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many, many days, and had long fondly glanced each at the other, Tutanekai sent a messenger to Hine-Moa, to tell of his love; and when Hine-Moa had seen the messenger, she said, 'Eh-hu! have we then each loved alike ?""

Some time after this a dispute arose among the brothers as to who was most favoured by Hine-Moa, and they treated Tutanekai's pretensions with scorn, as he was a low-born, illegitimate fellow; but he confided to his father their mutual affection, for they had agreed that on the first opportunity, Hine-Moa should elope to him, finding him by the sound of the trumpet, which he was to sound every night :

"Now always about the middle of the night Tutanekai, and his friend Tiki, went up into their balcony and played, the one upon his trumpet, the other upon his flute, and Hine-Moa heard them, and desired vastly to paddle in her canoe to Tutanekai; but her friends, suspecting something, had been careful with the canoes, to leave none afloat, but had hauled them all up upon the shore of the lake; and thus her friends had always done for many days and for many nights.

"At last she reflected in her heart, saying, How can I then contrive to cross the lake to the island of Mokoia ?-it can plainly be seen that my friends suspect what I am going to do.' So she sat down upon the ground to rest; and then soft measures reached her from the horn of Tutanekai, and the young and beautiful chieftainess felt as if an earthquake shook her to make her go to the beloved of her heart; but then arose the recollection that there was no canoe. At last she thought, perhaps I might be able to swim across. So she took six large dry empty gourds as floats, lest she should sink in the water, three of them for each side, and she went out upon a rock, which is named Iri-iri-kapua, and from thence to the edge of the water, to the spot called Wairerewai, and there she threw off her clothes and cast herself into the water, and she reached the stump of a sunken tree which used to stand in the lake, and was called Hinewhata, and she clung to it with her hands, and rested to take breath, and when she had a little eased the weariness of her shoulders, she swam on again, and whenever she was exhaused she floated with the current of the lake, supported by the gourds, and after recovering strength she swam on again; but she could not distinguish in which direction she should proceed, from the darkness of the night; her only guide was, however, the soft measure from the instrument of Tutanekai-that was the mark by which she swam straight to Waikimihia, for just

above that hot spring was the village of Tutanekai, and swimming, at last she reached the island of Mokoia.

"At the place where she landed on the island, there is a hot spring separated from the lake only by a narrow ledge of rocks; this is it it is called, as I just said, Waikimihia. Hine-Moa got into this to warm herself, for she was trembling all over, partly from the cold, after swimming in the night across the wide lake of Rotorua, and partly also, perhaps, from modesty, at the thoughts of mecting Tutanekai.

"Whilst the maiden was thus warming herself in the hot spring, Tutanekai happened to feel thirsty, and said to his servant, "Bring me a little water;' so his servant went to fetch water for him, and drew it from the lake in a calabash, close to the spot where Hine-Moa was sitting. The maiden, who was frightened, called out to him in a gruff voice, like that of a man, Whom is that water for?'" He replied,'It's for Tutanekai.' 'Give it here, then,' said Hine-Moa. And he gave her the water, and she drank, and having finished drinking, purposely threw down the calabash and broke it. Then the servant asked her, 'What business had you to break the calabash of Tutanekai? But Hine-Moa did not say a word in answer. The servant then went back, and Tutanekai said to him, 'Where is the water I told you to bring me?' So he answered, Your calabash was broken.' And his master asked him, Who broke it?' and he answered, The man who is in the bath.' And Tutanekai said to him, 'Go back again then, and fetch me some water.'"

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This occurred several times, till at last Tutanekai started up in a rage, and threw on his clothes, and took his club intending to chastise the insolence of the man who had dared to break his calabashes; and when he came to the bath and called out

"Hine-Moa knew the voice, that the sound of it was that of the beloved of her heart; and she hid herself under the overhanging rocks of the hot spring; but her hiding was hardly a real hiding, but rather a bashful concealing of herself from Tutanekai, that he might not find her at once, but only after trouble and careful searching for her; so he went feeling about along the banks of the hot spring, searching everywhere, whilst she coyly hid under the ledges of the rock, peeping out, wondering when she would be found. At last he caught hold

of a hand, and cried out, Hollo, who's this?' And Hine-Moa answered, 'It's I, Tutanekai.' And he said, 'But who are you?who's I?' Then she spoke louder, and said, 'It's I, it is Hine-Moa.' And he said, 'Ho! ho! ho! can such, in very truth, be the case? let us two then go to my house.' And she

answered, 'Yes;' and she rose up in the water as beautiful as the wild white hawk, and stepped upon the edge of the bath as graceful as the shy, white crane; and he threw garments over her and took her, and they proceeded to his house, and reposed there; and thenceforth, according to the ancient laws of the Maori, they were man and wife.

