is now perched, on that bird's-nest ledge, there the bleeding hand lay, and the red mark is said to be there, though I have never seen it, unto this very day.

'Huzza for M'Donnell, Dunluce is our own,
For spite of M'Quillan, the castle is won.'

Such was the cry of the Scotchmen as they landed, and so it was that even the Irish gave it in favour of the foreigner, who, at the expense of his limb, won the prize, and long and many a day the Scotchmen held it, until he became a good Irishman, and to this hour you may see a bloody hand painted in the middle of Lord Antrim's coat-of-arms.”

VIII.

FROM Dunluce we travelled southward to Coleraine, a remarkably neat and pretty town, and thence by Limavady to Londonderry, a part of Ireland abounding in rural beauty, and wearing more the look of England than any other that I had seen. From the hill by which we descended to Derry, the view was like one of an illuminated city, several large factories, with a bright light streaming from every window, standing opposite to us, and the hill within the walls showing apparently a light in every house. We entered the city over a bridge, built by a townsman of my own, Lemuel Cox, of Boston, United States, another of whose bridges I had crossed at Wexford. This over the Foyle is a wooden structure, one thousand and sixty-two feet in length, and considered here a great curiosity.

Londonderry occupies the sides and summit of a steep promontory, almost peninsulated by a noble sweep of the smooth, deep Foyle, whose waters glide majestically on towards a broad estuary, where they are mingled with the ocean. The old town is included within the walls, and entered by the ancient gates, still entire, while the gradual increase of population and commercial prosperity have occasioned an extension of the city avenues to a distance beyond them. The steepness of the ascent from the water's edge to the summit of the hill, particularly up the ShipQuay Street, is so great, as to be nearly impracticable by carriages, or, at all events, to be highly dangerous; and they tell a tale of the respectable inhabitants of this old-fashioned street, that when they visited each other in the winter-season, their

passage was accomplished by self-moving sledges; a form turned upside down having once conveyed a group returning from an evening party, in safety and with expedition, to the foot of the hill. The Diamond, so the central square, or marketplace, is generally called, is the regulating point from which the other streets emanate; and here the town-hall and reading-rooms are erected. Some of the buildings appropriated to the public business are handsome; all are spacious and convenient. The court-house, a fine elevation in the Grecian style, is after a design by Bowden; the principal front displays much grandeur and beauty, but the lateral entrances and fronts are in a very inferior manner. The old palace, the grammarschool, and lunatic asylum, possess no architectural elegance, but are built after liberal and useful designs. On the apex of the hill of Derry stands the church, which is both parochial and capitular: it is a venerable structure, in the pointed style, with finials and graduated battlements, but, incongruously enough as a cathedral, finished with a tower and spire. Within are preserved standards, and trophies, and other relics of the bravery of their ancestors, and of the memorable defence made by the citizens.

Early in the reign of James I., a considerable part of the province of Ulster was vested in the crown, by the attainder of the Roman Catholic families of distinction, and a colonization of the forfeited estates was then suggested to the king by the lord-treasurer, Salisbury. His majesty, conceiving the city of London to be the best qualified to effect so great an object, on the 28th of January, 1609, permitted an agreement to be entered into, between commissioners for the city, and the lords of the privy council, whereby the towns and liberties of Derry and Coleraine, with the “salmon and eel fisheries of the rivers Bann and Foyle, and all other kind of fishing in the river Foyle, so far as the river floweth, and in the Bann to Lough Neagh, should be in perpetuity to the city;" that the liberties of Londonderry should extend three miles every way; with numerous other privileges and conditions, included in twenty-seven articles of agreement. In 1613, the society of the new plantation of Ulster was incorporated; and from this date Derry has been the property of the city of London.

In the wars of William and James, Derry, from the number of its Protestant inhabitants, was looked on with suspicion by one party, and partiality by the other. Hither the Protestants of the north retreated as to a sanctuary; and the improvident precaution of Lord Tyrconnel, in withdrawing Mountjoy's regiment from the place, produced the unhappy effect of augmenting the breach between the contending parties. The lord-deputy had directed that Lord Antrim's regiment, consisting wholly of Roman Catholics, men " tall and terrible of aspect," should immediately take up their quarters here, and overcome the Protestants of the north; but dilatoriness in the execution of his measures, and the advance of the ferocious

looking body being communicated to the citizens, by Philips, of Newtown Limavady, the gates were closed against the advanced-guard that had arrived within three hundred yards of the walls.

In the history of the siege of Derry, the particulars of the closing of the gates are thus given. "A letter was dropt at Cumber, in the county of Down, where the Earl of Mount Alexander resided, dated December 3d, 1688, informing that nobleman, that on Sunday, the 9th of that month, the Irish throughout the whole island, in pursuance of an oath which they had taken, were to rise and massacre the Protestants, men, women, and children, and warning him to take particular care of himself, as a captain's commission would be the reward of the man who would murder him." There was no name subscribed to this letter, and the bad writing and low style of it, seemed to argue that it was penned by one of the lowest of the natives.

A copy of this letter was sent by William Coningham, Esq., from Belfast, enclosed in one of his own, to George Canning, Esq., of Garvagh, in the county of Londonderry. Mr. Canning, whose father had been cruelly murdered at his own house in that place, on the commencement of the massacre of 1641, sent this letter with the utmost expedition to Alderman Tomkins, in Derry, according to the strict injunctions of Mr. Coningham. A gentleman meeting with this messenger on the way, was informed of the contents of the despatches, and sent the information to George Philips, of Newtown Limavady, on the 6th of December, on which day a part of the Earl of Antrim's new regiment arrived there on its way to Londonderry. Mr. Philips, then in his ninetieth year, with a promptness to be expected in a veteran highly distinguished through the whole of the preceding civil wars, sent a messenger at midnight to the city, with an account of what had been communicated to him, and to acquaint his friends there what description of guests they were likely to have on the ensuing day. He wrote to them, that instead of six or eight companies of Irish Papists and Scottish Highlanders of the same religion, as had been reported, this regiment consisted of about double the number, attended by a multitude of women and boys.

At an early hour next morning, Mr. Philips sent another messenger to Londonderry, expressing his increased apprehension of the consequences of suffering this regiment to enter the city, and advising the citizens to look to their safety. The messenger, who was charged with the delivery of the letter, told them, that he had left some of the foremost companies within two miles of the town, the rest being on their way.

The Protestant inhabitants were terrified; several of them assembled in groups through the streets. The APPRENTICE BOYS, with a mob of the lower orders along with them, muttered something about shutting the gates; they got some