lessened its amount, yet the great point was not lost, a part of it remained and was preserved as a nest egg, inviting, and, indeed, securing future augmentation. Mick went to work as economically as possible. For instance, instead of sinking his capital on a horse, he bought an ass, which, with a little additional' labour of his own, accomplished his objects just as well. The furze fences, consisting of crumbling and uneven banks which unnecessarily divided, and sub-divided his fields into ribbons, and occupied a tenth of his land, he levelled and brought into cultivation half an acre of wet soil, which his predecessor never thought it worth his while to reclaim, Mick added to his patrimony, by treating it in an appropriate manner, and for his plough and team of horses, or bullock, he substituted, under the same sensible direction, his own good spade and shovel, and vigorous limbs,

In occasional conversations, Mick acquired much solid knowledge from his benevolent landlord, which be immediately applied to practice, to the surprise of his neighbours, who could not be persuaded that he was not making a fool of himself by changing the ould method. One notion, however, quickly got into their heads, namely, that he was only trying to humour the master, and that all his losses (for losses they anticipated as certain) would be made good by him. But this never proved to be the case, because Mick became a gainer, and not a loser, by following the new system recommended to him; and Mr. Bruce, on principle, abstained from giving any undue advantages to this man, whom he designed for a model to his other small holders. It is true, that he gave a fair and accommodating time for paying up the rent; and in this way was more indulgent to him than he would have been, had Mick's general habits been different, and his husbandry practices unimproving.'pp. 16, 17.

Contrasted with the fortunes of our friend Michael, are those of a very different sort of couple, Nick Moran and his wife. Nick had succeeded to a well stocked farm of twenty acres, which, under his father's care, had become extremely productive, and also to a leathern purse containing fifty pounds. He had the misfortune, however, to marry a slattern, who was always gadding abroad to wakes, funerals, and other amusements. The domestic history of this pair, has, we fear, but too many parallels in Ireland.

• Nick himself had been always a roystering blade, fond of company and sport, yet shrewd and cunning in some things: a good judge of cattle and a keen hand at a bargain, for his father had been in the habit of sending him as a cattle-jobber to distant fairs, to purchase cows or pigs, which they often afterwards sold to advantage. The habits of tippling which Nick had contracted in his rambling excursions, owing, in a great degree, to a very evil custom among his humble countrymen, of never buying or selling without the whiskey-bottle, as a party, did not contribute any good qualities to his character; and to render matters worse, his wife was a tea-drinker, and a company-keeper in his absence, occasionally pilfering a bag of potatoes, a stone of meal, or a barrel of oats, for the publican, or

the huxter who supplied her with tea and sugar, whiskey and tobacco. The candle was thus melting at both ends, and every thing went wrong within the house, and without it. The fields in which the job cattle were confined between one fair and another, were poached in wet weather; the fences were broken down, and left so; the drains were choked up, and not cleared again; the crops were half weeded; in a word, every thing denoted carelessness, mismanagement, and want of economy. The fifty pounds at length went to clear off rent and arrears, which had been accumulating for three years, and the cattle vanished also. The last struggle which Nick made to replace them was in vain, and so it deserved to be. He had picked up, for two pounds, an abominably vicious, untractable little pony, that would neither lead nor drive, unless when overpowered by flogging and fatigue, and its determination not to draw any thing was insuperable. Nick, however, contrived to force the animal to a very distant fair, and to exhibit him, his own long legs astride on him all the time, at the green where horses were ranged for sale. It soon happened that one

of the Society of Friends, attracted by the excellent points of the animal, enquired his price; but the bargain shall be stated exactly as it was made, in the presence of a crowd of petty horse-dealers.

Friend.-What will thee take for thy pony? 'Nick.-Fifteen guineas, your honour.

'Friend. Don't honour me; (6 honour to whom honour." thee take less?

But won't 'Nick.-(Scratching his head, and considering, perhaps, that the quaker was not to be huxtered with.) May be I might give a good luckpenny.

'Friend. But, first, will he draw a car, or little carriage? Thee must engage him.

Nick.-Och! let him alone for that.

'Friend.-Will thee warrant him to plough?

'Nick.-To plough, is it? I'll tell you what I'll warrant-that car, cart, and plough, are all alike to him. (Aside. The devil a one of 'em will the same baste ever put his back under.) And I won't ax the money till you get on his back and try him, how pleasant and aisy he travels. For Nick knew very well that the pony was sobered enough by this time to carry any person and quietly and smoothly did he now move under the friend," who, finding no reasonable fault with him, at once offered the sum which, on coming to the fair, he had intended to expend in the purchase of horse-flesh-ten pounds-a very old saddle and bridle included in the bargain.

