ther's side at the close of the massacre, I again secured the house, and darted off after the assassins. "Well, sir, to cut short the history, for to you who are not of the pays, it may appear tedious, we adopted the orphan boy for our own. At that time, to be the child of a ci-devant, was a bad certificate; and, though it went to my soul to call the babe ours-for we had been but four months married, and my wife's good name was dear to me-to all who were hold enough to say, Pierre, is the child thine?' I answered, 'the child is mine.' And so," continued the crayfish-catcher, passing his hand across his eyes, "my father's old chair was removed from beside the hearth, and I wove a wickercradle for the orphan to supply its place. To be sure, many in the village must have known that the babe was none of ours; but it was given out that all had perished in the flames at Luzières, and I doubt whether any at Etiolles guessed whence we had the infant; more especially when, year after year, as little Albert grew up among us, they saw us working for him as our own, and loving him as our own; for we did love him. Parents could not have loved him better!" "Were you ever a father, Pierre, that you venture to say that?" inquired I. "Hem! No! and I sometimes thank God for it: ay! even now that we are left alone in our old age; for with children of my own, I should have had no right to do all I did for Albert. You should have seen him, sir; what a noble young creature it grew under Madelaine's rearing! At six years old, not a lad in the village could hold head against Albert! When I saw the ruins of the Château de Luzières sold as national property, and the fine avenues cut down, and the gardens made grazing ground, and the fish- pond dried up, and the woods destroyed, I own I could not help sometimes grieving that the little fellow should be deprived of what, after all, was his birthright. And many's the time I have had him kneel down and pray beside me, on a green nook among the plantain trees, where I had taken up my pick, a day or two after the fire, and laid all that I could make out as the remains of my father and the poor foolish Marchioness. I dug but one grave for them, sir! Think what would have been her rage, had any one whispered to her, during her living days, that her last restingplace would be beside that of Pierre of Luzières. "Well! better times were coming! The mad and the bad were slain in their turn; the blood-thirsty became at length satiated; and at last every man's thoughts seemed to turn upon repairing the mischief that had been done. Ere the waters of the deluge subsided, a mighty name was floating upon their troubled surface. It was that of a great hero; and we became a martial nation! Had it been that of a great statesman, we might perhaps have become a commercial one; for, in truth, we were inclined to follow any one who was inclined to lead, with promises of guiding us to happier times. We had wars and battles, ay! and victories, faster than I could count them. But I had other work on hand! We quitted the farm of Luzières when it became a stranger's property, (and, in sooth, the very walls bore with them a host of painful recollections!) and with the amount of my father's savings and my own, purchased the cot that had once been tenanted by Bertin, wherein Madelaine was born, and wherein I still abide; a poor place, you will say, but my own; a home for me, and a home for Madelaine when I shall be no more. And there it was that Albert grew np upon our knees. "It was not till he was about ten years old, sir, that I began to regret I had not the means of giving him as much book-learning as became the blood that was in his veins. By that time, the hero of the nation had grown tired of being a hero, and got himself anointed Emperor; and many emigrants had leave to return; and, among the rest, one who called himself heir to the last Marquis of St Aignan. To hear this, made Madelaine and me jealous in our minds. We had taught the boy all we knew-it was not much crayfish-catching and basket-weaving were not for the like of him; and we had even gone poorly clad, and poorly fed, that Monsieur le Curé (the very curés were back again!) might add to the amount of his knowledge. Even that, I fancy, was not much; and one day when we went to fetch Albert home, as usual, the curé, who, from his office in the Confessional, knew what was the real parentage of the child, told us we had no right to trifle with Albert's claims, and that we must take him to Paris and reveal all to his family. It was a sore day for us to make up our mind! Madelaine cried and sobbed, as I had not seen her cry since my father's death; for we loved the boy so dearly, that we fancied every one else must love him as we did, and be mad-eager to take him from us! "Not a bit! For all we could do, or all we could swear, the great lord to whom we addressed ourselves, persisted that it was proved, by the procès verbal of the burning of the Château de Luzières, the Marchioness and her infant had perished in the conflagration; and instead of providing for Albert's education, as we expected, he ordered us all three to be thrust out of his hotel into the street, as impostors! It was the happiest evening I ever spent, that on which we got back to Etiolles after this fruitless attempt! We had done our duty to the lad, and the repulse we had met with seemed to render him our own