coming with us as hastening to the

rear.

I professed myself ready and willing to follow his orders, and away I went with the staff, well pleased to be once more on active service.

Two cannon shots, and a rattling crash of small arms, told us that the combat had begun ; and as we rose the hill, the bridge of Landshut was seen on fire in three places. Either from some mistake of his orders, or not daring to assume a responsibility for what was beyond the strict line of duty, the French commander of the artillery placed his guns in position along the river's bank, and prepared to reply to the fire now opening from the town, instead of at once dashing onward within the gates. Moulon hastened to repair the error; but by the delay in pushing through the dense masses of horse, foot, and artillery, that crowded the passage, it was full twenty minutes ere he came up. With a storm of oaths on the stupidity of the artillery colonel, he ordered the firing to cease, commanding both the cavalry and the train waggons to move right and left, and give place for a grenadier battalion, who were coming briskly on with their muskets at the sling.

The scene was now a madly-exciting one. The chevaux-de-frize at one end of the bride was blazing; but beyond it on the bridge the Austrian engineer and his men were scattering combustibie material, and with hempen torches touching the new-pitched timbers. An incessant roll of musketry issued from the houses on the river side, with now and then the deeper boom of a large gun, while the roar of voices, and the crashing noise of artillery passing through the streets, swelled into a fearful chorus.

The French sappers quickly removed the burning chevauxde-frize, and hurled the flaming timbers into the stream; and scarcely was this done, when Moulon, dismounting, advanced, cheering, at the head of his grenadiers. Charging over the burning bridge, they rushed forward; but their way was arrested by the strong timbers of a massive portcullis, which closed the passage. This had been concealed from our view by the smoke and flame; and now, as the press of men from behind grew each instant more powerful, a scene of terrible suffering ensued. The enemy, too,

poured down a deadly discharge, and grape-shot tore through us at pistol range. The onward rush of the columns to the rear defied retreat, and in the mad confusion, all orders and command were unheard or unheeded. Not knowing what delayed our advance, I was busily engaged in suppressing a fire at one of the middle buttresses, when, mounting the parapet, I saw the cause of our halt. I happened to have caught up one of the pitched torches at the instant, and the thought at once struck me how to employ it. To reach the portcullis, no other road lay open than the parapet itself a wooden railing, wide enough for a footing, but exposed to the whole fire of the houses. There was little time for the choice of alternatives, even had our fate offered any, so I dashed on, and, as the balls whizzed and whistled around me, reached the front.

It was a terrible thing to touch the timbers against which our men were actually flattened, and to set fire to the bars around which their hands were clasped; but I saw that the Austrian musketry had already done its work on the leading files, and that not one man was living amongst them. By a blunder of one of the sappers, the port. cullis had been smeared with pitch like the bridge; and as I applied the torch, the blaze sprung up, and, encouraged by the rush of air between the beams, spread in a second over the whole structure. Expecting my death-wound at every instant, I never ceased my task, even when it had become no longer necessary, impelled by a kind of insane persistance to destroy the barrier. The wind carrying the flame inward, however, had compelled the Austrians to fall back, and before they could again open a collected fire on us, the

way was open, and the grenadiers, like enraged tigers, rushed wildly in.

I remember that my coat was twice on fire as, carried on my comrades' shoulders, I was borne along into the town. I recollect, too, the fearful scene of suffering that ensued, the mad butchery at each door-way as we passed, the piercing cries for mercy, and the groan of dying agony.

War has no such terrible spectacle as a town taken by infuriated soldiery, and even amongst the best of natures a relentless cruelty usurps the place of every chivalrous feeling. When or

how I was wounded I never could ascertain; but a round shot had penetrated my thigh, tearing the muscles into shreds, and giving to the surgeon who saw me the simple task of saying, "Enlevez le-point d'espoir."

I heard thus much, and I have some recollection of a comrade having kissed my forehead, and there ended my re miniscences of Landshut. Nay, I am wrong; I cherish another and a more glorious one.

It was about four days after this occurrence that the surgeon in charge of the military hospital was obliged to secure by ligature a branch of the femoral artery which had been traversed by the ball through my thigh. The operation was a tedious and difficult one, for round shot, it would seem, have little respect for anatomy, and occasionally displace muscles in a sad fashion. I was very weak after it was over, and orders were left to give a spoonful of Bourdeaux and water from time to time during the evening, a direction which I listened to attentively, and never permitted my orderly to neglect. In fact, like a genuine sick man's fancy, it caught possession of my mind that this wine and water was to save me; and in the momentary rally of excitement it gave, I thought I tasted health once more. In this impression I never awoke from a short doze without a request for my cordial, and half mechanically would make signs to wet my lips as I slept.

It was near sunset, and I was lying with unclosed eyes, not asleep, but in that semi-conscious state that great bodily depression and loss of blood induce. The ward was unusually quiet, the little buzz of voices that generally mingled through the accents of suffer.

ing were hushed, and I could hear the surgeon's well-known voice as he spoke to some persons at the further end of the chamber.

By their stopping from time to time, I could remark that they were inspecting the different beds, but their voices were low and their steps cautious and noiseless.

