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the driver thrust his head through the broken bars of the gate, and directing his voice towards one of the ruined lodges, whence issued a feeble smoke, cried out, "Alleen ma chree! Alleen deelish!" "Who do you call to?" asked the Commodore, impatiently endeavouring to open the gate.

"To little Ellen, plaze your honor, the daughter of the poor baccah at Lis-na-sleugh, who lives here with her ould granny, that kept the gates in both th'ould lord's time, and is bed-ridden now that's as the baccah tould me last night, when I was axing him about the way. Alleen ma vourneen.”

"Che shin,"* answered a shrill voice from within; and the next minute a figure, small, wild, and frightful, bounded over the plank laid before the lodgedoor, and stood at the gate. To a few words addressed to her in Irish, she lent a timid but fixed attention; then Who's that.

flew back to the lodge, and instantly returned with a large massive key, which she applied with extraordinary strength to the rusty lock; and the heavy gates opened slowly, to admit the unusual visitors.

"That's my caen-buy-deelish," said Owny, kindly patting a head, to whose thick and matted locks adhered some bearded thistles. The little portress laughed with all the wildness of fatuity; but shrunk, scared, and intimidated, as she snatched the offered remuneration from the Commodore's hand. Her countenance, however, exhibited rather the stupor of unawakened intellect, than a natural deficiency of intelligence.

"That's a poor innocent, your honor: the likes of them be always found in lonely places, like the ould court here; and brings luck with them

My yellow-headed darling.

they say. But for all that she's a natural, her father tells me she's the finest eat-hunter and bird-catcher in the barony round; and is quite cute at gathering brushneens for the bit of fire, and catering among the neighbours with the cruiskeen* and wallet for her ould bed-ridden granny.

To this account the Commodore made no reply, but shrugged his shoulders; and both gentlemen proceeded in silence through the demesne, while Owny entered the lodge to make some enquiries from the bed-ridden lodgekeeper relative to the house; whether it was to be seen, and who occupied it. The grounds were divided into little - plots and job-farms, up to the door of the mansion, which stood on a rocky hight over the river. On the opposite shores ascended a range of well wooded acclivities, whose summits mingled with

* A little pitcher.

the line of the horizon. Of the original building nothing now remained but a square ivy-clad tower, called Desmond's castle, flanking a less imposing edifice, built by the Fitzadelms in the reign of James the First. This wing was in good preservation: but the modern façade, raised forty years back by Baron Fitzadelm, the Tierna-Dhu, was ruinous and mouldering. It had been built by contract, was rapidly got up for a particular purpose, and had been constructed with bad materials, most of which were not even yet paid for. The precipitous declivities which swept down from the rocky foundation of the house to the river had been cut into terrace gardens, a fashion still observable at the seats of the ancient nobility of Munster: and it was melancholy to observe the stunted rose-tree, and other once-cultivated, but now degenerate shrubs and flowers, raising their heads amongst nettles and briers, and long

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grass, and withered potatoe-stalks. Many fantastic little buildings were also seen mouldering on romantic sites along the river's undulating banks; some of shells, some of rock-work: all alike monuments of the bad taste of the day in which they were raised, and of the wanton caprice of the persons who projected them.

"It was doubtless from a scene like this," observed Mr. De Vere, plucking an half-perished rose, to which adhered the foliage of the deadly night-shade, " that Spencer drew his poetical metaphor of the seeds of vice springing up amidst the scions of virtue:"

"And with their boughs the gentle plants did beat;

But ever more some of the virtuous race

Rose up inspired with heroic heat,

That cropt the branches of their scient base,

And with strong hand their fruitful rankness did deface."

"It is thus, perhaps," returned the

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