that statement with the statement that you now make, that you called at Valetta ?",

"Oh, my lord," said his opponent, springing in triumph to his feet, “I thought (as if he had not got the information himself at the moment) that every child in court knew that Valetta was the capital of Malta;" and he sat down, and the counsel for the defendant sat down too, for he saw the mistake into which he had fallen.

The story was told at dinner on that evening, when the plaintiff's counsel's acting was declared to be inimitable, and was laughed at by all parties, for, be it remembered, that whatever feelings of jealousy or irritation are stirred up by their morning's zeal are invariably allayed at their evening meetings. At the bar, not alone has an esprit de corps its place, but a brotherly love exists which many a religious community might do well to follow. The drinking and duelling of former days are now merely a matter of history. Of the trials which have occurred on the circuit since 1830, we have not (except in one or two instances) spoken; but there was one during that time which would have rivalled, if not eclipsed, in interest the trials of early times. Its relation, however, would offend living men, and we shall merely say that it was a question whether the defendant, owner of vast estates in the province of Connaught, was or was not the son of the last proprietor. If he were his son, and the jury found that he was, then he was entitled to the possession of those estates. This was not a question of illegitimacy, it was not a question of a faithless wife pawning on her husband her son by another man, but it was a

question whether his wife had assumed the appearance of pregnancy, and, watching the confinement of another woman, took from that woman her child, which she then passed off as her own. Nor did the unfounded allegation stop here. It was alleged, too, that within a couple of years after this transaction, this wife, again assuming the appearance of pregnancy, found another child at the door of a foundling hospital, and pawned this child also upon her husband. It will be for some future writer to tell of how these questions were tried many times upon the circuit, how jury after jury, until the last trial, disagreed, and how thousands and thousands of pounds were spent in litigation.

Reader, we must now part. We have studied together the bistory of the Connaught Circuit from its foundation, and we have learned how much there was of worth, how much there was of which to be proud in its barristers of ancient times. It would not be becoming to lead you farther, because to do so would be to bring you into the company of living men. To praise

the living, even where praise is due, might look like adulation; and to dispraise the living, if such were needful, would give pain. This latter motive, indeed, can not operate; for we know not whom to censure. Public spirit-the spirit of their profession, the spirit of honour-were never more alive in the hearts of their predecessors than they are to-day in those of the living members of the Connaught bar. Need it be said, then, how willingly friendship would record the achievments of these men, amongst whom our best years have been spent, if we did not dread that, hereafter, some might say that

CHAPTER I.

In a country town of a remote shire dwelt, many years ago, a family consisting of a father, mother, and three daughters; the latter of the several ages of twenty, eighteen, and sixteen.

With the two elder my story has little to do-they married when their time came, well and happily, to their own, as also their parents' satisfaction, and being, fortunately for themselves, of placid, passionless temperaments, fulfilled their duties as good wives and mothers, and were in fine respectable members of society.

The character of Ellen, the youngest, was, however, of a different stamp from her sisters; but before proceeding to describe her, I must first inform my readers who and what her father was.

Mr. Irwell was the leading solicitor in the town of Eand to the profits accruing from a large and constantly increasing county practice, added that of money lender sub rosa, at rather a high rate of interest, to gentry and tradespeople; indeed it was considered not so easy a matter to get out of Mark Irwell's hands, once a person was unfortunate enough to get into them-not, however, that the least shadow of overreaching could be attributed to him; he was upright in all his dealings, yet hard and avaricious withal, never sparing a debtor, but always exacting to the uttermost mite his due, not a penny beyond it. In his dark saturnine

nature there was, notwithstanding, one soft corner, one ray of light brightening an otherwise rugged atmosphere-I mean his passionate love for his youngest child, whom he idolized as the very apple of his eye; and she was, in truth, worthy of all the love the fondest parent could bestow.

Of the middle height, Ellen Irwell's form was faultless. Slight and graceful as a young gazelle, she moved in the morning of her loveliness, shedding sunshine and light around her path. The masses of dark hair that hung in luxuriant clusters round her face lent a deeper tint to the rich olive of her complexion, and the lustre of her deep brown liquid eyes, now beaming with merriment, at other times a tender softness stealing into their depths, disclosing the world of passionate feeling that lay beneath. The somewhat foreign mould of her face she inherited from her mother, whose ancestors were of Spanish origin; but the beauty of Mrs. Irwell was of a more stately type than her daughter's. Both were fondly attached to, and resembled each other in character. Beloved by father, mother, and sisters, Ellen Irwell ran a fair chance of being spoiled: but no amount of indulgence could injure that frank and generous disposition.

Some few years previous to the time at which my tale commences, Mr. Irwell had been appointed guardian to the two sons of a gentleman of large property in the neighbourhood. Though totally