CHAP. I.

It is now five years ago that I looked, for the last time perhaps, on the Gothic turrets of Granta, having received, a few hours before, from the vice-chancellor himself (that venerable incarnation of Alma Mater), the immortal degree of Artium Baccalaureus.

As I stood on the crowded floor of the Senate-house awaiting my apotheosis, I beheld around me a generation of gownsmen, who, like myself, were about to exchange the tranquil solitudes and ethereal speculations of college, for the stirring realities of life; who, in short, had finished their "Cambridge course," and whose happy spirits were newly released from the rigours and perplexities of their mathematical probation.

But the reflections of inceptive bachelors are not always so free and light-hearted, being not unvisited in sundry instances by the academic phantasmata of proctors' fines and tutors' impositions, of squandered hours and blighted hopes, of bacchanalian revels, college bills, and empty pockets. How far these shadowy visions might have blended with my lighter fancies is not now to the purpose, though it is to the purpose that the present history is indebted for its existence to some of their corresponding realities. I had resolved, upon leaving the university, to reinforce my exchequer by turning my humble acquirements to some profitable account; but the only immediate chance that I had of carrying that resolution into effect, was the offer (which I readily accepted) of a tutorship in the South of Ireland.

What Trinity man is there that is not proud of his college? that does not feel his heart swell, and his cheek glow, when, for the first or the last time, he walks those silent cloisters, and gazes upon those ancient turrets, all teeming with glorious and immortal memories? With regard to myself, I felt, moreover, the greatest affection for old Trinity. That was verily the golden age of my existence. How many enhny hours did I dream away

and on the banks of that river! How many a midnight did my lamp gleam through that latticed window as I sought for truth in the soul-breathing pages of the ancients, or revelled in the wild magnificence of their poetry! It was during the hour of vespers that I lingered through the outer quadrangle of Trinity on the evening of my departure. The dreamlike tones of the organ fell on my ear at the moment I was passing under the gateway of Newton's Tower-to me that heavenly music was the dirge of happy hours then departed; the world was all before me; I turned to take a last look, but my eyes filled with tears; and, bidding old Trinity a long, long farewell, I walked hastily away.

These

But the Fates had predetermined, gentle reader, not to let us off quite so sentimentally. Upon arriving at the inn whence I was to start per coach for London, I found the vehicle besieged by a swarm of small collegers, who had made themselves apparent there for the philanthropic purpose of seeing off an elegant miscellany of brother-Cantabs, upon whom the parting bottle of that Tartarean puddle called Cambridge port seemed to have fully accomplished its duty. finished scholars, six in number, and all "outsides," had recently dignified the bachelor's hood, and were now employing their few last moments at the sage and virtuous University of Cambridge in various appropriate ways: such as in cursing the extortionate souls of the porters who had brought their luggage; in blessing the sweet little eyes of the damsels who were bringing them brandy ; in shouting forth sundry broken staves of some edifying canticle; in crowing, bleating, caterwauling, and other zoological exercises; in proposing to the circumambient multitude three cheers for " Sidney," "Mr. Barnwell,' Simeon," &c., and three groans for the proctors and the big-wigs; in reiterating their tenderest wishes to be remembered to "Black Fan," to Long Jane," and other estimable young persons and finally in exhorting the

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proprietor of a certain remote establishment.

What I have here reduced to some kind of intelligible order was, in reality, a scene of the wildest confusion, in which the performers were strenuously enacting their several parts at the same moment. "All right!" having been duly pronounced, the six bachelors lifted up their voices in a triumphant but discordant hurrah, which was promptly responded to in language of the most affectionate encouragement. "Go it, ye cripples!"

Keep your body up, Jones!" “I say, Gumley, mind your eye!" with similar prudent and friendly admonitions. It must be confessed, however, that the exemplary youths who had given utterance to them did not, somehow or other, seem to participate in the boisterous merriment of their evanescent companions. They, alas! could only look to their degrees across the yawning gulf of a Senate-house examination: there were heights of wisdom which they had not as yet attained, not having kept all their terms; although, to a practised observer, their lacerated gowns and battered trenchers indicated considerable advances towards scholastic perfection. They had evidently arrived at the latter stages of college vegetation-the green and sullen bud of the freshman had expanded into the gay, ethereal blossom of the soph; and the fruit was now delectable to look upon, though not yet sufficiently ripe to be-plucked.

CHAP. II.

