OUR readers, we presume, have not forgotten that when we parted from them at the first stage of our narrative, we had embarked at the little Friedland port of Docklum, Henrietta, Queen of England, to exchange "the raging of the sea" for the more perilous element of the madness of the people."

We must now introduce, more particularly than heretofore, a personage, the younger cavalier, who will hold a prominent and distinguished position in our little history of Love and Loyalty." O'Brien De Lacy was a native of Ireland, that beautiful Island, for which nature has done so much, and to whose people heaven has imparted moral gifts of the highest class, but choaked and perverted by bigotry, fanaticism, and centuries of misrule. Education has not dispelled the mists of ignorance perpetuating the dominion of priest craft, and with continued turbulence and confidence in numbers, they know not how to be free; they have yet to discover that social liberty is opposed to licentiousness, and whether in politics or religion, that freedom is not separable from knowledge and truth. De Lacy was not wholly Irish nor wholly English-the best and oldest blood of both countries mingled in his veins, and his loyalty to his King and attachment to the British connexion, resisted the taint of the dreadful times upon which, in the early vigour of manhood, he was thrown. By his father he was descended from the good Hugh VOL. I.

Emigrant of 1641.

His

De Lacy, who was Lord Deputy of Ireland in the reign of King John, and discharged his trust with a wisdom, energy, and justice unknown to that country even in the time in which we are now giving these details. mother's name was distinguished in Irish history by the defeat and death in battle of Richard the Second's Lieutenant, Mortimer Earl of March. Opposite currents are brought together and mingle in the course of time. The extravagance and hospitalities of successive inheritors, together with the unsettled state of Ireland, had greatly reduced his paternal estates, and on his accession to them he found that which is not very novel in our days, his means lessening as the number of his dependants encreased and his benevolence expanded. Rack-rents were unknown in these times; a labourer on three pence a day did not pay eight pounds an acre for potato ground, and middle-man and con-acre were terms not then engrafted upon our rural economy to make the fruits of the earth bitter or unattainable to a miserable peasantry. The tenant, for the most part, paid his landlord in kind; while feeding him, they had also to feed themselves, and as the political economy of a Malthus was not then dreamed of by the wildest Irishman, mouths were multiplying on the estate every year, and the science of gastronomy wonderfully well understood in its practice. No doubt, it appears an irreconcileable paradox to most persons

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His benevolence flowed a constant stream, and if any distress "in mind, body, or estate," escaped his notice, the good and kind Father Denis was sure to bring it under his pupil's observation. Both saw, not understood, the indications of an approaching moral tornado, which was to burst, all unlooked for, upon a doomed people. They were not altogether unconscious of a gathering storm of civil strife, but had no presentiment of that simoom from hell, which blasted pity, and all the charities of social life in the human breast, and, in religious fanaticism and hereditary hatred of England, transformed men into devils.

Three or four years passed away, with alternations of alarm and security, and even in despite of the ominous shadows of approaching evil, Father Denis would prepare his angle-rods, flies, and other tackle, all of which, he himself made, and, with his young friend, enjoy on the neighbouring lakes and streams, the sport of fishing, of which he was passionately fond. Upon one of those occasions, a sudden and violent storm arose on the lake on which they were angling, and a small cot was crossing from one shore to the other, where the waters were most exposed to the action of the wind. It was rowed by one man, with the lusty vigour for which the Irish peasant is distinguished, and in it was a monk, of the brotherhood of a neighbouring abbey, whose towers were visible on the shore which the cot was labouring to attain. The oarsman appeared to exert all his strength and skill, but made little or no way. Sometimes the frail and puny bark was hidden in the valley of the waves, and then rose again, as if flung from the surface of the waters. Apprehensions arose in the minds of De Lacy and his aged companion, for the safety of the passengers, and as theirs was a large and good sea-boat, they urged their rowers to make with all speed towards the struggling cot.

It was seen that the ecclesiastic had taken one of the oars to relieve his wearied companion, perhaps for the worst, as not accustomed to its use. The little vessel still sunk and rose, to view, when the oar was wrested, through his unskilfulness, from the grasp of the ecclesiastic, and was rapidly borne beyond the hope of recovery-the boat now became utterly unmanageable, and a

great "ninth wave," as it is called, crowned with fierce and curling foam, broke upon, and overwhelmed it. A shriek was faintly heard, and the boat and its freightage rose not on the next wave: by and by, the cot was seen capsised, and the hats of the passengers floated on the wild waters. De Lacy's oarsmen redoubled their exertions to an almost superhuman degree, he, himself shouting his directions, and encouragements, so that his voice overcame even that of the storm. De Lacy, who was an excellent swimmer, disencumbered his person of its most embarrassing habiliments, ready to plunge into the wild waters, at the mandate of humanity. The direction of the waves towards them lessened the distance--they reached the drowning men-the moment was critical-neither could swim

they were entangled, the peasant having grasped the monk's long garment, which, being expanded thereby on the surface, assisted to the partial buoyancy of the latter-they were going down for the last time, when, a boat-hook, being fortunately on board, De Lacy arrested with it the sinking monk, the death-grasp of the other was tenacious the hold had by the boat-hook gave way-De Lacy saw at once that the weight of the peasant would sink both, and handing the boat-hook to one of the rowers, he unhesitatingly plunged into the flood, seized the man by the hair, and stemming the tide with one arm, sustained the cotsman's head above water, until both were raised into the boat, and rescued from the jaws of death.

