aught that was even remotely allied to what was good. Premature old age succeeded habits of alternate toil and riot; and when I saw Barney More in the year 18-, he presented one of the most singular appearances I have ever witnessed. In the summer of that year I made an excursion, in the course of which I became for a short time resident in the neighbourhood of this uncommon man's habitation. His name reached me, and with it many a tale of plundered flocks, rifled bleach-greens, and eloigned cattle. The counties of Monaghan and Armagh are in part divided by a river, which in the fanciful language of the country is called "Owin Cuugger,"-" the Whispering River." A series of hills, of that beautiful undulation for which the high lands of Monaghan are distinguished, skirts its banks; and though no overhanging woods grace them, there are places where some scattered trees and bushes yield their clothing and embellishment. It was a fine summer evening, and the sun was setting with his last rays full upon the bank, along which I walked with a friend, when the form of a man extended at his full length struck us, as we turned round a projection which introduced us to one of those favoured spots which I have just described. His quick eye seemed to have anticipated ours, and without discomposing himself he awaited our approach. Some exclamation of surprise broke from my friend's lips as he recognized Barney More; who, raising himself upon his arm, accosted my friend with the usual salutation in Irish, God save you! The response was in English: "Ah, Barney More, you here! a good penny worth this meeting would be to Jem Macken, the constable!"" True for you, master; but the rook scents surely the smell of the powder; and I knew well they who came up the river carried none."-"You're a bold impudent fellow, Barney, and it were a good deed to lodge you in the strong walls of Monaghan- -a pretty job it was for you to rob Craigh Kuran, after having been let off before by the people.”— "And who says Barney More did it? and if I did, the magers! is an old ewe and her two brats of lambs so mighty a matter, when the children were hungry at home?"-" They said you had left the country, and I think you had better do so: you may rely you will be taken and get no mercy."- "And what for should I not get mercy? But be that as it may I'll never leave the old sod, while I have a hand to grasp a hazel that grows on it. I don't matter those Craigh Kuran magers a rush; and if there was nothing else out against me I would not care to face judge and jury to-morrow."-"You're a wicked old fellow-I think the fate of your old companion, Larry Donnellan, ought to warn you."-" Larry Donnellan, the beggar! and well he deserved what he got--the vermin! I tell you, master, if there had not been another cord in the province to hang that Larry with, I'd have lent them this;"-and so saying he bared his breast, and exhibited the cord of St. Francis, with which superstitious Catholics sometimes gird themselves, by way of dedicating themselves to the Saint. All the violence of his nature seemed roused by this Donnellan's name; and as if no longer brooking his former inert posture, he arose. He appeared above six feet high, powerfully made, with huge bones, and large coarse lineaments. The character of his form was gauntness; it seemed as if hardship or excess had reduced the huge shape to its present lankuess. His complexion appeared to have been once fair, and

his hair, where age had not impressed its own colour, was of the fiery red which characterized the O'Neils. He was meanly clad, and upon his shoulders hung, in the Spanish fashion, a large frize cloak of the grey colour usual in the garments of the Irish peasantry. I marked his visage intently; and methought could read there all that formed the character of the owner: I saw the ferocity about the nose; and in the flexible expressive mouth could trace the eloquence and quick sensibility; in the brow I observed the pride and sternness and determination; and in the glowing quick-moving eye all the unquenchable ire and wild profligacy which belonged to him. We passed forward; and my friend explained to me that Donnellan, the person in whose punishment Barney More signified so much satisfaction, had been a contumacious member of his gang; and had, by treachery, put his leader into considerable jeopardy. I learned also the meaning of the cognomen, More-which means large, and had been acquired from his bulk by Barney. Nothing, my companion assured me, could subdue the native wildness of that man's disposition; nothing could reduce him to the condition of a regular and industrious labourer. His delinquencies had been a thousand times overlooked, and had even served to introduce him to the notice of, and to procure him the good offices and counsels of, the objects of his depredations. He had been often in prison, often tried, frequently acquitted from default of prosecution, and at other times dismissed with punishments of peculiar leniency. Over all, kindness and forbearance, and the most earnest exertions for his benefit, the indomitable barbarity of his nature had prevailed. In the enterprises which fell within his sphere there was little occasion for the exertion of those qualities of courage and intrepidity which, under all circumstances, have something in them grand and interesting; but if there was no romance in his pilferings and thievings there was much in his habits. He was not, like the mean vagrant of more civilized countries, addicted to frequenting pot-houses, and the company of the vile refuse of society. Barney More did, it must be owned, indulge in an occasional debauch, and he was necessarily often in the places appropriated to the reception of the wretches with whom he concerted his schemes of plunder; but his inclination led him to haunt scenes of a different character. It was his chief delight to loiter along the banks of the softflowing river I have mentioned, and he would pass whole days in a favourite dell, watching the shadows as they fell upon the waters. He loved to bask in the noontide sun; and at night would often pass many an hour at the end of his sheeling looking upon the moon. But nothing would induce him to work; and he was heard to say, with something of pride, that though a poor cotter, his hand had not grasped a spade for forty years. Of his name and descent he was vain to the highest degree; and notwithstanding all his crimes and wretchedness, there was that about him which distinguished him from the herd of ignoble malefactors.