Oh, the miseries of a steam-packet! To breathe an atmosphere thickened with the dun smoke of Tartarus, and the mawkish vapour of a wash-house, and seasoned with the fumes of reeking train-oil, and cinders quenched in bilge-water! To walk a rolling, pitching, treacherous, vertiginous deck, with a black north-wester blowing in your teeth, and every now and then a sharp jet of spray splashing in your intelligent face! To be haunted by a confused sea-sick vision of whirling clouds and a see-sawing horizon; swells of the first water, with curled and powdered periwigs; and furious paddlewheels churning the brine into a

timbers, and the fierce washing of the waves along the planks of your berth, with ever and anon the heavy shock of some drunken, insolent billow, that reels against the poor afflicted vessel, making her all streaming wet, and giving her a violent spasm in the side! But now she swims along calmly and fluently; the clank and racket of the machinery at length subside; down goes the anchor; the fizzing and roaring of the steam, the poppling and plapping of the water, the tumult of voices, and the hauling of luggage, announce our arrival in the haven where we would be we spring to the deck, and, in another moment, press the emerald soil of Hibernia.

Leaving Waterford, I proceeded by an early stage-coach to a small town thirty Irish miles distant, where I found that, in order to reach my destination on that day, it was necessary I should submit to be jolted seven miles across the country in a rickety, lumbering commodity, facetiously called a post-chaise (an apparition of dust, cobwebs, and rottenness, that to me was intensely tragic-comical), drawn by a stunted, plethoric black cob, and a tall, white, thin-gutted Rosinante, that seemed far better qualified for the spectral chase in Der Freischütz than for any mortal employment. On arriving at a hamlet which lay within three miles of Cloughnagashill (that being the place whither I was proceeding to exercise the functions of a tutor), the chaise was hailed by a peasantly but decently-dressed fellow, with a knowing, broad-humoured expression of face, that was rendered still more comical by the jaunty, self-important set of his rusty caubeen.

"Whoo-hoo!" he exclaimed, addressing the postilion; "asy a minit. Is that the tuthorer inside o' the carr'ge?"

"Divil a know I know; asy axin, any how."

"Pwah! to blaizes wid ye! Bag pardon, sur, but my name, indeed, is Thady O'Houligan; av coorse you hard ov the O'Houligan family, sur? Maybe you're the tuthorer that's kim to the counthry fur to taich Masther Willim, bekase I brought the jauntin' car from Square O'Brady's, to drive

yer hanor; you're kindly welkim, indeed, sur !"

The requisite arrangements having been made, we mounted the car and drove off.

"I s'pose you kim acrass in a staymer, sur?" said Thady. "Divil whip ye! git 'long out o' that, now! D'ye see, sur? d'ye see that thief iv a pig lyin' right in the middle o' the road, there? Out o' that, ya vagabone! No, sur, nor he won't, aither."

"You can pass on this side."

"Augh, very will, yer hanor. Now, sur, the blaggard does only be doin' that jist to be purvokin', bekase thim he ladges wid there is all Repalers, an' he knows I'm no frin' to Dan O'Connell. Augh! they're the obstinatest craythurs brathin', them pigs. By the same token, there been grate doins here wid the Repalers; tirrible itsilf, but they'll nat titch the likes o' you, sur."

"I'm under no such apprehension, certainly."

"Sure an' you're right there, howsandiver; fur it's nat very aften they kills tuthorers, as I know by."

scrubbin'-brish sin' the creaytion, Biddy (that's the cook) outs wid her awn fat, durty face, out o' the windy in a thrimble ov fright; an' - och! sitch a scrame, be Jaiminy! I niver hard the like afore or sin'. • Tundher an' turnip-taps!' siz I, is it cracked y'are?' Hivven alive!' siz she;

