A Protestant lady, of great respectability, was allowed by Barker to take shelter with her children in his house. As a great mark of good will towards her, some thin stirabout was made for her early the next morning, which was Tuesday. She had noticed us from the house, and beckoning to me, with much kindness gave me a plateful of it for our children, but, though they tasted, they could not eat, for terror had completely deprived them of appetite. keep silence as to what I had seen, lest she should perish with fear and grief. We remained without food all that day, and towards six in the evening, Barker's family turned us all out of the garden, for they said it was not safe for us to remain there any longer. I now thought to take my mother home, for she was totally incapable of giving me advice; but just as we arrived at the outskirts of the town, and were slowly walking by the river, a party of rebels on the opposite bank ordered us to return again, or they would fire on us. We then endeavoured to quit it by another outlet, when we were surrounded by a strong body of pikemen, and led, with many more whom they had already prisoners, to Vinegar Hill. About nine, I felt such a desire to rejoin my father, and to leave that garden, that I left my mother's side, and went alone towards the garden gate, to see if it were possible. The first person I saw at it was Martin's mother, dressed completely in new and excellent clothes, and in particular wearing a remarkably hand-high, but tolerably steep, and the rebels were some hat. Knowing her poverty, I was so much astonished at her appearance, that, forgetting for the moment all my anxiety and fear, I asked her where she got the hat; to which she replied sternly, "Hush! 'tis not for one like you to ask me where I got it." I then said, "Oh! did you see my father?"-"I have," answered she; "and he is dead!" I forgot what I said or did for some minutes after this, but I found Mary Martin had drawn me away from the garden gate, lest, as she said, my cries should inform my mother of what had befallen us. I clung to her, and intreated her to take me to him, that I might see him once more. She at first refused, but at last, to pacify my violence, she consented. We went about a quarter of a mile to Barracklane, where, lying in the midst of eight or ten other bodies, with two pikemen standing looking on, I saw, and knew my father. I can He lay on his back, with one hand on his breast, and his knee slightly raised, his shirt was steeped in blood, the lower part of his face disfigured with the gashes of the ruffian's knife, and his mouth filled purposely with the dirt of the street; beside him lay our large mastiff, who had licked all the blood off his face, and who, though he was heard two or three nights after howling piteously round our burnt cottage, was never again seen by any one. now describe what then almost killed me to look upon. I felt as if suffocating: I thought, as I looked on him, that I could have given my mother, my brother, even my own life, to have brought him back again. I fell on my knees beside him, and, whilst kissing his forehead, broke out into loud cries, when one of the pikemen gave me such a blow in the side with the handle of his pike, (cursing me at the same time) that it stretched me breathless for a moment beside my father, and would have broken my ribs but for the very strong stays which I had on. He was going to repeat the blow, but that his comrade levelled his pike, and cried out, "If you dare do that again, I'll thrust this through your body! Because the child is frightened, are you to ill-treat her!" He then raised me; and I knew him to be a man named Bryan, who but the week before had purchased some cloth from my father at a fair to which I had accompanied him. He spoke kindly to me, and led me back to the garden where I had left my mother, telling me to This hill lies close to Enniscorthy, it is not assembled on it in thousands. They seemed to have a few tents made of blankets, but the greater number were in the open air. I could see that some were cooking at large fires, whilst others lay about sleeping on the ground. It was probably about eight in the evening when we arrived at the hill, when the men whom they had captured were separated from us, and driven higher up, whilst we, and many other women and children, were ordered to sit down, in a dry ditch not far from the foot of it. We had not been long here, when we were accosted by a neighbour, whose name was Mary Donnelly, she was a rebel's wife, and had now come to the hill to join her husband. She pitied us, and sat beside my mother the entire of that night, who, feeling her presence a protection, would cower down beside her when she heard the slightest noise. And that whole night we heard fearful sounds on the hill above us, as the men who were brought there prisoners with