might be, and he says, I remember the very words

"Boy,' says he, the time will be, and that not long off, when what little respect belongs to ould families and ould ruins will be done away entirely; and the world will hear tell of ould customs and the like; but they will look round upon the earth for them in vain-they will be clean gone! If I had my life to begin over again, I'd take great delight in restoring all them things. It's no wonder I should have sympathy with ruins; I, who have ruined, and am ruined.'

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"Sir,' said the old housekeeper, who was hard of hearing, and stupid when she did hear, Sir,' said she, 'sure Michelawn and the boys might mend the ruins up of this ould chapel, if it's any fancy for it you have.' So he looked at me, and smiled a sort of a smile, could and chilly, without any thing happy in it; like the smile you see sometimes upon the lips of a corpse when the mouth falls a little—a gasping smile. Sir,' keeps on the ould silly craythur, come away home, for it isn't safe for you to be anything like out of the house, which you havn't been for many a long month before.'

"True,' said he, true, just let me look here;' and he turned to where the little mo¬

nument stood to the poor girl's lemembrance, and he laid his hand on the marble urn, which was at the top, and drew it back on a suddent, as if he had not thought that it would have been so could. He then rooted with his stick among the buttercups and daisies that grew about it; and with a quick thought, flung off his hat, and fell on his knees upon the grass. As he fell, so, four men, vagabonds of the law, sprung on him. Whether he felt their hould or not is between him an' heaven; but this I do know, that when I looked in his face, as they held him up off the grass, he was dead."

"And that was the end of the most beautiful and most accomplished Irishman of the last century !"

"It was his end, God help us! And the murdering villians kept possession of the body for debt. The neighbouring gentry would not suffer it, and offered to pay the money; but his ould tenants would not hear of that; they rose to a man, over the estates which had once belonged to him and his, battled the limbs of the law out of possession, and gave the masther the finest wake and funeral that the counthry had seen for fifty years. There was a hard fight betwixt them and the constables when the body was moving, but they bet them

off. And then whew!- who would follow them into the Connamara hills!"

"What became of his sons ?"

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They are both dead: nor is there one stone upon another of Mount Brandon."

"But your obligation?"

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Ay! didn't you hear that he wished the ould ruins of ould Ireland looked to ?"

"True; but why do you wear no hat ?" "Didn't he, who was so high, so great, die that bitter night, bareheaded ?"

The old man's eyes were moist with tears. "One other question, Clooney; the poor girl's child-the baby who wailed beneath his window ?"

"Didn't he call me boy,' and give me his hand to kiss; and don't I do pilgrimage through the world for the sins of my father and my mother! The poor girl's babby was the only child that loved him!"

RUINS.

PART III.

THE OLD EAGLE.

THE sun was sinking behind a mimic forest of mingled oak and elm, whose foliage was beautifully varied, at intervals, by a beech or larch --still more rarely by a dark green holly-tree of magnificent growth. The wood upon which I looked had the advantage of being planted on the brow and declivity of an extent of rising ground which deepened into a verdant valley. The clustering plantations formed a perfect crescent, shading the beautiful vale completely from the northern and eastern winds, and leaving an opening for the soft southern breezes to breathe upon one of the most cultivated scenes it has ever been my lot to visit in Ireland,-where art and care have done so little, and Nature so much.

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The principal object in the valley was a straggling picturesque building, which had been commenced in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and remained to be finished during the dynasty of William the Fourth. A Gothic tower-a Roman arch-a steeple-a cottage front-an Ionic column-and half-a-dozen other classes of architecture, that would both puzzle and horrify Sir Christopher Wren, if he could arise from his grave-were bined without combination." Some portions of the building were overgrown with ivy, and the most luxuriant creepers clung, and twisted, and formed a fantastic garnishing from wall to wall, as if in mockery of the old house of Ballydunlawn. A colony of rooks had taken absolute possession of the tower's turrets; and very appropriate they looked, particularly in the evening, when, after their predatory excursions to the adjacent farms, they curved and whirled in the air over their ancient domicile for full twenty minutes before returning to their nests.

To the left of this multitudinous mass was a broad clear lake, studded with what might pass, amongst those who knew no better, for volcanic islands, composed as they were of stones of various hues, piled without regard to