6

Oh, it's the dhrame I had the night! Ab, thin, Thady, darlin, luk now! Och, blissed eternity! don't ye see what's nat there?" 'Divil sweep ye! what's the matthre now at all?' siz I. Mither in glory!' siz she; all the sints in righteousness! his cordherys is nat out 'pon the windypowl!' So I ups that instant-moment an' luks acrass the bog.'B' th' houly!' siz I, the world's kim to an ind, fur his cordherys is nat out this blissed mornin', an' that's thruth.' Accoordianly-(maybe, sur, you'd like to git aff, jist to ase Nitmag up this bit iv a hill?-we'll see the place I'm spakin' about whin we're at the top)I powdhers away down the road, an' who should I met but wan o' the labourers, runnin' for the dear life to till us the corp was jist found. Ogh, ogh! but the villains had knocked him an the hid, sure enough, an' him no time to make his sowl, or resave the binifit o' the blissid ointment, glory be to God! an' we niver known this minit who done it, barrin' a bit o writin' was stick'd up by som wan or ither an the chapel-dure the night afther, sayin', as might be, that the stone they threwn was nat intended fur the shkulemasthre, an' axin' his pardon for thim makin' the mistake. There, sur, now! d'ye see, sur?right away here at the ind o' my finger; that little white house wid two windys, wan over the ither? Will, the top wan was O'Flaherty's; an' if you sarcumspict it narrily-jump up here, till you see, sur- you'll obsarve a bit iv a powl purjectin' from it thit's been kep up iver sin' out o' rispick to his cordherys; for that now is where he used to hang thim ivery Sunday mornin' univarsally, barrin' the rainy day was in it."

For what purpose?"

"Only for the houlsimness, sur; jist, ye see, to git a taste o' the mornin' air an thim. Now we'll be down on the feer in a jiffy or two; it's the Rathnakilty feer-day, sur. Howsan

intintion to massacray the dain (we'll be dhrivin' by his place immajently; he lives contagious to this, sur) after him dinin' at Cloughnagashill, only the parpethwraytors hit the tuthorer in mistake, by rason the darkness was in it, as he was comin' from the shebeenhouse that same night. Och an' willelu! may the houly innicents light his pipe in glory this day!"

By this time we had reached the town of Rathnakilty. Thady, as he drove slowly through the fair, squaring his elbows and handling the ribands with peculiar grace (peculiar to himself, that is), had a word for every one. "Larry, boy, how's ivery shovelful o' ye?" "Lave aff, now, you gom! none o' yer thricks wid thim whirligigs; you'll freken the harse, I till ye!

!" "Now, is that Norah? Will, it's yersilf that's lookin' beautiful acolleen." "Sheelah, hist! d'ye see, sur?-th- that gurl jist turned into the Cat an an' Bagpipes, here? Och! the purtiest little-hem!-ugh! -it's droothy work this dhrivin, sur! Bag pardon, yer hanor, wan minit, till I stap in for a sup o' whisky, by rason my throath is gone dhry an me -jist wan minit, sur!"

After waiting in the street nearly ten minutes, and undergoing the scrutiny of some two or three hundred gazers, I was rejoined by Thady, who made a desperate effort to atone for his delay, by driving recklessly through the fair, to the consternation of numerous pigs, and other listless individuals; so that in another minute we had cleared the town, and regained the open road.

"Only a mile to Cloughnagashill, now, sur; we'll be there fully in time for dinner. Will, now, I've nat the laste doubt you'll have a very dacent place, sur; niver a house bear a betther correcther in the regard av atin' an' dhrinkin, an' the like: indeed thin, betune uz, you'll nat be noways necessiated."

"Highly satisfactory, certainly."

"You may say that, sur, an' thinaugh but they're the plisint family itsilf. I'm livin wid 'em now aight year, nigh hant it."

"In what capacity?"

"Is it the what I do, sur? Will, now, I was never ax'd that questin

masthre, au' the misthiss, an' the young laidies-och! but I'd like ye -though it'll nat be long afore you see the one I mane,-that's Miss Letty, the beauthiflest Will, willthere's the dain's place, sur."

"Beautiful, is she?"

Sure

"O, thin, she is that same. the houl family feels grate pride out of Miss Letty. Augh, an' to see her fadthre, how he do dote down upon her, the kind-hearted gintleman, thit he is. Thin there's anither, though she's not a sisther, but a soort iv will, I don't rightly ondherstan' the chranalagy iv it; but she's not like Miss Letty at all."

"Not so beautiful?"

"Augh, no comparishment! Now, here we are, yer hanor. There's the dhressin bell a-ringin. I'd go bail they seen us. Hould hard, sur; we'll go like the very dickens long the aveny, right up to the dure."

"But why?"

Augh, sur, why fur the hanor iv it, to be sure."

Accordingly Thady proceeded to slake his thirst for glory, by driving furiously up to the house, and pulling up so suddenly as almost to have projected my person from the vehicle, in spite of the precautions I had taken for countervailing the vis inertia.