ourselves, were massacred one by one. We could hear distinctly the cries of the murdered, and the shouts of the executioners. The moon shone brightly, and, towards dawn, I saw what I think alarmed me even more than any sight I had yet beheld. A tall white figure came rushing down the hill: as it came nearer, it had the appearance of a naked man, and I felt my heart die within me, for I thought it was no living being. He passed so close to us, that I could see the dark streams of blood running down his sides. In some minutes the uproar above showed he was missed, and his pursuers passed also close to us; one of them perceived I was awake, and asked if I had seen him pass, but I denied it. This was a young gentleman named Horneck, one of the finest lads in the County Wexford; he had been piked and stripped, but recovering, had fled from the hill, he waded the Slaney, and ran six miles to the ruins of his father's house, where his pursuers reached him, and completed their work of death. On Wednesday, about ten in the forenoon, owing to the intercession of Mary Donnelly, we were allowed to leave the hill. When we had gone about a furlong, I was shocked at missing the infant from my mother's arms. On inquiring of her what had become of it, she seemed at first not to understand me; she was so much bewildered, she had actually forgotten it behind her. I returned, and found the poor little creature asleep on the ground, where she had laid it, and she did not even seem to rejoice when it was restored to her. In our slow progress towards home, we met a silly, harmless fellow, a wood-ranger, who called himself a pikeman, but who was armed only with the handle of a shovel, with no head on it. He took one of our children on his back, and another in his arms, and said he would not leave us till we had arrived at our own house. When within half a mile of it, we met a Roman Catholic lad, a school-fellow of my own, named Murphy, who wept bitterly on seeing us, and, perceiving that we were sinking with weakness, he led us to the next house, insisted on our admission, and then flew off to his father's cottage for some bread and milk, but though two days had now fully passed since we had eaten, we could only moisten our lips. We were allowed to rest here till towards evening, but were then ordered to leave the house by the owners, for they said that our stay endangered their own safety. Murphy again gave my mother his arm; towards dusk we at last reached the home we had so long wished for, and found the house only a heap of ruins. It had been burned to the ground, the side walls had fallen in, and nothing remained standing but one chimney and a barn, from which the doors and part of the roof had been torn. Our little factory also lay in ashes, with all our looms, presses, wheels, and machines. All our cloth and wool, which we had concealed in the corn, was carried off; our young cattle, horses, and pigs, were all driven to Vinegar Hill, our stacks of hay and corn were burnt down, and yet we stood looking on all this desolation in utter silence, as if we could not comprehend that it was on ourselves it had fallen. My father's brother lived within two fields of us: his wife had been uncommonly charitable to beggars, or poor travellers, as they called themselves, and even had an outhouse, with clean straw, purposely for them to sleep in. One of these, a woman of the very lowest class, when she saw the family on the preceding Sunday, preparing to take refuge, as we did, in Enniscorthy, clung round them, and between entreaties and threats prevailed on them to remain in their house. She remained, also, and protected them; and, owing to her courage and presence of mind, she saved nearly their entire property from destruction, for she turned back more than one party of rebels who were bent on murder and plunder. My uncle hearing that we were standing at the ruins of our house, came to us, and led us to his, where we found more than fifty women and children, many of the highest class, who had no other place in which to lay their heads, nor a morsel to satisfy the hunger, which (now that they were no longer in immediate terror for their lives) they began to feel. All the provisions in the house had been given to the different parties of rebels who had called, but we milked all the cows, both those of my uncle and our own (which had not been carried away with the rest of our cattle) and made curds, which, for some days, was our only food. On the third day, poor Martin came to see us, he wept with us, and gave us two sacks of barley meal, which he and his comrades had plundered from some other distressed family, but want forced us to accept them with grati tude. My uncle, in a day or two more, found that two of our pigs had returned home, and he killed them, which gave us a great supply of food. In about a fortnight, the greater