some of whom I had known before and some not, but you were the principal personage among them all. There were Sir Charles Harcourt and Hastings the traveller, the poet Walsingham, the wife of poor Henry Richards, the white-haired and rather short man whom I have heard you talk of as Collins, and old Fowler, your grandfather, whom I knew when I first knew you, and lived as a boy in this neighbourhood with my mother. There were also several others, and the movements and changes of the whole history turned upon a Ring." She held up her hand before his face, which his first impulse was to kiss, but he saw that on one of the fingers was an Onyx Ring. "How on earth did you come by that? It has haunted me as if a magic Ariel were fused amid the gold, or imprisoned in the stone." "I will tell you. My grandfather died on Tuesday evening, the time you say of your recovery. My good friend Mrs Simpson was with him at the last -brought me an old tin snuff-box which I had before seen, and which had been found grasped in the hand of the corpse. It contained a certifieate signed by Mr Lascelles and the medical man then in attendance upon his wife, that the child of Mrs Wil liams had been received by them from Fowler, and substituted for the dead infant. In the same box, wrapped in a separate paper, was the Onyx Ring. I presume it had been given to the old man by Mr Lascelles as a token which, to him who could not read, would be more expressive than any written document, and would substantiate to his fancy the fact that the supposed Maria Lascelles owed only to accident the being other than Mary Williams.” "A curious coincidence, at least, with my visions. But as to the change of your name it is of little importance, for I hope a third will soon obliterate both the former ones. My trance, how unsubstantial soever may have been the forms I conversed with, has at least left on my mind intellectual and spiritual impressions too many, perhaps, and complex, ever to be fully described, but of which you, I trust, as well as I, may reap the benefit through all my life. Now that you keep your hand quiet and let me look at the ring close, I see the old man's head upon it is as beautifully executed as if it were one of Weigall's finest works. It bears, moreover, a curious resemblance to my uncle who has watched me so tenderly in my illness, and I could almost have supposed it a portrait of him." SOME ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. BY THE IRISH OYSTER-EATER. FASCICULUS THE FIRST. Duplex libelli dos est; quod movet risum, Et quod prudenti vitam consilio mouet."-Phædrus. "He would eat ortolans if he could get them, and though this oysters never tasted so sweet as when he had them upon tick."-Citizen of the World. Scene-O'Hara's Divan, French Street. Time-Midnight, or thereabouts. Beverages-Whisky toddy, rum punch, gin twist, cold brandy and water, ditto ditto hot, with sugar. Smokeables-Cubas, Havannahs, Woodville's yellows, Silva's ditto, cheroots, meerchaums, hookahs, yards of clay, Dutch, glazed English and Knockcroghery, short cut, mild canaster, Virginia, pigtail, and returns. Parties extant-THE SQUIREEN, DOCTOR SNOAKER, MR GREEN STREET, the Old Bailey Barrister, AN INSPECTOR OF NATIONAL SCHOOLS, several halfmounted Gentlemen, and the OYSTER-EATER. Squireen (loquitur). Pat, bring another "go" of brandy for the Oys ter-Eater; and, Pat, you may bring another for myself, by the powers. Doctor Snoaker. Patricius, "repetatur," as we say, ex cyatho magno Capiat. Pat. Another go of rum, sir? yes, sir. Inspector. Pat, I will take "one of whisky." Christians, as the apostle Paul- Lawyer Green Street. Pat, call a new case. Pat. Gin, I think for you, Coun. seral ? The Oyster-Eater. And, Pat, let me have brandy, as the Squireen wishes to treat me, and, d'ye see, mix it stiffer than you did the last. Pat. The last was stiffish, sir. The Oyster-Eater. Well! the last but one then. Whiskies all The Half-mounted. round for us-Pat-whiskies! Pat. Immediately, gentlemen, in a wink. Squireen. I think, gentlemen, by the powers, somebody was knocked down by myself for a song-it couldn't be me, for I'm so dry that I couldn't turn a tune, by the powers-was it yourself, Doctor Snoaker? Dr Snoaker. Me, sir,-paulo majora-you asked the Inspector for a song-cuculus canorus. Inspector. Beg pardon, but the Counsellor was the man-live in harmony with one another-excuse me -it's a rule of the board. Green Street. Rule made absolute -I never sing-that is to say, sel. dom or ever, not often-I mean sometimes-not just now-after the OysterEater. Oyster-Eater. By no means, sir, I couldn't think of Inspector. Do oblige us-it's a rule of the board-all denominations of Christians. Dr Snoaker. Aye, Turks, Jews and Arians-fiat mistura. Inspector. Arians, did you say, Doctor? Excuse me, it's a rule of the board but the Arians, Socinians, and so forth Dr Snoaker. Keep you in your places-and very natural for themDid