JOHN WALSH.

(1835-1881.)

JOHN WALSH was born at Cappoquin, County Waterford, April 1, 1835. He was educated at the national school there and at Mount Melleray. He became a national school-teacher in his native town and afterward at Cashel, County Tipperary, where he remained till his death in February, 1881. He left a widow and six children, and was buried on the Rock of Cashel. He wrote a very large number of poems for The Waterford Citizen over the signature of "A Cappoquin Girl," for The Irishman over those of "Shamrock" and "Lismore," for The Nation over those of “J. W.”, “ J. J. W.", and "Boz," and for The Irish People over that of "Kilmartin." He also wrote for The Harp, The Celt, Tipperary Examiner, etc. He wrote some admirably simple and touching pieces, which have earned for him the name of "The Sweet Singer of the South." They have never been collected. Michael Cavanagh, the Irish-American poet and journalist, and author of a valuable life of T. F. Meagher, was his brother-in-law.

TO MY PROMISED WIFE.

Dear maiden, when the sun is down,
And darkness creeps above the town,
The woodlands' green is changed to brown,
And the mild light

Melting beneath the tall hills' frown
Steals into night,

I don an honest coat of gray,
And, setting stupid care at bay,
Across the fields of scented hay
I stroll along,

Humming some quaint old Irish lay
Ör simple song.

And when, dear maid, I come to you,
A laughing eye of brightest blue,
And flushing cheek of crimson hue,
Tell whom I greet,

And bounds a little heart as true
As ever beat.

The green grass on the river-side,
The full moon dancing on the tide,

The half-blown rose that tries to hide
Her blush in dew,

Are fair; but none, my promised bride,
As fair as you.

And though, dear love, our gathered store
Of gold is small, the brighter ore

Of love's deep mine we'll seek the more,
And truth shall be

The guard beside our cottage-door,
Astor mo chroidhe!

DRIMIN DONN DILIS.1

Oh! drimin donn dilis! the landlord has come,
Like a foul blast of death has he swept o'er our home;
He has withered our roof-tree-beneath the cold sky,
Poor, houseless, and homeless, to-night must we lie.

My heart it is cold as the white winter's snow;
My brain is on fire, and my blood's in a glow.
Oh! drimin donn dilis, 't is hard to forgive

When a robber denies us the right we should live.

With my health and my strength, with hard labor and toil,
I dried the wet marsh and I tilled the harsh soil;

I moiled the long day through, from morn until even,
And I thought in my heart I'd a foretaste of heaven.

The summer shone round us above and below,
The beautiful summer that makes the flowers blow:
Oh! 't is hard to forget it, and think I must bear
That strangers shall reap the reward of my care.

Your limbs they were plump then-your coat it was silk, And never was wanted the mether of milk;

For freely it came in the calm summer's noon,

While you munched to the time of the old milking croon.

How often you left the green side of the hill,
To stretch in the shade and to drink of the rill!
And often I freed you before the gray dawn
From your snug little pen at the edge of the bawn.
1 Drimin donn dilis, "Dear brown cow."

But they racked and they ground me with tax and with rent
Till my heart it was sore and my life-blood was spent:
To-day they have finished, and on the wide world.

With the mocking of fiends from my home I was hurled.

I knelt down three times for to utter a prayer,

But my heart it was seared, and the words were not there;
Oh! wild were the thoughts through my dizzy head came,
Like the rushing of wind through a forest of flame.

I bid you, old comrade, a long last farewell;

For the gaunt hand of famine has clutched us too well;
It severed the master and you, my good cow,
With a blight on his life and a brand on his brow.

JOHN EDWARD WALSH.

(1816-1869.)

་

JOHN EDWARD WALSH, the author of Ireland Sixty Years Ago,' was the son of the Rev. Robert Walsh, a well-known Irish writer of the early part of the nineteenth century, and was born on Nov. 12, 1816. His father was at the time rector of Finglas, County Dublin, and he was not improbably born at that place.

He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1836. Three years later he was called to the bar, and during his early years of practice found time to write frequently for The Dublin University Magazine and to edit a few law books. In the periodical just mentioned portions of the book afterward anonymously printed as Ireland Sixty Years Ago' first appeared. His great success at the bar, however, prevented him from devoting much time to literature. In 1857 he became a Queen's Counsel, in 1866 AttorneyGeneral, and in 1867 Master of the Rolls. He died in Paris, Oct. 25, 1869. The book by which he is chiefly known was published in 1847 and was subsequently reprinted as 'Ireland Ninety Years Ago.'

SOME COLLEGE RECOLLECTIONS.

From Ireland Sixty Years Ago.'

I entered college in the year 1791, a year rendered memorable by the institution of the Society of the United Irishmen. They held their meetings in an obscure passage called Back-lane, leading from Corn Market to Nicholas Street. The very aspect of the place seemed to render it adapt for cherishing a conspiracy. It was in the locality where the tailors, skinners, and curriers, held their guilds, and was the region of the operative democracy. I one evening proceeded from college, and found out Back-lane, and having inquired for the place of meeting, a house was pointed out to me, that had been the hall in which the corporation of tailors held their assemblies. I walked in without hesitation-no one forbidding me-and found the society in full debate, the Hon. Simon Butler in the chair. I saw there, for the first time, the men with the three names, which were now become so familiar to the people of Dublin-Theobald Wolfe Tone, James Napper Tandy, Archibald Hamilton Rowan.

The first was a slight effeminate looking man, with a

hatchet face, a long aquiline nose, rather handsome and genteel looking, with lank, straight hair combed down on his sickly red cheek, exhibiting a face the most insignificant and mindless that could be imagined. His mode of speaking was in correspondence with his face and person. It was polite and gentlemanly, but totally devoid of anything like energy or vigor. I set him down as a worthy, good-natured, flimsy man, in whom there was no harm, and as the least likely person in the world to do mischief to the state.

Tandy was the very opposite looking character. He was the ugliest man I ever gazed on. He had a dark, yellow, truculent-looking countenance, a long drooping nose, rather sharpened at the point, and the muscles of his face formed two cords at each side of it. He had a remarkable hanging-down look, and an occasional twitching or convulsive motion of his nose and mouth, as if he was snapping at something on the side of him while he was speaking.

Not so Hamilton Rowan. I thought him not only the most handsome, but the largest man I had ever seen. Tone and Tandy looked like pigmies beside him. His ample and capacious forehead seemed the seat of thought and energy; while with such an external to make him feared, he had a courtesy of manner that excited love and confidence. He held in his hand a large stick, and was accompanied by a large dog.

I had not been long standing on the floor, looking at and absorbed in the persons about me, when I was perceived, and a whisper ran round the room. Some one went up to the president, then turned round, and pointed to me. The president immediately rose, and called out that there was a stranger in the room. Two members advanced, and taking me under the arm, led me up to the president's chair, and there I stood to await the penalty of my unauthorized intrusion. I underwent an examination; and it was evident, from the questions, that my entrance was not accredited, but that I was suspected as a government spy. The "battalion of testimony" as it was called, was already formed, and I was supposed to be one of the corps. I, however, gave a full and true account of myself, which was fortunately confirmed by a member who knew something