part of those creatures he had sheltered departed to whatever homes or friends were left to them, but still, for many weeks, we, and several as desolate, were entirely dependent on him. In a few days after Martin's first visit, he came again, with some tea and sugar for my mother, whose health was now so precarious, that, for many days, it was her only nourishment; and until he was killed, about the latter end of June, at Borris, he continued to show us similar kindness. Even when dying, he made his comrades promise to carry his body to his mother and us, though the distance was twenty miles, and we had him laid in his own burial-ground, as he earnestly desired. On the day after we returned, my aunt said to me, I shall tell your mother of your father's death; for it is better she should be in sorrow than in her present state of stupefaction." She did so, and I cannot bear even now to think of how my mother behaved when she heard it; yet the thoughts of his body lying unburied seemed to give her (even in the midst of her extreme grief) the greatest anguish. My aunt, who was a woman of great strength of mind, and who loved my father as if he had been her own brother, now proposed that I should accompany her, the next day, (Friday) to the town, to seek for the body, which we agreed to lay in one of those pits in which we buried our potatoes, but which was now empty and open. We went in much apprehension, and on reaching the town, and passing through the market-place, we could hardly tell which way to go, the appearance of every place was so much altered by the number of houses that lay in ruins. No one molested us, and with some difficulty we found the place where I had seen my father lying, but, on reaching it, the body was no longer there. All the others had also been removed; yet the smell of putridity was so strong that my aunt fainted. I brought her home again, and we found Martin there; and he seeing my mother's anguish, told her he had laid his master's body in a gravel pit, but this, I knew, was merely to soothe her: and I was afterwards told, that it and the others had been thrown into the Slaney, which ran close beside the spot, but a few hours before we went to seek for it. We lived thus for some weeks, in constant dread, both of the rebels and even of the straggling parties of the military sent out to apprehend them; from the first, we were protected by the female beggar and Martin's mother, who lived with us; but the last, either not knowing we were loyalists, or not caring, frequently behaved with much insolence; the smaller the party was, the more we dreaded them; and more than once myself, and a few more young girls, fearing to pass the night in the house, slept in the centre of a large holly bush, at some distance from it. But after the rebels were repulsed at Newtown Barry, and finally routed at Vinegar Hill, a regular camp was formed within a quarter of a mile from my uncle's house: we were then in safety, for the soldiers were under better discipline, and we found a excellent market for our milk and butter, which enabled us to purchase a few indispensable articles of furniture and clothing, and to fit up the barn as a dwelling-house. About this time, Grimes, who saved not only his life but his mill, and the greater part of his property, restored a good part of our oatmeal. The latter end of July, a field of barley, which had escaped trampling, became ripe, our new potatoes became fit for use, and we never afterwards knew want. We could not, however, rebuild our house till the next summer; and the blackened walls of our little factory (which we could never afford to build) are yet to be seen. might have been but a dream, yet who can say he was not permitted to save his son from the certain death that awaited him if he had been found sleeping on his post? I have now told the principal circumstances that fell under my own eye during the fearful summer of 1798, in which, besides my father, I lost fourteen uncles, cousins, and near relations; but if I were to tell all I saw, and all I heard, it would fill a large volume. Yet before I conclude, I must mention one evil that arose from the rebellion not generally noticed, but the ill effects of which may be said still to continue. The yeomanry was composed mostly of fine boys, sons of farmers, some of whom had scarce from the eye of their parents, with arms placed in their hands, raised to the rank of men before they had discretion to behave as such, and ex careless, disorderly life, till they became quite unable to pay their rents. They were thea ejected, and emigrated to America; and on the very farms which, thirty years ago, were pos sessed by old Protestant families, there now live the immediate descendants of the very people who may be said to have been the original cause of all this evil. This, thank God, has not been the case with our