opium. But in September, 1817, neither De Quincey nor Carlyle dreamed that their paths would cross. Carlyle had come back after his summer holidays at home, saddened by the mental trouble which had seized his mother temporarily. Besides, he hated his work, and his love-affair with Margaret Gordon was weighing on his spirits. For him September of this year was as dull as it was bright for De Quincey, but the dullness was to open up and the brightness was to be overshadowed.

Carlyle was in his twenty-second year. He was to mould English prose into forms undreamed of by his contemporaries in 1817, but his work as an author lay all in front of him, unlike those whom we have mentioned in this survey, with the partial exception of Peacock. It was the same with poetry. On the fifteenth of the month, Byron wrote to Murray thus: "With regard to poetry in general, I am convinced, the more I think of it, that he [i.e., Moore] and all of us-Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, Campbell, and I-are all in the wrong, one as much as the other; that we are upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system or systems and from which none but Rogers and Crabbe are free; and that the present and the next generations will finally be of this opinion. I am the more confirmed in The Contemporary Review.

this by having lately gone over some of our classics, particularly Pope, whom I tried in this way: I took Moore's poems and my own and some others, and went over them side by side with Pope's, and I was really astonished (I ought not to have been so) and mortified at the ineffable distance in point of sense, harmony, effect, and even imagination, passion, and invention, between the little Queen Anne's man and us of the Lower Empire. Depend upon it, it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, among us; and if I had to begin again, I would mould myself accordingly." Fortunately Byron had not to begin again. Pope and Crabbe have come into a new kingdom since this September musing was written, a century ago. But the rest of Byron's misgiving was gratuitous. There is room under the broad heaven for more kinds of achievement than one in poetry, and, to say nothing of himself and Keats and Wordsworth, there were two little boys that month in Camberwell and in Somersby Rectory who were to do in a fresh way for Victorian poetry what Byron thought had been done once and for all by Pope. Perhaps there are youths and schoolboys this September who are designed to disappoint any similar fears that our literature has its Augustan period behind it.

James Moffatt.

Aye, there are some tidy farms in the County Armagh right enough, as I was telling you, and specially over by Lisnacoon you'd find a good few lying foreninst other.

There was Robert Kilpatrick's-he owned the biggest of them all. Him and his sister run the place almost

be themselves, for Robert was that close he wouldn't employ more men about the place than he could help, nor a woman indoors for that matter. You've seen the place where he lived, I expect a big, yellar house, standing right on the road to Armagh, a good mile and a half out of Lisnacoon,

with the big slated barn t'other side the road-that's the place, right enough.

A fine, big, strong man, Robert Kilpatrick, hard as nails. There was no getting round him, and that's a fact. But there was one got round him in th' end, and that was his sister, and it's about her I'm going to tell you. A poor, broken-down sort of creature she was, with pale, dead sort of hair, and not much of that, and a small, white face. You wouldn't say she was intelligent or quick in the uptake at all; I've heard the neighbors say many a time it was a quare pity Robert Kilpatrick had a sister so dull and uninterestin'-like as Mary Jane. The poor creature, they said, sure it was the hard work of keepin' the farm together and working from morning to night had all the life took out of her, and made her the way she wouldn't spake hardly a word of an evening when the neighbors would be looking in. She kept the house clean and neat as a new pin, but when we'd be sitting roun' and saying what a snug wee place Robert had, and how lucky he was to be so well looked after, Mary Jane would be sitting in the corner be the fire knitting and never let a word out of her one way or the other. Ye couldn't make her talk.

But Robert here, he had the gift of the gab to make up for it, and he'd sit in his big chair in the middle of the floor and lay down the law about this, that, and th' other till there were some of us got tired hearing him, and wouldn't have gone back again only for the good whisky he kept in the house. He was a wellhated man in all the townland at thon time. Still and all, for the sake of the whisky we'd all sit round of an evening, and it's this sort of thing he'd spout

at us:

"When I come to this farm," says

he, "it was nothing but water and bog-every inch of it," says he, "except for the three-four fields at the back here. But," says he, "I put me hand to it, and I worked and slaved at it to I got it drained and ploughed up and the crops down, and you wouldn't see," says he, "the farm to compare with it in the whole of the County Armagh," says he. "It's just hard work done it," says he, "and an eye to business, and a tightish hold on the money bag when the cash come in. That done it," says he, "and I'll defy anybody to find a better laidout farm and a more paying one for its size than the place I've got here." And he'd glower round at us as if he was only waiting for one among us til spring up and contradict him to stretch him out on the floor. But he knowed rightly there wasn't one of us had a place half the size of his'n, so we all just looked down intil our glasses and said nothing. And Mary Jane she'd be turning the heel of her stocking, maybe, and smiling quiet to herself.

