passes him, in which ruffians, hired as we have seen by no desperate admirer, as is usual on such occasions, but by her old frantic grandmother, are in the act of transporting Eva into the power of that person. To hear the cry of a female in distress, and to pursue the ravishers, although upon foot, was one and the same thing. An interesting and animated account of the chase is given, rendered more true by the knowledge of the localities exhibited by the author. De Courcy, losing and recovering the object of his pursuit as the carriage outstrips him in speed or is delayed by accident, follows them through the Phoenix park, and along the road to Chapel-Izod. Here, in a miserable cottage, he lights at last upon the object of his pursuit, in the keeping of the old hag by whose accomplices she had been carried off, and who, while they were absent about the necessary repairs of some damage sustained by the carriage, awaited their return to carry her to some place of greater security. She is thus forcibly described.

66 Charles, who knew not what to answer, advanced; a woman then started forward from a dark corner, and stood wildly before him, as if wishing to oppose him, she knew not how. She was a frightful and almost supernatural object; her figure was low, and she was evidently very old; but her muscular strength and activity were so great, that, combined with the fantastic wildness of her motions, it gave them the appearance of the gambols of a hideous fairy. She was in rags; yet their arrangement had something of a picturesque effect. Her short tattered petticoats, of all colours and of various lengths, depending in angular shreds, her red cloak hanging on her back, and displaying her bare bony arms, with hands whose veins were like ropes, and fingers like talons; her naked feet, with which, when she moved, she stamped, jumped, and beat the earth like an Indian squaw in a war dance;

her face tattooed with the deepest indentings of time, want, wretchedness, and evil passions; her wrinkles, that looked like channels of streams long flowed away; the eager motion with which she shook back her long matted hair, that looked like strings of the grey bark of the ash-tree, while eyes flashed through them whose light seemed the posthumous offspring of deceased humanity,-her whole appearance, gestures, voice, and dress, made De Courcy's blood run cold within him. They gazed on each other for some time, as if trying to make out each other's purpose, from faces dimly seen, till the woman, whose features seemed kindling by the red light into a fiend-like glare, appeared to discover that he was not the person whom she expected, and cried, in a voice at once shrill and hollow, like a spent blast, What is it brought you here?'-and, before he could answer, rushing forward, stood with her back against a door (which but for this motion he would not have observed), and waving her lean nervous arms, exclaimed fiercely, 'Come no farther at your peril!'"-Vol. i. 15–17.

The threats of this demoniacal personage were insufficient to deter De Courcy from forcing his way to the interior of the hut, where he beheld a beautiful, but almost inanimate form, lie stretched on a wretched pallet. Upon De Courcy's attempt to remove her, the frantic guardian again breaks into a transport of rage, which, however, does not prevent him from accomplishing his purpose amid the dire curses which she heaped upon him, and which are expressed in a tone of energy which marks the dialogue of this author.

"Take her, take her from me if you will, but take my curse with you; it will be heavier on your heart than her weight is on your arm. I never cursed the grass but it withered, or the sky but it grew dark, or the living creatures but they pined and wasted away. Now you bear her away like a corpse in your arms; and I see you following her corpse to the churchyard, and the white ribbons tying her shroud; her maiden name on her tomb-stone; no child to cry for her, and you that sent her to her grave wishing it was dug for you."-Vol. i. p. 24.

Unappalled by these denunciations of future vengeance, De Courcy conveyed Eva in his arms to a place of safety, and found the means of restoring her to her guardians the Wentworths. The seeds of a fever which had lurked in his constitution had been called into action by De Courcy's exertions upon this memorable night. On his recovery, a friend and fellow-student, himself something of a Methodist, conducts him to a place of worship frequented by those who held that persuasion, when he finds himself unexpectedly seated close to that lovely vision which he had seen but briefly on the night when he released her, and which had nevertheless haunted, ever since, not merely the delirious dreams of his fever, but the more sober moments of his reconvalescence. He is invited to the house of her guardians, where the society and conversation is described with the pencil of a master. The various effect of the peculiar doctrines which they professed, is described as they affected Mrs Wentworth, a woman of strong sense, rigid rectitude, and a natural warmth of temper which religion had subdued; her husband, a cold-hearted Pharisee, whose head was so full of theology, that his heart had no room for Christian charity or human feeling; and Mr Macowen, a preacher of the sect, a sensual hypocrite, whose disgusting attributes are something too forcibly described. The conversation of such a society was limited to evangelical subjects; or whatever appeared to diverge from the only tolerated topic, was brought back to it by main force, according to the manner

