derlies, selected in haste and at hazard. I was credibly informed, and know it to be fact that in the early part of the year, when I first visited the East, abundance of every species of valuable necessaries for the army, both as regards effective men, and the sick and wounded, remained for days-nay, weeks-on board the vessels which brought them out from England-"it being no person's or every person's duty to receive them, or that Mr. Brown refused to give an order till countersigned by Mr. Jones; Jones, in like manner, awaiting the authority of Smith." And what is still more strange, at the very moment that complaints were being made, that the army was ill-provided, the market at Balaklava was so overstocked, that cargoes were actually bought up, to be sent back to England, and resold at a profit. It is to be hoped, however, that we have had a lesson, terrible though the effects, which henceforth will remedy such evils; and if it is God's will that our noble army is still doomed to suffer, either in the battlefield or from disease, England will know how best to give that aid to mitigate its sufferings as to save many valuable lives.

At the period of my first visiting the hospitals at Scutari and Kulalee, in January last, they were filled to overflowing, not with wounded soldiers, but sufferers from dysentery, fever, and frost-bitten limbs; in the latter case their position was most pitiablegenerally ending, if not in successful amputation, in mortification and death. During the time I was present in the barrack-hospital, several poor fellows arrived in this state from Balaklava, as also others laboring under fever and dysentry. It would be ridiculous to assert that there was anything bordering on cheerfulness in the countenances of these poor soldiers; but, having undergone the welcome ordeal of a warm bath, clean linen, and been laid helpless as children in bed-the nurses having supplied them with some fitting nourishment or temporary restorative, to which, alas, they had long been unaccustomed there shone forth an expression of renewed hope, calm resignation, and gratitude, in the knowledge they would be well cared for, which went straight to the heart. Comfort, indeed, must they have experienced, poor fellows! at being relieved from the filth and vermin in which, for so many months, they had actually existed. In the middle of February the hospitals were almost entirely free from wounded men; quite so from those who had fought and bled at the glorious battles of Alma,

Inkerman, and Balaklava; but Miss Nightingale most justly and most touchingly observed to me, that the nature of her duties was far more sad.

The wounded soldier, she observed, returning from the glories of a victory, in which he has taken part, may and does, not seldom, suffer physical torments hard to endure; but, in the midst of these torments, bright feelings, cheerfulness, knowledge of duties well performed, hoped-for reward and gratitude of his country, one and all, tend to support him; and even in the midst of torture his eye is bright, and his courage high. But fever, and dysentery, and frost-bitten limbs, are sufferings of a totally different nature; they subdue the spirit, utterly prostrate all physical powers, leaving the sufferer a mere inanimate human being, who, as day by day he witnesses a comrade carried to his last home, eventually sinks himself, without energy or strength to sustain him. Such was the position in which I found our sick in the months of January and February; and with the exception of frostbitten wounds, their sufferings are similar now; but it is a source of gladness to be enabled to assert, that the sufferers are diminished by three fourths, and the deaths are one twentieth in proportion. Gladness, indeed; for alike amid the lordly homes as in the rural cottages of Merrie England-high and low, rich and poor, there are some hearts which beat in unison with those who are fighting our battles in the East.

That the hospitals of our allies have been more efficient-their system better-their comforts greater at the earlier period of the campaign, there admits of no question; and it would be well for us, in some things, to take advantage of their mode of administration in this department, as in some others, as regards military affairs. Such, however, can scarcely, in justice, be said now to be the case; and in proportion, though they have a careful habit of silence, at times doubtless very desirable, my conviction is, they have suffered to the full as much as we have.

Since writing the foregoing chapter, with a firmness of heart and nobleness of purpose unsurpassable, Miss Nightingale has been induced to proceed to the seat of war in the cause of suffering humanity. Unhappily, while there probably from over-exertion, or from her fearless mode of mixing with fever and pestilence, with the desire to aid the sick-she has herself been attacked with severe fever. All England, however, have now the satisfaction of knowing that she is

It is very possible for a myth to exist in the midst of us; and although no one firmly believes in it, yet to be as lively as ever. Such a myth was witchcraft; long before it judicially died, belief in it had died out, yet it existed. And such, but a far more lively one, is the modern idea of an Irishman.