Nick. Why, then, if I take ten guineas for him this day, may I be'Friend.-If thee swears, thee may keep thy horse. I'll give thee no more. (Going.)

'Nick.-Well, well, you're a quaker, sure enough, then, and I must be at a word with you. You must give me a luck-penny, anyhow, to drink. Friend.-I'll give thee a shilling to refresh thyself, but don't thee

exceed.

After Nick had reiterated his protestations of the pony's excellencies, the simple and upright quaker paid him his money, which Nick might have carried home, had not his besetting sin assailed him in a critical moThere was a tent hard by; the luck-penny was in his hand; in

ment.

went Nick, and changed not only his shilling, but a pound-note afterwards; and there he remained for that day, and part of the succeeding one, until some acquaintances of the quaker, witnesses of the bargain, came in with a constable, took Nick before a magistrate, proved to the engagement, implied, though not, perhaps, expressed in the straightest form of words, and obliged him to surrender the purchase money, ten shillings of which, however, had been spent in the tent, where the fascinations of a drunken piper had so long detained him.

"Nick's dishonesty, for such his conduct really was in principle, however disguised by the trickery of words, and the character of his pony being now completely blown through the fair, our unfortunate jobber had to come home again just as he went, only that the pony died on the road, from illusage and exhaustion.

The gale-day soon came round again, and Nick was at length ejected. from his farm, and glad to find shelter for himself and his family in a wretched cabin on the road-side, with a small potato-garden behind it, for which he was charged, by a man almost as poor as himself, only four times its value.

'He was ever afterwards, as may be supposed, in one perplexity or another, from his total want of discretion, economy, and self-restraint; careless, idle, and improvident, while his potatoes lasted; compelled, when they were consumed, which was usually at the end of December, to slave unremittingly, in order to preserve himself from beggary; and still there was no trusting him with a shilling in his pocket, although that shilling was earned by the sweat of his brow.

The

Mr. Bruce, in the hope of his reformation, and seeing that he was occasionally a laborious and ready workman, often employed him, and he was perhaps inclined to judge favourably of him now, from having observed certain indications of a desire in Nick and his wife for comfort and cleanliness. These symptoms appeared from their having renewed the thatch of the hovel with tolerable trimness, dashed and whitewashed its walls, and inserted windows where there had been only apertures before, so small as to require no other shutter at night than a wisp of straw, or the tattered breeches, out of which Nick had slipped on tumbling into bed; and above all, by their having filled up, for a cabbage garden, the green and stagnant pool which had long been in front of the door. All these improvements had been effected by Nick's energy and assiduity, within a single week, the materials having been supplied by Mr. Bruce. Morans, however, in all this had something farther in view than merely pleasing their employer; they speculated (or rather Nick speculated, for his wife, sobered by continued misery, disliked the scheme, as tending to excite Mr. Bruce's disapprobation), on making a guinea or two, and a bellyfull of whiskey to boot, by the contributions of their friends; his plan was to invite every neighbour, cousin, and well-wisher, within six miles of him, to a subscription housewarming, to collect within his metamorphosed habitation all those who were willing to pay for every tumbler of bad punch, and worse tea, which might be served out to them in the course of a winter's night. Such was the short cut by which Nick's cunning and idleness, combined with a love of company and drink, expected to accumulate what diligence and temperance alone can acquire.

Nick's invitations were answered by few apologies: some came from

love of drinking, some from love of gossiping, many from the love of whiskey, which the entertainer's taste gave reason to expect in abundance, and a few, but very few, alas! from the simple motive of assisting the Morans with their money.

