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"Will you promise that, this night?' asked Kitty.

"I promise,' returned the other; and from the slap that followed, I think they shook hands on it.

"Well, then,' commenced Kitty, you must get some love-powdher and mix it in his drink.'

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Love-powder!' repeated Nancy. I never heard tell of such a thing.' "You're wiser now,' laughed Kitty; 'tis the only thing for a bashful man; when once he tastes it, he grows bould as the best o' them.'

"And where is it sold?' demanded Nancy Mullins.

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At Mrs. Costigan's.'

"The wise woman?' demanded Nancy, anxiously.

"The wise woman,' echoed her companion.

"This was a fortune-teller, plase your honour, who lived near the Dane's Rath, you noticed a-blow near the Barrow side."

"Oh! I can't go,' sobbed poor Nancy; the priest spoke again any one having call to her; and you know we're to have the station soon.'

"Well, I wash my hands out of you, for I can't think of anything else. So, good night, Miss Mullins, and a better adwiser, said Kitty, as she turned aside to depart.

"Oh! do not leave me, for pity sake,' cried Nancy, I've no friend but you I dare spake to, Kitty dear; and I suppose I had better go, if it's for the best.'

"I know no other way to bring him round,' observed Kitty, it's only a short step from this to the wise wo man's: no one will see you, an' tomorrow the hounds will be passing your door, when you can have a cup o' syllabub or a dandy o' punch, and just drop the powdher into it, and you'll see my words are true.'

"The girls kissed each other. I waited till I see Nancy take the road to the Rath, an' went in to deliver my errands.

"One of the family was taken sick in the night with consternation of the bowels, I think they called it, an' I was sent over to Athy early, to the docthor's shop, to bid him come immediately. When I see all the beautiful physics, in blue and yallow bottles, and quare snakes, and other combustibles, I thought if I could get a little

love-powdher for a sweetheart ov my own, I might get it betther from the shop than from Mrs. Costigan. How the docthor laughed when I axed for it; and he was a mighty 'cute man, the Heavens be his bed, for many a life he saved, so he soon wormed out of me all I have been tellin' your honour; an' when he asked me if I thought Miss Mullins would give Jerry the powdher, and I said yes. Well, then, no harm in bringing this at all events,' he said, as I'm having the gig, and, Dan, you shall have a sate ;' and he put a matter like the worm of a potteen-still, with the medicine, into the gig, and we started for home.

"Though I lost no time on the road, the clock struck ten ere we left Athy, and I said by that time the hounds quitted the kennel, and were on the way to the meet. The docthor touched up his horse, and we trotted on gaily, till we came to the cross leading to Bat Mullins's farm. Here one of the gossoons, with his face as white as a sheet, ran against the gig, as he cried, half breathless, Whip up the bohreen for your life, docthor dear, poor Jerry Nowlan's a'most off.'

"What ails him, Patsy?' asked the doctor, turning the gig.

"Foamin' like a mad dog, and takin' four men to hould him.'

"Thank God, we may save him yet, muttered the doctor, an' he kept skelpin' the horse along the rough road, an' the gig leapin' from jowlt to jowlt; 'twas as much as we could do to keep our sates.

"He pulled up at the door with a jerk that nearly druy the gig into the kitchen windys, and the cries of the women, and groaning of poor Jerry, with the shouting and noise of the men, as they almost failed to keep him down, were distracting.

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"Out with you, Dan,' cried the docthor, and get out the stomachpump.'

"I did not know what he meant. There's no pump nearer than the Great House, sir,' I said; but there's a very fine well.'

"You be hanged, you omadhawn! Lift up the cushion till I open the box;' and on my raising the lid of the drivin'-sate, he pulled out the machine that reminded me of the still, and hurried with it into the house.

"The moment the docthor laid his

eyes on Jerry, he knew what ailed him. All the effects of arsenic were before him.

"I guessed as much,' he said. What did he take the powder in?' "Milk,' was the reply, from a dozen voices.

“How long since?'

"Not ten minutes from the time you come.'

"Then there's hope for him yet,' said the worthy jontleman, and he fell to work pumping at Jerry, and pouring in hot wather, and, glory be to God, he did wondhers, and brought him to.

"And oh ! when poorNancy, who had been the cause of such destruction to the boy she loved best in the world, found that his life was saved, how she threw herself on her knees before the docthor, and prayed blessings on his gray hairs; and he kissed her, and lifted her up, and told her he knew Jerry loved her, and if she came to consult him, instead of the wise woman, he would have spared her all she suffered. Poor Jerry himself remained at Mrs. Mullins's for a fortnight, being as wake as a child, with pains in his bones, and the joints of his legs without motion. We thought he was crippled for life; but by good care, and the best of nursing-and may be Nancy was not taking good care of him he came round, and in six months he was brave and hearty as ever."

"Was the wise woman prosecuted?" we inquired.