Your Irishman-what is he? I don't speak of Mrs. Hall's Irish men or women, from Katty Dowlan to the last creationthey are all sisters and brothers, and, as everyone knows, the most virtuous people in the world. I am not also exactly speaking of your stage Irishmen, though I come nearly to it; but I speak of that immortal creature of song-thy myth with a rouged face, curling hair, bright eyes, big calves, thick shoes, yellow breeches, and an immense brogue and shillelah to match, whom we meet on the rostrum of a low concert room, where he sings in character, and who appears to be incessant in his courting, blarneying, philalooing, kissing, squeezing, dancing, slapping the sole of his shoe with his shillelah, and bothering everything on earth. Ugh! the

monster.

Now, I'm not an Irishman myself. I am a simple Shropshire man, a Salopian-thank my stars! objectionable to no popular prejudice, and proud of nothing which my countrymen have achieved. I am Englishand I own my weakness there-I am proud of it. I should have been just as proud of being a Frenchman, or a Swiss, or of any country to which one can look back with satisfaction on. I'm proud of both Irish or Scotch; they are all Fellow-Britons. I feel perfectly certain that English, Irish, and Scotch, shoulder to shoulder, could - well; I leave the reader to say what they could do, it would take too long here. But I do like to see people painted pretty fairly; I don't like those murderous and cadaverous daguerotypes, where the eyes look so sombre, the nose so large, the mouth so frightful—and I don't like the rhymed Irishman, I won't call

him the poetic Irishman-though it is too much the custom to call rhyme poetry. Let us trace his history.

The first thing which happens to this mythic Irishman has happened to all of us; he is born-but then he is born in a peculiar, in an out of the way, in an Irish manner. "Near a bog, in swate Ireland, I'm tould that born I was;

Well I remember a fine muddy morn it was.” And then, being of a country which is happy under the influence of religion, another thing happens to him as to us :—

"Oh! when I was christened, 'twas on a fair day, And my own loving mother, she called me her dear joy;

And that I was so, she always would say;
I was smiling, beguiling,
Dutiful, beautiful,

Could not tell what I did ail! 'Twas dear, dear, what can the matter be? Och arrah, my honey! what can the matter be? Och gramachree, what can the matter be? Bothered from head to the tail!"

After this botheration, his courtship takes place. He is usually remarkably quick upon this point. He will do anything of that sort in five minutes less than no time; if he tells you, that "Adown a dark alley, I courted a maid, Miss Judy M'Snifford, who washed for her trade," he tells you in the next verse, that "he soon got her leave in church to say grace, which he saled with a kiss on her swate yellow face," &c. But we will not here endure such improper haste, we will suppose that his mistress accuses him of "decate," which, she well may, seeing he is "true to ten thousand;" he immediately answers her in his popular song

"Can an Irishman practise such guile, With a lady so swate to dissemble? And when he would make the rogue smile, To think of him making her tremble?" And having thus excused himself, probably goes on to disport himself elsewhere. Indeed, his life, as he chronicles, is, about this time, full of jollity and male flirtation, for which the ladies will, very considerately, abhor him. "Och," he cries, with his customary howl-“ Och,”

"I was the boy for bewitching 'em,

Whether good-humored or coy;
All cried, when I was beseeching 'em,
'Do what you will with me, joy.'
Daughters, be cautious and steady,
Mothers would cry out for fear,
Won't you take care now of Teddy?
Och! he's a devil, my dear."

We will presume that the Irishman, this versified horror which we have been describing, now wishes to go on the grand tour, or, as he calls it, "tower," as men of spirit, in the mythic times in which he lived, generally did. To do this, he takes steps peculiarly Irish, and with a freedom and boldness, which neither occasion nor experience justifies, he launches himself upon his voyage.

"With a dozen thirteens* in a nice paper-bag, I came up to London without a dry rag,

On a fine summer's day in a shower of rain;
But all that I saw, I thought deucedly queer;
At a place called Cheap side, they sell everything
dear;

I went to Cornhill, where I looked like an ape;
And as I came over the harvest to rape,

Och! there was no harvest for Darby M'Shane."

It may be necessary to explain, that in this mythic tongue the "thirteen" of thirteenes is a shilling.

After a series of blunders, and a lame compliment to the English, the Irishman concludes his metrical history, and it would appear, with a little more caution, proceeds at once to Paris. The history of this strange trip he gives in the song called, "O'Whack's Journey to Paris;" but Mr. O'Whack is, without doubt, the same individual as Darby M'Shane. There are the same characteristics about him, the same lying, bragging, rattling brogue.

