in despair, at last spoke of returning to Manchester with his work unfinished. He was then told that if he came in the mornings while O'Connell was at breakfast, he might possibly collect some traits for the completion of his picture. He accordingly came, and carried off on scraps of paper the minutia of expression and feature, which he transferred as well as he could to the canvass. At length Mr. O'Connell gave him one or two good sittings at his studio, which enabled him to produce a successful likeness.

CHAPTER V.

Dame M'Carthy and Louis the Fourteenth-Old Irish Castles and Graveyards-The Annals of the Four Masters-Repudiation of Holy Water-O'Connell's Illness in 1798-Arthur O'Connor-Who was the Greatest Irishman?-Interview with Owen, the Socialist.

SPEAKING of some imposing cavalcade that had escorted one of his political progresses, he said,

"Those things are all comparative. When a lady of the M'Carthy family was sitting in her hotel at Paris, working embroidery, she heard shouts of triumph in the streets for Louis the Fourteenth's grand entry after his successes in Flanders. But the lady stirred not from her task.

"What!' said her companion, 'will you not come to the window to look at the king's triumphant entry?'

66 6

No,' replied the lady; 'I have seen M'Carthy More's triumphant entry into Blarney, and what can Paris furnish to excel that ?'

The mention of M'Carthy More led him to talk of ancient times, ancient chiefs, and of the Desmond Castles in Kerry. "What an undigested mass of buildings are the relics of the Earl of Desmond's court at Castle Island! And how much the difference between our habits and those of our forefathers is marked by the architecture of their dwellings and of ours. The old castles, or rather the old towers, of Ireland, were manifestly constructed for inhabitants who only stayed within when the severity of the weather would not allow them to go out. There seems to have been little or no provision in the greater number of them for internal comfort. And what a state of social insecurity they indicate! Small loop-holes for defence; low, small entrance doors for the same purpose; evidently, it was a more important object to keep out the enemy, than to ventilate the house."

Speaking of the elder days of Ireland, he said, "I never can pass the old burial-grounds of Kilpeacon and Killogroin, among the hills,* without thinking how strange it is that they should be totally deserted by the present generation. Nobody ever is buried in either of them now, and they have been disused so long ago, that not even a tradition exists among the peasantry of the time when, or

I believe between Cahirsiveen and Darrymore.

the cause wherefore, interments were discontinued in them."

He spoke with contempt of the "Annals of the Four Masters." "They are little more than a bare record of faction or clan fights. On such a day the chief of such a place burned the castle of the chief of so-and-so;' there's a tiresome sameness of this sort of uninteresting narrative."

The "Annals" are, indeed, a bald record of facts. But the same objection would equally apply to the early history of every country.

O'Connell constantly reverted to his juvenile recollections of Darrynane. I cannot tell what led to the following anecdote, nor, indeed, to half the anecdotes he incessantly "welled forth" in exhaustless profusion.

"There were," said he, "two Protestant gentlemen on a visit with my uncle during one of my sojourns at Darrynane. On Sunday, as there was no Protestant place of worship near, they were reduced to the alternative of going to mass, or doing without public worship. They chose to go to mass; and on entering the chapel they fastidiously kept clear of the holy water which the clerk was sprinkling copiously on all sides. The clerk observed this, and feeling his own dignity and that of the holy water compromised by their Protestant squeamish

ness, he quietly watched them after service, and planting himself behind the sanctuary-door through which they had to pass, he suddenly slashed the entire contents of his full-charged brush into their faces! I thought I should have been choked with laughing. You can't conceive any thing more ludicrous than the discomfited look the fellows had!" And his fancy was so tickled with the recollection, that he chuckled heartily over it.

He spoke of his illness-a severe typhus fever— which had nearly proved fatal to him at Darrynane in 1798.

"It was occasioned," said he, " by sleeping in wet clothes. I had dried them upon me at a peasant's fire, and drank three glasses of whiskey, after which I fell asleep. The next day I hunted, was soon weary, and fell asleep in a ditch under sunshine. I became much worse; I spent a fortnight in great discomfort, wandering about and unable to eat. At last when I could no longer battle it out, I gave up and went to bed. Old Doctor Moriarty was sent for He pronounced me in a high fever. I was in such pain that I wished to die. In my ravings I fancied that I was in the middle of a wood, and that the branches were on fire around me. I felt my backbone stiffening for death, and I positively declare that I think what saved me was the effort I made to