left it there for her to find when he should be gone? And might not a part of his strangeness have been caused by the fact that no answer came to him? Was it not providential that just now, when all entanglements were being smoothed out, that this also should be made clear! She felt that the letter was a message

for her.

Without stopping to reason, and without a dream that she had no right to read the note, she unfolded and read it.

It was a passionate protestation of love toward one who had doubted him; but the second glance showed that it was not for her, though she was referred to in it. "If it be true, as you think, that my cousin loves me, it is an affection so calm and controlled that it will never trouble her. She has not your temperament. But perhaps you mistake."

Laying this letter out on the table, Clara searched for some sign of the one to whom it had been written, and found but too many. Here and there, in a dozen places, the name of Mrs. M'Cloud was plainly stamped on the paper.

She closed the book, and rising, walked slowly to and fro, recollecting and understanding all. Her face pale with the sudden. shock and revulsion of feeling, her lip curling with scorn and disgust, her smooth brow drawn by a slight frown, she paced the chamber noiselessly, and studied out the whole story of what had been concealed from her. There were no longer any mysteries. "He said rightly," she said to herself, "my love for him will not trouble me."

"It was a providence, indeed, my finding that letter," she thought awhile after.

As she walked there she stripped away from what had seemed love all its illusions, tones, words, glances, half-caresses, all the countless fascinations of manner which entangle the fancystripped them off, not angrily, but with a firm hand. There was no love beneath. Its frail life had gone out while she read that letter. Or if it had been stronger, she would have set her foot upon it. A dishonoured man was not for her, who had kept her honour. She understood virtue otherwise.

After standing long in deep thought, she roused herself with a sigh. "And Albert Fronset knew this, yet would have let me— perhaps-marry Francis!" she said. He has, then, ceased to

care for me."

(To be contined.)

THE POET.

The sovereign singer's mood is like a sky
Of cloudy, luminous harmony;
Aloft, Imagination

Breathes on its central sunny-visioned throne;
Beneath, a silent ocean

Of manifold emotion,
Awaiting the creative breath
To image every phase

Of life's wide varied days,
In tempest gloom or sunny blaze,
Or starry, sorrowing infinite of death.

Now he strikes a stormy measure
Through the dark electric air,
Charioting in epic gloom;

Now, floating in the sensuous sleep
Of sunclouds spread along the deep,
He waves a golden plume,
Chanting dreams of love's sweet leisure,
Passion-tongued and rare:

In visioned trance careers the past
Among the imperial ruins of old Time;
Or, spirit-like, sublime,

Vibrates the nobler future in his rhyme,
Soaring 'mid solemn splendours of the vast-
A soul with space for its domain,
Subject and condition of its reign;
With nature and existence in all moods
Associate, vivifying where it broods;
Transmuting into sound the tidal floods
Of feeling harmonized, or passion's storms
In grand or sweet symmetric forms;
But, unlike nature's, a spirit-enchanted sca,
Incapable of monotony.

Wonder-winged, now it urges
Sunward fancy's golden surges,
Now in shadowy monotone,

Thunder, or winter ocean's moan,

Or mountain wood tempestuous: now emerges 'Mid zones of summer ocean-paradises

Of tropic odour and of sunny spices;

Vibrating all the soul can feel, in sound
Ethereal, without bound,

Owning th' extemporizing spell
O'er every mood of happiness or hell;
Kin to the universal,

Its rehearsal

Of beauty, order, love and energy,

Passion and sorrow, vibrates like the light
'Twixt star and star-its home, the Infinite.

T. C. IRWIN.

RICHARD BOYLE, FIRST EARL OF CORK.

1. Budgell's " Memoirs of the Lives and Characters of the Illustrious Family of the Boyles." 1737.

2.

"State Letters of Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery; with the Life of the Earl.” By Morrice." 1743.

3.

4.

H. Ryland. 1824.

"Researches in the South of Ireland." By G. Crofton Croker. "Historical Sketch of the County and City of Waterford, &c."

1824.

Edited by Rev. R

5. History of the County and City of Cork." By the Rev. C. B. Gibson, M.R.I.A. 1861.

THE century which elapsed between 1588 and 1688 is, perhaps, the most important and interesting in the modern history of Ireland. Its commencement is marked by the destruction of the Spanish Armada; its close by the advent of William III. The intervening period saw the legal extinction of the Brehon law, and of the customs of gavelkind and tanistry, and the universal establishment, for the first time throughout this island, of the English common and statute law. Within that period are comprised the plantation of Ulster by James; the transplantation into Connaught by Cromwell; the settlement of parliamentarian soldiers and adventurers; and the final settlement under Charles II. In that period, too, the late Church establishment took its permanent shape and form; its ample revenues and surpassing dignities were assured, and the penal code was developed and almost matured. In other words, a land system and Church system, the two informing principles of national life, were within this period imposed by force on an unwilling people. If we would then intelligently discuss the two great questions of land and Church in their relations to our 1. tional life at present, we should study and dispassionately examine the history of the eventful century ending with the advent of William.