for ever. After rejecting his cousin in the face of his whole establishment, the head of the family could not claim him from us; and never did I see Madelaine caress his curly head so fondly, or call him her own so tenderly as then." "We must content ourselves with less for him," said she. "If Albert do not grow up so learned as the clerk of the peace at Corbeil, he will know more than we knew before him; yet we are better respected in the village than even was his father the Marquis!" "With this reasoning, I was forced to content myself; and one must have been difficult indeed not to have been contented with Albert! He was so handsome, so frank, so humane, so laborious, so gay! And what I loved best in him was, that, though he was well acquainted with his origin, (for how could Madelaine keep such a secret from our nursling?) he never seemed to desire that the mystery should be cleared up." and when Albert whispered to me as I waved my old bonnet de police to the cry of Vive l'Empereur-The rich manufacturer of Essonne has offered three hundred Napoleons for a substitute for his son-the money would make a rare dowry for our dear Madelaine!' I could not help replying, Nom d'une bombe! I should like to shew the Corsican's men how the vieux moustaches of Louis XVI, were put through the movements! Albert! my boy, I will bear thee company in thy first campaign.' "You will think that my project met with opposition from my wife? Not a whit! It will be but the further embittering of my tears!' was all she said. The time of the boy's absence must be a time of agony; and I can better bear to be without thee, Pierre, than to think that he, so young, so rash, so tenderly reared by my weak fondness, will be alone, unguided, in the And so, sir, two fittings out were needed in lieu of one; and bequeathing Madelaine to the protection of God, and the counsel of the good curé who took charge of her little fortune, away we went for the army. "My family have cast me off," he would say― "I have henceforth none-no family, no friends, no benefactors but you, Love me still, and Albert will be happy; but strive to cause my recognition by the proud man who is willing to take the livery and wages of one whom he holds to be an usurper, and I shall fancy you are tired of your burthen, and grudge me my pro-hour of danger,' spect of tending you, and labouring for you in your old age, as you have tended and laboured for me in my childhood!" "There was no answering him! I loved him too dearly to attempt it! "I would fain linger in my story now, sir; for those were the happiest years of my life! There was sunshine under our roof, there was joy, there was promise. But though I grudge not my time the telling, your patience must be wasting. On, therefore, on to the end! "You may be sure that, loving Albert as we did, something was laid by, after the half-yearly payment of our contributions to the State, to make up a redemption-fee for our boy, when he, too, should be claimed for its service. This sum did we, for security-sake, lodge in the hands of a great notary at Corbeil. Security! ere the day arrived when Albert underwent the fate I had borne before him, of falling to the conscription, the guardian of our deposit had made a fraudulent bankruptcy; and because he saw fit to take himself off in his carriage to Hâvre and embark for America, the lad was fain to march off for the army of Germany! Poor Madelaine was like to break her heart; so young as he was to leave us, and for such a service! For all this chanced not till victory had grown weary of hovering over the eagles of France. "You may guess that the spirit of the lad blazed forth when we reached head-quarters! Wounded in the very first action, the sight of his own blood, spilt by the white coats, seemed to put the very devil into his young heart. He got the name of the Lutin in the regiment, from the pranks he was ever playing, even when the cannon boomed over our heads. But his pranks did not prevent him from being a good soldier; and they loved a lightsome-hearted lad in those days; the great generals thought, somehow, that their folly put heart into the men. But, alas! the lucky hour of soldiership was over for France! Had Albert been born in time to follow the eagle over the Alps, or along the Danube, or across the sea to the Pyramids, there would soon have been a ribbon at his button-hole, and an epaulet on his shoulder-for the soul of his great grandsire, the old Marquis who fought under Turenne, seemed to be within him, But the second year of our recruitment carried our gallant brigades into the bitter north, which was not made for our Heaven-favoured countrymen to abide in. Even I, a seasoned man, shrunk under the frosts of Moscow; and what were they to a delicate lad (he was scarce sixteen!) like Albert? Nevertheless, for a time, his high courage bore him up! The heavier our privations, the louder grew his laugh beside the bivouac fire, where the carcase of some half-starved horse "Albert, in spite of his struggle to disguise his joy, for fear of giving us pain, was full of glee at his opening prospects of distinction, for still there lived the saying among the people, that every French conscript, on quitting his village, bore in his knapsack the truncheon of a was roasting for our supper. But that laugh field-marshal! And so, by way of cheering up grew hollow as well as loud; and there was a Madelaine's