great cause of the war to some miserable points of petty differences, in which Russia is to the full as much in the right as her adversaries. Add to this, that in our ignoble pursuit of this same alliance, we have outraged every sentiment which for years we have been professing, and given a flat denial to all the hopes of liberty we have encouraged throughout the whole Italian peninsula. Assuredly, if our object was to assail despotism and its policy, Austria should not have been the ally of our choice. "She has kept all her engagements," said Lord Clarendon, in his reply to Lord Lyndhurst's admirable speech. "She has kept all her engagements"? Which of them, we would ask, has she adhered to? Is it the first that if the Russians crossed the Pruth, she would regard it as a casus belli? Is it the second-wherein she pledged herself to move, if the Russian army crossed the Danube? Is it the treaty of January last-when she stipulated, that if peace were not ratified, or in progress of ratification by the time then stated, that she would then arrange with the Western Powers the terms of a military convention? Here are three pledges which of them has she kept? To be sure, our foreign secretary, with a zeal above discretion, volunteers the explanation, by assuring us that Austria only waited till we were successful! That had Sebastopol fallen or Cronstadt been taken, we should have Austria heart and soul in our cause. Let us not undervalue the admission. Let us rather treasure it as the only true expression of opinion with which the present Government have favoured us the only solitary instance in which they treated us to a fact. Lord Clarendon also informs us, that our successes were always welcomed at Vienna, and our cause had all the sympathy of Austria. Who could have so grossly misinformed him? In all which calls itself society at Vienna, but one opinion, one wish prevailed—and that was for the success of the Russian arms. The army, in every rank, from that of field marshal down to its lowest lieutenant, had no other desire than to see France and England humbled. How could it be otherwise, in a service where scarcely a superior officer could be seen without a Russian decoration, and where many actually enjoy Russian pensions? The expression of Austrian sympathy for Russia was the more remarkable, that Austrian officials, whether in the civil or military services, are especially guarded-never evincing anything like a personal predilection in a question of politics. Had the pro-Russian tendency, then, been one likely to meet disapproval in high quarters, how many would have dared to avow it? Is it not more natural to suppose that they knew such to be the temper and such the leaning of the Government? Of all the absurdities yet broached about the state of feeling of the Continent, I know of none to equal this assertion of Austrian sympathy. I am here speaking of what I know, and I assert, without a qualification, that this is not the sentiment of Austrians of rank, nor is it the feeling of the army. England of late years has been the reverse of popular in Vienna; nor is there a city where, without peculiar and personal claims, our countrymen meet with less courtesy and attention. What treatment our travellers experience at the hands of police and passport-people let the columns of our own newspapers reveal. To say, therefore, that our cause is regarded with favour, and that our success would be hailed with joy amongst them, is to assert what no English resident of Austria would credit-no native Austrian would expect you to believe. He Lord Lyndhurst avers, that if no actual treaty exist between Russia and Austria, that certainly a distinct understanding subsists between them. But who is to say that no actual treaty-no distinctly drawn up and concerted document does not bind each to his separate part in this grave emergency? would be, to my thinking, a very rash man who would reject this possibility a possibility which, under reflection, becomes more and more like a probability. If we pass under review all that Austria has done since the outbreak of this war, and then contrast with it what she might have done, the supposition assumes a very plausible shape. Nor is there in such a line of policy anything inconsistent with her practice, or adverse to her traditions. I could quote acts of even greater and deeper treachery during the progress of the late troubles in Italy. On the other hand, mark the tone of Russia in all her intercourse with Austria: how remote from that of a Government in daily expectation of a rupture; what interchange of compliments-what bartering of orders, and decorations, and old uniforms of the defunct Czar! Do the terms of such an intercourse suggest thoughts of estrangement and hostility; or are the autograph letters handed by Count Esterhazy and General Gortchakoff missives of defiance and insult? Away, then, and for ever, with the flimsy pretext of an alliance it was a disgrace to have sought for, but worse than a disgrace to have accepted in the measure it was accorded. Austria is not with us; but, I repeat again, she dares not be against us! Let this be the guiding spirit of all our diplomacy with regard to her. -a tone of calm and resolute defiance, and her enmity will be less to be feared, and her friendship not less valuable. As she is not our ally, admit her to none of the privileges of alliance; while the tramp of her squadrons