clergy still are by the rural parishioners, and how strong religious feeling still is in the great body of the English people, we entertain more sanguine hopes of the issue of the contest which has now commenced, than any other which has taken place since the passing of the Reform Bill. We should have no fears whatever for the result, if it were not for the peculiar character of the body to whom the New Constitution has given so destructive a preeminence, and the great proportion of the ten-pounders who are either themselves Dissenters, or influenced by the envy and spite so frequent among the lower classes of their different communions. We trust, however, with confidence in the hitherto untainted hearts of the rural population; we rely upon the sanctity and justice of the cause which the Church is called to defend,-upon the wisdom, prudence, and courage of its leaders, and, most of all, upon the influence of truth and returning moderation, even upon a numerous portion of the community whose seduction has hitherto given the enemies of the Constitution so fatal an advantage. We trust that the feelings of religion, and the reverence for Christianity, are yet all-powerful with a vast majority of the people; that this constitutes an essential, a vital difference between our situation and that of France at the commencement of her Revolution; and that the eloquent description of Mr Burke is yet applicable to the English people. "We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the

basis of civilized society, and the source of all good, and of all comfort. We are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition with which the continual absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of any system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets should ever want a farther elucidation, we shall not call on Atheism to explain them. We shall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other incense than the infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers in adulterated metaphysics. If our Ecclesiastical Establishment should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we shall employ for the audit, or receipt, or application of its consecrated revenue. We are resolved to have an Established Church, an Established Monarchy, an Established Aristocracy, and an Established Democracy, each in the degree it exists, and no more. Violently condemning neither the Greek nor Armenian, nor, since the heats have subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer the Protestant;-not because we think it has less of the Christian religion in it, but because, in our judgment, it has more. We are Protestants, not from indifference, but zeal."

"WHEN the 48th were quartered in Mallow, I was there on a visit to one of the Purcells, who abound in that part of the world, and, being some sixteen or seventeen years younger than I am now, thought I might as well fall in love with Miss Theodosia Macnamara. She was a fine grown girl, full of flesh and blood, rose five foot nine at least when shod, had many excellent points, and stepped out slappingly upon her pasterns. She was somewhat of a roarer, it must be admitted, for you could hear her from one end of the Walk to the other; and I am told, that as she has grown somewhat aged, she shews symptoms of vice, but I knew nothing of the latter, and did not mind the former, because I never had a fancy for your mimini-pimini young ladies, with their mouths squeezed into the shape and dimensions of a needle's eye. I always suspect such damsels as having a very portentous design against mankind in general.

"She was at Mallow for the sake of the Spa, it being understood that she was consumptive- though I'll answer for it, her lungs were not touched; and I never saw any signs of consumption about her, except at meal times, when her consumption was undoubtedly great. However, her mother, a very nice middle-aged woman-she was of the O'Regans of the West, and a perfect lady in her manners, with a very remarkable red nose, which she attributed to a cold, which had settled in that part, and which cold she was always endeavouring to cure with various balsamic preparations taken inwardly, -maintained that her poor chicken, as she called her, was very delicate, and required the air and water of Mallow to cure her. Theodosia, (she was so named after some of the Limerick family,) or, as we generally called her, Dosy, was rather of a sanguine complexion, with hair that might be styled auburn, but which usually received another name. Her

nose was turned up, as they say was that of Cleopatra; and her mouth, which was never idle, being always employed in eating, drinking, shouting, or laughing, was of considerable dimensions. Her eyes were piercers, with a slight tendency to a cast; and her complexion was equal to a footman's plush breeches, or the first tinge of the bloom of morning bursting through a summer cloud, or what else verse-making men are fond of saying. I remember a young man who was in love with her writing a song about her, in which there was one or other of the similes above mentioned, I forget which. verses were said to be very clever, as no doubt they were; but I do not recollect them, never being able to remember poetry. Dosy's mother used to say that it was a hectic flush

The

if so, it was a very permanent flush, for it never left her cheeks for a moment, and, had it not belonged to a young lady in a galloping consumption, would have done. honour to a dairy-maid.

"Pardon these details, gentlemen," said Bob Burke, sighing, "but one always thinks of the first loves. Tom Moore says, that there's nothing half so sweet in life as young love's dram;' and talking of that, if there's any thing left in the brandy bottle, hand it over to me. Here's to the days gone by, they will never come again. Dear Dosy, you and I had some fun together. I see her now with her red hair escaping from under her hat, in a pea-green habit, a stiff cutting whip in her hand, licking it into Tom the Devil, a black horse, that would have carried a sixteen stoner over a six-foot wall, following Will Wrixon's hounds at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and singing out, Go it, my trumps.' These are the recollections that bring tears in a man's eyes.”

·

There were none visible in Bob's, but as he here finished his dram, it is perhaps a convenient opportunity for concluding a chapter.