heart on the eve of his departure, I clear brightness in his eyes which was more sang our old canteen songs, and told our old deadly to me to look upon, than the fire of the bivouac stories of Versailles; and related all I enemy. And then there came defeat-and after had learned of the glories of Marengo and Aus- defeat, retreat-and who does not know the terlitz-and how the dying grenadier's last calamities of a defeated and retreating army? moments on the field of battle had been cheered The lad was growing discouraged; and I used to by receiving the cloak of le petit Caporal to talk of home to him in our long, wearying, hungform his shroud. My blood was warm with wine, ering marches, as the trumpets are blown on and the sort of desperateness that wrings one's the field of battle to inspirit man and horse, breast into noise at parting with something loved; | And sometimes he tried to listen when I talked of the green alleys of the forest of Sénart, and the wild roses entangling its paths, and the green vineyards of Etiolles, and the soft-softsilver current of the Seine. But those soothing words did not prevent that there were wildernesses of snow around us, and the very atmosphere congealing over our heads! Mon père,' whispered the lad one night, as the blood burst from his ears and nostrils had I been a few years older, I might have borne it;—but 'tis only a veteran such as thou who can survive this trying time, to die upon the field of battle. Mon pere! mon bienfaiteur! forgive me for my weakness!" " For some minutes Pierre could not utter a syllable. To aid him in his story, I ventured to observe "And the time came, I fear, when he could drag his legs no further; and you were forced to leave poor Albert in the rear ?" "To abandon him," cried Pierre?"No! I do not deserve that you should think it of me! Abandon him?-no, no, no! When his strength utterly failed him, and still there was no chance but to march on, or fall into the hands of the enemy, I threw aside bag and baggage, and strapped the fainting child to my shoulders; (his weight was but as a feather;) and, after the first few hours, I did not dare speak to him to ask him how he fared, lest, peradventure, there should be no reply. And again, after a time, I thought his limbs grew more listless-and then stiff and then I murmured to myself—Madelaine-❘ Madelaine-how shall I tell thee of this?— and my murmurs were drowned by hoarse cries of march!' at every pause of the battalion, and by the grumblings of the men, with whom all hope was over! "At last one of them, an old comrade, hallooed to me,Pierre! fling aside thy burthen-thy labour is in vain! the boy is dead!' And I cursed him for the word, and would not listen! And another came and said, the corpse is heavy for thee-cast it down! Oh! God had they known what heaviness was in my heart! During the retreat from Moscow, Count Flahault, the husband of Lady Keith, carried, for some days, upon his shoulders, an old servant of his father's, who had followed him to the wars. "Even when I knew that he was surely surely gone, (for the locks of his hair grew frozen where his blessed head lay, stonelike, on my shoulder,) I bore him on and on; for I chose not to leave him for a prey to the wolves of the Borysthenes, and I knew that my hopes were gone, by the bursting forth of my words; for now I talked to him— now, again and again, I called upon him by name, as I tottered onwards through the snow, I had nothing more to learn from his silence! "That night, sir, I scooped away the snow, and dug my boy a grave on the outskirts of the village where we bivouacked for the night. 'Twas a rude place; but still 'twas within reach of a Christian bell. I knew it was! for all night I lay upon the grave; the striking of the church clock warning me, from hour to hour, that the precious minutes were passing I might remain with him! The word of command, when daylight came, sounded hoarse as the cry of a raven in my ears; and yet I dared not disobey the call, for it reminded me that Madelaine was waiting beside her hearthstone for tidings of those she loved." There are some mysteries of sorrow which it appears almost sacrilegious to explain; and I will therefore dwell no longer upon the sufferings of Pierre, or describe the scorching tears that poured from the old man's eyes, as I ventured to draw aside the veil by which they had been long concealed. On his return to Etiolles, it appeared the cure's abode had been sacked by the Prussians, and Pierre's old age made destitute as well as childless. Suzette, too, was dead. The old people were alone. "Yet you see we have borne it all!" he ejaculated, in conclusion; "and our days do not pass in tribulation, for we feel that the lapse of each brings us nearer to the lad. Yes!