"With suggestions I have done," said the lawyer sharply; "too many have been made already; I see their utter futility. I hazard, however, one passing remark. You are in the habit, Sir Philip, of alluding to your mother, and have been heard but too often to express a doubt as to her happiness in that unseen world to which she has passed. It is a subject on which I believe you are peculiarly sensitive."

"And justly," returned the Baronet, in a tone in which fear and sorrow were painfully blended.

"It is highly probable that advantage will be taken of your susceptibility on this point, and that more questions than one relative to Lady Cecilia will be put to you. Arm yourself for this contingency. Be guarded. Speak slowly-speak briefly; and let me conjure you-favourably."

"I cannot; if there be a heaven beyond the grave it exists not for her."

"If there be-what strange words are these?"

"Mistake me not," cried the young man, wildly; "holy men, and soothing records and wearied and aching hearts alike admonish us of a state of rest beyond the grave; but there she is not— she cannot be-if God be true."

Bohun was startled and distressed. He had roused the very feelings which he desired to allay. How to repair his error puzzled him. Something by way of explanation he felt he must venture; but, by some inadvertence, explanation assumed the form of reproof.

"With the memory of the dead,-Sir Philip,-it behoves us to deal tenderly. They are silent and defenceless; and upon their actions and errors, especially in the case of relatives we are bound to place the most favourable construction. With reference to Lady Cecilia that most watchful of mothers "—

"Name her not!" interrupted her son with frenzied earnestness; "name her not, or I shall curse her even in her grave. To her I owe the obloquy, mystery, slavery that enfold and crush me. ther, do you call her? Mother! Profane not that hallowed name.

She has made me the wretch I am!"

Mo

He strove to speak further and more vehemently; but increasing emotion checked his utterance. At length with a wild wave of the hand, and with agony painted in his troubled eye, he staggered from the apartment.

Bohun turned to the window. "The wretch I am!" he repeated; and gazed deliberately on the scene presented to him from below. The fountain was playing merrily in the sunshine. The stately oaks were waving slowly in the breeze. The flowers were flinging up their thousand odours from the gay parterres below. The deer in groups were browsing leisurely and boldly-here in sunshine, there in shadow-on the closely cropped herbage of the undulating park; while ever and anon a hare would start from her form and indulge in a merry scamper across the uplands; and the pheasantfearless of keeper's gun- would descend from his airy resting place; and like a beau exhibit with stately step his glorious plumage in the mid-day sun.

"The wretch I am!" The expression sounds oddly from the lips of a possessor of a place like this! "The wretch I am!" Oh,

well! One or two of these outbreaks, and a sprinkling here and there of these ill-advised expressions before the Commissioner and the Jury, and it is easy to foresee the conclusion each and all will arrive at.

In anything but complacent mood he descended the stairs. On the last step duly shawled and bonneted-with a band-box in one hand, and a cotton umbrella in the other-evidently equipped for a journey sat in an attitude of expectation, Mrs. Hilda Ravenspur. "Your commands, sir?" said that paragon of audacity.

"My commands?" repeated the Coroner.

"Yes, sir; I wait your pleasure,-when am I to start?” The Coroner frowned fiercely, but in vain.

"Name your time, sir, I'm yours to a minute! If I am to leave, let it be in your company."

"Haslam!" cried Bohun; "you're aware I hold a judicial character. My Court is a Court of Justice; and my position would have permitted no such escapade. To lay hands upon a woman was out of the question; but how I longed to put my dignity in my pocket, and give that infernal bonnet-box a kick which should shiver it to atoms."

But this was not the only tax which the events of the morning furnished on the patience of my much-enduring master. At the end of the avenue leading to the Court,-a couple of yards beyond the gate, perched in a high gig, and straining his eyes in the direction of the servants' offices the very prototype of measureless curiosity, sat the inquisitive Mr. Spinkle. His address was prompt; and delivered with abounding satisfaction.

"Mr. Bohun, your most obedient! Thought it was your bay pony trotting down the avenue. Delighted to see you looking so well! How is that melancholy maniac, Sir Philip? Never pry into my neighbour's business-never-never! But I've fathomed

your errand. Curious that we should both be so early abroad on the same scent. You to counsel the Priest Baronet how to resist the inquiry; I to give to the solicitors of the next of kin a resumé of my forthcoming evidence-conclusive, sir,-quite conclusive as to Sir Philip's mania. Facts admirably got up, and irresistible. Will be under restraint before six weeks are over. So best! So best! We've a tall and commanding keeper quite prepared to undertake him."