Sir John Davies remarks:-"To give laws unto a people; to institute magistrates and officers over them; to punish and pardon malefactors; to have the sole authority of making war and peace, and the like, are true marks of sovereignty, which

Henry II. had not in the Irish countries; but the Irish lords did still retain all these prerogatives themselves. For they governed the people by the Brehon law; they made their own magistrates and officers; they pardoned and punished all malefactors within their several countries; they made war and peace, one with another, without controlment; and this they did not only during the reign of King Henry II. but afterwards in all times, even until the reign of Queen Elizabeth." The learned author goes on to explain, in a lucid and most instructive narrative, why, during the centuries which clapsed from the conquest until the reign of that queen, Ireland had never been subdued, and wherefore the native Irish, as between themselves were left to their own devices, and as between themselves and the English were treated as aliens and enemies.

The state of things represented by Sir John Davies-was all changed in Elizabeth's reign. She poured into the country an army of 20,000 men, commanded by experienced officers of approved valour and ability, and kept it up to the standard of efficiency during her entire reign. The civil service of the crown was administered by trained and tried statesmen, and the watchful eye of the sovereign was ever prying into, and her ear was ever open to hostile reports concerning the conduct of her most highly-placed, as well as of her most subordinate servants. During her time she encountered and overcame three formidable rebellions as wars with the natives or quasi-natives were calledthose of Shane O'Neil, of Desmond, and of Tyrone; and at her death she left the Irish land a fair and a open field whereon her successor might work his unbridled will.

One result of the Desmond rebellion there was, which through all the succeeding century affected and gave colour to the conduct of England towards Ireland. I allude to the forfeiture of more than half a million of acres which followed the death of the great rebel in 1583. The news of this rich "find" sent a thrill of delight and excitement through those classes which furnish the world's adventurers. The discovery in our day of the Australian gold-fields was not more operative on the masses than the prospect of escheats, and of new estates to be carved out of the fair fields of Ireland, was on the minds of the English squircarchy. From this time forward every rebel was weighed in the balance according to the amount of territory to be disposed of on his attainder, and the assurance of his guilt was in proportion to the greatness of his possessions.

On the outbreak of the rebellion of 1641, before it had extended beyond the borders of Ulster, the English parliament passed the Act 17th Charles I., whereby 2,500,000 acres of land were declared forfeited in Ireland, and which enacted that these acres should be offered for sale at fixed rates in London and the surrounding districts. One of the notable clauses in the Act pro

vides, that the lands are to be taken from the four provinces in equal proportions, that is, one-fourth from each; though at the time when it received the royal assent, there was no rebel outside Ulster, and there not one convicted. Again, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt but that Parsons and Borlase, who were lords justices at the opening of the rebellion, goaded the Catholics of the Pale into insurrection, and refused all terms of accommodation in view of the splendid forfeitures which awaited suppression by the sword. Such were some of the fruits of the Desmond forfeitures. Another product of this time was the sudden rise. into importance of the office of Escheator. The word escheat is supposed to be derived from a Norman-French verb signifying "to change." Dr. Johnson, probably in a fit of spleen, says, that it comes from the practice of cheating, universally attributed to the holder of the office in question. Each province in Ireland had its escheator and his deputy. The ancient importance of the office is still attested by the fact that the Escheatorship of Munster stands in the same relationship to Irish members of parliament as the stewardship of the Chiltren Hundreds does to English members. So late as the year 1858, by the 21st & 22nd of Vic., chap. 110, the offices of Steward of the Chiltren Hundreds and of Escheator of Munster are excepted from the operation of its provisions. The duties of the post consisted in looking after forfeited lands, overhauling title-deeds, prying into patents, and hunting out monastic possessions and what were technically called concealed lands, that is to say, lands which had been forfeited to the crown, but had escaped identification and seizure. These officers and their deputies had very large powers of adding to the public revenue by legal means, or of reaping a harvest of private gain by unconscionable methods. We quote the following passage from that upright witness, Sir John Davies, both because it illustrates our position and also throws a lurid light on the opening carcer of the subject of our present memoir, Richard Boyle :

"These deputy-escheators," writes King James's Attorney-General, “make a suggestion that they are able to find many titles for the crown, and obtain a commission to enquire for all wards, marriages, escheats, concealments, forfeitures, and the like. If this commission were well executed and returned, they were good servitors. But what do they do? They retire themselves into some corner of the counties, and in some obscure village execute their commission; and there, having a simple or suborned jury, find one man's land concealed, another man's land forfeited for non-payment of rent, another man's land holden of the crown in capite and no livery sued, and the like. This being done, they never return their commission, but send for the parties and compound with them, and so defraud the crown, and make a booty and a spoil upon the country; so that we may conjecture by what means one that was lately an escheator's clerk is now owner of so much land here, as few of the lords of Ireland may compare with him."

The escheator's clerk here referred to is the Richard Boyle who founded a powerful family, extensively allied himself, by the marriage of his children, with the best blood of England, and