"You may talk of a brogue, and of Ireland, swate nation,

Of bulls, and of howls, and palaver, comme ça ; But, mon Dieu, it's no more to the French botheration,

Than vin de Bourdeaux to the swate usquebaugh. If I go back again, blood 'doons, how I'll wriggle, And congé, and caper, and make the folks stare; And, instead of potatoes, how Shelah will giggle When I cries, M'mselle, hand me that swate pomme de terre.

With their petite chanson, ça ira, ça ira, Malbrook Merrington,

And their dans votre lit, by the powers, the're

all nonsense and bodder,

Agra, to our dideroo, buberoo, whack lango lee."

Fame, indeed, no more agrees with the versified Irishman, than it does with John Bull in Monsieur Nontongpaw. He is, horrible to relate, also guilty of as great a breach of the law of nations, as the Russians are when they fire on the wounded; he meets with a grisette, who is polite to him from evidently mercenary motives, and he immediately, on finding this out, beats her.

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'But when she found out sans six sous was poor whack, sir,

'Twas Allez, miserable diable, John Bull ! So I gave this blarneying, Frenchified cat, sir, Of good wholesome shilelah a good stomach full. With her petite chanson," &c.

His poverty, which has accompanied him everywhere, does not seem to leave him upon his return to Irelaud. He has been drinking, singing, confessing, and making love, and he thinks he will now settle. In fact, he can't do without a wife, he must have "love-i-ly wooman" somewhere near him.

"Oh! a petticoat, honey, 's an Irishman's joy, Go where he will the time merrily passes; Search the world over, sure, Paddy's the boy,

For banging the men and for kissing the lasses.

"When swate Kitty Connor pierced me through the heart,

And chose Teddy Blarney, a big man of honor, One moonshiny night, to give ease to my heart I kicked Mr. Blarney, and kissed Mrs. Connor." After this proof of his devotion to woman, we may fairly again land him in Ireland, where he is to be married, generally it must

be confessed "off-hand." But, sometimes he lays regular siege to the lady's heart, and surprises it by mentioning the property which he possesses.

"I've got an acre of ground,

I've got it set with praties;
I've got of baccy a pound,

And I've got some say for the ladies.
I've got a ring to wed,

Some whisky to make us gaily,

A mattress feather-bed,

And a handsome new shillelah.

So only say, will you be Mrs." &c.

His furniture and possessions seem ever to be of the same nature; he has chronicled them in another place, thus :

"When Pat was asked,

Would his love last?

The chancel echo'd with laughter, oh !
Arrah, fait cried Pat,
You may say dat,

To the end of the world, and after, oh !
Then tenderly her hand he gripes,

And kisses her genteelly, oh!
While all in tune, the merry pipes,
Struck up a lilt so gaily, oh!

"And then at night,
Oh what a sight,

To see them footing and prancing, oh !
An opera or ball

Were nothing at all,
Compared to their style of dancing, oh!
And then, to see old Father Quipes,

Beat time with his shillelah, oh!
While the chanter, and his merry pipes,
Struck up a lilt so gaily, oh!"

The versified Irishman is married; would our readers wish to proceed further in his history? Poets and novelists finish wisely at the wedding, and perhaps we had better here drop the curtain. The Irishman who marries upon the slender property we have chronicled above, is not very likely to be either a careful or considerate husband. If we go any further, we may find him " bating" or "banging" Mrs. O'Whack, or M'Shane; and surely we have enough of these exhibitions at our London Police Courts, to prevent their being

reproduced in a magazine. Let us, therefore, before we come to the end, turn to two qualities of the versified Irishman which we have not yet noticed-the first is his love for his country and his superiors-the second, his attachment to his friends in difficulties. The first he has chanted, as only an Irishman could, in the "Groves of Blarney," part of which, of exceeding richness, we give. After descanting upon the peculiar beauty of the place, he tells us that

""Tis Lady Jeffers owns this station, Like Alexander, or Helen fair;

There's not one commander throughout the

Oh, there's many a flitchee in the kitchen,
With maids a sleekin in the open air;

Oh, the bread and turkey, and the beef and
whisky,

Would make you frisky if you were there.
'Tis there you'll find Peg Murphy's daughter,
A poking praties before the door;

With Nancy Casey and Aunt Delany,
All blood relations to my Lord Donoughmore."

But in numbering the beauties of this earthly paradise, the bard neither forgets his Irishism nor his modesty :

"Oh, there's to grace'm, this noble place'm,
All haythin goddesses so fair;

Bold Neptune, Plutarch, and Nicodemus,
All mother naked in the open air.
So now to finish this brief narration,
Which I have not the gift to entwine;
But was I Homer or Nebuchadnezzar,
'Tis in every feature I'd make it shine."

