a job for you, if you wish to earn some money easily. I live here."

As he said this, he beckoned authoritatively to Peter, who followed almost mechanically at his heels, and they turned up a little lane near the old Roman Catholic chapel, at the end of which stood, in Peter's time, the ruins of a tall, stone-built house.

Like everything else in the town, it had suffered a metamorphosis. The stained and ragged walls were now erect, perfect, and covered with pebble-dash; window-panes glittered coldly in every window; the green halldoor had a bright brass knocker on it. Peter did not know whether to believe his previous or his present impressions; seeing is believing, and Peter could not dispute the reality of the scene. All the records of his memory seemed but the images of a tipsy dream. In a trance of astonishment and perplexity, therefore, he submitted himself to the chances of his adventure.

The door opened, the officer beckoned with a melancholy air of authority to Peter, and entered. Our hero followed him into a sort of hall, which was very dark, but he was guided by the steps of the soldier, and, in silence, they ascended the stairs. The moonlight, which shone in at the lobbies, showed an old, dark wainscotting, and a heavy, oak bannister. They passed by closed doors at different landingplaces, but all was dark and silent as, indeed, became that late hour of the night.

Now they ascended to the topmost floor. The captain paused for a minute at the nearest door, and, with a heavy groan, pushing it open, entered the room. Peter remained at the threshold. A slight female form in a sort of loose, white robe, and with a great deal of dark hair hanging loosely about her, was standing in the middle of the floor, with her back towards them.

The soldier stopped short before he reached her, and said, in a voice of great anguish, "Still the same, sweet bird-sweet bird! still the same.' Whereupon, she turned suddenly, and threw her arms about the neck of the officer, with a gesture of fondness and despair, and her frame was agitated as if by a burst of sobs. He held her close to his breast in silence; and honest Peter felt a strange terror creep over him, as he witnessed these mysterious sorrows and endearments.

"To-night, to-night-and then ten years more-ten long years-another ten years."

The officer and the lady seemed to speak these words together; her voice mingled with his in a musical and fearful wail, like a distant summer wind, in the dead hour of night, wandering through ruins. Then he heard the officer say, alone, in a voice of anguish

"Upon me be it all, for ever, sweet birdie, upon me."

And again they seemed to mourn together in the same soft and desolate wail, like sounds of grief heard from a great distance.

Peter was thrilled with horror, but he was also under a strange fascination; and an intense and dreadful curiosity held him fast.

The moon was shining obliquely into the room, and through the window Peter saw the familiar slopes of the Park, sleeping mistily under its shimmer. He could also see the furniture of the room with tolerable distinctness -the old balloon-backed chairs, a fourpost bed in a sort of recess, and a rack against the wall, from which hung some military clothes and accoutrements; and the sight of all these homely objects reassured him somewhat, and he could not help feeling unspeakably curious to see the face of the girl whose long hair was streaming over the officer's epaulet.

Peter, accordingly, coughed, at first slightly, and afterward more loudly, to recal her from her reverie of grief; and, apparently, he succeeded; for she turned round, as did her companion, and both, standing hand in hand, looked upon him fixedly. He thought he had never seen such large, strange eyes in all his life; and their gaze seemed to chill the very air around him, and arrest the pulses of his heart. An eternity of misery and remorse was in the shadowy faces that looked upon him.

If Peter had taken less whiskey by a single thimbleful, it is probable that he would have lost heart altogether before these figures, which seemed every moment to assume a more marked and fearful, though hardly definable, contrast to ordinary human shapes.

What is it you want with me?" he stammered.

"To bring my lost treasure to the churchyard," replied the lady, in a sil

very voice of more than mortal desolation.

The word "treasure" revived the resolution of Peter, although a cold sweat was covering him, and his hair was bristling with horror; he believed, however, that he was on the brink of fortune, if he could but command nerve to brave the interview to its close.

"And where," he gasped, "is it hid-where will I find it ?"

They both pointed to the sill of the window, through which the moon was shining at the far end of the room, and the soldier said

"Under that stone."

Peter drew a long breath, and wiped the cold dew from his face, preparatory to passing to the window, where he expected to secure the reward of his protracted terrors. But looking steadfastly at the window, he saw the faint image of a new-born child sitting upon the sill in the moonlight, with its little arms stretched toward him, and a smile so heavenly as he never beheld before.