"Tiernay- this is Tiernay," said some one reading my name from the paper over my head. Some low words which I could not catch followed, and then the surgeon replied—

"There is a chance for him yet, though the debility is greatly to be feared."

I made a sign at once to my mouth, and after a second's delay the spoon touched my lips, but so awkwardly was it applied, that the fluid ran down my chin; with a sickly impatience I turned away, but a mild low voice, soft as a woman's, said

"Allons!-Let me try once more;" and now the spoon met my lips with due dexterity.

"Thanks," said I faintly, and I opened my eyes.

"You'll soon be about again, Tiernay," said the same voice; as for the person, I could distinguish nothing, for there were six or seven around me; "and if I know anything of a soldier's heart, this will do just as much as the doctor."

As he spoke he detached from his coat a small enamel cross, and placed it in my hand, with a gentle squeeze of the fingers, and then saying, "au revoir," moved on.

"Who's that?" cried I, suddenly, while a strange thrill ran through me.

"Hush!" whispered the surgeon, cautiously; "hush! it is the Emperor."

THE mass of the people are little aware of the practical value of a Census. Some consider it a useless waste of money; others look upon it in the nature of an inquisitorial proceeding, inconsistent with the principles of British freedom; while the more thoughtless turn it into ridicule, and throw obstacles in the way of its inquiries, in their ignorance of the object for which it has been instituted.

The progress of time has done much for the investigation of truth. Every succeeding periodic enumeration has been attended with less difficulty, and this has arisen not merely from the spread of civilisation and education, or from improvements in the machinery of the Census itself, but from the fact, that the people are becoming more and more habituated to inquiries of the sort.

The Irish Census taken on the 30th of last March has justly claimed an amount of public interest and consideration, which no previous investiga tion of a similar kind, either in this or any other country, ever demandedsimply because neither general nor statistical history can supply results of anything like the same kind.

We imagined, when we commenced to consider this subject, that we might have been enabled to find some parallel to that which has taken place in Ireland within the last four years—such, for instance, as the effect produced by the great war in North-Western Europe. The means of comparison are not of that nature to enable us to speak with accuracy; but there can be little doubt that the destruction of human life during the continuance of that eventful conflict fell short of the loss the Irish people sustained from the year 1846 to the present time.

The gross result of the last Census has just been published. So far the general mind has been satisfied, and its curiosity appeased. Those who are ignorant of the advantages derived from statistical science, and who are unaware that in a correct knowledge of the status of a country is to be found the only sure basis for legislation, suppose that the mere enumeration of a people is the sole duty of a Census, and that the investigation about which there was so

much anxiety a few months ago is all over. This is not the case; the real business has but commenced. The arrangement, compilation, and reduction into order of the collected materials must occupy a considerable time, and then a voluminous publication, extending to every point to which inquiry has been directed, and containing reports upon every section into which the Census has been divided, will be presented to parliament. When this information shall be completed and made public, we shall be in a better condition to see in what precise manner the country and its inhabitants have been affected by the events of the preceding decade. Pending the production of this document by the Census Commissioners, we have turned our attention to the various attempts which have been made to compute the population of Ireland, and, by way of preface to future articles, present our readers with "Historic Notes on the Irish Census."

Previous to the year 1813, when the first authentic enumeration of the peo ple of Ireland was taken under the authority of Parliament, the amount of the population was computed chiefly by individuals who, from time to time, had applied their zeal and industry to the consideration of the subject. The statistical materials, from whence they obtained their results, were, for the most part, of an uncertain and unsatisfactory kind, and consequently the estimates we have of our numbers and progressive increase up to the date to which we have alluded, must be considered more conjectural than ac

curate.

To these calculations, however, in the absence of authorised inquiry by governmental machinery, there was much importance attached at the period when they were respectively published, and they now supply the science of political arithmetic with historic data not less interesting than instructive.

It is remarkable that from the year 1185, when Gerald Barry, commonly called Giraldus Cambrensis, visited Ireland, and found it, as he says, "without roads and almost uninhabited," up to the period when Lord Deputy Mount

joy's Secretary, Fynes Morrison, calculated, that after the termination of the war of 1602, but 700,000 Irish subjects remained to Queen Elizabeth, there should be such utter silence by historians or other writers, as to the number of inhabitants in the country. This silence may be said to have been maintained up to the commencement of the seventeenth century, when, through the laborious researches of a learned doctor of medicine, named Petty, who settled in Ireland in 1652, and was subsequently appointed one of the surveyors to value the forfeited estates instituted during the Protectorate, we were supplied with the first computation to which any degree of faith may be attached. Petty was regarded as one of the ablest statists of his time, and all writers have adopted his estimates of the population in 1652 and 1672, as the sources from whence calculations of our numerical progress should be derived.

"He

was," says Ware, "a person of an admirable invention, of a prodigious working wit, and of so great worth and learning, that as he was fit for, so he was an ornament to the highest preferment." His first estimate is to be found in his tract entitled "The Political Anatomy of Ireland," in which he gives his opinion as to the amount of population in 1652 :—

"The number of people," says he, being now (1672), about 1,100,000, and anno 1652 about 850,000, because I conceive that 80,000 of them have, in twenty years, increased, by generation, 70,000, by return of banished and expelled English, as also by the access of new ones; 80,000 of new sects, and 20,000 of returned Irish, being in all 250,000."