Shortly after my rencontre with this wild Irishman, a gentleman from a distant part of the county arrived at the house of my friend one evening at a very late hour. His stable had been broken open a few nights previous, and two valuable horses stolen; information had reached him that Barney More was concerned in the robbery, and his

object was to proceed with my friend to the house in the bog, and endeavour to recover his horses. Before breakfast, the following morning, we set out with this purpose. Long ere we reached the house its inmates seemed apprised of our approach; and several persons successively appeared to reconnoitre us from the door. When we reached it, we found Barney More's youngest boy, a fine child of twelve years old, awaiting our arrival. My friend asked for his father; and the boy replied, while he sharply scrutinized the other stranger and myself, that he" was not at home." But the tear in his fine blue eye seemed to belie his words. We entered the house; and were received by the wife of the wretched offender we sought, with an eager courtesy and show of welcome which could not be outdone by the most accomplished bypocrite of a court. As soon as my eyes recovered from the first effects of the smoke which filled the apartment, and I could discern the objects within, I was struck by the appearance of a large quantity of dried beef and bacon suspended in goodly show from the ample chimney-balk. While my companions addressed their interrogatories to the woman, who assured them her husband had no participation in the alleged robbery, and was "just gone out," I was occupied in observing a fine comely young woman, who sat at her spinning-wheel apparently regardless of our presence. Her face was turned away; but her shape appeared particularly fine. At some order of her mother's she arose, and as in crossing the floor she afforded me a better view of her countenance and person, I was much affected with the loveliness of both. She was poorly, but not sordidly, clothed; and her attire had the merit, which prouder fashions want, of displaying the form in all its natural grace and beauty. Her costume was made up of a petticoat and a cotton jacket, reaching nearly to the knee, open in front, and confined round the waist by the strings of an apron which hung before. She wore no stays, nor shoes, nor stockings; but her hair was carefully tied up in a tasteful yet simple manner. I suppose she had learned to repress her emotions; for I could scarcely discover in her countenance an indication of concern at our visit. In my friend I fancy she thought her father would find a merciful enemy, and that she trusted he would not accompany the stranger if personal injury were intended to him; and I remarked, that with intent I suppose to secure his good offices, she dropped a curtsey as she passed his seat, and bestowed on him one merry glance of favour from eyes which were well calculated to do the work of coquetry. I am happy to say we left Barney More's house, and his wife, and boy, and lovely daughter, without being able to discover any thing against him. But his destiny was not to be averted: he was shortly after apprehended on a different charge, and though acquitted on it, convicted upon another, and sentenced to transportation.

In addition to all his other accomplishments, Barney More was an excellent crown lawyer-that peculiar aptitude for law which the Irish peasants universally display; and long and bitter experience, the best of all tutors, had enabled him to understand most of the points which arise on criminal prosecutions, and to calculate the effect of the evidence to be adduced against himself. From the first he foretold his conviction on the particular accusation which terminated in that event. He was tried at the same assizes for various other offences; but the

proofs of all were defective, as he himself had previously asserted they would be found. He was convicted; and a bitter sentence transportation was to Barney More. In vain did he seek to avert or commute it; with incredible address and perseverance he had applications made in every accessible quarter; his wife, his daughter, and numerous other emissaries were incessantly engaged in negotiations set on foot by his fertile ingenuity: all, all were vain; and the last of the O'Neils was conveyed upon a cart to a transport at Cork, which bore him far from the land he loved as his own heart's blood. He is gone, and for ever; and has perhaps left behind him no such example as he presented of the strange union of the highest barbaric qualities, with the lowest meanness of the worst specimens of civilized society. S. M. T.