"And the new spray I got for me potatoes is the finest thing out," Robert would go on, "found it out for meself I did, thon spray, one time I was up in Dublin last June was a twelve-month. William Hannah was with me-it was the time of th' Agricultural Show-and I mind he was very scornful. 'You won't find these new-fangled things any use,' says he to me, but says I, 'I know what I'm about, William,' says I 'you trust me to make no mistakes.' And sure enough his potatoes all took and died of the blight last season, and mine weren't even touched."

"Aye, you're a wonderful man, Robert," old Patrick Healy would say sometimes, with a dry crackle in his voice that all of us heard only Robert. "A wonderful man is Robert," he'd say til me when we started for home

after an evening at the yellar house, "that is, according til himself. What his Maker thinks of him, and what Mary Jane thinks, is another, and maybe a less impor-rtant matter."

Robert was a wonderful politician, too. He'd hold forth be the hour on the state of the country, and how it was being ruined be Redmond and O'Brien working for their own ends, and how Carson was the only standby, and how it was owing to him (Robert) that Horner had got in for South Tyrone at the last election, ousting that lying rascally turncoat, Russell. Aye, he was a strong Unionist, Robert, although there was a good few of the farmers thereabouts strong enough Home Rulers in those days.

I mind one time Mary Jane looked up from her knitting and said she thought maybe the Home Rulers weren't all the liars and blackguards they were said to be, and Robert turned on her like a roaring lion.

"What, in the name of goodness, do you know about it?" he yelled at her. "You stick to your own wee bit o' work and quit worrying your head over the big questions o' this country. They'll settle themselves without your help."

"Aye, I've no doubt they will, Robert," says Mary Jane, and I saw her smiling intil the fire.

"I'm ashamed of ye, with the Orange tradition ye've got behind ye," roared Robert. "Your da an Orangeman, and your grand-da an Orangeman, and your brother an Orangeman! And you to talk about the blasted Nationalists as if they were angels of Heaven instead of the devil's own children, and they Papists, or else traitors to the cause their fathers died for!"

He was a grand theologian, too, Robert was-none better. A strong Presbytair-yan he was, and his father before him. And he had a tongue could argue you to Heaven and back again

in half an hour. I mind I traveled with him one time in the train from Armagh to Dublin, and he arguing with a wee Methodist grocer that lived in Lisnacoon. Arguing fine, too, he was-firing off Paul and Peter at the wee man's head, and shouting texts out of the Bible the way I'll be bound he was heard in the next carriage. He had the wee man dumbfounded entirely be the time we got to Dundalk, and when we come to Dublin he was lying all huddled up in a corner, too crushed and stunned-like to spake a word. But he took a hold of me arm when we got out on to the platform, and says he to me in a whisper: 'Sure, he's a grand theologian, thon man, but kape me away from him in the future! Man, I'm afraid of him!"

The minister at Lisnacoon thon time was the Rev. Ferguson, and Robert was a great admirer of his prayers. "I doubt could I do much better in the way of a prayer myself," he'd say when we'd be talking outside church on a Sabbath morning.

There was one Sabbath Mary Jane turned round in the path, and looking up intil his face says she til him "Why don't ye ask Mr. Ferguson to let ye do the praying some Sabbath, Robert? Maybe, the Almighty wouldn't like it so well, but the people would be fine and edified.'

"Wumman," roared her brother, "have ye never hearkened to what Paul says about weemin and matters relating to the church?"

"Och, aye, I've heard ye interpret Paul many a time on that same subject," says Mary Jane, walking on; and there were some of us wondered was Robert's sister as dull as she seemed to be.

Well, I was telling ye about the Rev. Ferguson. He was a fine preacher altogether. Robert liked him well for that. It was thon way Robert thought little of th' Episcopalian ministers

because they could preach none. Mr. Ferguson's sermons were the most eloquent ever you heard, especially the political ones, and they were nearly all that. Boys! to see him thumping the cushion and denouncing the Church of Rome the way he could be heard in the street was the finest thing you'd come across in the whole county. He had a grand way of putting his argyments-very near as grand as Robert himself-and he could quote from the Scriptures better nor any man I ever heard. "I'm not the man to be easy beaten by anybody living," says Robert til me oncet, "but, although I'm an Orangeman to the backbone, I doubt if I could put them argyments against the Papists better than the minister; though, mind ye, I think he's hardly strong enough agin th' Episcopalians."

There were some Romans lived near Robert's farm, in a tumbledown cottage a few hundreds yards up a wee lonin'. A poor couple they were, be the name of Quin, with more wee childer than I'd care to have the counting of. Peter Quin was an industrious man, and he'd ha' liked well to work on Robert's farm, although it was a small enough wage he gave til his laborers. But Robert wouldn't employ a Papist on any grounds-not if there wasn't another job for him in the length and breadth of Ireland. I doubt, anyway, it would ha' made bad blood among the other workers, and I don't say Robert wasn't right, him an Orangeman and Master of the Lodge, and all. We're staunch Protestants in these parts, as ye maybe know; still, it was hard enough for Peter Quin, I'll say that much and him a dacent man and finding it hard enough to find bread for the wee childer.