"Till that hour," concluded Bohun, "I never fully felt the restraining force of the Decalogue. I looked at the grinning wretch before me; and repeated once, twice, almost audibly- Thou shalt do no murder.'"

227

DIONYSIUS O'DOGHERTY, ESQ.

WITH A FEW EXTRACTS FROM HIS DIARY.

BY W. H. MAXWELL, ESQ.,

AUTHOR OF "STORIES OF WATERLOO," ETC.

"

MARVELLOUS are the differences in man's tastes. A butcher's boy considers that mortal felicity lies in witnessing a brindled bull-bitch destroy half a hundred hocussed rats in some dog-pit, whose locality is near unto Smithfield. A sailor declines a shipmate's invitation to an early breakfast, including attendance on an execution at the Old Bailey. His vessel drops down the river on the evening tide; and as he is always infelicitous in the pleasure line, much as he should be delighted to see the man hanged, still, obedient to the call of duty, he must forego a morning's innocent amusement. Without even a pretence of business, an Irishman will travel twenty miles to attend a fair, leaving his placens uxor to sod the potatoes in his absence. At curfew hour, if he be not moribund in the county hospital, he returns home sadder than when he departed at cock-crow-the police-bad luck attend the inventor of them! having spoiled a beautiful factionfight between the Carneys and the Callaghans; and one of the villains, to wit the police, having also made an intercostal insertion with a bayonet on his person that will prevent him-Lord look down upon the family! from sticking a spade in the sod for the next "month of Sundays." An "Ebrew Jew obtains the sweet voices of a majority of cockney Christians-presents himself, rejoicing, at the door of the Commons House-is told that there is no admission there for "the twelve tribes"-that every thing associated with Petticoat-lane is utterly tabooed—and the sweetest singer that ever warbled in a synagogue will not, in Saint Stephen's, be allowed to favour that assemblage of collective wisdom with a single quaver. "A gentleman from Ireland"—observe the distinction-not an Irish gentleman-on the look out for the metalics matrimonially, drops upon the very article he wants-namely, an heiress,-in the Ramsgate boat. In military parlance, he pushes his approaches vigorously-and before "the Gem" has reached the Foreland, between hot love and a very nasty sea, the lady yields to the double assault, and surrenders at discretion-granting permission to the gallant Captain-a gentleman on the half-pay list of that distinguished corps, the Horse Marines-to break the matter to dear papa the next morning. Until the correct hour for the call upon the "old Governor" shall arrive, Captain O'Driscol dawdles over his congo and the "Times." Alas! it is decreed that the hymeneal embassy won't come off after all-for, in the morning paper he is informed that Emanuel Stubbs, currier, leather-cutter, and chapman, of Back Lane, Bermondsey, is honoured with a leading place in the day's "Gazette"- not as Lieutenant-Colonel of the Lumber Troop-but an intimation that he has a free permission from Mr. Commissioner Black, or Brown, or Green, to appear before him, or any of them, on an early day, and, then and there, deliver in due form, a full account of his stewardship.

Mr. Tomkins, the eminent melter in Mint-alley, has been apprized

an earnest

by the early delivery post, that his valued correspondent, Mr. Snobson, will pay an afternoon visit to the modern Babylon. But last week, he, Tomkins, forwarded to him, Snobson, fifty casks of "yellow Russia," and who can tell what a tallow dealer's luck may be, or say that as many of "white Petersburgh" may not be added to the tale. Accordingly, Mr. Tomkins prepares for the advent of his respected friend-forwards a turbot from Leadenhall Market to his residence in Doughty-street, accompanied by a lobster, with entreaty to the cook, that the fish-kettle shall be watched, and that, too, carefully as the cot of an only child in the last stage of scarlatina. The hour comes, but not the man-the writing is already on the wall —and the decree is posted in Fate's ledger, and Mr. Emanuel Snobson will never more insert a leg under Timothy Tomkins' mahogany. The postman's knock is heard next door. Mr. T., who has carefully brushed his hat, and actually assumed his umbrella, merely waits for an expected letter. He is not disappointed. An epistle is delivered, but it is innocent of the anticipated order upon Spooner, Atwood, and Company, and cometh from the respected rustic who was to have been at four o'clock in Doughty-street, there to be a demolisher of turbot, and all that formeth the pleasant adjuncts to the same. Mr. Snobson intimates that he hath been afflicted with monetary disappointments, and consequently, that he can neither come to London or the scratch; but he trusts that by a liberal indulgence from his creditors, with six or eight months' leisure to wind-up, by mercantile exertions on his part, which rarely have been equalled and never shall be surpassed, he will pay all claimants on his estate a dividend of ninepence halfpenny in the pound. Is not that pleasing intelligence for the fish-fancier? a man, who in the plenitude of mercantile confidence, not three hours before, had invested twelve and sixpence in a turbot, and secured a beauty of a lobster, by the further outlay of half-a-crown!