you not compile a series of Scripture lessons on the principle of the family Shakspeare, in which all pasSages that " can possibly offend" Turk, Jew, Arian, or Atheist, are "purposely omitted?" I use the words of your preface. Inspector. We publish, but nobody reads them they will keep. Dr Snoaker. And do you not assure us in your preface that these selections, as you call them, are sometimes in the words of the" authorized," and sometimes of the "f Douay version, and sometimes" neither the one nor the other?" we must conciliate; it's a rule of the board. Dr Snoaker. And further, does not your preface state that this new translation of the Scriptures" for the use of Schools," has been compiled by a Protestant clergyman, "under no peculiar views of Christianity doctrinal or practical?" Inspector. True, but nobody reads them there's no harm done-it's a rule of the board. Green Street. Hem! Ahem! The Half-Mounted. Order, order hear, hear-the Counseral's song. Dr Snoaker. Are you not repudiated by "Power Tuam," who won't take your money, and by "John Tuam," who can't get it-by Protestant, Presbyterian, and Papistyou teach no religion, and you have only those without religion to teachtene simul-Koran or Catechism, all's one-altera quaque hora. Squireen. Order, order, Counseral, by the powers-a song! Green Street. Ahem! A-hem! Really 'tis too bad to force a man-If I must-tol lol de rol-tol lol de rol that's the way it goes--you know the tune, gentlemen, and just chime in altogether, will ye? A song without chorus is like Dr Snoaker. Have you not totally failed to amalgamate different creeds -have you not failed in all your shuffling, equivocating, double-faced attempts to introduce a system of political Christianity" for the use of schools"-have you not built up the public money irrecoverably in sectarian houses, and is not every school where your rules are attempted to be enforced, more like a cock-pit than a place for the education of youth? The Oyster-Eater. Gentlemen, I was going to give an account of my birth, parentage, and Green Street. Pooh! stuff-Ahem! ahem! I know the law-and a chorus without a song is-I mean a song without a chorus Dr Snoaker. Did you not come into office under a solemn declaration from Lord Stanley, that your commission was gratuitous, and did not one of your body consent to become the stipendiary of his fellow commissioners, and does he not flourish about the streets of Dublin in an eleemosynary Inspector. Ambo is good Latin- equipage, provided or maintained for him, in addition to a princely mansion out of the funds voted by Parliament for the "Education of the poor of Ireland"-Faugh! Green Street sings "As I was a walking, One fine summer's morning, Dr Snoaker. What is your multitudinous establishment of stipendiaries of high and low degree, but a manufactory of sycophants? What your model schools and training schools but a monument, in cut stone, of Government extravagance? What your system but a contrivance to serve the political uses of your party? What the whole scheme of your commission but the working out of the designs of your despicable faction, that is to say, making Government arbitrary, under pretence of making it popular? Inspector. Excuse me-it's a rule of the board-Christians of all—— Dr Snoaker. In short, do the annals of political profligacy furnish any thing like the spectacle of the creatures of a faction being tolerated to withhold the means of enlightenment from any body of tax-payers, who may refuse to submit their course of religious instruction to the surveillance of Commissioners like yours; who bow so low in the worship of faction as unanimously to recommend books to a Christian people, which have been compiled, as they coolly assure us, under no "peculiar views of Christianity, doctrinal or practical?" The Oyster-Eater. Autobiography, gentlemen, now-a-days is- Green Street. If I must sing, I really wish, Dr Snoaker, you would stop to draw breath, and let me edge in a note-I'm in possession of the Court. (Sings.) "As I was a walking one"Squireen. By the powers, gentlemen, here's news! The Liberator's tus. Pat. Another of the same, sir? Yes, sir. Inspector. "One of raspberry" for me, Pat-particular denomination of Christians Squireen. Don't leave me out, Pat. I can't see to read, by the powers, I'm so dry. Dr Snoaker (reading from the Dublin Evening Hack). "We publish this evening the fifth letter of his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant, in the case of Chief-Constable Gruff, the facts of which we are at the pains to repeat, fearing they may have escaped the memories of our numerous readers. Chief-Constable Gruff, stationed with his party of police in the village of Bullyraggin, encountered upon the Queen's highway a certain Widow Hoolaghan's pig. This aforesaid porker, being at large without a ring affixed to the cartilage of his nose, as directed by proclamation, was construed and taken by the