"She, the deluderer," replied Dan. "Likely enough. Do you think the wise woman would let herself be nab

bed that way. She happened to be prowlin' about just when Jerry got the bowl o' milk from Miss Mullins, and when he drank it, he just turned

up

the whites of his eyes, and rested his arms around Nancy's white neck— and, poor girl, she was delighted, fər she thought Kitty Molloy's words were coming true; when, Lord save us from harm! he fell from the saddle as if he was shot, and foamed at the mouth, workin' like one in the fallin'-sickness. Mrs. Costigan never gave ano. ther look, but cut away as if the hounds were chasing her, and tale nor tidings were never heard of her again." "Did Jerry forgive Miss Mullins ?" we inquired.

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"Ayeh! 'tis he that did, and mar. ried her in style, with Kitty Molloy as bridesmaid. 'Shure,' sis she, I made the match after all, for you must bring a bashful man to death's door before you get any good of him.'"

While our entertaining companion thus shortened the road, we had pass ed by various country seats. Some locks are on the stream of the Barrow, which is increased in volume by junction with divers small rivers, the Lerr and the Greese, which fall into it near the bounds of the counties Carlow and Kildare. In our progress through the parish of Urglin, in the County Car fow, our companion pointed out Palatine town, with the handsome residence of F. W. Burton, Esq., Burton Hall, surrounded by fine woodlands. land House and Rutland Lodge are also in this district. We caught glimp ses of Mount Leinster and Black. stairs Mountain, separating Carlow from the County Wexford, and skirted the spacious demesne of Oakpark, to Besfield Lock. The smoke and bustle, crowded houses, and clamour of a large town, now rose on every side, and we entered Carlow, an account of which we must reserve for the next number of our national Magazine.

Rut

J. R. O'F.

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ONCE again "the year is growing ancient." Another of those cycles, seventy of which measure the ordinary life of man, is well nigh completed. One more of those seventy waves, which drift man into Eternity, is just about to break on the shore of Time. Hours, and days, and months, have poured out their sands, to make up the sum of one of the most eventful years this generation has seen; and, as it speeds irrevocably away, we stand on the skirt of the unretraceable PAST, on the brink of the unknown FUTURE. "Horæ cedunt, dies, menses, anni: nec præteritum tempus unquam revertitur, nec quod sequatur sciri potest." It is good to pause a moment at seasons such as these, if it be only to take breath, ere we start anew on the race of life, to look around us, and consider whence we have come, whither we are going

""Tis wisely great to talk of our past hours."

The PAST! the irrevocable past! All that we once looked forward to with an intense desire-all that we sought so eagerly to accomplish-for a moment, and for a moment only, became the PRESENT; and in that moment only became ours perishing in the using, dying in our embrace, or phantom-like, eluding our arms; and the moment after beyond our reach once more, as the things that have been, hurrying away into the dim distance, growing smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter every hour-till, like the lessening objects on the distant horizon that shrink into misty spots in the physical landscape, they, too, shrink as they recede, occupying but a little space in the field of our mental vision, till at last we can only discern them by the light of MEMORY that illumines them upon the far away verge of the past.

MEMORY, "the warder of the brain," the great magician of life. She stands far away behind us, holding up her mirror; so that, when at times we stop a moment in our onward progress, and turn the mind's eye backwards, we see the things that have long since sped away, caught and deflected in their course by that magic glass-and lo! the phantasms of the departed flit back to meet us, and the images all stand before us, "lifeless, but life-like,"-our childhood, our youth, our manhood, and all the scenes and beings with which we conversedsome dim, and shadowy, and undefined-some standing out with sharp outlines and in strong colours, so that we think we can handle them with our hands, and see them with the eyes of our body. And thus Memory gives us back the days that are gone-its pleasures and its sorrows, its good and its evil

MEMORY.

Sad, as the waves of the low-moaning ocean

Break in the light of the moon on the shore—
Fitful, as music, when winds set in motion

Strings of the air-lute their wings tremble o'er;

VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXVI.

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Pure, as the spring from its fountain-heart welling
Through the hot sands in the wilderness lone,
Come back again from their shadowy dwelling,

All the dear memories of days that are gone.

Childhood-its light-hearted sorrow and pleasure,

Smiles like the sunlight, and tears like the dew;
Youth-rich in love, as a vase filled with treasure;

Prime-with its dreams of the grand and the true.
Sunlight and dew-drop will come back at morning,

Night give new dreams, and the vase find new store;
Life! on thy stream there is no more returning-

Memory! oh, give back the sweet days of yore!

