so vehement, as, metaphorically speaking, to carry Miss Vane off her feet. She could not withstand the torrent of his fiery nature. His piercing eyes seemed to burn through her. His voice, and his glance, and his ardour had for the moment thrilled and subdued her, and it was such a triumph over Lucy and Percy, and all the rest of them over Bernard's friends, too-those odd "Agnostics" who never went to church, and who talked about republicanism as if they would not be sorry to see it established, and who all-there was the pointseemed to think that Aglionby was quite above woman's influencethese incentives, put together, formed a stronger influence than she could resist. Aglionby became her accepted lover, and, looking at it all from her point of view, she presently began to find that a great conquest brings its cares and pains as well as its pleasures. Still, it was a conquest, and her power had made itself felt now and then. More than once she had cajoled Bernard into giving up some political meeting, or some evening of debate; or she had withdrawn him from his brother Agnostics in order to take her to the theatre, or go out with her to some suburban tea-party. Suburban tea-parties and theatre-going were things which she liked, and which Bernard, as she very well knew, disliked, so that every time he accompanied her to either one or the other entertainment, was a new and tangible proof of her ascendency over him.

This afternoon she had what she considered a very convincing proof of this ascendency. Bernard meekly followed her to Mrs. Golding's, and there there were, as he had prophesied, rivers of tea, many muffins and teacakes, a number of young people, and a little music by way of diversion. Bernard sat in silent anguish during this last form assumed by the entertainment. He had some scientific knowledge of music; his mother while she lived had taken care of that; and he had a fine natural taste and discrimination in the matter, thrilling in answer to all that was grand or elevated in the art. His one solitary personal extravagance was to attend the series of fine concerts which were given every autumn and winter season at Irkford. The performances this afternoon caused him pain and dejection. He experienced a sense of something akin to shame; to him it all appeared a sort of exposé. Lizzie, in the sublime blissfulness of ignorance, boldly sat down and sang in a small voice, nasal, flat, and affected:

"We sat by the river, you and I,

In the sweet summer-time long ago."

It was terrible. He was thankful when at last Lizzie arose and said it was time to be going to church. That was her moment of triumph, or rather, it ought to have been-when Miss Golding, it may

be innocently, or it may be of malice aforethought, but certainly with every appearance of ingenuous surprise, exclaimed:

"To church! I thought you never went to church, Mr. Aglionby." "I go with Lizzie whenever she likes," he said carelessly and haughtily. "It pleases her, and does me no harm."

"Oh-h! Bernard!" cried his betrothed, her cup of pleasure dashed from her lips; while a young lady who was almost a stranger, and who appeared struck with this remark of Bernard's, said severely that she could not understand how going to church could harm any one. To which he, inwardly annoyed by the silly stupidity of the whole affair, replied nonchalantly that it was nevertheless very bad for some constitutions, his amongst them, and amidst the consternation produced by this statement, he and Lizzie departed.

Really, Bernard, you do upset me when you come out with those awful remarks of yours. Poor Miss Smith couldn't make you out at all."

"I daresay not. I am sure it is a matter of complete indifference to me whether she made me out or not."

"Yes, you will set public opinion at defiance, and it will do you no good, say what you like."

"My child," said he, drawing her hand through his arm, and laying his own upon it, "I think you can hardly be called a judge as to what is public opinion. If you mean that Miss Smith represents it, I don't care to please it. And if I go to church with you at your wish, what do fifty Miss Smiths and their silly ideas matter?"

"Ah, but I don't know whether it is not very wicked in you to come to church, when you don't believe in a word of what is going on. I am not sure that I do right to bring you, only I keep hoping that it will have some good effect upon you."

"Well, it has," he said tenderly. "It has the effect of making me love you and prize you ten times more for your goodness and your faith."

They were reconciled, as they entered the gates of the churchyard, and joined the throng going in, while the loud, clanging bells overhead sounded almost deafening, and the steeple rocked to their clamorous summons.

Bernard liked sitting there, through the evening service, with Lizzie by his side; and he liked the walk home through the fields, under the clear, starlit sky, and then through the streets, between the lines of lamps. When she hung on his arm, and they talked nothings together, then he felt at home with her, he forgot her bad singing, and her conventional little thoughts and stereotyped ideas. In the province of talking nothings Lizzie was at home, was natural, unaffected, even spirited. So soon as she left them she became

insipid and artificial, and this was what Aglionby had dimly felt for some time, though he had not given a definite name to the sensation. They talked nothings to-night, and he parted from her in the warm conviction that she was a dear, lovely little creature, that she was the woman who loved him, and whom he loved, and to whom he was going to be loyal and true to his life's end.