captain to be a public nuisance, and was accordingly summarily abated by being perforated through the thorax with the sabre of the captain, impelled by the captain's own hand. Now, her majesty's mail, passing that way about twelve o'clock at night, five minutes past twelve being her regular time at Bullyraggin, happened to be overturned by actual contact of the off hind-wheel with the carcass of the abated porker, which remained upon the road, the Widow Hoolaghan declining to prejudice her claim to Justice for Ireland' by tak * Why is not the stipendiary equipage of this stipendiary Commissioner marked and numbered like other hackney carriages? It is certainly a new item in the public expenditure; but of these Commissioners "for the education of the poor of Ireland," as of the rest, matchless effrontery seems the least of their good qualities.-See Report of Committee of the House of Commons on the Irish Education Enquiry for 1837, wherein will be found an account of the equipage set up for the Stipendiary Commissioner, by his fellow Commissioners out of the funds for promoting "the education of the poor of Ireland." VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXXIX. D the ba "OPINION. "It is my opinion that pigs on the roads are not necessarily nuisances at common law. But it is not so clear that they are not so rendered by Stat. 33 and 34 Geo. III., c. 109, amended by 34 and 35 Geo. III., c. 112, partially repealed, as far as regards rings in noses only, by 35 and 36 Geo. III., c. 119, which, as Irish Acts, still remain in full force and effect, except as hereinbefore excepted, unless, indeed, the General Turnpike Act, 9 and 10 Geo. IV., c. 53, may be supposed to have rendered these provisions, as far as regards rings in noses only, void and of none effect. This, however, may be doubted.-See Laystall on Public Nuisances. "As to the summary abatement of this nuisance, I am clear that pigs on the roads may be abated, but I apprehend, not to the effusion of their blood; the 9 and 10 Will. IV., prescribing exactly the legal course, to wit, the impoinding of the offending porker, and citation of the owner to the nearest Court of Petit Sessions, there to be dealt with as the law directs. ing any steps to remove con,' contenting herself with declaring through the village of Bullyraggin and suburbs that that cowardly spalpeen had made the sun shine through her dumb baste,'-adding several intimations of the deep interest she took in the spiritual welfare of the captain, which we can very well spare the religious reader. The overturn of the royal mail was attended with rather serious consequences, one of the outside passengers, no less a personage than a bagman in the general tea-tray and fancy snuff box line, having his thigh-bone broken, as thigh-bones invariably are broken, if you believe the sufferers, in three places! Soon after this the Widow Hoolaghan proceeded by 'civil bill,' at the Quarter Sessions of Bullyraggin, against Captain Gruff, for the value of the abated porker, when the case was very fully gone into by counsel on both sides, the Captain producing a bundle of testimonials to the sweetness of his temper, humanity, and general efficiency but it would not do; the jury, unintimidated by a threat of the stipendiary to the effect that the Government would make them "Whether the Chief- Constable is to 'smoke,' impudently returned a verdict be reimbursed at all, and whether by for the plaintiff, and the Court had the presentment on the county at large, or effrontery to award immediate execu- by a Treasury minute, must turn, I aption for the full amount against the prehend, principally upon the proceedbody or goods of the defendant.-ings of the Chief Constable himself— About this time, too,the bagman filed a very doubtful point; for, by the late a declaration of an action of trespass Constabulary Act, 8 and 9 Will. IV., in the Court of Common Pleas against c. 96, it may reasonably be doubted the mail-coach contractors, who wrote whether the Chief-Constable is altoto complain of the police-the police gether, or at all, of the civil force, or to complain of the Widow Hoolaghan posse comitatus, or rather a military -the barrister to complain of the sti- servant of the Crown functus officio.' pendiary the stipendiary to complain Now, the riot act not having, as I conof the verdict-and Chief-Constable ceive, been read, nor the porker reGruff to demand reimbursement and quired in due form of law, reasonable to complain of every body. We state grace being allowed for that purpose, upon undoubted authority that nothing to disperse, it is a mooted point whether has been done at the Castle these six the perforation of said porker was not months, save in Gruff's case, and no- wholly illegal, no magistrate being prething to be heard there but clerk sent! With regard to the removal of calling to clerk for copies of the cor- the bacon,' and with whom such rerespondence in the