a little surprised to hear him speak the broad Lan- | was cold venison pie, tongue, puddings, &c.; but, if I

they are thrown off." I selected six old castles, | after Lady Scott's death, and the Castle Street es-
and submitted to him the list. Hermitage tablishment had been broken up; from whence he
Castle, Liddesdale; Caerlaverock, Dumfries-shire; had removed to a furnished lodging in Castle
Threave, the Castle of the Black Douglas, in
Galloway; Bruce Castle, in the Island of Rath-
lin, County Antrim; Duart on the Sound of
Mull; and Ellandonan, in Ross-shire; in all
six, with a sheet of letter-press description. "They
are all very good,” said Sir Walter; "and, with
respect to your descriptions, I have found very
little amendment necessary. The price must be one
guinea; and I shall be able to dispose of 25 or
maybe 50 copies. Constable has promised to lend
his assistance, and will publish for you if neces-
sary. Go on, and do not allow the business to rest
one day." I printed 125 copies, which were all
sold in ten days. He pressed me to publish an-
other series; but I did not like to draw too much on
the good-nature of my friends, for the sales were all
private. Printing on stone was then in its infancy
in Edinburgh; and indeed is so still, with respect
to landscape; and the impressions by no means
pleased me.

Street, as I was informed. I met him, by chance,
on the street, and he invited me to come to break-
fast on the following morning in Walker Street.
I congratulated him on living in so elegant and
"but as the lad
quiet a street. "Yes," he said;
said who went a-wooing, when congratulated by
the lass on his smart appearance on horseback,--
"The horse that I ride on

One morning, while at breakfast, a woman called, complaining that Maida, Sir Walter's stag-hound, had bit her child. "And did not Igive you something handsome to help to cover it?" said Sir Walter. "You did so ; but I am told that if the dog is not hanged, the bairn will go mad."-"I do not think that the crime deserves death, as the child is not yet dead; but Maida shall be banished; and if the child die, he shall suffer, which is the law of the land; and there is some more money."

Maida was an ill-natured tyke, and no favourite with me. He once attacked me. I met him in a narrow path; and he stood in the middle, disputing my passage. Having, by good luck, a measuringpole in my hand, about eight feet in length, I prepared to make my passage good. If I had turned my back, he would have been on me immediately. I advanced, and with my good ash pole hit him a whack along the ribs, on which he gave a fearful howl, and fled. So much for the courage of this Highland brute. On telling it to his master, he would not believe it. "I will again defend myself in your presence; indeed, I will make believe to attack you, and you shall see whether this Highland bear of yours will be bold and faithful in defending his very kind and over-partial master.” "I do not entertain the smallest doubt of his courage and affection; but it may be as well not to put it

to too severe a test."

stance of Maida's distress.

One morning I heard a dog howling in distress. On going to the place, I found Maida, who had been hunting hares; and on leaping a paling, was entangled by the hind-legs, and could not relieve himself. At breakfast, I mentioned the circum"And did you relieve him?"—" I did not think it at all safe, as he holds me at a grudge.” "Good heavens!" exclaimed Sir Walter, "the poor brute's legs may be broken.""Do not be alarmed; I sent Tam Purdie to his relief." And soon after the dog made his appearance, much fatigued, and the skin peeled from his hind legs.

After this, I did not again see Sir Walter till

Is Sandy Wilson's mare.' Miss Blair has been so good as to lend me her house while she is absent."

A French gentleman was at breakfast, who brought him in a present, a copy of his poetical works, from Galignani, I think. He examined the prints, and said the work was neatly got up; and referred to me. I said that I thought the "It is well that work much inferior to our own. the Frenchman does not understand English; otherwise you might be in a scrape."

He invited me to return to dinner, and said he would ask Mr. Campbell, who made a third. He desired Allister Dhu to give us Macrimmon's Lament, first in Gaelic, and then a stanza in English. I never "The Gaehave seen him more pleasant company. lic," said he, " is infinitely more musical than my own words." Sir Walter, at this time, talked of the lightness of heart, and the prospects of youth, seldom realized, and repeated some lines from Johnson's "Vanity of Human Wishes"

"O'er Bodley's dome his future labours spread, And Bacon's mansion thunders o'er his head." But mark the sad reverse

"From Marlbrough's eyes the tears of dotage flow; And Swift expires, a driveller and a show." On preparing to go, he inquired how long I was "A year," said I," at least. likely to be absent. I am going to the west country to paint some portraits."-" Cast yourself round by Abbotsford. I am projecting some new plantations, and am in hopes of making an exchange, and acquiring the entire margin, or boundary line, of Cauldshiels Loch; and if I succeed, I will adopt your design, and plant the whole land around, to a considerable extent."