family. Clevass is still in my brother's hands, my mother, now an aged woman, lives with him, and all the rest of our family have been for many years married, and settled in our own homes. Yet fears and suspicions still remain in the hearts of the two opposite parties in the County Wexford, and until the present generation, and their children after them, shall have passed away, it will never be otherwise; for those who, like me, have seen their houses in ashes, their property destroyed, and their nearest and dearest lying dead at their feet, though they may, and should forgive, they never can forget. A few nights after Vinegar Hill was takenly attained the age of sixteen; these, removed by the King's forces, I went with a lantern to an unfrequented outhouse to bring in some straw for our beds; Martin's mother, who did not at first know where I was going, follow-posed to all the temptations of idleness, intoxied me, in much agitation; but I had already cation, and evil companions, when peaceful reached the little building, and, as I removed times returned, were totally unable to settle to the sheaves, I was dreadfuly shocked at seeing their farms (too often left by their father's that they concealed four or five pallid ghastly-death to them alone), but continued the same looking creatures, who, on seeing me, intreated me, in the most piteous manner, not to betray them. They were rebels, who had been badly wounded in the battle; and the woman who sheltered them there, and supplied them with food from my uncle's house, joined her intreaties to theirs, and I promised I would be silent. In four days more one died there, and the rest were able to remove. I have been since blamed for not giving them up, but I have never repented that I kept my promise to them. It was just seven weeks after the beginning of all our sorrows, that, as I was passing, one evening, near the ruins of our house, I was greatly startled at hearing from within it the deep sobs and suppressed lamentations of some person in great trouble. I ventured to look in, and found they proceeded from a man who was sitting on a low part of the fallen wall, with his head resting on his knees. When he heard me he arose, and I saw it was my brother; but if it had not been for the strong likeness he yet bore to my father, I should never have known him; from a fair ruddy boy, he had become a haggard, sun-burnt man, so thin, that his waist might have been almost spanned; and this change had been wrought in him by want and hardship, in the short space of eight weeks, for it was just so long since we had met. He immediately turned when he saw me, and fled from me at his utmost speed. In four days more he returned again to us, and seemed more composed; he occasionally got leave of absence to assist in our business of the farm, but he never could settle entirely with us till the winter was past. In one of his short visits, being alone with him, I asked him how soon he became acquainted with my father's death, and he answered, "I knew of it before I was told of it. I knew it when I was on guard at Duncannon Fort, the third night after the battle of Enniscorthy, for I saw him as plainly as I see you. I was overpowered with hunger and fatigue, and I slept on my post, and he stood beside me and awakened me; as I opened my eyes, I saw him clearly in the bright moonlight, he passed away from before me, and I knew by what I felt he was no living man!" This From the Athenæum. R. E. S. THE trees wear a sunny gleam, And the music of the blast. There is one cloud overhead, As the rout and flying fear Of an army, and behind, Like a sword upon the rear, Hangs alway the chasing wind; As a tempest-scattered fleet, When along the distance fine Every vessel goes to meet The horizon's level line; As the hideous coil of night, Fear, and suffering, and crime, When we wake to broad daylight, In the full of summer time. All beneath the empyrean, Bird, and beast, and insect gay, As of old uplift their Pan To the conquering King of Day: Yet, I learn that Nature's treasures, Gentle wind and sunny air, Which she gives, and never measures, Which are near us every where, Like the household flowers that lie Unregarded at our feet, Like the daisy's golden eye, With the tear of morning wet; Like the heath-flower on the moor, Hung with purple bells all round; That mayhap, at twilight hour, May ring out a fairy sound,- Aught of glory to our sight, And of wind, that murmurs by, What our tuneful hearts supply. For we owe to Nature nought But the outward forms alone, From within the light is brought, And the splendour is our own. From the United Service Journal. ALFIERI'S DESCRIPTION OF HIMSELF. Sublime specchio di veraci detti. A FAITHFUL portrait of myself I write A true description of my form and mind: My hair is red, but thin and scanty quite; My stature, tall, to stoop somewhat inclined, On well-shap'd limbs I stand a figure slight; Complexion fair-blue eyes-expression kind! Good nose and mouth, my teeth most dazzling white, A throned king, you will not paler find!