a

a

But never on the western main

To deem that he has wove insidious So fair a bark was seen again.

rhyme, It was not her's to pass away

To blazon a career of wrath and crime ; In useless age, and dull decay !

Or clothed a pirate in a hero's guise, 1200 One moment, beautiful and free

And claim'd for him a hero's obsequies. She bounded on the joyous sea;

Not such his end :—from tales, his boyAnother, she had sunk to rest

hood knew, For ever on that mighty breast.

Fearful and harrowing, but alas! too One moment, o'er the daring way 1180

true, Hot fiery spirits held their sway; As oft confirm'd in manhood's ripening Another, still and cold they sleep,

years, As children on their parent deep. By sad experience of far distant spheres, But still where'er in tropic skies

Where the descendants of those lawless The pirate's blood-red banner tlies,

hosts The hardy seamen love to tell

Still
sweep the

seas, and awe the lonely How firm, how true, the Rubi fell;

coasts, Speak of a bark unmatch'd in speed;

His story sprang: which seeks in simple A crew of bold and daring deed;

strains Of stern hearts faithful to the last: 1190

To paint the pirate as he still remains, And, as they muse on times long past,

Nor strives to clothe in forms of specious Amid their sires' remembered praise

art

1210 They mourn their sons' degenerate days.

The murderer's bloody hand, and ruthless

heart. If rightly has the song pursued its aim,

No ill-judged pity will the Rovers claim : So let them mourn, in whose untutor'd Hatred to vice, and justice to mankind, breasts

Will blunt the softer feelings of the mind; The inheritance of kindred passions rests! And truth will praise the line that dares But much the bard would at his parting to tell grieve,

How justly mid her crimes The Rubi Such baneful moral for his tale to leave; fell.

1217

LVI.

THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM.

BEING A FOURTH EXTRACT FROM THE LEGACY OF THE LATE F. PURCELL,

P. P. OF DRUMCOOLAGH.

" All this he told with some confusion and

Dismay, the usual consequence of dreams
Of the unpleasant kind, with none at hand
To expound their vain and visionary gleams.
I've known some odd ones which seemed really planned
Prophetically, as that which one deems
• A strange coincidence,' to use a pbrase
By which such things are settled now-a-days.'"

BYRON.

Dreams-- What age, or what country a dream produces upon a mind, to all of the world has not felt and acknow- appearance hopelessly reprobate and ledged the mystery of their origin and depraved, an effect so powerful and so end? I have thought not a little upon lasting as to break down the inveterate the subject, seeing it is one which has habits, and to reform the life of an been often forced upon my attention, abandoned sinner. We see in the reand sometimes strangely enough ; and sult, in the reformation of morals, which yet I have never arrived at any thing appeared incorrigible in the reclamation which at all appeared a satisfactory of a human soul which seemed to be conclusion. It does appear that a men- irretrievably lost, something more tal phenomenon so extraordinary can- than could be produced by a mere not be wholly without its use. We chimæra of the slumbering fancy, someknow, indeed, that in the olden times thing more than could arise from the it has been made the organ of commu- capricious images of a terrified imaginanication between the Deity and his tion ; but once prevented, we behold creatures ; and when, as I have seen, in all these things, in the tremendous

and mysterious results, the operation of the hand of God. And while Reason rejects as absurd the superstition which will read a prophecy in every dream, she may, without violence to herself, recognize, even in the wildest and most incongruous of the wanderings of a slumbering intellect, the evidences and the fragments of a language which may be spoken, which has been spoken to terrify, to warn, and to command. We have reason to believe too, by the promptness of action, which in the age of the prophets, followed all intimations of this kind, and by the strength of conviction and strange permanence of the effects resulting from certain dreams in latter times, which effects ourselves may have witnessed, that when this medium of communication has been employed by the Deity, the evidences of his presence have been unequivocal. My thoughts were directed to this subject, in a manner to leave a lasting impression upon my mind, by the events which I shall now relate, the

statement of which, however extraordinary, is nevertheless accurately cor

rect.

About the year 17— having been appointed to the living of Ch, I rented a small house in the town, which bears the same name: one morning, in the month of November, I was awakened before my usual time, by my servant, who bustled into my bed-room for the purpose of announcing a sick call. As the Catholic Church holds her last rites to be totally indispensable to the safety of the departing sinner, no conscientious clergyman can afford a moment's unnecessary delay,

and in little more than five minutes I stood ready cloaked and booted for the road in the small front parlour, in which the messenger, who was to act as my guide, awaited my coming. I found a poor little girl crying piteously near the door, and after some slight difficulty I ascertained that her father was either dead, or just dying.

"And what may be your father's name, my poor child?" said I. She held down her head, as if ashamed. I repeated the question, and the wretched little creature burst into floods of tears, still

more bitter than she had shed before.

At length, almost provoked by conduct which appeared to me so unreasonable, I began to lose patience, spite of the pity which I could not help feeling towards her, and I said rather harshly, "If you will not tell me the name of the person to whom you would lead me, your silence can arise from no good

motive, and I might be justified in refusing to go with you at all."

"Oh! don't say that, don't say that," cried she. "Oh! sir, it was that I was afeard of when I would not tell youI was afeard when you heard his name you would not come with me; but it is no use hidin' it now-it's Patt Connell, the carpenter, your honour."

She looked in my face with the most earnest anxiety, as if her very existence depended upon what she should read there; but I relieved her at once. The name, indeed, was most unpleasantly familiar to me; but, however fruitless my visits and advice might have been at another time, the present was too fearful an occasion to suffer my doubts of their utility as my reluctance to re-attempting what appeared a hopeless task to weigh even against the lightest chance, that a consciousness of his imminent danger might produce in him a more docile and tractable disposition. Accordingly I told the child to lead the way, and followed her in silence. She hurried rapidly through the long narrow street which forms the great thoroughfare of the town. The darkness of the hour, rendered still deeper by the close approach of the old fashioned houses, which lowered in tall obscurity on either side of the way; the damp dreary chill which renders the advance of morning peculiarly cheerless, combined with the object of my walk, to visit the death-bed of a presumptuous sinner, to endeavour, almost against my own conviction, to infuse a hope into the heart of a dying repro. bate-a drunkard, but too probably perishing under the consequences of some mad fit of intoxication; all these circumstances united served to enhance the gloom and solemnity of my feelings, as I silently followed my little guide, who with quick steps traversed the uneven pavement of the main street. After a walk of about five minutes she turned off into a narrow lane, of that obscure and comfortless class which are to be found in almost all small old fashioned towns, chill without ventilation, reeking with all manner of offensive effluviæ, dingy, smoky, sickly and pent-up buildings, frequently not only in a wretched but in a dangerous

condition.

"Your father has changed his abode since I last visited him, and, I am afraid, much for the worse," said I.

"Indeed he has, sir, but we must not complain," replied she; "we have to thank God that we have lodging