has not been heard, do not listen to the voice of her diplomacy. She is treacherous she is Machiavelian, but with all that she is powerless! She maintains an army of half-a-million, and it is the mere police of her own kingdom, and beyond the frontier of her misruled territory she is not to be dreaded. It is the bane of our public men that they possess little personal acquaintance with foreign countries. The language held by Ministers with regard to Austria is a strong illustration of this ignorance. Let us hope that the delusion is not to last for ever, and that when measures of menace towards Piedmont* are added to the insulting tone assumed by journalists to the Western Powers, we may at length awake to the conviction, that the Austrian alliance is not the great boon that our rulers have called it, C. L. * Forty thousand fresh troops are to be sent into Italy, and a strong force assembled on the Ticino and the Austro-Sardinian frontier. "DIDN'T I tell you how it would be ?" said Billy, as he re-entered the kitchen, now crowded by the workpeople, anxious for tidings of the sick man. "The head is relieved, the con-jestive symptoms is allayed, and when the artarial excitement subsides, he'll be out of danger." "Musha but I'm glad," muttered one;"he'd be a great loss to us." "True for you, Patsey; there's eight or nine of us here would miss him if he was gone." "Troth he doesn't give much employment, but we couldn't spare him," croaked out a third, when the entrance of the Corporal cut short further commentary; and the party now gathered around the cheerful turf fire, with that instinctive sense of comfort impressed by the swooping wind and rain that beat against the windows. "It's a dreadful night outside; I wouldn't like to cross the Lough in it," said one. "Then that's just what I'm thinking of this minit," said Billy. "I'll have to be up at the office for the bags at six o'clock." "Faix you'll not see Leenane at six o'clock to-morrow." "Sorra taste of it," muttered another; "there's a sea runnin' outside now that would swamp a life-boat." "I'll not lose an iligant situation of six pounds ten a-year, and a pair of shoes at Christmas, for want of a bit of courage," said Billy; "I'd have VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXIII. my dismissal if I wasn't there, as sure as my name is Billy Traynor." "And better for you than lose your life, Billy," said one. "And it's not alone myself I'll be thinking of," said Billy; "but every man in this world, high and low, has his duties. My duty," added he, somewhat pretentiously, "is to carry the King's mail; and if anything was to obstruck, or impade, or delay the correspondence, it's on me the blame would lie." "The letters wouldn't go the faster because you were drowned," broke in the Corporal. "No, sir," said Billy, rather staggered by the grin of approval that met this remark. "No, sir; what you observe is true. But nobody reflects on the sintry that dies at his post." "If you must and will go, I'll give you the yawl," said Craggs; "and I'll go with you myself." "Spoke like a British Grenadier," cried Billy, with enthusiasm. "Carbineer, if the same to you, master," said the other, quietly; "I never served in the infantry." "Tros Tyriusve mihi," cried Billy; "which is as much as to say "To storm the skies, or lay siege to the moon, Give me one of the line, or a heavy dragoon ;' "It's the same to me, as the poet says." And a low murmur of the company seemed to accord approval to the sentiment. T "I wish you'd give us a tune, Billy," said one, coaxingly. "Or a song would be better," observed another. "Faix," cried a third, "'tis himself could do it, and in Frinch or Latin if ye wanted it." "The Germans was the best I ever knew for music," broke in Craggs. I was brigaded with Arentscheld's Hanoverians in Spain; and they used to sit outside the tents every evening, and sing. By Jove! how they did singall together, like the swell of a church organ. 66 Yes, you're right," said Billy, but evidently yielding an unwilling consent to this doctrine. "The Germans has a fine national music, and they're great for harmony. But harmony and melody is two different things.' And which is best, Billy?" asked one of the company. "Musha but I pity your ignorance," said Billy, with a degree of confusion that raised a hearty laugh at his ex pense. "Well, but where's the song?" exclaimed another. "Ay," said Craggs, "we are forgetting the song. Now for it, Billy; since all is going on so well above stairs, I'll draw you a gallon of ale, boys, and we'll drink to the master's speedy recovery." It was a rare occasion when the Corporal suffered himself to expand in this fashion, and great was the applause at the unexpected munificence. Billy at the same moment took out his fiddle, and began that process of preparatory screwing and scraping which, no matter how distressing to the surrounders, seems to afford intense delight to performers on this instrument. In the present case, it is but fair to say, there was neither comment nor impatience; on the contrary, they seemed to accept these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of melody that was coming. That Billy was occupied with other thoughts than those of tuning was, however, apparent, for his lips continued to move rapidly; and at times he was seen to beat time with his foot, as though measuring out the rhythm of a verse. "I have it now, ladies and gentlemen," he