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"When the morning dawned, all the people of the village went forth from their houses to cook their breakfasts, and they all ate; but Tutanekai tarried in his house. So Whakaue said,This is the first morning that Tutanekai has slept in this way; perhaps, the lad is ill-bring him here — rouse him up.' Then the man who was to fetch him went, and drew back the sliding wooden window of the house, and peeping in, saw four feet. Oh! he was greatly amazed, and said to himself, Who can this companion of his be?' However, he had seen quite enough, and turning about, hurried back as fast as he could to Whakaue, and said to him, 'Why, there are four feet, I saw them myself in the house.' Whakaue answered, "Who's his companion, then? hasten back and see.' So back he went to the house, and peeped in at them again, and then for the first time he saw it was Hine-Moa. Then he shouted out in his amazement, 'Oh! here's Hine-Moa, here's Hine-Moa, in the house of Tutanekai;' and all the village heard him, and there arose cries on every side'Oh! here's Hine-Moa, here's Hine-Moa with Tutanekai.' And his elder brothers heard the shouting, and they said, 'It is not true!' for they were very jealous, indeed. Tutanekai then appeared coming from his house, and Hine-Moa following him, and his elder brothers saw that it was indeed Hine- Moa; and they said, It is true! it is a fact!'

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"After these things, Tiki thought within himself, Tutanekai has married Hine-Moa, she whom he loved; but as for me, alas! I have no wife;' and he became sorrowful, and returned to his own village. And Tutanekai was grieved for Tiki; and he said to Whakaue, I am quite ill from grief for my friend, Tiki;' and Whakaue said, "What do you mean?' And Tutanekai replied, 'I refer to my young sister, Tupa, let her be given as a wife to my beloved friend, to Tiki;' and his reputed father, Wakaue, consented to this; so his young sister, Tupa, was given to Tiki, and she became his wife.

"The descendants of Hine-Moa and of Tutanekai are at this very day dwelling on the lake of Rotorua, and never yet have the lips of the offspring of Hine-Moa forgotten to repeat tales of the great beauty of their renowned ancestress, Hine-Moa, and of her swimming over here; and this, too, is the burden of a song still current."-pp. 242

245

out feeling how "one touch of nature
The
makes the whole world kin?"
rude Maori with his war-club, and his
stone-axe, his tatooed skin, and his
matted cloak, full of revenge on his
enemies, reckless of life, fierce and
savage even to cannibalism, slaying,
killing, and eating a man, on slight
provocation, or perhaps upon none at
all, has yet a soul and a heart open to all
the beauties of nature, and accessible
to all the soft influences of love. Poetry
and song are his delight-not only the
war-chant, but the love-song; and his
love is not solely the mere animal im-
pulse, but as evinced by the above
poem, full of sentiment, delicacy and
grace, natural and artless, but refined
and modest, and blending easily with
music and with flowers, cherished by
the soft sunsets and moonlit evenings
of the summer, the natural efflorescence
of the youthful soul among the Maoris
as among ourselves. Which of us men
would not have loved Hine-Moa, and
have felt for Tutenakai as for a friend
and a brother?

We have given but a few of the legends and stories in Sir G. Grey's book, and are obliged to omit many passages we had marked for extract. Among these were some having important bearings on the manners, and customs, and past history of the people. An account of the graceful dancing (or gesture-making, as we should call it) of a young chieftainess at page 266, might be given as a literal account of that of a Malay dancing-girl. The graceful bending of the arms, and the lissomness of the wrist, as shown by reverting the fingers till their tips touched the centre of the forearms is in each case accounted a great beauty, all the motions of the body being light and graceful as that of a person swimming or floating in the air.

At another passage a date is given, since eleven generations, or two hundred and seventy-five years, are said to have passed since the marriage of a certain chieftain, though, as the story is evidently a modern one, and does not pretend to concern itself with any of their great ancestors or mythical demigods, the date is not of much importance. Two legends are devoted to the subject of the first emigration of the Maoris to New Zealand, called the emigration of Turi, the progenitor of the Whanganui tribes; and the emi

Who can read this simple tale with gration of Manaia, the progenitor of

the Ngati-awa tribes. Perhaps the most remarkable circumstance in these stories is, the constant assertion that the emigrants arrived in New Zealand from the West, or that they always steered towards the rising sun. This appears simply impossible, as there is no Polynesian people west of New Zealand, nor any land in that direction nearer than Australia, the inhabitants of which are, in every respect, far more inferior to the Maoris than the Maoris are to ourselves.