case of Hoolaghan moval ought to have rested, the books and Gruff. The law points having are obscure; but I think it will hold, been, as usual, submitted to Counsel that, by the act of killing, an inchoate lor Bosthroon, who fills the high office right to the carcass resulted to the killer of Attorney-General's devil-per syn- -a contingent remainder resultantcope the divel,'that infernal the act is clearly trammelled with its functionary delivered the subjoined consequences; or, as the sound maxim opinion, which, we are credibly in- ofthe law hath it, qui facit ille capit.'formed, is the admiration of the whole Vide Russell on Crimes. It is clear that profession, not less for its lucidity of if the widow Hoolaghan 'had viciously style, than for its soundness, legal acu- intromitted,' to borrow a term of Scotmen, and research:tish law in the premises,' another view might be taken of this intricate case; as it is, I think it rests with the Chief-Constable to shew that the discharge of his duty, quasi duty, was effectively directed to the abatement of the nuisance, quasi nuisance. But it was clearly not so directed, for the nuisance might have been abated by Hoolaghan, or it might have abated itself; but this power of self-abatement no longer rested with the nuisance, the same being, as it appears, perforated through the thorax, and being certainly dead in fact, and probably in law. "Under all the circumstances, therefore, I am clearly of opinion that the result of an appeal against the verdict of the Quarter Sessions, in favour of the widow Hoolaghan, may be doubtful, though I am also clearly of opinion that it may not.' 6 (Signed)" P. BOSTHROON.' "Such is a concise statement of the case as it stood at the commencement of the paper war in which His Excellency has thought it due to the dignity of his high office to engage with Chief-Constable Gruff, and which is still continued with various success, to the great entertainment of the newspapers, the vast majority of whom, we are proud to say, prefer the florid copiousness of His Excellency's style, to the less ornate but more intelligible diction of Captain Gruff. "Whether the correspondence will ever terminate, and whether the result will be the dismissal of his Excellency, or of Chief-Constable Gruff, it is not for us, but for the legislature, to determine; already his Excellency has consumed four letters in an attempt to prove that the perforation of the porker by Chief-Constable Gruff was premature, and exhibited want of self-command and discretion. Captain Gruff, on the contrary, has concluded with the third epistle, his ironical tirade of compliments to His Excellency upon his discretion and sound sense. "Whatever may be the conclusion, the correspondence must do good the spectacle of a Chief Governor engaged in bandying recriminatory let ters with his own stipendiary offspring, through the medium of the newspapers, must impress the nation at large with a deep sense of the blessings they enjoy under a rule, at once so respectable and so capable of making itself respected. For our own parts, we throw ourselves upon the benevolence of our readers-our patience is quite exhausted-and although our position as editor of the Dublin Evening Hack, compels us to an insertion of His Excellency's long-winded rigmaroles in our independent columns, we at once confess ourselves heartily sick of the porker, His Excellency, and ChiefConstable Gruff.*" Green Street. Sick of the por ker-well we may. For my part, I think if somebody would favour us with a song Oyster-Eater. As I was going to say, I was born, gentlemen, in the year Dr Snoaker. The hankering after newspaper notoriety, exhibited in this correspondence, is of no sort of conse quence, as it affects only the individual; but it is quite a different thing when employed in writing at the nobility and gentry of a great country, who may request protection for their properties and lives from the attacks of the midnight marauder, and mid-day assassin. These Inspector. Keep perpetually bringing up hot water, Pat-it's a rule of the board. Dr Snoaker. These unfortunate persons, even though they may not choose to be identified politically or socially with the Irish Executive, have some claim to sympathy, if not to protection-and their supplications for succour need not be refused in a hectoring, lecturing rodomantade, but be Squireen. Pat, don't put too much lemon-by the powers!-I can't hear a word, by the powers, I'm so dry. Dr Snoaker. Be declined, if declined they must be, with a show, at least, of courtesy and decorum. Green Street. Dr Snoaker, you are intolerable I really wish there was a perforation of your thorax, by which your breath might escape, un * Chief-Constable Gruff, we perceive, has been dismissed at last, and we hope shortly to congratulate the readers of the Dublin Evening Hack on the dismissal of the other party to this very creditable and dignified correspondence. |