* Oft caustic, harsh, but oftener docile, mild; Malignant never, though in angry mood; My heart and head can ne'er be reconcil'd; At times all mirth, on sadness though I brood: Achilles or Thersytes oft am I! Man! would'st thou know thy real nature?-die! "Pallido in volto, più che un Rè sul trono." Museum.-VOL. XIV. From the London Weekly Review. THE PORTRAITURE OF A CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. By a Barrister. 12mo. London, 1829. Hessey. THE present volume is the work of Mr. Roberts, already known to the public by a literary career, distinguished for sound views of life, good literature, and principles equally worthy of the member of a free state, and the professor of a religion without narrowness, prejudice, or guile. The purport of the volume is to show, not merely how compatible Christianity is with the highest observances of social life, but how essential it is to those observances; how utterly hollow the most substantial of them are, unsupplied from the sources of Christian principle; how apt to degenerate into actual vice, and how sure to fail us in the first great struggle that comes to put the spirit of man upon its trial. Mr. Roberts presses those incomparable truths upon the mind in a great variety of forms, be ginning with the circumstances of private life, and proceeding upwards to the lives of statesmen and sovereigns. He begins with the duty of private and family prayer, and proceeds, through a succession of chapters on "Unscriptural Religion-the Politics of the Christian Gentleman-his Literature-his Family Government-his Exterior Intercourse-his Familiar Conversation-his Worldly Dealingshis Consecration of the Sunday,"-with illustrations from public characters. Among those he gives some very vivid, and, what is better, perfectly true sketches of the leading men of the reigns of George the First, Second, and Third; Bolingbroke, Walpole, Chatham, &c. &c. Of Fox, his character is at once a stern condemnation and a true one. "Look at that man, of popular memory, so long the head of a great party; see him at his early age in full maturity of mental power, advancing to the field of action and enterprise, rich beyond rivalry in the gratuitous endowments of nature, with a promptitude of talents for public debate, which at once gave him the ascendant among the most experienced, behold him grasping every topic as his own by right of intuition, and recovering, as if by reminiscence, what others had acquired by practice and diligence; imparting with such simplicity what he had mastered with such ease, that all difficulties seemed to vanish before the magic of his genius. See him reducing to familiarity questions the most complicated, treading with sure steps the labyrinths of political discussion, rambling, but always recovering the clue; visiting every recess; digressing and returning at pleasure; roving with confident security through the mazes of illustration, and again pressing onwards in a series of syllogisms, always certain of his proposed end; most self-possessed when most excited, and safest in the midst of storm and commotion; bringing to the same argument, however often recurring, fresh supplies of matter, new topics of illustration, or more interior views of the subject. What then was wanting, to raise such a man to a partnership at least in the executive administration of the country? There was doubtless something to regret in his oraNo. 84.-3 B earthly admixtures, and made commensurate in length and breadth with the whole duty and destiny of man. Enriched from these sources of intellectual abundance, Mr. Burke was the Christian orator; but he wanted many things which go towards the finished fabric of the Christian gentleman. In real wisdom he was much in advance beyond his associates in politics, during the period of his greatest efficiency; but he was long kept down by his political connexions to the beggarly elements of party, and party of that pernicious kind, which, under the names of consistency and principle, gives to confederate and indiscriminate hostility a place among the social virtues. Still, however, he bore a striking testimony to the improved state of thinking and feeling on the subjects of highest interest to man, which, under the tacit but prevailing influence of courtly example, was gradually raising the character of the late reign to the glory of a new era in the moral world."