At sight of this, strange to say, his heart entirely failed him, he looked on the figures that stood near, and beheld them gazing on the infantine form with a smile so guilty and distorted, that he felt as if he were entering alive among the scenery of hell, and shuddering, he eried in an irrepressible agony of hor

ror

"I'll have nothing to say with you, and nothing to do with you; I don't know what yez are or what yez want iv me, but let me go this minute, every one of yez, in the name of God."

With these words there came a strange rumbling and sighing about Peter's ears; he lost sight of everything, and felt that peculiar and not unpleasant sensation of falling softly, that sometimes supervenes in sleep, ending in a dull shock. After that he had neither dream nor consciousness till he wakened, chill and stiff, stretched between two piles of old rubbish, among the black and roofless walls of the ruined house.

We need hardly mention that the village had put on its wonted air of neglect and decay, or that Peter looked around him in vain for traces of those novelties which had so puzzled and distracted him upon the previous night.

Ay, ay," said his old mother, removing her pipe, as he ended his description of the view from the bridge,

66

sure enough I remember myself, when I was a slip of a girl, these little white cabins among the gardens by the river side. The artillery sogers that was married, or had not room in the barracks, used to be in them, but they're all gone long ago."

"The Lord be marciful to us!" she resumed, when he had described the military procession, "it's often I seen the regiment marchin' into the town, jist as you saw it last night, acushla. Oh, voch, but it makes my heart sore to think iv them days; they were pleasant times, sure enough; but is not it terrible, avick, to think its what it was the ghost of the rigiment you seen? The Lord betune us an' harm, for it was nothing else, as sure as I'm sittin' here." When he mentioned the peculiar physiognomy and figure of the old officer who rode at the head of the regiment

"That," said the old crone, dogmatically, "was ould Colonel Grimshaw, the Lord presarve us! he's buried in the churchyard iv Chapelizod, and well I remember him, when I was a young thing, an' a cross ould floggin' fellow he was wid the men, an' a devil's boy among the girls-rest his soul!"

"Amen!" said Peter; "it's often I read his tomb-stone myself; but he's a long time dead."

"Sure, I tell you he died when I was no more nor a slip iv a girl-the Lord betune us and harm !"

"I'm afeard it is what I'm not long for this world myself, afther seeing such a sight as that," said Peter, fearfully.

Nonsinse, avourneen," retorted his grandmother, indignantly, though she had herself misgivings on the subject; "sure there was Phil Doolan, the ferryman, that seen black Ann Scanlan in his own boat, and what harm ever kem of it?"

Peter proceeded with his narrative, but when he came to the description of the house, in which his adventure had had so sinister a conclusion, the old woman was at fault.

"I know the house and the ould walls well, an' I can remember the time there was a roof on it, and the doors an' windows in it, but it had a bad name about being haunted, but by who, or for what, I forget intirely."

"Did you ever hear was there goold or silver there?" he inquired.

"No, no, avick, don't be thinking

about the likes; take a fool's advice, and never go next or near them ugly black walls again the longest day you have to live; an' I'd take my davy, it's what it's the same word the priest himself I'd be afther sayin' to you if you wor to ax his raverence consarnin'

it, for it's plain to be seen it was nothing good you seen there, and there's neither luck nor grace about it."

Peter's adventure made no little noise in the neighbourhood, as the reader may well suppose; and a few evenings after it, being on an errand to old Major Vandeleur, who lived in a snug old-fashioned house, close by the river, under a perfect bower of ancient trees, he was called on to relate the story in the parlour.

The Major was, as I have said, an old man; he was small, lean, and upright, with a mahogany complexion, and a wooden inflexibility of face; he was a man, besides, of few words, and if he was old, it follows plainly that his mother was older still. Nobody could guess or tell how old, but it was admitted that her own generation had long passed away, and that she had not a competitor left. She had French blood in her veins, and although she did not retain her charms quite so well as Ninon de l'Enclos, she was in full possession of all her mental activity, and talked quite enough for herself and the Major.

"So, Peter," she said, "you have seen the dear, old Royal Irish again in the streets of Chapelizod. Make him a tumbler of punch, Frank; and Peter, sit down, and while you take it let us have the story."