In the oarsman of the cot, De Lacy recognised a tenant of his own to whom he had extended many and substantial acts of kindness and benefit, previously to this last paramount and saving service, and in the monk, Father Denis recollected an old schoolfellow of the order of Saint Francis.

Since their return to Ireland, De Lacy and his reverend friend had their retirement seldom invaded. The known loyalty and suspected orthodoxy of the one, (for he was never seen at confession, and was known to have laughed at the idea of purchased masses liberating a soul from purgatory,) together with his fine and cultivated mind, were not calculated to attract the sympathies or fellowship of his Roman Catholic neighbours, even of the same rank;

besides the still greater cause of repulsion, his being of English descentthe black drop of the Sasenach in his veins, was not to be forgiven: the other, when not indulging in his favorite piscatory amusement, was occupied by his religious studies and offices, and by acts of benevolence and charity, in comforting and relieving the wants and maladies of the poor, he having no secular charge. For some months previous to this period of our narrative, a gloomy reserve marked the demeanour of the peasant classes towards De Lacy, and, in a degree, even towards the good father. The resources derivable to the former from his estates began to be reluctantly or only in part yielded, and the lower orders who were wont to flock to the latter to be shrived, because he did not make merchandise of his absolutions, now scarcely or never sought from him the consolations of religion. De Lacy could not help noticing that even his own tenantry and dependants, not only failed in the payment of their rents, in specie or in kind, but also began to fail in those humble and respectful acknowledgments demanded by the relative situations of the parties in society. What could be the cause? The solution of the mystery soon came upon him in the lurid gloom and terrors of the earthquake, or meteoric destruction.

The occurrence on the lake, already mentioned, took place in the month of August 1641. A murkiness, deep, silent, and unaccountable, was, from thence gradually spreading over the social horizon, close and dark as precedent of a physical convulsion. There was a moral sensation, depressing to the spirits and alarming to the fears, yet none, not initiated, could tell why. The latter part of September had arrived. Father Denis had laid up, for the season, his angling apparatus. De Lacy took the field, with his gun and dogs, against the partridge. The late hours of evening saw him pass over hill, and moor, and stubble field in safety, and yet, not without instinctive misgivings which he could not define, and therefore sought to reject. He could not help noticing, that, except in very few instances, the peasant's hand to his hat and cordial and accustomed benedictory salutation," God save you," was withheld, altho' never more needed than at that moment.

Things were in this state.-Father Denis had replenished the medicine chest, his winter's dispensary for the neighbouring poor; wool was gratuitously distributed through the cabins on the estate, to be converted, by the industry of their female inhabitants, into clothing for themselves and their children; and Christian-charity was laying up for itself, "treasures in heaven," when, early in the month of October, a meeting or council of Romish clergy from various parts of Ireland, together with many laymen of turbulent character, was held in the abbey of Multifernam, county of Westmeath. The holy brotherhood there, a remnant of whom exists to this day, were so much in the habit of extraordinary religious observances-stations, confessions, penances, jubilee, &c. that such an assemblage excited no particular notice, except in the devotees who were wont to attend 2 on such occasions. This meeting passed away without creating any alarm, when on the evening of the twenty-first of October, a scene of deep and harrowing interest took place, at the residence of De Lacy.

The capacious hearth was fresh furnished with a cheerful peat fire, before which De Lacy sat musing, as he was wont to do, on plans of a more active and spirited-stirring course, by which he might retrieve his decayed fortunes, and not waste his prime of life ingloriously: Father Denis was deeply engaged in the pages of Saint Augustine, and silence was broken only by the crickets beginning to resume their winter quarters, and the mice who were pursuing their gambols behind the old oak wainscotting, which lined the parlour walls. The reveries of De Lacy, and the studies of his aged friend, received a different and fearful interruption. It was announced that a stranger, apparently of the rank of a farmer, desired to be admitted.-De Lacy ordered him to be shewn in. Shortly a man entered the room, dressed in the ordinary garb of the farmers of that period, yet there was in his port and the glance of his eye something that denoted superior rank and intelligence. He paused just inside the door of the apartment, until the retreating footsteps of the menial died upon his ear-he then shot the bolt of the door-listened for a space, inclining his ear towards the passage-then, looking round with painful