Monsieur de Tiernay ?" said the Marquise, whose eyes were fixed upon me during this conflict.

"Of course not, Madam," said I, in an accent of almosts arcastic tone. "If I am not wrong in my impressions the cause might claim a deeper devotion; but this is a theme I would not wish to enter upon.

"We are aware of that," said Laura, quickly, "we are quite prepared for your reserve, which is perfectly proper and becoming."

"Your position being one of unusual delicacy," chimed in the Marquise.

I bowed haughtily and coldly, while the Marquise uttered a thousand expressions of gratitude and regard to

me.

"We had hoped to have seen you here a few days longer, Monsieur," said she, "but perhaps, under the circumstances, it is better as it is."

"Under the circumstances, Madam," repeated I, "I am bound to agree with you;" and I turned to say farewell.

"Rather au revoir, Monsieur de Tiernay," said the Marquise, "friendship, such as ours, should at least be hopeful; say then 'au revoir.'"

"Perhaps Monsieur de Tiernay's hopes run not in the same channel as our own, aunt," said Laura, "and perhaps the days of happiness that we look forward to would bring far different feelings to his heart."

This was too pointed-this was in

supportably offensive! and I was only able to mutter, "You are right, Mademoiselle ;" and then, addressing myself to the Marquise, I made some blundering apologies about haste and soforth; while I promised to fulfil her commission faithfully and promptly.

"Shall we not hear from you?" said the old lady, as she gave me her hand. I was about to say, "under the circumstances," better not, but I hesitated, and Laura, seeing my confusion, said, "It might be unfair, aunt, to expect it; remember how he is placed."

"Mademoiselle is a miracle of forethought and candour too," said I. "Adieu! adieu for ever!" The last word I uttered in a low whisper.

"Adieu, Maurice," said she, equally low, and then turned away towards the window.

From that moment until the instant when, out of breath and exhausted, I halted for a few seconds on the crag below the fortress, I knew nothing; my brain was in a whirl of mad, conflicting thought. Every passion was working within me, and rage, jealousy, love, and revenge were alternately swaying and controlling me. Then, however, as I looked down for the last time on the village and the cottage beside the river, my heart softened, and I burst into a torrent of tears. There, said I, as I arose to resume my way, there is one illusion dissipated; let me take care that life never shall renew the affliction ! Henceforth I will be a soldier, and only a soldier.

IRELAND is now in a state of transition. The whole frame of society has been shaken to its very centre. A storm has burst over the island; it has now subsided, and has left all the constituent elements necessary to the formation of a great and happy country chaotic and confused. Out of these disjointed

materials we have to construct a new nation; and whether it will contain the germ of happiness and prosperity, or hold at sufferance a sickly existence, depends, in a great measure, upon the part we act. There is a tide in the affairs of nations as of men, and upon our own conduct now depends our future fortune or misery. It is not enough to pull down, we must also reconstruct. Ireland has often been subjected to changes as violent as the present, and yet its evils were only perpetuated. "The whole of your island," said Lord Clare, in his celebrated speech at the Union, "has been confiscated, with the exception of the estates of five or six ancient families of English blood; and no inconsiderable portion of the island has been confiscated twice, perhaps thrice." Satisfied, then, that Ireland, particularly her soil, offers incalculable advantages to the capitalist, and that his presence among us is necessary to revive drooping hopes, and to palliate a vast amount of human suffering that must otherwise ensue, we propose, in the course of the present article, to examine some of the principles of vitality we still possess, and the result to which the course of modern events appears to tend, principally with this object in view. To do this, with even a moderate chance of success, it will be necessary to turn occasionally out of the direct course, in order to expose some of the vulgar errors, or to combat some of the national prejudices entertained of the Irish at the other side of the channel. And this is the more necessary, as we feel well assured that the absence of the English capitalist is produced, less by an ignorance of the

great industrial resources of our country than by unwarranted prejudices.