-we shall soon be with Albert, and, even now, I often fancy he is beside me, and commune with him by the river-side, where we used to labour together, or in the woods of Luzières, or in the forests of Sénart. You see, sir, God is merciful; he gave it to us to atone for our own expiation, the feeling of exultation with which I had beheld the execution of the Marquis; and still vouchsafe his protection and consolations, even to so humble a child of the dust as PIERRE L'ECREVISSIER." The afternoon grows dark betime; The night-winds ere the night are blowing; And cold grey mists from out the sea, Within the rooms are cold and dreary; That, screaming, round the window flitteth. That come with moaning and with sighing; Calling afar, and then replying. And now she paces through the room;— And then she stirs the sleeping fire, Sore marvelling why he thus delayeth. Unto the window now she goes, And looks into the evening chilly; She saw the misty moors afar, And sigheth, "Why cometh not my Willie ?" The gusty winds wail round about, The damps of evening make her shiver, And, in the pauses of the wind, She hears the rushing of the river. "Why cometh not my Willie home, Why comes he not?" the mother crieth: "The winds wail dismally to-night, And on the moors the grey fog lieth." She listens to a sound that comes She knows not whence, of sorrow tellingShe listens to the large black hound, That on the river side is yelling. The hound he sitteth by the stone- The mother listens eagerly The voice is as a doleful omen; "Rise up, my women, every one, And make the house so light and cheery; The hound he moaneth bitterly The moaning hound he ceaseth never; Then down into the darksome river. The shepherd's heart is troubled sore, That lies the broken granite under. He looks into the deep dark pool; The shepherd dimly sees a cloak He dimly sees a floating feather- And broken twigs of crimson heather. The hound clings to the granite crags, As o'er the deep dark pool he bendeth, Into the darksome linn he sendeth. Upon his staff the shepherd leans, And for a little space doth ponder; "Ah!" said the old man, mournfully, And tears adown his cheek were falling, INGLIS TRAVELS IN IRELAND IN 1834. THIS is the most interesting and incomparably the most useful book of travels that Mr Henry D. Inglis has yet produced. Its popularity cannot, we think, fail to equal its utility. To every work we give a hearty welcome which tends to make Ireland better known to the people of Great Britain, but especially to such works as awaken the attention of those whose feelings for the land which "God has made and man has marred," are either those of cold indifference and repulsion, or the rancorous hatred which the conscious inflicter of wrong cherishes against the trampled and scorned victim of his injustice. There cannot, in our opinion, be too many tales, stories, and light books of travels, which place the Irish people in the fair and true aspect before their fellow-subjects in Britain; and which appeal to sensibility and the generous affections, rather than to that sense of justice against which, in' the solitary instance of Ireland, Englishmen harden their hearts. One main source of the wrongs of Ireland, is the ignorance which prevails in Great Britain as to the real condition of that country, and of the indivisible nature of the true interests of both kingdoms where they are properly understood. Mr Inglis is himself an example of the profound ignorance which prevails, even among the educated classes on this side of the channel, about what we, as if in mockery, call "the sister kingdom," a region separated from us but by a narrow channel, forming an integral and most important part of the same realm, and yet more remote from our knowledge, and much further removed from our affections, than if half the convex world lay between us. Mr Inglis frankly acknowledges that he never visited any European country of which he previously knew so little,* and of which his notions The ignorance of the young English lady, the wife of an Irish proprietor, who came over to ameliorate the condition of her husband's tenantry, by giving them fancy dresses like those of the Italian peasants, and setting them to dance under the trees, appears overdone even in Lady Morgan's lively fiction. But truth always outdoes fiction. Mr Inglis was a well-informed traveller compared with Mr Lane Fox, an Irish absentee proprietor, who, indulging the most benevolent feelings for his unknown vassals, lately carried over, as presents to them, stores of the beads, little mirrors, and brooches, and such trumpery as navigators wont to take out to captivate the people of the South Sea Islands, and which the savages soon despised and neglected for needles, nails, knives, and bits of iron. One would like to know at which of our great schools and universities this well-meaning Irish landlord received his useful education. were so erroneous; yet Norway and the Penin- | sitting upon the door-steps of princely mansions: sula have been the scenes of his travels. It might be wished that he had reached the bay of Dublin with a greater accumulation of knowledge of Irish history and of Irish affairs; but if not a well-informed, he possessed the advantage of being an unprejudiced and impartial observer. There was nothing to be viewed through English spectacles, or accommodated to English prejudice and preconceived theories; and he brought with him shrewdness of observation, a good store of homely experience, gathered among the people of other countries, a disposition to view everything on the true, and, if possible, on the bright side, and much kindly feeling, which warmed as he extended his range of observation among the peasantry, and which sometimes flashes forth in short fits of generous indignation. His hearting the younger part of the pauper population. thus kindly disposed, and his mind nearly a tabula rasa, he came not unfitted for the important task of fairly reporting to the people of Britain upon the social state of the Irish, a subject which it