said, making a low obeisance to the company; and so saying, he struck up a very popular tune, the same to which a reverend divine wrote his words of "The night before Larry was stretched;" and in a voice of a deep and mellow fulness, managed with considerable taste, sung "A fig for the chansons of France, Whose meaning is always a riddle; The music to sing or to dance Is an Irish tune played on the fiddle. In praise of our Land of Potatoes. "What care I for sorrows of those Who speak of their heart as a cuore ; How expect me to feel for the woes Of him who calls love an amore! Let me have a few words about home, With music whose strains I'd remember, And I'll give you all Florence and Rome, Tho' they have a blue sky in December. Tol lol de lol, &c. "With a pretty face close to your own, I'm sure there's no rayson for sighing; Nor when walkin' beside her alone, Why the blazes be talking of dying. That's the way, tho' in France and in Spain, Where love is not real, but acted, You must always purtend you're insane, Or at laste that you're partly distracted. Tol lol de lol, &c.'" It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy's impromptu as did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew nothing, the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest approval. Nor was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The "irritabile genus" has its soft side, can enjoy to the uttermost its own successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher associates, that he might have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere pleasure. "You're right, there, Jim Morris," said he, turning suddenly round towards one of the company; "you never said a truer thing than that. The poetic temperament is riches to a 1855.] Chapter III.-Billy Traynor, Poet, Pedlar and Physician. poor man. Wherever I go-in all weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and the mountain streams all flowin' over-I can just go into my own mind, just the way you'd go into an inn, and order whatever you wanted. I don't need to be a king, to sit on a throne; I don't want ships, nor coaches, nor horses to convay me to foreign lands. I can bestow kingdoms. When I haven't tuppence to buy tobacco, and without a shoe to my foot, and my hair through my hat, I can be dancin' wid princesses, and handin' empresses in to tay." "Musha, musha!" muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to discuss his own miraculous gifts. "And," resumed Billy, "it isn't only what ye are to yourself and your own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that sacret bond between you, wouldn't think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware— cheap penknives and scissors, pencilcases, bodkins, and the like—and I wandered about for weeks through what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in Ireland-more wood, forest timber, and better off people, but nothing beyond that! 66 Well, one evening-it was in August-I came down by a narrow path to the side of a lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to see the view from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot and well chosen, for you could count as many as five promontaries running out into the lake; and there, was two islands, all wooded to the water's edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin' to change their colours, and there was shades of deep gold, and dark olive, and russet brown, all mingling together with the green, and glowing in the lake below under the setting sun, and all was quiet and still as midnight; and over the water the only ripple was the track of a water-hen, 259 as she scudded past between the islands; and if ever there was peace and tranquillity in the world it was just there! Well, I put down my pack in the leaves, for I didn't like to see or think of it, and I stretched myself down at the water's edge, and I fell into a fit of musing. It's often and often I tried to remember the elegant fancies that came through my head, and the beautiful things that I thought I saw that night out on the lake fornint me! Ye see I was fresh and fastin'; I never tasted a bit the whole day, and my brain, maybe, was all the better; for somehow janius, real janius, thrives best on a little starvation. And from musing I fell off asleep; and it was the sound of voices near that first awoke me! For a minute or two I believed I was dreaming, the words came so softly to my ear, for they were spoken in a low, gentle tone, and blended in with the slight plash of oars that moved through the water carefully, as though not to lose a word of him that was speakin'. "It's clean beyond me to tell you what he said; and, maybe, if I could ye wouldn't be able to follow it, for he was discoorsin' about night and the moon, and all that various poets said about them; ye'd think that he had books, and was reading out of them, so glibly came the verses from his lips. I never listened to such a voice before, so soft, so sweet, so musical, and the words came droppin' down, like the clear water filterin' over a rocky ledge, and glitterin' like little spangles over moss and wild flowers. "It was'nt only in English but Scotch ballads, too, and once or twice in Italian that he recited, till at last he gave out, in all the fulness of his liquid voice, them elegant lines out of Pope's Homer "As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies; |