It would indeed be difficult to say in what natural gifts, qualities, or capacities, any race of people whatever excel the Polynesians. Physically, they are as well formed and as goodlooking as any people. In bodily strength and athletic exercises they are great adepts. Captain Cook found none of his crew able to compete in boxing with some of the Friendly Islanders. Sandwich Islanders and New Zealanders are often the picked men of English or American whalers. Singularly quick and intelligent, their mental faculties rejoice in the acquisition of knowledge; while their moral instincts, though often perverted, are still truly human and correct at bottom, and are, above those of all other men, easily trained and docile to instruction. In this again they show their kindred to the Malays. Among no other nations do missionaries, whether Bhoodist, Mahometan, or Christian, so easily make converts, and acquire such an entire ascendancy, as among the Malays and the Polynesians.

It is true that among the facile and light-hearted Tahitians and other peoples inhabiting gay tropical islands, their natures are light, mobile, and impulsive. Deep and serious truths, abstract contemplations, or severe studies are foreign to the natures of such people, and must ever be confined to the few of higher powers among them.

In the more serious Sandwich Islands such things may take deeper root; but it is to the far sterner and more athletic Maorie or New Zealander, nursed and strengthened in a somewhat ruder climate, and with a larger and more varied country, that we must look for our own more immediate counterpart in the southern seas, The whole of this people is now, or shortly will be, Christian; and according as they be come of one faith, and of common opinions, and common education with ourselves, intermarriages will doubtless take place-not, as of old, by New Zealand women being taken as concubines by the white men, but as wives of equal rank with themselves, and white women may then marry with Maori gentlemen or chiefs. Some few generations will doubtless have to pass ere the old savagery and ferocity pass altogether from the blood of the mixed race; but it will very shortly show itself in the form of independence, enterprise, and energy; and we may look forward to the AngloMaori as a people destined to play a distinguished part in the world's history. Mr. Macaulay's New Zealander will become a real personage, though we do not know whether the historian contemplated him as a descendant of one of the native race, or merely as one inhabiting their land. Let' us hope, however, that it will be long before he makes a pilgrimage to gaze upon the mere ruins of London, or to find our own islands gone back to the condition of a wilderness.

Under whatever circumstances, we believe Sir George Grey's book will be a most valuable one to him, as valuable as one would be to us written in choice Latin by a contemporary of Livy or of Tacitus, and containing a literal translation of all the legends and stories of the Druids, all the songs and poems of the ancient Bards.

THE DRAMATIC WRITERS OF IRELAND.-NO. VI.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

"If anything be overlooked, or not accurately inserted, let no one find fault, but take into consideration that this history is compiled from all quarters."-TRANSLATION FROM EVAGRIUS.

WE arrive now at a great name in dramatic literature-RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, son of Thomas Sheridan, the celebrated manager and actor, and of Frances Chamberlaine, his wife, both commemorated in an earlier portion of the present series. This is the man of versatile and multiplied endowments, culogised by Thomas Moore,

as

"The orator, dramatist, minstrel, who ran

Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all;"

and whom Lord Byron has placed even on a higher pinnacle, when he says"Whatever Sheridan has done, or chosen to do, has been, par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy, The School for Scandal; the best opera, The Duenna;-in my inind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, The Beggar's Opera; the best farce, The Critic (it is only too good for an afterpiece) ; and the best address, "The Monody on Garrick;" and to crown all, delivered the very best oration, the famous Begum speech, ever conceived or heard in this country."

The varied abilities, systematic profusion, convivial intemperance, brilliant conversational wit, unrivalled eloquence, dazzling meridian, and most melancholy decline, of this gifted, but ill-regulated son of genius, have employed the pens of such a host of writers, and have formed the text of so many printed discussions, that novelty in going over the same ground can scarcely be looked for. All the leading incidents of the public and private life of this remarkable individual have been held up as a moral lesson, commented on, and sermonised until the topic is exhausted. Moore, in his "Life of Sheridan," as in the case of Lord Byron, has laboured with

the zeal of a friend and fellow-countryman, to perpetuate the most agreeable features of the portrait he undertook to draw. It is deeply to be regretted that he has been less fortunate himself when he became, in his turn, the subject of a biography.*

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin (not at Quilca, as has been sometimes supposed), in the year 1751. In his family, natural talent and literary acquirements appear to have been hereditary. His father and his grandfather were both eminent for their scholarship, and his mother distinguished herself as an authoress in more than one department. It was not, therefore, likely that his education would be neglected. In his seventh year he was consigned, with his brother, to the instruction of a well-respected pedagogue, Mr. Samuel Whyte of Dublin, with the encouraging recom mendation from Mrs. Sheridan, that they were the two dullest boys she had ever met with.