There is no sentiment that obtrudes itself more constantly upon a thoughtful Iman than this, that human life, with all its business and its bustle, its toils and its cares, its hopes and its fears, has more of the unreal than the real in it, more of the shadow than the substance, ever fleeting and transient. Sages and phi losophers, in all ages, have felt this sad and solemn truth, and proclaimed it the world."Man," says the poet-king of Israel, "walketh in a vain shadow, ad disquieteth himself in vain." "Our days on earth are but a shadow, and there's none abiding." And the great preacher upon vanities bears the same testimony, "All the days of his vain life, which he spendeth as a shadow." Pindar calls man "the dream of a shadow, Zxis övag avgw; and Æschylus still more happily designates human life-""Ovag husgópavτov "—a dream that appeareth in the daylight. St. Chrysostom, who was himself an elegant scholar and well ac quainted with the classical literature of ancient Greece, had, in all probability, the sentiments of these poets in his mind, when, speaking of life, he says, "Like a shadow and a dream it flitteth away, having nothing that is true, nothing that is stable.* And again, in one of his fine homilies, he thus preaches. life is like a scene in a play, or a vision of the night. For, as in the scene when the curtain drops, the decorations disappear; and the visions, when the light of the sun shines in upon the sleeper, all flit away, so, in like manner, when the last hour for all and for each draweth nigh, all these things are dissolved and vanish."t

"Our

But if life be thus unreal-if the past be as a shadow, and the present but a dream-where shall we look for the real and the abiding? Where but in the future the future beyond the grave-the morrow not of Time, but of Eternity,

when

"The days breaketh, and the shadows flee away."

Strange paradox of Nature! mysterious antagonism between the physical and the moral condition of our being! To the eye of the Christian philosopher, as of the Christian poet, this life is

"The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth is shadow-all beyond
Is substance."

There indeed is the real, the true, the stable. The strong hand of that most sublime and beneficent of God's ministers-DEATH-rends away the clay-scales from the eyes of the soul; her vision is no longer diseased that she sees spectres, no longer dim that she fails to see realities, no longer short to see the whole. And so there is no shifting, no passing by parts across the field of view; but all is beheld in its entirety, and therefore unchangingly.

In the midst, then, of all this fleeting, changeful, phantom-life, wherein we now dreamily move, let no man fail to take these comforting thoughts to his

* Καθάπερ σκια και ὄναρ παρατρέχει, ουδέν αληθές ουδεν βέβαιον εχον.

cap. xiv. Gen.

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† Σκηνή τις εστιν ὁ βιος και ὂνας. Καθαπερ γαρ ἐπι της σκηνῆς, τοῦ σκηνους αρθέντος, αι ποικιλίαι διαλυονται, και τα ὄνειρατα, τῆς ακτινος φανείσης, παντα αφίσταται· οὕτω καὶ νῦν τῆς συντέλειας γενομένης, και της κοινης και της ενός εκαστου, ταντα λυιταί και αφανίζεται, Ep. i. Tim., cap. 5, Hom. XV.

soul they will not make him the less earnest to do whatsoever his hand findeth to do; but while he is occupied about the things of time, let him not be falsely craven to the nobility of his nature, to fear to avow that he looks beyond and above the earth, and fixes his hopes on heaven. Let us listen to Nature while she teaches us this lesson in a figure :

THE WILLOW.

"Tongues in trees-books in the running brooks."-SHAKSPEARE.

The Willow grows beside the River,

And the boughs hang o'er its flow,
Till the green leaves, as they quiver,
Kiss the waves that run below.

The River whispers to the Willow
With a sad, mysterious tone,
As the bubbles of each billow

Gurgling break on bank and stone.

What saith the River as it glistens

In the sun-glints through the tree,
While the bough stoops down and listens
To its plaintive melody?

"Like my waters, life is flying

Brightest joys have shortest stay-
As my waves speed onward sighing,
With thy kisses far away :

"Human hopes are like the bubbles
Swoln and glittering on my tide,
Till the rocks, like earthly troubles,
Meet and wreck them as they glide."—

High o'er Willow, high o'er River,
Soars a Lark in airy rings,

While his voice trills to the quiver
Of his sun-illumined wings.

And the ether-vault is riven

With this glad song, as he flies————

"Seek, like me, thy joys in heaven,

And thy hopes within the skies."

But it was not of such things that we sat down to write. The rude winds are blustering outside our close-curtained room; the rain is plashing in drearily against our window-panes, and we feel that the winter is indeed upon us. Well, let him come. Happy, if we never meet worse enemies than "winter and cold weather." Come, then, thou hoary-headed and dripping shiverer; if thou art, indeed, an enemy, we will deal with thee as the great Christian philosopher of Tarsus enjoins us to deal with all our enemies. We will feed thee, we will give thee drink, we will "heap coals of fire upon thy head;" we will thaw away all thy ice; we will dry thy dripping garments; we will hush thy mournings, and wipe away thy tears. So now, be jolly, old fellow, and sing us a stave

"Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly;

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly;
Then heigh ho the holly,
This life is most jolly."

Oh! rare Will Shakspeare, thou hast a sentiment for every season—a phrase for every thought-something apposite in the way of expression for every phase of human feeling; and they who cannot make their winter nights pass away gaily in thy company must have "hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins'

heads."

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