In examining a country with the intention of forming a just estimate of its wealth and prosperity, it is necessary, in the first place, to consider the laws by which it is governed, the security that exists for life and property, and the agency through which justice is administered. Should two states resemble one another very nearly in these respects, and should no great disparity exist between them in climate, in situation, in the intelligence of the people, and generally in civilisation, that one will receive from us a decided preference in which industry has made the greatest progress; in which the fields have been enclosed, drained, and reclaimed; in which the mines are profitably worked, factories erected, and the greatest amount of capital already created and invested. Proceeding upon these facts, we are enabled to arrive, with a great degree of certainty, at a fair conclusion as to its social condition at the time, and the industrial activity already developed. But if, in making this comparison, we are anxious to form an opinion, not upon their then existing states, but upon their future conditions and ultimate destinies, we must proceed upon different facts and different data. We must take into consideration not the past but the future-not what has been done, but what may be done. Those circumstances which induce us, in the first case, to give our award, will, in the second case, make us withhold our preference. In England, where unbroken peace has prevailed for years, and the highest degree of civilisation has existed, and where it is almost impossible to find a single acre of land upon which large sums of capital have not been expended, everything, it is true, "doth make a gleeful boast;" whilst, in Ireland, whole tracts of land exist upon which a shilling has never been expended-unfenced, undrained, wild,

and uncultivated — and still in the same state of nature in which it has remained for centuries past. In England money has done much. Each new application of capital to the soil has brought in a smaller return, until at last the profit has become so small as to offer few temptations for its investment; but in Ireland we possess all the elements of progress. Our's is a country abounding in all the raw materials of wealth, and labour itself is almost a drug. Under the watery wastes that cover a great portion of the soil lie rich lands; valuable mines, never yet worked, exist almost upon the surface of the ground, their rich ore in many cases laid naked by the mountain-torrent; and water power, sufficient to turn the machinery of the world, still rolls on in its ceaseless course, unemployed, unappropriated. These are the elements of progress we possess; these are the things that, notwithstanding the gloom of the past and the present, inspire, in the heart of the nationalist, confidence and hope for the future, and teach us that Ireland is yet destined to be prosperous and happy, if her people will only have it so, under the blessing of Him who "hath caused the wilderness and solitary place to be glad, and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose."

It would have been no easy thing, a few years ago, to have pointed out any two countries upon the face of the earth, placed in the same juxtaposition as England and Ireland, and yet so totally dissimilar in the habits and feelings of the people; and it would be equally difficult, at the present time, to discover any two nations in which the process of assimilation has advanced with more rapidity or steadiness. To investigate the causes of the social and political antagonism of Ireland to England, of her disaffection and habitual distrust in the laws, and consequently of her physical and intellectual backwardness, it would be necessary to trace down from an early period of history the selfish policy and misrule of England. This task has been frequently undertaken by others, and often executed with ability; although it must be a constant source of regret that the motive for such an investigation was rather to perpetuate discord and dissension, than to learn from the experience of the

past, apt remedies for present misfortunes. These matters, however, are now mere speculative questions. The electric telegraph, the extension of railways, and the wonderful improvements that have been made in steam navigation, have done more to further the amalgamation of England and Ireland, than all the legislative enactments of the last half century.

Where two states are situated in close proximity to one another, everything in their social and commercial condition tends to an equality. A difference in language or religion, or even a different code of laws and government, may for a long time mar this consummation. It may be delayed by natural obstacles, such as a dangerous channel, till man, by his ingenuity, shall have triumphed over such impediments; or it may be postponed by vexatious custom-house regulations, or quarantine laws; but all these things can only oppose, they can never annihilate the natural tendency of events. But where, as with England and Ireland, a narrow piece of water alone separates the two islands, once, indeed, a serious impediment to intercourse, but now the most important means of communication and traffic; and where the same government, laws, and language exist, and where, above all, the efforts of both countries appear to be directed to the removal, and not to the creation of the obstacles that hinder, in the least degree, free and unshackled international communication, this complete amalgamation and merger into each other of political individualities, must be rapidly effected.