Peter accordingly, seated near the door, with a tumbler of the nectarian stimulant steaming beside him, proceeded with marvellous courage, con

sidering they had no light but the uncertain glare of the fire, to relate with minute particularity his awful adventure. The old lady listened at first with a smile of goodnatured incredulity; her cross-examination touching the drinking-bout at Palmerstown had been teazing, but as the narrative proceeded she became attentive, and at length absorbed, and once or twice she uttered ejaculations of pity or awe. When it was over, the old lady looked with a somewhat sad and stern abstraction on the table, patting her cat assiduously meanwhile, and then suddenly looking upon her son, the Major, she said

"Frank, as sure as I live he has seen the wicked Captain Devereux.” The Major uttered an inarticulate expression of wonder.

"The house was precisely that he has described. I have told you the story often, as I heard it from your dear grandmother, about the poor young lady he ruined, and the dreadful suspicion about the little baby. She, poor thing, died in that house heart-broken, and you know he was shot shortly after in a duel."

This was the only light that Peter ever received respecting his adventure. It was supposed, however, that he still clung to the hope that treasure of some sort was hidden about the old house, for he was often seen lurking about its walls, and at last his fate overtook him, poor fellow, in the pursuit; for climbing near the summit one day, his holding gave way, and he fell upon the hard uneven ground, fracturing a leg and a rib, and after a short interval died, and he, like the other heroes of these true tales, lies buried in the little churchyard of Chapelizod.

WHEN we look abroad upon the world of nature and of man, we find both full of diversities and ever changing. Night and day are not more dissimilar than land and sea. The ever-burning Tropics, and the eternal ice of the Poles, seem to belong to different planets. The barren sands of Cobi, the stony deserts of Arabia, are appalling contrasts to the gigantic luxuriance of the impenetrable forest-wildernesses of Southern America; the level waterless plains of the Steppes of Tartary, or the Pampas of Brazil, resemble in nothing the cloud-capt snowy peaks of the Himalayas and Andes. So, also, in the endless diversities of mankind, we seem rather to behold differences of origin than modi. fications of the same human family. Cross but the mountain-chain that girdles your native land, and you may find yourself among the Babel-voices of an unknown tongue; where your God is a mystery and your religion contemned; where diversity of interest, antagonism of temperament, make your countrymen hated as enemies; in fine, where all the associations of life, all the external habits, all the internal emotions, which constitute the individuality of men or nations, find no counterpart. Embark on the stormy Atlantic, that laves the rich homes of the fair-skinned sons of Japhet, and you may land among the jetty woolly-haired children of Ham, poor and naked as the sands whereon they dwell. Embark on the Pacific pass from the thinly-peopled regions of Western America and Australia, where the old population is dying out, and the new one is pregnant with the energy and fervid aspirations of youthand you may land in the denselypeopled Empire of China, where the natives have lived on unchanged since the Flood, under institutions that have grown grey beneath the flight of four thousand years; where age has not yet induced decay, and where the phenomenon appears of a nation at once the youngest and the oldest that imagination can conceive.

Variety in nature is at once pleasing and profitable; but where, it may be

asked, is the advantage of variety in man? Does it not sow dissension, impede communication, and arrest the genial efforts of philanthropy? Yes; but these evils will die out ere the grand cycle of the world be closed. These diversities may impede for a while the march of civilisation, but they will be swallowed up in its triumph, and increase the splendour of its reign. If we look back on the history of our race, this diversity, seemingly obstructive of human progress, will be seen to be in truth its greatest promoter. Truth, indeed, is one; but mankind have never reached it save through the thousand paths of error. And as each nation forms civil, religious, and political institutions for itself, a hundred-fold more experiments in the Art of Life are thus originated than if the only kingdoms had been continents, and the only nations races. In the Mongolian world, for instance, where only one empire has existed from the beginning, and one path in civilisation has alone been tried there, unexcited by rivalry with other nations, and un-. taught by their experience, the human mind has slumbered on at mediocrity, and has never attained the perfection which has sprung up among the particoloured kingdoms of Europe. More over, dwelling in separate and diverse countries, each tribe of the human family acquires physical and moral qualities in some measure peculiar to itself; and thus are prepared prerequisites for the intercommunication of varied knowledge, and the elements of that mingling of race and blood which in all ages has produced the noblest nations. The Greeks, the Romans, the English-these are the powers which have most widely and most durably influenced the world's history; which have fixed on themselves the gaze of the philosopher, the poet, the politician, to the end of time; and it is precisely in these na. tions that the ethnographer discovers the greatest concourse of tribes, the greatest mingling of blood. Compare the pure Celt of Western Ireland and the Hebrides with the lively gallant Parisian, in whose veins mingles the