belongs to their peace thoroughly to understand, and that without delay. in one word, Merion Square and St Stephen's Green in contrast with the Liberty. All this we have had from eloquent and graphic pens, and Mr Inglis goes again over the same ground, and, concludes with one of his own sagacious observations:-"I was struck with the small number of provision-shops. In London, every fifth or sixth shop is a bacon and cheese shop. In Dublin, luxuries of a different kind offer their temptations. What would be the use of opening a bacon shop, where the lower orders, who are elsewhere the chief purchasers of bacon, cannot afford to eat bacon-and live upon potatoes." When we have first seen the condition in which he found the country, it will be time enough to make our own observations. From his outset, Mr Inglis was aware, that in a country divided against itself, the information he received must often vary, or be altogether contradictory; and he formed the prudent resolution of patiently hearing both sidessubmitting to be both-eared* by Orangemen and Repealers, and then to make his own observations and inquiries, and from these to draw his own conclusions. Upon the whole, he seems to have been tolerably successful in following the line he prescribed for himself. If his inferences are not always just, they are always candid; and he has kept wonderfully free indeed of the infection of party spirit, when we consider how it has spread over the whole atmosphere of Irish society. There are questions in Irish politics to which he adverts, that we do not intend to moot with him, and speculations upon which he has entered that want authority. He is, however, throughout, the advocate of a poor.rate, and he does not appear to admire tithes! He is the uncompromising enemy of Orangeism. Statistical information was not his object, though the work contains many useful practical details, the result of personal inquiry; but the book, on the whole, is a lively running commentary upon the face of Ireland, and on the striking features of its society in the year specified; and, as such, we ad dress ourselves to it in the same spirit which Mr Inglis viewed the country he described-disposed to be pleased, reasonable, and indulgent. Mr Inglis landed in the bay of Dublin upon a fine morning, last spring, and saw the same scene and the same population which have been so often and so well described: gaiety and luxury in close proximity to squalor and misery; numerous equipages, and multitudes in rags; splendid sonares, and ragged, homeless-looking wretches, * Bath-cared—i. e. e. bothered. His lodgings, in Kildare Street, being opposite the Royal Dublin Society, where there was a cattle show, gave him an opportunity of observ "I remarked," he says, "in particular, the great eagerness of every one to get a little employment, and earn a penny or two. I observed another less equivocal proof of low condition. After the cattle had been fed, the half-eaten turnips became the perquisite of the crowd of ragged boys and girls without. Many and fierce were the scrambles for these precious relics; and a half-gnawed turnip, when once secured, was guarded with the most vigilant jealousy, and was lent for a mouthful to another longing tatterdemalion, as much, apparently, as an act of extraordinary favour, as if the root had been a pineapple. Yet these mouthfuls were freely given; and I have seen, that where two boys contended who should take charge of a gentleman's horse, the boy who obtained the preference, and got the penny or twopence, divided it with his rival. These were pleasing traits, and were indicative of that generosity of character which displays itself in so many kindly shapes." Wherever he travelled, he had occasion to remark the sympathy which the poor of Ireland feel for those who are a degree worse off than themselves, and their affectionate pity for all poor crathurs." 66 The ostentation and improvidence of the Dublin merchants and traders are duly noticed by our traveller. "A visit to the Mendicity Society would not," he says, "put anybody in love with that system of voluntary charity which, we are told by an eminent divine, is so blessed an encourager of human sympathies. "When I visited the Dublin Mendicity Society, there were 2145 persons on the charity, of whom 200 were Protestants. The finances were then at a very low ebb; and the directors of the institution were threatening a procession of the mendicants through the streets, by way of warming the charity of the spectators. This, I understand, has once or twice been resorted to; and, I confess, I cannot conceive anything more disgraceful to a civilized community. The English reader, who has never visited Ireland, can have no conception of a spectacle such as this. What a contrast to the gaiety of Grafton Street would be the filth, and rags, and absolute nakedness, which I saw concentrated in the court of the institution!" From Dublin the traveller visited the romantic and beautiful scenery of Wicklow; the Pargle, Powerscourt, Glendalough, the vale of Avoca, and all the other objects which attract strangers; and found, in spite of much harmless exaggeration, that they were scenes worth visiting; but he draws a sorry and dispiriting conclusion : Notwithstanding that I was in the next county to Dublin that Wicklow is a county orneé, full of villas and gentlemen's seats, and that the mines in this county, |