His next computation is contained in a report from the Council of Trade in Ireland to the Lord Lieutenant, in obedience to an order of Council, bearing date the 20th of January, 1675. This report was, as the preface to the tract on Political Anatomy says,

"not only drawn but wholly

composed by Sir William Petty, and with which the Council concurred unanimously." His calculation rests chiefly on the number of hearths (or smokes as he calls them) :

"The number of people in Ireland in 1672 (says this document), is about 1,100,000, viz., 300,000 English, Scotch, and Welsh Protestants, and 800,000 Papists; whereof one-fourth are children unfit for labour, and 75,000 of the remainder are, by reason of their quality and estates, above the necessity of corporeal labour, so that there remains 750,000 labouring men and women, 500,000 whereof do perform the present work of the nation.

"The said 1,100,000 people do live in about 200,000 families or houses, whereof there are about 16,000 which have more than one chimney in each, and about 24,000 which have but one; all the other houses, being 160,000, are wretched nasty cabins, without chimney, window, or door-shut, even worse than those of the savage Americans, and wholly unfit for the making of merchantieth butter, cheese, or the manufacture of woollen, linen, or leather.

"By comparing the extent of the country with the number of people, it appears that Ireland is much underpeopled; forasmuch as there are about ten acres of good land to every head in Ireland, whereas in England and France there are but four, and in Holland scarce one."

Sir William, in arriving at his conclusion with respect to the population of 1672, was, in all probability, guided by the returns received from the hearth money collectors; a source upon which very little reliance could then be placed.

At that time the revenue was in management, and the commissioners farmed out the hearth moneyt in almost every part of the kingdom, a system not likely to secure either accuracy or honesty in the returns. Mr. Gervais Parker Bushe (whose account of the population of Ireland in 1789 we shall hereafter notice), in speaking of Sir W. Petty's Report, says, "When I reflect that in 1786, when some offi

cers had been appointed to collect the duty, and after the frauds of several of them had been detected and punished, there were houses suppressed to the number of near two hundred thousand, can I suppose that the lists formed in 1672, under less efficient laws and a more imperfect method of calculation, could have been free from fraud and error?" Petty, even where he speaks about the smokes, is silent as to the source from whence he derives his calculations. Besides, as has been truly observed, the tract on "Political Anatomy" is posthumous, evidently unfinished, and avowedly published in an imperfect state; and consequently these circumstances would combine to make a calculator cautious in forming deductions from such premises. It is agreed, however, that though his computations are open to objection in point of general accuracy, he is not likely to have erred in overrating the numbers, for he was well aware of the effects which war and concomitant pestilence had produced on the population.

Sir William Temple, in his letter to Lord Essex, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in 1677, in describing the state of Ireland, says, "The want of trade proceeds from the want of people; and this is not grown from any ill qualities of the climate or air, but chiefly from the frequent revolutions of so many wars and rebellions, so great slaughters and calamities as bave at several intervals of time succeeded the first conquest of the kingdom, in Henry the Second's time, until the year 1653. Two very great plagues followed the two great wars, those of Queen Elizabeth, and those of the last, which helped to drain the current stream of generation in this country." And again, in another passage, he says, "So that had it not been for the numbers of the British which the necessity of the late wars drew over, and of such who, either as adventurers or soldiers, seated themselves here upon account of the satisfaction made them in land,

the country had been, by the late war and plague, left in a manner desolate."

This letter is dated July 22, 1673, ten years after Potty's Report to the Council of State. In an anony mous pamphlet, published in 1673, entitled "The Present State of Ireland, together with some Remarques upon the critical State thereof," in speaking of the population, the writer observes:

"It hath been said of late by some, that the people of England are quadru pled within 400 years, as doubling every 200 years. How true this may be in relation to England, I know not; but I may be persuaded that this observation may be more properly applied to Ire land, which has been within these 400 years highly improved by clearing of grounds from a wilderness, and thereby constantly giving way for the enlarge. ment of people's habitations. Ireland being reported to be greatly overgrown with woods in Giraldus Cambrensis his time. Though Ireland was very popuous before the late wars, and is computed to be half as big as England, yet I dare not say that it contained half as many people as England did, because onefourth part of Ireland is taken up with unprofitable bogs, lakes, and barren mountains; and for the townes and cities of England are far greater and more numerous in population to those of Ire. land, inasmuch that the citie of London itself may be thought to contain more people than one-half of the kingdom of Ireland in the best of times. But whether Ireland did in her prime contain two millions of people, I will not take on me to determine, but to submit the decision of so doubtful a matter to more knowing persons."

It will be seen, then, from the authorities that we have quoted, that the population was considered greatly decreased, from the time when the country was supposed to be in her prime ; wars, plagues, and famines having had nearly uninterrupted sway for a long period of her history, the eleven years from 1641 to 1653 being the most dis

astrous.