"THE day of that hunt was the very day that led to my duel with Brady. He was a long, straddling, waddlemouthed chap, who had no more notion of riding a hunt than a rhino. ceros. He was mounted on a showyenough-looking mare, which had been nerved by Rodolphus Booti man, the horse-doctor, and though 'a good 'un to look at, was a rum 'un to go;' and before she was nerved, all the work had been taken out of her by long Lanty Philpot, who sold her to Brady after dinner for fifty pounds, she being not worth twenty in her best day, and Brady giving his bill at three months for the fifty. My friend the ensign was no judge of a horse, and the event shewed that my cousin Lanty was no judge of a bill-not a cross of the fifty having been paid from that day to this, and it is out of the question now, it being long past the statute of limitations, to say nothing of Brady having since twice taken the benefit of the Act. So both parties jockeyed one another, having that pleasure, which must do them instead of profit.

She was a bay chestnut, and nothing would do Brady but he must run her at a little gap which Miss Dosy was going to clear, in order to shew his gallantry and agility; and certainly I must do him the credit to say that he did get his mare on the gap, which was no small feat, but there she broke down, and off went Brady, neck and crop, into as fine a pool of stagnant green mud as you would ever wish to see. He was ducked regularly in it, and he came out, if not in the jacket, yet in the colours, of the Rifle Brigade, looking rueful enough at his misfortune, as you may suppose. But he had not much time to think of the figure he cut, for before he could well get up, who should come right slap over him but Miss Dosy herself upon Tom the Devil, having cleared the gap and a yard beyond the pool in fine style. Brady ducked, and escaped the horse, a little fresh daubing being of

less consequence than the knocking out of his brains, if he had any; but he did not escape a smart rap from a stone which one of Tom's heels flung back with such unlucky accuracy, as to hit Brady right in the mouth, knocking out one of his eye teeth, (which, I do not recollect.) Brady clapped his hand to his mouth, and bawled, as any man might do in such a case, so loud, that Miss Dosy checked Tom for a minute, to turn round, and there she saw him making the most horrid faces in the world, his mouth streaming blood, and himself painted green from head to foot, with as pretty a coat of shining slime as was to be found in the province of Munster.

That's the gentleman you just leapt over, Miss Dosy,' said I, for I had joined her, and he seems to be in some confusion.' I am sorry,' said she, Bob, that I should have in any way offended him or any other gentleman, by leaping over him, but I can't wait now. Take him my compliments, and tell him I should be happy to see him at tea at six o'clock this evening, in a different suit.' Off she went, and I rode back with her message, (by which means I was thrown out,) and would you believe it, he had the ill manners to say the h;' but I shall not repeat what he said. It was impolite to the last degree, not to say profane, but perhaps he may be somewhat excused under his peculiar circumstances. There is no knowing what even Job himself might have said, immediately after having been thrown off his horse into a green pool, with his eye-tooth knocked out, his mouth full of mud and blood, on being asked to a teaparty.

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He-Brady, not Job-went, nevertheless-for, on our return to Miss Dosy's lodgings, we found a triangular note, beautifully perfumed, expressing his gratitude for her kind invitation, and telling her not to think of the slight accident which had occurred. How it happened,

he added, he could not conceive, his mare never having broken down with him before-which was true enough, as that was the first day he ever mounted her and she having been bought by himself at a sale of the Earl of Darlington's horses last year, for two hundred guineas. She was a great favourite, he went on to say, with the Earl, who often rode her, and ran at Doncaster by the name of Miss Russell. All this latter part of the note was not quite so true, but then, it must be admitted, that when we talk about horses, we are not tied down to be exact to a letter. If we were, God help Tattersal's!

"To tea, accordingly, the ensign came at six, wiped clean, and in a different set-out altogether from what he appeared in on emerging from the ditch. He was, to make use of a phrase introduced from the ancient Latin into the modern Greek, togged up in the most approved style of his Majesty's fortyeighth foot. Bright was the scarlet of his coat-deep the blue of his facings."

"I beg your pardon," said Antony Harrison, here interrupting the speaker; "the forty-eighth are not royals, and you ought to know that no regiment but those which are royal sport blue facings. I remember, once upon a time, in a coffeeshop, detecting a very smart fellow, who wrote some clever things in a Magazine published in Edinburgh by one Blackwood, under the character of a military man, not to be any thing of the kind, by his talking about ensigns in the fusileersall the world knowing that in the fusileers there are no ensigns, but in their place second lieutenants. Let me set you right there, Bob; the facings your friend Brady exhibited to the wondering gaze of the Mallow tea-table must have been buff-pale buff."