in which the preachers of the seventeenth century spiritualized all temporal incidents and occupations, or rather degraded doctrines of the highest and most reverent import, by the base comparisons and associations with which they dared to interweave them.

'One man talked incessantly of the election of grace;' his mind literally seemed not to have room for another idea; every sentence, if it did not begin, ended with the same phrase, and every subject only furnished matter for its introduction. Dr Thorpe's last sermon at Bethesda was spoken of in terms of high and merited panegyric.— Very true,' said he; but—a— Did you think there was enough of election in it?' A late work of the same author (his clever pamphlet on the Catholic petition) was mentioned.' But does he say any thing of election in it?'

There was no opportunity,' said Mr Wentworth. Then he should have made one-Ah, I would give very little for a book that did not assert the election of grace!' Once seated in his election-saddle, he posted on with alarming speed, and ended with declaring, that Elisha Coles on God's Sovereignty, was worth all the divinity that ever was written. I have a large collection of the works of godly writers,' said he, turning to De Courcy, 'but not one work that ever was, would I resign for that of Elisha Coles.'' Won't you except the Bible?' said De Courcy, smiling. Oh, yes-the Bible-ay, to be sure, the Bible, said the discomfited champion of election; but still, you know,' -and he continued to mutter something about Elisha Coles on God's Sovereignty.

"Another, who never stopped talking, appeared to De Courcy a complete evangelical time-keeper;-the same ceaseless ticking sound;-the same vacillating motion of the head and body; and his whole conversation turning on the various lengths of the sermons he had heard, of which it appeared, he was in the habit of listening to four every Sunday. Mr Matthias preached exactly forty-eight minutes. I was at Mr Cooper's exhortation at Plunket-street in the evening, and it was precisely fifty-three minutes. And how many seconds?' said Mrs Wentworth, smiling-for she felt the ridicule of this.

"Close to De Courcy were two very young men, who were

comparing the respective progress they had made in the conversion of some of their relations. They spoke on this subject with a familiarity that certainly made De Courcy start. My aunt is almost entirely converted,' said one. 'She never goes to church now, though she never missed early prayers at St Thomas's for forty years before. Now,' with a strange sort of triumph, 'now, is your sister converted, as much as that?'-'Yes-yes-she is.' answered the other, eagerly; for she burned her week's preparation yesterday, and my mother's too along with it.'"-Vol. i. 64-67.

De Courcy in vain attempted to assimilate his conversation to that of the party, by quoting such religious works as were known to him. The chilling words "Arminian" or "heterodox" were applied to those popular preachers whose sermons he ventured to quote ; and even Colebs was appealed to without effect, as he was given to understand that Hannah More, however apostolical in the eyes of Lord Orford, was held light in the estimation of the present system. Thus repulsed from the society of the gentlemen

"When he arrived in the drawingroom, the same monotonous and repulsive stillness; the same dry circle (in whose verge no spirit could be raised) reduced him to the same petrifying medium with all around. The females were collected round the tea-table; the conversation was carried on in pensive whispers ; a large table near them was spread with evangelical tracts, &c. The room was hung with dark-brown paper; and the four unsnuffed candles burning dimly (the light of two of them almost absorbed in the dark baize that covered the table on which they stood), gave just the light that Young might have written by, when the Duke of Grafton sent him a human skull, with a taper in it, as an appropriate candelabrum for his tragedy writing-desk. The ladies sometimes took up these tracts, shook a head of deep conviction over their contents, laid them down, and the same stillness recurred. The very hissing of the tea-urn, and the crackling of the coals, was a relief to De Courcy's ears.”— Vol. i. 69, 70.