But there was one evening there Mary Jane was met be a cousin of me own going with a basket of eggs and I

don't know what all up the lonin' to the Quins' cottage.

"What's this at all, Mary Jane Kilpatrick?" says me cousin—young Mrs. Sullivan it was, William John's wife, over there at Lisnacoon-"is it you going into a papistical house?" says she. "Well, I never heard the like! Sure, your brother would drive ye out of the house if he saw you."

"He would just," says Mary Jane in her dull way, "but he's down at the hay in the meadows, and I haven't the least intintion of letting on til him I go to see Catholics," says she.

"And you giving good eggs and butter and all til the like of them!" says Mrs. Sullivan, shocked-like.

"Might I ask ye to let me pass, Mrs. Sullivan?" says Mary Jane, still quiet and tired. "It's nobody else's business only mine that I know of. It's me own hens laid the eggs, and I've saved me own butter that I might have eaten. Peter Quin's a poor starving creature, and the wee childer are cryin' for food, and herself sits there with them all about her feet an' wonderin' what sort of a cold welcome at all there'll be for the one that's comin'. An' I'll take it kindly, Mrs. Sullivan, if you say nothing to Robert about the soobject, and ask William John not to either. I'm not the God-fearing Christian Robert is, and I can't see me Catholic neighbors starve."

It was when William John reported this conversation til us in Fox's publichouse in Lisnacoon we said we wouldn't be surprised but there might be more in Mary Jane nor we thought.

It was long afterwards that we heard she had been quare and good til the Quins for months at a stretch, saving her food til give it til them, for she had no money til give them, Robert kaping the tight hould of the purse-string. I don't say her reputation went up in the place on that account. It didn't, for the Orange feeling's too strong, and some of the

neighbors said it was a scandal to be feeding a Catholic family thon way; still and all, for some reason, nobody let on til Robert.

Maybe you remember the MacHenrys, who lived in Lisnacoon thirty year back? Aye, that's the family. Always in debt, and a shiftless, drunken lot. They weren't much thought of when I was a boy, and the like of the Kilpatricks wouldn't have naught to do with one of them.

Well, Joe MacHenry, the youngest son of th' old man, was different. He worked hard at his books, and was always thought to be a scholar. When he grew up he saw there wasn't much chances for him over here, with the Kilpatricks and their like refusing til have anything til do with him or his family, so he just packed up and went out to Canada. I don't rightly know what he did out there-I think maybe he ran a farm at Calgary -but, anyway, he made a good lock of money, and three or four years back he turned up again in Lisnacoon, a big, smiling man, rich and prosperous-like. It's quare now, the way an Irishman will come back til his own country in th' end. I could name half a dozen men went from here years ago that have come back til die in their old home. There's no man fond of his home like an Irishman, I'm thinking, although often enough it's been a poor, mean place til him. Still, that makes no differ, somehow.

Well, Joe MacHenry, what did he do but buy up old Patrick Murray's farm on the hill, and not only that, but he pulled down th' old thatched house and built a grand new one for himself. My! but you ought to see thon house! All red brick it is, with large square winders, and he cut down every single tree round it, so you can see it for miles round. And he filled the sitting-room with the loveliest plush chairs ever you seen, and a

harmonium, and I don't know what else.

But, as ye may well imagine, Robert Kilpatrick wasn't just pleased to see a new big farm set on fut that close til his own. Patrick Murray had niver made much out of the place, but Joe had his wits about him, and knew all the most up-to-date machinery, and the best stock til buy, and so on. Robert was quare and jealous, I can tell you. Still and all, he made the great show of being in with Joe. It would ha' made ye laugh til see the two of them together-Joe fat and jolly, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, and Robert clenching his fists and setting his teeth, and making himself listen to ideas he had never held. For I must tell you Joe had come home with some strange notions. He was a Nationalist, if you'll believe me, and in Canada he had turned Episcopalian, and Robert hated him for both these things.

Joe wasn't often seen at the yellar house, it was noticed; if he was asked he didn't come. But maybe Robert couldn't bring himself til ask him. And after he stood up and withstood Robert til the face at Fox's public at the Summer Fair Robert would go miles out of his way til avoid him.

"You're a jabbering fool, Robert Kilpatrick!" says Joe, and Robert went home foaming at the mouth.

"I'll larn him!" he stuttered, "I'll larn him! Don't ye ever," says he, turning til his sister that sat as usual be the fireplace, "don't ye ever let me see ye passing so much as the time o' day with that low, rascally, foulmouthed blackguard! Do ye hear me?"

"I hear ye Robert," says Mary Jane, in her dull way.

But it wasn't long after that Joe passed her one hot afternoon on the road between Armagh and Lisnacoon, he in his smart trap and she pattering