The last trait of our present hero naturally brings him to his grave; how he gets there, is narrated in the following record of the doings on "the night before Larry was stretched," when, because his " courage was good," "the boys they all paid him a visit." Upon this occasion, just to keep up his spirits, his friends proposed a game of cards :—

"The cards being called for, they play'd,
Till Larry found one of 'em cheated;
He made a smart stroke at his head
(The boy being aisily heated).
Oh by the holy, you teef,

I'll scuttle your nob wid my daddle;
You cheat me bekase I'm in grief,

But soon I'll demolish your noddle."
It is not perhaps worth our space to
chronicle the whole of the ultima verba of
Larry; let us hasten, therefore, to the closing

scene:

"When he came to the nubling cheat,

He was tuck'd up so neat and so pretty; The rumbler jogg'd off from his feet, And he died with his face to the city.

He kick'd, too, but that was all pride,
For soon you might see all was over;
Soon after, the noose was untied,

And at darkee we wak'd him in clover."

Such is the versified Irishman from his cradle to his grave; a monster of drunkenness, debauchery, and braggadocio. In the book* from which we have gathered this metrical history, are a hundred instances of

*The Shamrock. Glasgow, 1830.

these qualities, which we have thought fit to suppress. How far such a character has an effect upon a sensitive nation-how far the imputation of careless, brutal, and monstrous qualities produce such qualities themselveswe leave our readers to guess. What the Irish really are, we all know; what the unnatural myth is, the foregoing paper will give us some idea. Happily, the creature is now to be numbered with the extinct animals classified at Sydenham.

CHAPTER LVII.

AN ANONYMOUS LETTER.

WHILE Harry Coverdale, with the best possible intentions, had been breaking his wife's heart and his own bones, the world had not stood still, nor had the ordinary course of events been in the slightest degree retarded. On the contrary, the unsympathizing globe we inhabit had revolved on its axis with its accustomed perseverance, and men had been born into it in their first childhood, and died out of it in their second, and the sons and daughters of men had been married and been given in marriage, and the many had gone on sinning and the few repenting, very much as it all happened in the days of Noah, while the ark was abuilding, and the longsuffering of God waited to allow the evildoers to perceive the error of their way, and to turn from it ere the day of mercy should be over, and the destroyer should be let loose upon them. The world was then a profligate young world, sowing its wild oats. with a frank and careless disregard of appearances, which involved at least the one virtue of sincerity-the world is now a crafty old world, in its dotage, one is sometimes tempted to imagine; but even the flood only whitewashed its outside, for it still clings to its darling sins, though no longer openlythe world has grown too cunning for that, it knows the value of a good name, and has set up a gilded idol of clay yclept Respectability to resemble the refined gold of which virtue's image is composed; and because it worships this idol zealously, short-sighted optimists mistake hypocrisy for true religion, and deem the world has grown pious in its

* Continued from p. 43. VOL. VII. N. S.

old age; but there are those who fear that if, once again, the waters should overspread the earth, sin would weigh so heavily on the inhabitants thereof, that not very many of them would swim.

Bethis as it may, certain it is that while Harry was riding Don Pasquale across the country at the risk of his neck, and Alice was fretting herself into a brain fever on the chance of his being shot by Horace D'Almayne, that talented young gentleman was laboring most industriously, with the assistance of his cousin, the avocat at Brussels, to obtain the sum of money due to Mr. Crane, on the cargo of the unfortunate Bundolumda East Indiaman. When men exert their utmost energies to attain an object, success nine times out of ten is the result; consequently, very few days elapsed after Horace's departure before Mr. Crane had the pleasure of learning that the mere threat of energetic law proceedings had brought his adversary to reason, and that the money had been actually paid into D'Almayne's hands. But somehow this announcement did not appear to afford the worthy ex-cotton-spinner such satisfaction as might have been expected; on the contrary, when he closed the letter which conveyed the intelligence, he, to his wife's surprise, muttered something very like an oath; whereupon, after the laudable fashion of her sex, that lady appeared deeply scandalized, and exclaimed, "My dear Mr. Crane," in a tone of voice which metamorphosed that affectionate address into " You wicked old man, where do you expect to go to? Replying rather to her tone than her words, her husband, exalting his peevish treble, began,

Yes, it's all very well for you, Mrs. Crane, who have nothing to do but to sit here and

spend the money I pour into your lap, to

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