of rural economy, and communicating among the neighbouring districts.

At the conjunction of four of these mountain defiles, marked by a large stone cross, placed over a holy-well, hung with ragged offerings, the priest departed, with a cordial benedicite and a bow, learned in his French college, some thirty years before, and not yet forgotten in the wild scenes, where his laborious and ill-requited calling placed him.

vourna.

The traveller, again left alone, proceeded by the direction of the priest to a little mountainous village, called the Town of the Beloved, in Irish, Bally-naIt was silent and solitary, and seemed to sleep in the noon-tide sunshine, as if placed there only to form a pretty feature in the romantic scenery. Its inhabitants were all abroad, getting in their scanty harvest in a neighbouring valley. When the Commodore, after resting and bating his horse at a little

public house, lost sight of its mosscovered roofs and curling smoke, no further vestige of human habitation cheered his sight for many hours. Meantime his road became every moment more rugged, wild, and difficult. The extraordinary instinct of the little animal upon which he was mounted, and which seemed as peculiarly organized for the region it occupied, as the camel for the desert, or the rein-deer for the snows of Lapland, excited an admiration not unmixed with gratitude and respect. The traveller, rather abandoning himself to its guidance, than attempting to direct its steps, fearlessly permitted it to climb among the rugged rocks, to skim over trembling bogs and sloughy morasses; and it still preserved its pleasant ambling pace, where other horses would have sunk knee-deep, and was able to proceed where they would have perished.

The sun was now hastening to its

goal; the few birds of prey which inhabit these elevated regions were returning to their eyries among the rocks. The traveller had still to "eek the landmarks which the priest had described as designating his descent to the Peninsula of Dunore. He indeed caught glimpses of the Atlantic ocean, through the interstices of the mountains; but the evening shadows were gathering in vapours beneath his feet, as he descended, and yet he approached not the mountain's base. That he had missed his way, and might be benighted in a region so desolate, had suggested itself as a possibility; and he alighted for the purpose of ascending an high cliff, which seemed to command a vast extent of prospect, to ascertain his exact position. As he was in the act of fastening his horse's bridle to the stump of a farze bush, sounds, measured and mechanical, met his ear, and spoke of human proximity : they came from a little glen, near whose

entrance he stood. A narrow bridleway, leading through a deep ravine, presented itself: on the summit of a stupendous rock, some fragments of a ruin vere visible; and beneath, seated in a sort of dry dyke, appeared a man occupied in scraping away with a sharp flint the lichens and mosses which incrusted a large angular stone, in order to decypher an inscription which he was endeavouring to copy. The characters were Irish, and beneath appeared a translation, in not very pure Latin, intimating that "NEAR TO THIS PLACE, AT THE CASTLE OF MACARTHY, THE STRANGER WILL RECEIVE AN HUNDRED THOUSAND WELCOMES."*

The person who was engaged in this antiquarian occupation was so intent upon his task, that the approach of the Commodore was unobserved; who stood

* A similar inscription was found in a ditch near the ruined castle of the Macswines in Munster.

gazing upon him with a look of singular and marked expression, as if he too was penetrating through the veil of time, and gradually recalling traces, and decyphering lineaments, which its mouldering finger had touched with decay, but not wholly defaced. There was an emotion of tenderness softening his countenance, as he gazed, foreign to its habitual expresssion; and when, leaning forward, he read aloud the Latin, and added the comment of—"I believe there is a false concord in that sentence," his full, deep voice, wanted its usual tone of firmness and decision.

As he spoke, the flint dropped from the hand of the solitary sage, and he remained for a moment, in the motionless position of surprise, tinctured with apprehension; as if some

airy voice, that syllables men's names," had suddenly addressed his unexpecting ear.