I had been praising a small medallion portrait as an excellent likeness. "It was," said he, "first done in wax by Henning, and then cast in glass. I have more than one. Accept of this; and permit me to hang it by a small chain." It was a silver chain, such as he used to hang his whistle or dogcall by. The same kind of chain is painted round his neck in the last portrait by Raeburn.

My reflections on parting were melancholy. Sir Walter looked care-worn; and his efforts to be merry appeared painful. I saw that the "Life of Napoleon" sat heavy on his spirits. "There is no imagination in it," said he;" and the incidents are so distorted by party, that there is great difficulty in coming at the facts. It may happen," said he, " as you are often unsteady in your movements, that you may not leave Edinburgh so soon as you at present purpose: if so, come to breakfasthalf-past-eight, or at the same hour in the evening."

REMINISCENCES OF DUBLIN COLLEGE LIFE.-No. III.

BILLY SHERIDAN'S BREAKFAST TABLE. THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY IN ITS DECLINE.

and would as soon have abjured her marriage vows as wash the venerable dust of ages from her brow. To students who were nice in their diet, her habits were not agreeable. With the same hand that

down a loaf upon the table, or transfer a roll of butter from the cabbage-leaf to the plate; and to question her, during such ministrations, as to the date of her last ablutions, was not at all times safe. If she was in good humour, she would refer you to the college-pump for the information you required:

BESIDES the race of Skips, of which my good friend Foley was a bright example, the Irish University is singular, I believe, amongst colleges, in tolerating the use of female attendants. The "nice caution," however, employed in the selection, pre-patted the wet slack upon your fire, would she set cludes scandal. The candidates-fair candidates, shall I call them ?-for such appointments must be of a certain age; and, in addition to that natural fortyfication, must also have passed the inspection of a Committee of Ugliness, of which the senior and junior deans are members ex officio. Little inquiry, any, is made about their character for temper--"Ax the pump." But if anything had occurred ance, sobriety, or those other parts of morality to ruffle her serenity, she would not hesitate to which are looked to for the protection of moveable send you somewhere else for an answer. property intrusted to servants. But they must be decidedly unhandsome in form and feature. That is a sine quâ non; and, so qualified, the handmaid who aspires to academic pickings and perquisites, may come and go at discretion, and pilfer and purloin till she is found out. As Doctor Daniel Mooney said of his one-eyed Xantippe, "She answers all ancillary purposes beautifully."

if

I know not if it be expressly contrary to the statute "De Moribus," for a college woman to expose, unmasked, those charms which are, with perfect propriety, uncovered elsewhere. But from their invariable concealment, under an encrustation of grime and ashes, of the natural complexion, it may be deemed that soap and water, though perhaps unnamed in the Dean's Tariff, are excluded by prescription.

The renowned Anne Horan flourished under the patronage and irregular payments of gentlemen from Tipperary, through many successive generations. She had great perfections, among which her native eloquence, in the racy idiom of "the sweet county," took the shine; and a slighting allusion to the honour of that bright particular spot in our green isle, or to any personal peculiarity about herself, or her chief patron Doctor Wall, was sure to draw it out in torrents. The fluency for which many eminent speakers at the bar and in the pulpit are to this day remarkable, was first developed in wordy encounters with her. The late lamented and indomitable member for Clonmel, Dominick Ronayne, was indebted for all his "saucy and audacious eloquence," to the daily tilts with which he seasoned his breakfast, while Anne brought up the milkman's scores, or wondered "where the next tay was to come from, when the grain at the bottom of the canister would be out?" Surgeon Porter also, the most mellifluous of lecturers, imbibed a great portion of his ready wit and sparkling flow of expression from Anne; and, to her dying day, it was her boast, which nobody thought of denying, as often as the oratorical fame of Mortimer O'Sullivan was alluded to in her presence, that she "taught that boy to praich."