-p. 160–162. tery; it was defective in compass, in pomp, in pathos, by its want of that to which the indigent nature of man is ever looking for solace and supply. It was without that which surrounds, supports, and exalts humanity; it was defective in that divine philosophy which touches the lips of eloquence with the fire from the altar, and dips it in the colours of Heaven. The great connecting, vivifying, exalting principle was wanting: the scope, the rule, the reward, the crowning grace of human actions, lay beyond the limit by which his morality was bounded. On the subject of religion, his head was ignorant, and his heart unconscious. Atheistical France, with her blasphemous ereeds and her savage desecration of society, provoked no indignant elevation in his oratory, no vehement sorrow for suffering humanity.In these respects many of his colleagues were greatly above him; but the real ground of his exclusion was this:-he was very much below the level of the Christian statesman. Party bigotry, factious conflicts, and the errors and Spirited characters of Pitt and Perceval folirregularities of a lax education, depressed his low. The style of the volume may be fitly apbetter part, frustrated the bounties of benig-preciated from those passages. It is always nant nature, and doomed him, and his follow- fluent and copious, always manly, often eloers in an element of perpetual discord, to be quent. But it has higher merits than the highfor ever fighting the battles of unsuccessful est that can belong to style. It bears the stamp ambition."-p. 157–160. of strong sincerity; its purpose is to uphold the dignity of man, by giving to the common pursuits of life the dignity of virtue and its influence upon every mind capable of good, must be to give it a new vigour in the upward path of purity, unclouded reason, and religion turned from the terror and rebuke of our wavering lives into the cheerer and light of an existence hallowed and eternal. Burke, that immortal name, who, in the loftiest sense of the word, was the statesman of England; who elevated and ennobled the passing impulses and events of his country and his time, by converting them into the wisdom of all nations and of all posterity;-receives from this able writer the well-weighed tribute that he would have honoured more than the noisiest panegyric of party. Miscellany. meeting of the Geographical Society of Paris, some particulars of his travels in the latter country, of which he is preparing a narrative. We subjoin an extract relating to the conversation which passed at a coffee-house at Sapanja (or Subanja), on his road to Constantinople, respecting the suppression of the Janissaries, a whole troop of whom had just been brought in disarmed, and designed for capital punishment. "Mr. Burke was by many degrees nearer to the standard of a Christian gentleman, in eminent and public station; he was bred in a better school; his youth was passed within the regular bounds of conjugal society, in literary A TURKISH COFFEE-HOUSE.-M. Fontanier, intercourse, in severe study, and in honoura- formerly a pupil of the Normal school, at Pable avocations: his acquaintance with the in- ris, who had been travelling in Georgia, Perspired volume, and the works of the great theo-sia, and Turkey, communicated, at a recent logians, supplied him with lofty themes, and opened a vista in his imagination, which disclosed the prospect of eternity. While others courted ephemeral eulogy, this great man addressed himself to the collective talent of his country. Full of the philosophy of experience and the eloquence of philosophy, he left for others the passions of the multitude, seeking rather to fasten upon the understanding and secure the moral mind. At a time when the civilized world was on the point of being thrown into confusion by a selfish, heartless, and infectious system of profligate politics, Mr. Burke, in his Reflections,' built up a perdurable edifice, to be the asylum of Christian philosophy, the habitation and home of exiled truth. It has been justly said, that there is 'genius in all religious thoughts.' Every thing seen through this medium has the impress of Omnipotence upon it: all the works of nature become supernaturally great, when religion enters into the contemplation; all the works of art and science are at once exalted, expanded, and corrected by its influence; all moral prudence, and the thoughts of the heart, are thereby sublimated above the dross of "Four or five Turkish travellers, separated from me by a wooden balustrade, which divided the divan of the room into compartments, listened to what passed with perfect indifference, smoking all the time with imperturbable gravity. At length, one of them addressed to me the same questions which my host had asked, and which I had been asked often before, namely,' Where did you come from? Where are you going? Have you a teskuri or passport? Have you much money? Are you s spy?" The answers required only an effort of memory and patience on my part. Had there been twenty querists, I should have only had to repeat the same answers twenty times The interrogatories ended, I offered him cof |