Lord Edward FitzGerald.

AMONG the Irishmen who took part in the events which led to the rebellion of 1798, and stood out boldly to denounce and resist the corrupt despotism beneath which their country groaned, there are few who hold so high a place as Lord Edward FitzGerald. It was patriotism, wholly disinterested, that urged him to the lengths he went; and had the cause he espoused been gained, instead of lost, he would have been ranked among the heroes of modern history. As it is, his memory will always be cherished by his countrymen.

He was born in 1763, being the fifth son of James, first Duke of Leinster, by his marriage with Lady Emilia Lennox, daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond. He was ten years old when he lost his father. The following year, his mother married a Scotch gentleman, named Ogilvie, who proved an excellent stepfather to her younger children.

The army was the profession for which young FitzGerald was intended, and to which his own taste inclined. We find him at seventeen, in America, serving with his regiment, the 19th, in the war with our revolted colonies. Here his gallant conduct procured him the post of aide-de-camp to Lord Rawdon. Wherever the danger was greatest, there he was to be found; in one engagement he received a deep sword-cut in the thigh, was dashed from his horse, and left on the field for dead. He was discovered, in such sorry plight, by a poor Indian, who carried him to his hut, and nursed him till he was able to be removed to Charlestown. This negro, who became strongly attached to the young man he had befriended, refused to leave him, and we hear of him often as "the faithful Tony," following his master wherever he went.

On the conclusion of the American war, the 19th Regiment proceeded to the island of Saint Lucia, in the West Indies. Having remained with it there some months, Lord Edward returned home at the instance of his relations in Ireland. About the same time, a dissolution of Parliament took place, and he was brought in by his eldest brother, the Duke of Leinster, as representative for the borough of Athy. He now settled down to lead a life which, when contrasted with the stirring scenes in which he had taken part in America, seemed tame enough. Still the time passed pleasantly, for he spent it chiefly with his mother, whom he loved with a tenderness not at all

too common among sons, either then or now. The Duchess, it may here be observed, was that lady the full sweetness of whose expression of countenance Sir Joshua Reynolds, when painting her portrait, found it difficult to render, and told Burke so. She appears to have been quite as sweet as she looked, besides being the most indulgent of parents to her soldier son, and—as one is tempted to imagine-her favourite child.

Dublin at this period was a gay capital (not a dowdy dowager among cities), and Lord Edward, while mixing in society there, met, and fell in love with, Lady Catherine Meade,* a daughter of Lord Clanwilliam. Before this affair of the heart had advanced too far, his cautions stepfather, to get him out of temptation's way, hurried him off to England, and persuaded him, as Parliament was then up, to go through a course of gunnery instruction at Woolwich. Lord Edward consented to the plan; yet that, in the midst of his studies, his heart remained in Ireland, is pretty clear from the tone of his letters to the Duchess. "I am as busy as ever," he writes in midsummer 1786 :

"it is the only resource 1 have, for I have no pleasure in anything. I need not say I hope you are kind to pretty dear Kate; I am sure you are. I want you to like her almost as much as I do;-it is a feeling I always have with people I love excessively."

It would be unfair to accuse Lord Edward of fickleness, when he at least appears to have been serious: nevertheless, it is certain that, before the year was out, he had forgotten "pretty Kate," and fallen a victim to the superior charms of his first cousin, Miss Lennox, at whose father's house in Sussex he had been staying on a visit. In this case, too, the course of true love refused to run smoothly. The lady's father would not hear of their marrying, his leading objections being their youth, and the inadequacy of their means. At length, seeing that his nephew was likely to prove a lover more constant than reasonable, he forbade him to enter his house.

This was a cruel disappointment to the young man, and the inactive life he led on his return to Dublin-varied only by his Parliamentary duties-made him feel it all the more. His one wish now was to get away-he cared not how far-anywhere, so that the scene were changed. Without telling anybody of his intentions, he set out to join the 54th Regiment, into which he had exchanged at the time of his leaving the West Indies, and which was now stationed at St. John's, New Brunswick. He went first to Halifax, and made the journey thence to St. John's by land. His letters, recounting what he saw on the way, show that he possessed no mean powers of observation and description.

* Afterwards Lady Powerscourt.