But a few years since, party feeling ran high, and political influence was of no mean value to the holder; and in the violent contests for power that ensued, the welfare and happiness of thousands was often postponed to the selfish ends of the ambitious statesman; and, as in modern warfare, Belgium has generally been selected as the battlefield of nations; so, unfortunately for Ireland, it has happened that she has almost always been chosen as the battleground of contending parties. Laws were supported, or measures opposed, by the different rulers of the country, not according to the benefits or evils Ireland was likely to derive from their enactment, but in proportion as such measures were calculated to support or embarrass a friendly or hostile ad

ministration. We have seen salutary laws for the protection of life and property thrown out by a powerful opposition, on the plea that such laws were opposed to the liberty of the subject; and we have seen the very same party, when in power, a few weeks afterwards, propose the same measure, with many additionally stringent regulations. We have seen the government and patronage of Ireland handed over, in consideration of the mere promise of his support, to a man a short time previously denounced by the same government, and made the object of a criminal prosecution. In short, we have seen crimes tolerated, bad laws (rendered worse by bad administration) suffered to exist, the Established Church assailed, and agitation, we had almost said, rebellion, permitted to spread its desolating influence over the country, blighting Ireland's fairest hopes and prospects, however loved and cherished in their day.

These things, however, have greatly changed. Party feelings of the same intensity and virulence no longer exist; nor do the same means of pandering to the prejudices of the vulgar remain. The failure of the potato has loosened the tie that seemed to bind the Irish peasant like a Helot to the soil. Already he lifts his eyes from the ground, and, whilst thousands, unfortunately despairing of receiving in their own country the fruits of industry, seek in the far West the land of promise; thousands more, determined to raise themselves by their own exertions (abandoning all connexion with land), have already given an impetus to our manufactures unexampled in the history of this country. The spread of education, as well as the possession of freehold estates by persons who not long since despaired of ever becoming "landed proprietors," has already created an independence of feeling, and a habit of thinking for themselves, instead of blindly following a leader, to which the Munster and Connaught men have hitherto been strangers. All these things must conduce to good government; and bad government has hitherto been the only cause of all the crimes and outrages that have hindered the advent of capital, and the only impediment to the prosperity of Ireland.

Although it would be ridiculous to assert that bad government had wholly

ceased, yet it is certainly true that the motive for bad government, a desire to gain temporary popularity with the anti-landlord party, has greatly decreased; and that where it does exist, its effects have been considerably weakened and counteracted by the superior force of the education and intelligence of the people. Apart from political or agrarian outrages there is scarcely any country in the world so free from crime as Ireland. The revolting and awful murders that have so often taken place have all been, more or less, connected with the possession of the soil: for "hunger will cut through stone walls, though the gallows stood in the gate." This great incentive to crime has now ceased. The intense desire of obtaining land upon any terms has altogether disappeared as one of our characteristic features; and at the same time the power of obtaining it, by those possessed of capital, has been greatly facilitated. This fact is placed beyond doubt by the last Report of the Incumbered Estates Commissioners, by which it appears that out of 587 estates sold in that court, nearly one-half of them have been purchased by parties for sums of £1000, and under. Thus a number of small landed proprietors are becoming scattered through the country, possessed of sufficient education and fortune to command the respect of the poorer classes, but not placed so far above them as to excite their envy. These estates, like forts scattered over an unsubdued country, form the advance posts of civilization, and the rallying-points of industry and self-reliance.

Society is in a very unsound state where

"One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade."

The poorer classes then look upon those above them as placed, by some unjust laws, in a position which they can never expect to attain; but a middle class connects the rich and poor, as it were, with a ladder, each step of which the humblest member of the community feels he can climb by good conduct and a little selfdenial. The position of the rich man then ceases to be one of envy; and the pomp, pride, and circumstance of wealth is regarded as a splendid prize, open to all; a constant stimulus to