Indeed, there is no certainty in sublunary events, nor can any sure dependence be reposed in mortal wisdom. Jews have been victimized to their hearts' content; and Quakers done brown as the garment of sombre hue, which protected the nether extremities of their outward man.

It might be supposed, that to their own species, male delinquencies should and would be restricted; but, in her sex's helplessness, woman cannot calculate on security from the unscrupulous rapacity of a determined fortune-seeker. Irishmen, en masse, have been falsely accused of being matrimonial adventurers-and that charge, like many others brought against them, is generally unfounded.

Debarred ourselves by professional and prudential considerations from entering into the honourable estate, still we regard matrimony with proper respect; and we feel convinced that when it can be prudently effected, it offers through after life the smoothest path a human pilgrim can select to travel to the narrow house by.

Dionysius Dogherty was pretty much of our own opinion. Anno ætatis, Dion was on the verge of twenty-five, in height six feet two, and for his weight, a tip-top rider. He had never been accused of craning a fence even by an enemy; and his pistol practice was much admired, as he could take the centre point out of the nine of diamonds at twelve paces. He played very passably on the fiddle-tied a killing salmon-fly-there was not a better hurler in the barony—and at lovemaking he was the devil himself-or why should Father Paul Macgreal have cursed him from the altar once a quarter as he did regularly?

And yet, no matter how the clergy, priest, and parson, may abuse it, love-making is a pleasant way of passing an idle hour. In point of fact, how could an Irish gentleman fill up time and get on without it? Down comes, what they call in the Highlands, 66 a spaight;"* the water is turbid as sour porter; and the boldest salmon would not touch the most artful fabrications of feathers with his tail. The gun is useless as the fishing-rod-for no bird will repose himself on the saturated surface. The grouse become evanescent at a quarter of a mile-and snipes go off in a wisp, before the most prudent pointer can approach within long range. Men will not, and horses cannot, follow hounds, bogged every second stride to the saddle girth. The post comes in but twice a week-the piper, from heavy exertions at the last pattern, is laid up in pleurisy. There is no club-house for an Irish gentleman to repair to, and the nearest billiard-room is distant twenty miles. He may clean over every gun in the house, mend an old wheelbarrow, listen to his grand aunt giving an account of her first appearance in public at the state-ball at the Dublin Rotunda, fifty-seven years ago. His mother may labour hard at the netting-frame-the priest mutter some formula from his missal, and cross himself for exercise, as he moves from the window to the door-but what can an Irish gentleman do? No placens uxor to fondle-no image of himself to whip-no friend with whom to play backgammon or blind-hookey. Nothing but a choice of evils is left. He must drink his right hand against his left-or make love in the gate-house.

Dionysius O'Dogherty, by birth and education, was a gentleman. His progenitor came over with the Phoenicians, and his mother was an heiress of the O'Tools-a lady of large expectations, which are, as Naty Kelley the attorney declared, certain to be realized. Yet, an Irish chancellor is a very slow coach-and the fidelity with which he secures all property committed to his safe-keeping is exemplary. Fifty years have passed since Mrs. O'D. was committed to his, the chancellor's safe custody, and a king and a chancellor are immortal. They never become legally defunct and every successor to the great seal, holds it to be a bounden duty to hand to the learned Theban who shall succeed him, after a reign of five-and-twenty years, all impounded stocks, cash, and securities, precisely as he received them himself. Virgil declares that a man once lodged in Pandemonium is a safe fixture there. He would be equally so in a Court of Equity. In both cases, the analogy is striking any man anxious to get into hell or chancery can do so easily" facilis decensus est." Within half a term an attorney, or Hygeist, will do the trick, while the angel Gabriel could not liberate client or patient once there, even to the Greek Kalends. But to return to Dionysius.

Circumstances evoke men's energies, and Dionysius, who might have tied flies, made love, and played the fiddle for another quarter of a century, was roused by necessity to exertion. He was the spes ultima of the house, and that of O'Dogherty was trembling in the balance. Dangerous-looking wafer-sealed letters arrived by every post, and most of them were indited upon the moiety of a sheet of foolscap. The head of the O'Dogherties had evidently no fancy to collect autographs, -for, interesting as the morning's correspondence might be, it was committed invariably to the fire, and generally without being read.

* Anglicè, a thunder-shower.