ireland. Of Humbert, he spoke as a fourth or fifthrate man, and actually shocked me by all the heresies he uttered against our generals, and the plan of campaign; but, perhaps, I could have borne even these better than the sarcasms and sneers at the little life of "the settle

ment." He treated all my efforts at defence as mere hypocrisy, and affected to regard me as a mere knave, that had traded on the confiding kindness of these simple villagers. I could not undeceive him on this head; nor what was more, could I satisfy my own conscience that he was altogether in the wrong; for, with a diabolical ingenuity, he had contrived to hit on some of the most vexatious doubts which disturbed my mind, and instinctively to detect the secret cares and difficulties that beset me. The lesson should never be lost on us, that the devil was depicted as a sneerer! I verily believe the powers of temptation have no such advocacy as sarcasm. Many can resist the softest seductions of vice; many are proof against all the blandishments of mere enjoyment, come in what shape it will; but how few can stand firm against the assaults of clever irony, or hold fast to their convictions when assailed by the sharp shafts of witty depreciation.

I'm ashamed to own how little I could oppose to all his impertinences about our village, and its habits; or how impossible I found it not to laugh at his absurd descriptions of a life which, without having ever witnessed, he depicted with a rare accuracy. He was shrewd enough not to push this ridicule offensively, and long before I knew it I found myself regarding, with his eyes, a picture in which, but a few months back, I stood as a fore-ground figure. I ought to confess, that no artificial aid was derived from either good cheer, or the graces of hospitality; we sat by a miserable lamp, in a wretchedly cold chamber, our sole solace some bad cigars, and a can of flat stale cider.

"I have not a morsel to offer you to eat, Maurice, but to-morrow we'll breakfast on my razors, dine on that old looking-glass, and sup on two hard brushes and the wig!"

Such were the brilliant pledges, and we closed a talk which the flickering lamp at last put an end to.

A broken, unconnected conversation followed for a little time, but at length, worn out and wearied, each dropped off to sleep-Eugene on the straw settle, and I in the old chairnever to awake till the bright sun was streaming in between the shutters, and dancing merrily on the tiled floor.

An hour before I awoke he had com

pleted the sale of all his little stock in trade, and, with a last look round the spot where he had passed some months of struggling poverty, out we sallied into the town.

"We'll breakfast at Jonathan Hone's," said Santron. "It's the first place here. I'll treat you to rump steaks, pumpkin pie, and a gin twister that will astonish you. Then, while I'm arranging for our passage down the Hudson, you'll see the hospitable banker, and tell him how to forward all his papers, and soforth, to the settlement, with your respectful compliments and regrets, and the rest of it." "But am I to take leave of them in this fashion?" asked I.

"Without you want me to accompany you there, I think it's by far the best way," said he, laughingly. "If, however, you think that my presence and companionship will add any lustre to your position, say the word and I'm

ready. I know enough of the barber's craft now to make up a head en Puritan,' and, if you wish, I'll pledge myself to impose upon the whole colony."

Here was a threat there was no mistaking; and any imputation of ingratitude on my part were far preferable to the thought of such an indignity. He saw his advantage at once, and boldly declared that nothing should separate

us.

"The greatest favour, my dear Maurice, you can ever expect at my hands is, never to speak of this freak of yours; or, if I do, to say that you performed the part to perfection."

My mind was in one of those moods of change when the slightest impulse is enough to sway it, and more from this cause than all his persuasion, I yielded; and the same evening saw me gliding down the Hudson, and admiring the bold Kaatskills, on our way to New York.

SOME Seventy or eighty years ago, there resided in the barony of Carbery, a squire of the name of O'Sherkin.

The barony of Carbery! quoth some one-and where on earth is Carbery?

Mercy on us! exclaims that worthy soul, Miss Peggy Bustlebody, who for five-and-thirty consecutive years, has occupied a logemen in the principal street of Clonakilty;-said logemen having a bow window commanding a prospect in one direction as far as the post office, and on the other side bounded by the turn in the street just at the grocer's, and including the coach and jingle office, and the turn to the market-place-no bad gazabo for one who likes to see the world, and what's passing in it. Mercy on us!!!!!!— (observe we put six notes of admiration to it)-Don't know where Carbery is! Why the very crows that build in the woods at Myross know Carbery! Only think of any human craythur not knowing where Carbery is !!!!!

