Irish roads in those days were probably as bad as those in England. They could hardly have been worse, for De Quincey tells of his childish interest in watching the postilions, who were employed, not by fits and starts, but "always and eternally," in quartering—a word which he explains to mean going from side to side to avoid the ruts and large stones. A natural consequence of bad roads and inefficient police was the prevalence of highwaymen, who were then to be met with in both countries. They usually infested the roads which had to be passed by traders at fairs or by men employed in collecting rents. A noted highwayman named Brennan was the terror of all who traveled in the northern part of the county of Cork. After some outrages more than usually daring, no one in the service of a gentleman in that neighborhood could be found brave enough to pass the lonely mountain-road to bring home a balance of rent remaining due. A young lad volunteered, saying that he would go in his every-day garb, and that no one would suspect him of carrying money about him. Having received and secreted the cash, he was returning in apparent safety, but just as he arrived at the loneliest part of the road Brennan leaped out from behind a hedge and presented a loaded pistol. "Give up that money," said he to the boy.—"Sure, then, I will if you give me time, but you won't have me go home wid my finger in my mouth, widout looking as if I made a stand for it, anyhow. Look here!" continued Jerry, dismounting and holding up the ragged skirt of his coat, "couldn't you put a ball through this for me?"—"'Tis riddled enough in all conscience, but here goes," said the highwayman, firing off a pistol at it.—"Here's my ould caubeen now, and I'll just give my face a scratch to draw the blood if you put a hole through that too." The hat was riddled for him in the same way. "Well, now, that's grand; but I think if the other skirt was tore, they couldn't say a word then."—"Why, you omadhaun! haven't you enough of it? Give me the rint. Do you think I have any more powder and ball to be wasting on you, you spalpeen?"—"If you haven't, I have," cried Jerry, springing on his horse, and pulling out a loaded pistol he was off and away before the astonished highwayman had time to prevent him or to reload his weapon.
The legislative union forms a distinct epoch in Irish social life, and we cannot more fitly close this paper than by giving an account of the last meeting of the Irish House of Lords in the words of an observant and dispassionate eye-witness. After expressing his surprise at the facility with which their consent was gained, De Quincey adds: "They all rose from their couches peers of Parliament, individual pillars of the realm, indispensable parties to every law that could pass. To-morrow they will be nobody—men of straw—terræ filii. What madness has persuaded them to part with their birthright, and to cashier themselves and their children for ever into mere titular lords?... The bill received the royal assent without a muttering or a whispering or the protesting echo of a sigh. Perhaps there might be a little pause, a silence like that which follows an earthquake, but there was no plainspoken Lord Belhaven, as on the corresponding occasion in Edinburgh, to fill up the silence with: 'So there's an end of an auld sang.' All was, or looked, courtly and free from vulgar emotion. Thus we were set at liberty from Dublin. Parliaments and installations and masked balls, with all other secondary splendors in celebration of primary splendors, reflex glories that reverberated the original glories, at length had ceased to shine upon the Irish metropolis. The 'season,' as it is called in great cities, was over—unfortunately, the last season that was ever destined to illuminate the society or to stimulate the domestic trade of Dublin."
Eliza Wilson.
VINA'S "OLE MAN."
"Vina's got an idee she wants to git married." The speaker was a venerable darkey, who stood twirling his rimless hat with a sheepish air in the probate-office.
"Rather hard for you, Father Abram," said the judge kindly, "but it's a way girls have. I presume my daughter will be leaving me some day in the same ungrateful fashion. Bring around Vina's man and I will make out the license."
Father Abram's manner became at once more confused and ludicrous: he poised himself alternately on either foot, and scratched his head vigorously, while his facial expression was something too comical for description. Finally, through a series of embarrassed chuckles and gurgles, he rippled into a broad guffaw, articulating indistinctly between its paroxysms, "Bress de Lord, sah! I'se de man!"