blood of the Gaul and the Roman, of the Burgundian, the Frank, and the Northman, and say how mighty the difference between the indolent halfsavage of our western districts, and the polished Celt who, seated at Paris, rules with his opinions the best half of Europe.

When we look upon some nations, sunk in the indolence and ignorance of barbarism, or debased by the selfishness and corruptions of an erroneous civilisation, we are tempted to find fault with a system which seems to condemn a portion of the human race to a career of marked inferiority or of positive degradation. But how infinitely worse if the reverse of all this were established; if all nations were alike timid and inoffensive as the Hindoos, or cruel and devastating like the Tartar-warlike as the Romans or peaceful as the Chinese-innovating like the Frank or conservative as the Asiatic-colonising like the Teuton, or sedentary as the Celt. It is this diversity which accelerates the progress of humanity. The hundred different nations of the earth cause mankind to live a hundred times faster. They are the steeds which hurry on the car of civilisation; they are a hundred searchers the more after the mirror of truth. Enlightened by knowledge from all quarters of the globe, man looks abroad as from a high tower, and beholds his brethren toiling at a thousand experiments in the art of life. Here he sees them in travail with some grand idea, working it out for the immediate benefit of themselves, but for the permanent benefit of all;— ;-there, convulsed and agonised in the grasp of suffering, or emerging wiser and better from the ruins of error; now, grasping firmly some long-sought and hard-won truth, now painfully retracing their steps from the pursuit of some alluring phantom. By their success he learns where to venture-by their failure, when to forbear.

They

are buoys on an untried sea, beacons on an unknown shore, warning mankind of the dangers which beset their path, or lighting them in safety to the distant haven.

But, as if to prove the ephemeracy of human things, even these self-propagating agents of civilisation cannot escape the doom of mortality. Nations themselves, of all sublunary things the most enduring-which the flight

of centuries should only render more powerful, and time itself only make more populous-perish at times utterly, or sink for ever from the world's history. Not to mention the extinction of savage tribes before the march of civilisation, and passing over the old empires of America-the powerful kingdom of the Aztecs in Mexico, and the golden prosperity of the Incas of Peru, which, like beautiful myths, perished the moment the light of history was let in upon them-the chroni cles of the Old World sufficiently illustrate the sad tale of national extinction or decline. Where are the old nations of the Orient, among whom civilisation and the arts sprang up while earth was yet moist from the Deluge-those mighty nations who left their name as a byword in the world for wealth and splendour, whose science seemed to succeeding ages a mystery too deep to be revealed, and who, though the spider has woven its web in their palaces for three thousand years, have left in their ruins monuments which all the marvels of modern science can hardly rival, and which the present inhabitants of the land behold aghast as the works of deeves and genii? The myriads of Nineveh and Egypt have perished utterly; the divine race of Hellas, diminished in numbers and extinct in fame, are now mere cumberers of the ground which their ancestors made beautiful and glorious. The old Romans are extinct, and the second era of Italian glory was due to the mixed offspring of barbaric invasion. Thus, not seldom, in the hour of a nation's dissolution, a successor emerges phoenix-like from its ashes the same wise Providence, which ordained the separation of mankind at Babel, originates new nations from time to time, to supply the place of the effete or the destroyed. But it is only at long intervals that a nation is born into the world; still more rarely can we discern in the embryo the signs of a gigantic maturity. Since the time when the hordes of Mahomet II. poured through the breaches of Byzantium, and from the thousands of the female captives, and from the daughters of Greece and the Caucasus who ever since then have filled the harems of the conquerors, the present Turco-European race grew up between the Ionian and Egean seas, there has been no hymen of the nations, and no