When his parents removed to England in 1762, he was sent to Harrow, under Dr. Sumner, but he gained no laurels in that renowned seminary, which he left with the reputation of being a sharp, froward, careless lad, of a buoyant temperament, fond of light reading and poetry, but averse to sustained or studious application. Yet he must have laid in, while there, what Dr. Johnson would have called, "a bottom of learning," or he could never, at eighteen, in conjunction with his schoolfellow, Halhed, have undertaken and completed a poetical translation of Aristænetus- an obscure Greek author of disputed existence, under whose name some epistles in prose have been preserved on subjects of love and gallantry, and which are more characterised by gross indelicacy

66

* A good condensed life of Sheridan, compiled by G. G. S., is prefixed to an edition of his works published in Bolm's Standard Library, in 1848.

than by wit or graceful imagination. The young translators softened these passages; but there was an error in taste and judgment, as well as loss of time in their selection, which few read and nobody liked.

Sheridan lost his mother in 1766, before he quitted Harrow. Having left that seat of learning, he entered himself of the Middle Temple, with a view to the profession of the law, an intention which he speedily abandoned. Themis was too dull for an enthusiastic votary of Apollo. In 1771 he went to reside in Bath, his father finding it convenient to fix the head-quarters of his family in that idle resort of fashion, valetudinarianism, profligacy, and selfishness, while he himself was fulfilling a round of professional engagements elsewhere. Here young Sheridan became acquainted with the beautiful and accomplished Miss Elizabeth Linley, daughter of the eldest Thomas Linley, a distinguished composer and musician. The young lady, who sang at public concerts and oratorios, possessed vocal abilities of the highest order, and, as might be naturally expected, was followed by a legion of admirers. She was a coquette too, and played them off with considerable skill, but sometimes with hazardous imprudence. Included in the list was a Captain Matthews, an intimate friend of the family, the possessor of a large fortune in Wales, but unfortunately a married man. His principal employment in life was playing whist, on which he wrote a treatise, long considered the infallible guide. The close attentions of such a squire in ordinary under such circumstances, could only tend to injure Miss Linley's character, and his free conversation gave colour to the most damaging reports. A mutual attachment of an ardent and romantic complexion sprang up between Sheridan and the fair syren, which led to an elopement to the continent, winding up with a secret marriage.

Then followed two singularly savage duels between the happy husband and the disappointed Matthews. In the first, Sheridan was victorious, breaking his adversary's sword, and compelling him to beg his life. The second appears to have been a sort of drawn

battle, or scuffle, in which the combatants having closed and fallen together, hugged and hacked away on the ground with the fragments of their broken blades, something after the practice of the Jesuit D'Aigrigny, and the Marêchal St. Simon, in "The Wandering Jew.* Wounds, slight, although they were reported deadly, were given and received on both sides, until the seconds, who had long looked on in passive silence, thought it necessary to interfere at last. The ex-parte statements of these encounters published respectively by Sheridan, Matthews, and their friends, are so totally at variance, that it is not easy to extract the real truth from such conflicting evidence; but in both quarrels the principals seem to have gone to work more like red Indians, determined to tomahawk and scalp each other, than polished gentlemen, moving in elegant society, fighting according to rule, and in compliance with the ordinances and prejudices of the day.

When Sheridan ran away with Miss Linley he was twenty-two, and his bride eighteen. He was without a profession, or any certain income. The lady had a fortune of £3,000, paid to her by a Mr. Long, for a very unprecedented reason — because she had refused him; but she was articled to her father, who could claim her services until she was twenty-one. Linley, finding the marriage irrevocable, after an interview with Sheridan at Lisle, assented to a marriage he was no longer able to prevent, and became reconciled to the young couple, on the understanding that his daughter should fulfil her engagement to him, as in duty bound. This being settled, they returned to England, and lived for some time in retirement at East Burnham. Sheridan had a great dislike to the appearance of his wife in public, and resolved to withdraw her entirely from all professional avocations. By yielding to this point of delicacy he gave up at least one thousand pounds per annum, a sum she was sure to receive for several years, and which in all probability would have continued to increase. Dr. Johnson, in conversation with Boswell, expressed his warm approbation of this high spirit in a young

This scene seems to have furnished the idea of the close of the duel between Fabien dei Franchi and Château Renaud, in The Corsican Brothers.

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