'The rooms, kitchen and bed-rooms, (and, by the way, there were three or four children in the measles huddled into a corner of the latter), were filled as well as Nick's hopes could have anticipated; and the piper, and the whiskey, and the tobacco, were in as great demand, as if every man in the room had his landlord's receipt in his pocket, a very problematical point, at least with most of them. For a considerable portion of the night all was good humour and pleasantry; but, at last, as ill luck would have it, Brien Foley, the blacksmith, who had got the cross sup in him, revived an old quarrel with Jemmy Cassidy, the carpenter, a man remarkable for his great size* and good humour; but on this occasion his temper was tried beyond the limits of endurance, as will appear in the sequel. Brien, whose fist, in the course of his passion, came in contact as forcibly with Jem Cassidy's nose as if he had been sledging his anvil, applied an epithet so very galling to the heart of the carpenter, as to make him return the blow with interest. This brought on a rejoinder in kind; Brien struck Jemmy; and Jemmy floored Brien; Brien's wife ran at Jemmy, and Jemmy's sister pummelled her again; party formed against party, every one striking at his particular opponent, except Nick, who being too drunk to discriminate, struck at random amongst them all. Luckily for the children, the combatants rushed into the road, which was soon a scene of clamour and contention; stools and tables torn asunder, pots and pot-hooks, kettle and frying-pan, were all in requisition; blows and screams, curses and oaths mixed together in undistinguishable uproar, were the sounds which that night broke the rest of the few orderly persons who had staid at home, and gone to bed quietly.'-pp. 18-26.

The results were most disastrous. Nick was summoned to the petty sessions, tried, and found guilty of selling spirits without licence, and committed for a month to prison, there to be kept to hard labour. From one offence, as is usually the case, he progressed to another, and finally was obliged to quit the country. These cases are so happily contrasted, and so neatly developed by Mr. Doyle in his humorous and engaging style, that they cannot fail to produce the best impression wherever they become known.

We hope that it is from experience that Mr. Doyle is enabled to set before us the picture of an admirable country school, planned and conducted under the auspices of Mr. Bruce. Besides the usual rudiments of ordinary education, there was attached to this Institution, after the Swiss fashion, a portion of land, which was cultivated by the boys as a model farm. Their time was regularly divided between school instruction, and attention to this farm at all seasons of the year; and when the weather prevented them

One of those Irish giants, whose portraiture was well conveyed by the following description: "Plaze your honour, a boy that would pull a bullock out of a bog."

from going a-field, they were taught to use the tools of the turner and carpenter, within doors. In the same way, the girls were trained to the usual kinds of needle-work, to washing, making and mending clothes, brewing, baking, gardening, and the culture of bees. Another most admirable practice, described by Mr. Doyle, is the inspection, by his model of a good landlord, of the cottages and farms upon his estate, and the distribution of premiums in money, on a rigidly graduated scale, amongst his cottage tenantry. This gives him an opportunity of drawing a contrast, between the cottage and farm of our friend Michael, and those of one of his neighbours. The chapter, in which the opposite effects of the thrifty industry of the one, and of the indolent attention of the other, are exhibited, contains in itself a little volume of practical wisdom.

On one of those days in June, when even in comparatively rude and unimproved districts, the face of nature has that smiling appearance which gladdens the heart of man, which makes him feel that even merely to exist is happiness (happiness how infinitely increased, if while his bodily energies are excited by the renovating influence of a cloudless sky, he has reason to feel that at the same time he is dwelling in the sunshine of God's love, and that the rays of divine goodness are beaming on his heart, making his "path as the shining light that shines no more unto the perfect day!") the Bruces, the Gumbletons, Father Murphy, Doctor O'Neil, the medical superintendent of the dispensary, and several strangers invited for the occasion, assembled at the " great house" to breakfast, after which the visiting procession issued forth in all the pomp of visitorial dignity. The list of prizes comprehended many heads:-cottage premiums green crops-including clover and vetches for summer, and mangel wurzel, turnips, cabbage and rape for winter food-stall feeding— dairy management-hedges-trees, &c. &c. The respective claims being minutely examined into, each successful candidate was classed according to his merit.

'The state of Michael Kinshella's house and farm was as follows: first as to the interior of his house; the floors which had been remarkably well and evenly laid with a composition of yellow clay and lime, was as clean as possible; the dresser well scrubbed, and filled with its pewter garniture, as bright as silver-the tables perfectly clean-a coarse clean piece of rubber cloth hung suspended from a roller for the purpose of wiping the face and hands, before and after meals, a process especially necessary in a labouring family, whose manual operations are so varied and unceasing-the sleeping room, was equally neat and comfortable, its floor boarded, its window opening on hinges to admit the air, its curtain, as well as that of the bed, neatly arranged, the sheets white and clean though coarse, and the quilt (Joanny's patchwork while a spinster) corresponding in cleanliness-there was a decent chest of cherrytree drawers too, and a rack on which Joanny's bonnet and Mick's Sunday clothes were usually hungnor was the parlour without its appropriate furniture; a cupboard full of cups and saucers, with a somewhat ostentatious display of china plates, broken at the manor house, but ingeniously reunited, and here "wisely kept for shew," gave an appearance of snugness to the household