"Buff, black, blue, brown, yellow, Pompadour, brick-dust, no matter what they were," continued Burke, in

no wise pleased by the interruption, they were as bright as they could be made, and so was all the lace, and other traps which I shall not specify more minutely, as I am in presence of so sharp a critic. He was, in fact, in full dress-as you know is done in country quarters-and being not a bad plan and elevation of a man, looked well enough. Miss Dosy, I perceived, had not been perfectly ignorant of the rank and condition of the gentleman over whom she had leaped, for she was dressed in her purple satin body and white skirt, which she always put on when she wished to be irresistible, and her hair was suffered to flow in long ringlets down her fair neck-and, by Jupiter, it was fair as a swan's, and as majestic too-and no mistake. Yes! Dosy Macnamara looked divine that evening.

"Never mind! Tea was brought in by Mary Keefe, and it was just as all other teas have been and will be. Do not, however, confound it with the wafer-sliced and hot-watered abominations which are inflicted, perhaps justly, on the wretched individuals who are guilty of haunting soirées and conversaziones in this good and bad city of London. The tea was congou or souchong, or some other of these Chinese affairs, for any thing I know to the contrary; for, having dined at the house, I was mixing my fifth tumbler when tea was brought in, and Mrs Macnamara begged me not to disturb myself; and she being a lady for whom I had a great respect, I complied with her desire; but there was a potatocake, an inch thick and two feet in diameter, which Mrs Macnamara informed me in a whisper was made by Dosy after the hunt.

"Poor chicken,' she said, 'if she had the strength, she has the willing. ness; but she is so delicate. If you saw her handling the potatoes today.'

"Madam,' said I, looking tender, and putting my hand on my heart, I wish I was a potato!'

"I THOUGHT this was an uncommonly pathetic wish, after the manner of the Persian poet Hafiz, but it was scarcely out of my mouth, when Ensign Brady, taking a cup of tea from Miss Dosy's hand, looking upon me with an air of infinite condescension, declared that I must be the happiest of men, as my wish was granted before it was made. I was preparing to answer, but Miss Dosy laughed so loud, that I had not time, and my only resource was to swallow what I had just made. The ensign followed up his victory without mercy.

Talking of potatoes, Miss Theodosia,' said he, looking at me, ' puts me in mind of truffles. Do you know this most exquisite cake of yours much resembles a gateau aux truffes? By Gad! how Colonel Thornton, Sir Harry Millicent, Lord Mortgageshire, and that desperate fellow, the Honourable and Reverend Dick Sellenger, and I, used to tuck in truffles, when we were quartered in Paris. Mortgageshire-an uncommon droll fellow; I used to call his Lordship Morty-he called me Brad-we were on such terms; and we used to live together in the Rue de la Paix, that beautiful street close by the Place Vendôme, where there's the pillar. You have been at Paris, Miss Macnamara?' asked the ensign, filling his mouth with a half-pound bite of the potato-cake at the same moment.

"Dosy confessed that she had never travelled into any foreign parts except the kingdom of Kerry; and on the same question being repeated to me, I was obliged to admit that I was in a similar predicament. Brady was triumphant.

"It is a loss to any man,' said he, not to have been in Paris. I know that city well, and so I ought; but I did many naughty things there.'

"O fie!' said Mrs Macnamara. "O, madam,' continued Brady, the fact is, that the Paris ladies were rather too fond of us English. When I say English, I mean Scotch and Irish as well; but, nevertheless, I think

Irishmen had more good luck than the natives of the other two islands.' "In my geography book,' said Miss Dosy, it is put down only as one island, consisting of England, capital London, on the Thames, in the south; and Scotland, capital Edinburgh, on the Forth, in the north; population'

'Gad! you are right,' said Brady -' perfectly right, Miss Macnamara. I see you are quite a blue. But, as I was saying, it is scarce possible for a good-looking young English officer to escape the French ladies. And then I played rather deep -on the whole, however, I think I may say I won. Mortgageshire and I broke Frascati's one night — we won a hundred thousand francs at rouge, and fifty-four thousand at roulette. You would have thought the croupiers would have fainted; they tore their hair with vexation. The money, however, soon went again-we could not keep it. As for wine, you have it cheap there, and of a quality which you cannot get in England. At Very's, for example, I drank chambertin-it is a kind of claret-for three francs two sous abottle, which was, beyond all comparison, far superior to what I drank, a couple of months ago, at the Duke of Devonshire's, though his Grace prides himself on that very wine, and sent to a particular binn for a favourite specimen, when I observed to him I had tasted better in Paris. Out of politeness, I pretended to approve of his Grace's choice; but I give you my honour-only I would not wish it to reach his Grace's ears-it was not to be compared to what I had at Very's for a moment.

"So flowed on Brady for a couple of hours. The Tooleries, as he thought proper to call them; the Louvre, with its pictures, the removal of which he deplored as a matter of taste, assuring us that he had used all his influence with the Emperor of Russia and the Duke of Wellington to prevent it, but in vain; the Boulevards, the opera, the theatres, the Champs Elysées, the