Leaving excellent Miss Bustlebody to her notes of admiration-the barony of Carbery, as the whole universe knows, except the above ignorant individual, for whose sole enlightenment

we condescend to answer the question -is an extensive district in the western part of the county of Cork; and boasts as its metropolis or centre of commerce and fashion, the delightful city of Skibbereen-la Superba-as the Italians say of Genoa. The barony is for the most part hilly, rocky, and mountainous; abounding in turf bogs; and with sundry picturesque bays opening from, and headlands extending into the Atlantic ocean; the "Carberia Rupes" of Dean Swift, who has made mention of them in some flat, prosaic, schoolboy-like verses, which, however, are treasured and celebrated as a relic of the witty Dean of St. Patrick's. Swift was no poet.

In this famous barony, Barnaby O'Sherkin, Esquire, had his residence. It was the remains of an old mansion, which preserved, even in decay, an ap. pearance of respectability. A few ancestral trees were grouped about the house; giving to the place, as contrasted with the dreary poverty of the surrounding scenery, the appearance of an oasis in the desert. It was situated a few miles from the distinguished city above-mentioned, on a farm of a few

hundred acres, the remant of a vast extent of rock and bog, over which the ancestors of Mr. O'Sherkin had, some centuries before, presided in the capacity of princes, kings, or the Lord knows what; and which had, excepting the remnant aforesaid, long since passed into other ownership. The dilapidated house, half of a ruined stable, a kitchen garden, a huge turf-stack, a colossal dunghill, and two tall piers flanking a gateway the interval occupied by a heap of stones instead of a gate-were the principal objects that struck the eye of a visitor to Castle Sherkin, as this ancient seat of that illustrious race was named. The landscape around was not without features of remarkable beauty. The distant ocean, islands rising like mountains from the water, a picturesquely-indented coast, and the heights of Crookhaven and Mount Gabriel, presented to the eye objects more pleasing than the wretched farms and mud cabins of the foreground.

Amid all this apparent misery, however, the squire passed his time, from one end of the year to the other, in great jollity-fox-hunting on a small scale, gossip on the roads, and lounging in the street of Skibbereen, where for hours together, with any chance acquaintance, or with farmers and nondescript idlers, his hands in his breeches pockets, and his back to a door-post, he would stand joking, and prating, and looking wise about nothing. These occupations whiled away the days of Mr. Barny O'Sherkin, as they had those of his ancestors, time out of mind.

They slept, these ancestors of his, in a neighbouring churchyard. "Poor fellows," as Mr. O'Sherkin would say of them, "they were fine chaps in their time. Arrah, but if the family had its rights, they'd be all of 'em lords and princes now, instead of myself livin' on this few poor ould acres here. But I think nothin' goes right in Ireland."

By what process of political logic Mr. O'Sherkin made out satisfactorily to his reason, that if his family had its rights its defunct generations would start to life with coronets on their heads, we are unable to say; but it was a matter of Irish politics; and the world are aware of the fact that Irish politics are different from all other politics. As little are we able to affirm by what ingenious process he arrived at the conclusion that a tract of rock

and bog, which in past ages had belonged to a certain clan or set of persons of the name of O'Sherkin ought, amid the fluctuations of an unsettled state of society, to have descended without interruption to their lineal progeny; while in all other countries lands have changed proprietors over and over again. But, as we have already said, Irish politics are-Irish politics.

Like the rest of mankind, the squire had his little rubs, quarrels, and mishaps. Not that they were little to him; on the contrary, each of them, severally, for the time being, occupied the entire of his heart, soul, and mind. Still he was, on the whole, too goodhumoured to retain anger long, however he might roar and bellow, under the immediate pressure of some contretemps or other, on which occasions he would roar with a vengeance. Dennis M'Cash, his caretaker and sense-carrier, was wont to say of him :-" Och! then, 'tis the masthur has the fine voice entirely! Wisha, but as you stand in the fair field at Skibbereen, you may hear him scouldin' the people up at Castle Sherkin, when they do be crassin' his honour."

He had not fought many duels; had horsewhipped not very many of the peasantry; had seldom a sixpence of his own; and was considered to be as good-natured, honest, kind-hearted, excellent, worthy a fellow as ever lived.

Nothing could be merrier than the spectacle presented in his little parlour on a winter's evening, when, after a day spent in riding and hallooing over bog and ditch after a small pack of harriers, kept by a club of which he was president, he would assemble a knot of congenial spirits at his hospitable board. The cloth removed; his wife and daughters retired; a blazing fire; claret, whiskey, lemons, sugar; an enormous kettle of hot water; a regular set to-fun, stories, joking, and roars of laughter-wasn't it a scene on which Bacchus might have looked with envy! Then came singing all sorts of songs, and talking all together, and sentimentalising, and getting glorious: a paradise-at least a Scandinavian paradise-of which they retained no distinct recollection the next morning, when-how did they get there?— they found themselves not in paradise, but-three in a bed, and with splitting headaches.