THE STATUE OF A FUNERAL GENIUS *.

THOU shouldst be look'd on when the starlight falls
Through the blue stillness of the summer-air;
Not by the torch-fire wavering on the walls,
It hath too fitful and too wild a glare;
And thou!-thy rest, the soft, the lovely, seems
To ask light steps, that will not break its dreams.
Flowers are upon thy brow; for so the Dead +
Were crown'd of old, with pale spring-flowers like these:
Sleep on thine eye hath sunk; yet softly shed,
As from the wing of some faint southern breeze:
And the pine-boughs o'ershadow thee with gloom,
Which from the grove seems gather'd, not the tomb.

They fear'd not Death, whose calm and gracious thought
Of the last hour, hath settled thus in thee!

They, who thy wreath of pallid roses wrought,
And laid thy head against the forest-tree,
As that of one, by music's dreamy close,
On the wood-violets lull'd to deep repose.

They fear'd not Death!-yet who shall say his touch
Thus lightly falls on gentle things and fair?
Doth he bestow, or can he leave so much
Of shaded beauty as thy features wear?

Thou sleeper of the bower! on whose young eyes
So soft a night, a night of summer, lies!

Had they seen aught like thee?-did some fair boy
Thus, with his graceful hair, before them rest?
His graceful hair, no more to wave in joy,
But drooping, as with heavy dews oppress'd?
And his eye veil'd so softly by its fringe,

And his lip faded to the white-rose tinge ?

"The figure which particularly affected Combabus, was a funeral genius, under the form of a beautiful boy, standing erect, his eyes closed with an air of languor between death and sleep, his legs gracefully crossed at the ancles, his hands meeting above the head, and his back resting against a pine-tree, the branches of which were spread above him, as if to cast their funereal shade over the tranquillity of his eternal repose."-See Vol. V. p. 115, of this Magazine.

+ The Funeral Genius of the Louvre was crowned with flowers.-See Visconti's Description des Antiques du Musée Royale.

Oh! happy, if to them the one dread hour
Had given its lessons from a brow like thine!
If all their knowledge of the spoiler's power
Came by a look, thus tranquilly divine!
-Let him, who thus hath seen young life depart,
Hold well that image to his thoughtful heart!

But thou, fair slumberer! was there less of woe,
Or love, or terror, in the days of old,

That men pour'd out their gladdening spirit's flow,
Like sunshine, on the desolate and cold?
And gave thy semblance to the shadowy king,
Who for deep souls had then a deeper sting?

In the dark bosom of the earth they laid
Far more than we-for loftier hopes are ours:
Their gems were lost in ashes; yet they made
The grave a place of beauty and of flowers,
With purple wreaths and fragrant boughs array'd,
And lovely sculpture gleaming through the shade.

Is it for us a deeper gloom to shed

O'er its dim precincts?-Do we not intrust
But for a time, its chambers with our Dead,
And strew immortal seed upon the dust?

-Why should we dwell on that which lies beneath,
When living light hath touch'd the brow of Death?

F. H.

THE CLASSICS AND ROMANTICS.

SINCE the celebrated dispute of Perrault no subject has been discussed with more earnestness among the French literati, than that at present pending in respect to the relative merits of the classic and romantic schools, or to be more explicit, respecting the superiority of the style of the age of Louis XIV. which has been denominated the "Classic School" on the one hand; and the followers of a free national style, unshackled by the laws of the ancients, on the other, distinguished by the appellation of "Romantic." In this war of words the combatants have called to their aid every auxiliary power, and it may not be amiss to give the reader an idea of a contest which will, in the end, produce an important change for the better in the literature of the nation. The despotism of the Academy once so perfect, had frequently of late years received severe shocks upon isolated questions, and the Revolution inflicted upon its sovereignty a blow which it was impossible for it to survive. Its use to the Bourbon government, as an instrument of influence on the literature of the country, has now nearly become inert, not by the conversion of the academy to the side of truth and nature, but by the rising of a regenerated school of literature, more in harmony with modern civilization and congenial to national feeling, as is the case in England. The wild and extravagant school of Hardy was supplanted by the genius of Corneille modelled upon the ancients, and Racine eclipsed Corneille in the opinion of his countrymen by the introduction of what may be called the Court style of Louis XIV. Every thing was confined to a servile imitation of the ancients, and so far had the style of Racine, backed by the influence of the court, esta