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others, the Krudner or Johanna Southcote of some Munster village, to which she might now be returning, laden with sectarian tracts, and Irish snuff, bohea tea, and intolerance.

When the waiter delivered a negative. answer to her card, she shook her head, and said: "In their blindness they know not what they reject why! but the sickle will go forth, and the harvest will yet be reaped."

She shortly after set off for Naas, accusing the waiters of sauciness and extravagantcharges, talking Irish with the driver, and lecturing the beggars on the sin of idleness. She accompanied her admonition with some small change; at the same time accounting selfishly for her donation, by observing, "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. "O! I engage," said the waiter as she drove off, "it's little you'd give, if you didn't expect it back with interest tenfold-and that's now what the likes of

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her calls charity! Its the charity that begins at home, aye, and ends there too. Commend me to the gentleman above stairs that gave his two pound notes, and never canted nor preached about it. That's the real charity, long life to him!"

To this ejaculation an "amen" was repeated by all present, who had witnessed the liberality of the Commodore, and heard the departing apostrophe of the "elderly gentlewoman."

CHAPTER II.

Oh! quel homme superieur! quel grand genie, que ce Poco-curante! Rien ne peut lui plaire. VOLTAIRE.

THE two distinguished strangers, whom chance had so singularly united, and who had mutually chosen, from caprice or prudence, to hang the veil of mystery over their respective situations, appeared to touch on the extremes of human character. But there was, notwithstanding, an obvious dove-tailing in their dissimilitudes; and their moral disagreements, like some musical discords, produced a combination more gracious than the utmost perfection of a complete and blended harmony could effect. The one seemed a brilliant il lustration of physical and intellectual

energy, thrown into perpetual activity; the other a personification of moral abstraction, originating ingenious reveries, which, though sometimes founded in fact, were generally inapplicable in practice. The fortunes of life seemed to have formed the one, and to have spoiled the other. The one thought, sympathized, and acted; the other mused, dreamed, and was passive. Their first half-hour's communication, however, on board ship, was a prompt commutation of mutual good will.-Each felt he was associated with a gentleman; and in that confidence had suffered intimacy to grow with a rapidity disproportioned to its duration. But though opinions were freely discussed, and almost always opposed; though sentiments were broadly debated, and principles vehemently canvassed; yet in the many and long conversations, held during the silence of calm seas and of slumbering elements, by the midnight moon, or the day's prelusive dawn, no

circumstance of personal communication had ever passed between them: mutually in possession of each other's leading opinions, and features of character, they were ignorant of all else beside.

Both gentlemen spoke Spanish and French fluently; but the Commodore had a foreign pronunciation of some particular English words, which denoted him to have been long absent from the countries where English is the vernacular tongue. The reading of the younger stranger seemed stupendous. It included the classics, ancient and modern, with the whole belles lettres of European and oriental literature. The studies of the Commodore were evidently more confined to the exact sciences; and, with the exception of Shakespeare, Milton, and Ossian, and of some old quaint English prose writers, the chroniclers of Ireland's hapless story, the Campions, Spencers, and Hanmers, his course of English reading seemed cir

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