is it very likely that the detractors of the Irish nation would be more satisfied with an overt act of resistance, than they are with the tameness of annual petitions.

But be that as it may, the nationat tale', with which the reader is here presented, is no pathetic appeal to public compassion. It is, indeed, impossible to speak of Ireland, still less to take it as the scene of a narrative, without frequent allusion to its starving, squalid, and diseased population. The people form too prominent an object in the landscape to be wholly passed over by the most indifferent observer. But it is chiefly from among the master cast that the author of Florence Macarthy has drawn her characters and her incidents; and it is in the reaction of the execrable system of divide and govern,' in the demoralization and insecurity which that system inflicts: upon the agents, no less than on the victims

of oppression, that she has found ma terials for another Irish story.

For the fidelity of her delineations, whoever has resided in Ireland will readily vouch; and if the features are sometimes deeply tragical, and sometimes broadly ludicrous, the fault lies in the originals, and not, with their illustrator.

The manners she has described, and the society she has represented, belong to a peculiar epoch; they arose under a particular political combination, and they will cease with its dissolution. But wherever a possibility exists for bringing that combination again into action, the tale will have an interest: and as ridicule will reach those who are impregnable to reason, this picture of the aristocracy of the bureau may not ⚫ be without a contingent utility to other countries, beside that for whose service it was more expressly undertaken.

In the composition of the series of tales, of which FLORENCE MACARTHY

forms a part, the author has hitherto endeavoured to sketch the brilliant aspect of a people struggling with adversity, and by the delineation of national virtues, to excite sympathy, and awaken justice. In the portraiture of a party, a cast, a faction, the colouring must necessarily vary. The opposition between the natural characteristics of the Irish temperament, and those peculiarities, which a false policy, operating for six hundred years, has impressed upon a portion of the population, must not be confounded with contradiction in statement, or versatility in opinion: nor the Crawley family be taken as derogating from the Glorvinas, O'Donnels, and Mac Rorys, of former compositions.

T. C. M.

La Grange:

Département de Seine et Marne,

September, 1818.

FLORENCE MACARTHY.

CHAPTER 1.

Whom when I asked, from what place he came,
And how he hight himself, he did y-cleep
The Shepherd of the Ocean, by name,

And said h came far from the main sea deep.
Collin Clout's come home again.—SPENCER.

EARLY in the nineteenth century, in an autumnal month, a corvette, a light built Spanish vessel, passed the Bar of Dublin, and, with all her canvass crowded, rode gallantly into the bay, after having weathered, for a period of five days, one of those tremendous gales, which occasionally agitate the Irish seas. A southern port of Ireland had been her original destination. Stress of weather had driven her up the Channel; and the injury she had received in

her unequal contest with the elements rendered it necessary that she should undergo repair, before she proceeded on her coasting voyage. On her stern she bore the name of " Il Librador;"* and, though now unarmed, and the property of a private individual, she had evidently been a sloop of war in some foreign service.

The dawn was breaking in tints of gold and hues of crimson, as the corvette cut her way through the brightning waves; and the happiest aspect of the Irish coast presented itself to the view of two persons, who stood in silence at the helm;-who had stood there since the first pale flush of light had thrown its silvery line along the eastern horizon.

The elder of the two was the master of the vessel. He was still in the very prime of life and flower of manhood;

* The Liberator.