She was dyed in grain with the esprit de corps, (which, by the by, was not the esprit de lavando;)

By such a Hebe was Billy Sheridan's supernacular apartment opened to my knocking, when, according to invitation, I went to breakfast with him, on the second morning after our meeting at the theatre.

To my inquiry, if Mr. Sheridan was stirring? her answer was brief and pithy.

66

Faith, and that he is; and scowldin'. I wonder you didn't hear the roars of him in the coort-yard." "What's that you're saying, ye old trump?" said mine host, thrusting his well-lathered chin out from a crib eight feet by six, which was partitioned off his parlour; and grinning, at the same time, a gracious good morrow at me through the soap-suds. "No wonder I'd scold, when you took my shavingbrush to whitewash the hearth."

"And a great harm was in that!" cried she, with an indignant toss of her head. "Lord save ushow grand we are, all of a suddent. There's Docthur Wall, a betther man than ever ye wor, or your father afore ye, and a Fellow of the College into the bargain, that never says again' the like. No, nor if I was to polish the bars of the grate, as often I did, with the clothes-brush, he wouldn't be the man to say-Ill ye did it, Anne Horan.' Agh! and there's nothing like the rale ginthry to dale with." Here she launched into a genealogical eulogium of the Walls of Coolnamuck, leaving her submissive master at liberty to proceed with the delicate abrasion of his chin, which the mixture of roach-lime with the usual softer application had rendered a tearful operation.

Anne, in the meantime, handy as she was homely, bestirred herself to set the breakfast gear to rights, dusting out the inside of the cups and saucers with the corner of an apron, the sight of which would almost excuse the wish that she had been born of the sect of the Pharisees. She then brought out what she was pleased to call "the crame," from a filtby shelf in the shoe-pantry, taking heed to grasp the jug by the spout, thumbwise, whereof she left a visible impress in semicircular wavy lines of black, about half-an-inch above high water-mark. The bread had been toasted before I came, (how toasted, I happily was ignorant,) and was laid on a plate to be kept warm, within the fender; upon which,

this considerate dame raked down with the poker such another cloud of ashes as never fell upon any man's breakfast, since that which alit upon Pliny's last muffin. "That's nothing at all," said she, dropping the Coolnamuck theme for an instant. "The toast isn't buttered;" and with three smart puffs of her spicy breath she dispersed the light embers through the room, leaving the plate with its contents as clean, to all appearance, as any other part of the entertainment.

It was to a meal, so prepared, that I first sat down with Billy Sheridan in his own castle; and to which, notwithstanding the unsavoury preliminaries I had been witness to, a fresh and not-easilyjealous appetite did ample justice; whilst mine host poured forth tea and criticism with an even hand. He had just seen in the London papers an account of Macready's début in Drury Lane; and, from what The Examiner said, was sure that " Macrady must be a great fellow." But he was not quite prepared to give up John Kemble for any new heresy.

The Cynthia of that minute, however, was not theatrical. Billy was ruminating a speech to be delivered in the Historical Society, on the revolutionary question:-"Was Brutus justified in conspiring against the life of Julius Cæsar?" The provost-Elrington -had expressed his disapproval of such a subject, as involving, by possible reflection upon recent events in France, the discussion of modern politics; and it was Billy's endeavour so to frame the argument as to give the fullest scope to his admiration of the king-killer, while he should avoid offence to the surly Head of our House. How he might have succeeded in so double an object, was never put to the test; for the provost proceeded from disapproving to interdict the question; and it was changed, accordingly, to a dry debate on the Wars of the Roses; a subject so entirely English, that my friend observed it was impossible to twist the smallest imaginable bit of Shamrock into it.

The war of the Heads of the University against the progress of polite literature and the practical study of eloquence had then begun. Upon the promotion of Provost Hall to a bishopric, which he did not live quite one week to enjoy, it was thought advisable by Spenser Perceval's government to check the Jacobinical spirit, which was supposed to be growing up in the university, by placing it under the rod of a hot and uncompromising Tory. For this purpose, Dr. Elrington was called up from his parish in Ulster; and almost his first act was a mortal blow aimed at the Historical Society.

He procured an order of the Board for excluding from the society all members who had withdrawn their names from the college books; and the immediate effect of that regulation was a separation of the youthful and inexperienced students from men of established reputation in the learned professions, with whom it was a point of duty, as well

as a pleasant relaxation from the toils of business, to frequent those meetings. Thus, at once, a most salutary control was removed, by which the wild excesses of temper had been restrained, and the judgment of young aspirants to fame disciplined and guided in the right path to distinction. The result was what the learned Vandals at the Board anticipated. The Society soon became a sort of rhetorical boxing-school, in which he who could utter the greatest quantity of sounding nonsense and personal abuse, without stop or impediment, was accounted the best orator. Party politics then crept in, and infused their poisonous influence in the election of officers, who had formerly been chosen, solely in reference to their rank and eminence in the various walks of liberal knowledge. The society was thus split into factions, and became the constant scene of wrangling and violence, which brought on new restrictions from the Board. Those restrictions were found intolerable; but remonstrance was treated with purposed contempt; and in a moment of irritation, which it had been the anxious wish of the constituted authorities to excite, the society heroically dissolved itself. The provost clapped a padlock upon the door in halfan-hour after the suicide was committed; taking possession of all the books, furniture, copper-kettles, cups, saucers, and other moveables, whereof we died possessed. The fine room in which this mimic parliament had been wont to sit, was turned into a draught-house, or something of the kind, for medical students to discuss the Pharmacopoeia in; and in their possession it remains, I believe, to this day.

The same year which witnessed the extinction of the Historical Society in Trinity College, saw an Orange Lodge established in the chambers of a student from the north of Ireland; and weekly orgies were celebrated therein, without the slightest intimation of displeasure from the provost or his obedient Sanhedrim, until the day of his departure to take possession of the Episcopal palace at Ferns.

My acquaintance with the Society commenced in the days of its decline. The old members had been turned out. North's visits, few and far between, were rudely interdicted. Finlay, honest John, no longer came to smile upon juvenile talent, and assist it with counsel ever friendly and ever welcome. Charles Phillips rolled his large dark eyes along the Dodder Bank, where he was obliged to spout his blank verse, instead of taking our wondering comprehension by surprise. * Wallace was gone to London; that Hotspur of the north, who had been called to the foot of the chair for telling a seedy antagonist that he must be answered out of Shakspere

"Froth and scum, thou liest." M'Ghee was even then waxing fanatical, (he had always been flighty,) and had seceded, leaving behind him a reputation for oratory, the fruit of a single speech of remarkable brilliancy and power,

*One of this orator's most renowned and popular speeches, that made in the Crim. Con, case of Guthrie v. Sterne, was composed throughout in the Heroic measure. Take a sample::

"It might have been, that in the spring of Life, When Fancy waved its fairy wand around them, Till all above was sunshine, all beneath

Was flowers; when, to their clear and charmed vision,
Each tint they saw spoke Nature's loveliness,
And every breeze was but embodied fragrance," &c., &c,

It is a solemn and striking lesson to young persons, as yet unused to consider the mutability of human things, save as an abstract truth, when those who have run along with them in the race of fame and honour, and been companions of their pleasant hours, are swept away before their eyes. Sad and startling was the intelligence when we returned at the end of a Long Vacation, expecting to resume our wonted pursuits and associations, and missed two such men as Graves and Hamilton from the places which they had occupied, and which none but themselves could fill. "Where are they?" was the general and almost the first inquiry.

It was in this manner that the loss sustained by our little community was made known to most of us; and the effect, even after a lapse of eight-andtwenty years, is still painful to remember.

Romney Robinson, Her Majesty's AstronomerRoyal, was then in his Middle Bachelorship, and sometimes of an afternoon, when he condescended to come down from holding converse with the stars in his skylight apartment, would pass an hour or To say truth, he looked more twain amongst us. like one who had dropped down from that high perch, through the shaft of a chimney, than by the ordinary gradation of the stairs. But,

Quid tum, si fuscus Amyntas?

Romney, in spite of his linen, was a shining light; and woe was to the wight who had the temerity to provoke him. He had been a poet; one of those juvenile prodigies who "lisped in numbers;" and his infant effusions had been published, while he was yet a little boy, a very little boy," with a full-length engraving of the author, in jacket and trousers, upon the frontispiece. But one of the first things he learned in college was the wisdom of discarding the muse; which he did sans ceremonie, turning a set of highly unprofitable democratic principles out of doors along with her; and he retained nothing of the bard but the dark rolling eye, and a more than prosaic irritability of