mouth, and they all retreated unmolested to Bantry.

Some time after, a large body of troops surrounded and scoured the mountains, but no Captain Rock; he had retreated in hopelessness into the fastnesses of Slievelogher, and it cost the sappers and miners of the King's army many a blast, and many a pound of powder, before they broke up the rock with which Lieutenant Starlight, a minute all too late, closed up the Pass of Cooleagh.

C. O.

SKETCHES

IN THE SOUTH OF IRELAND. ·

LETTER III.

TO THE REV. THOMAS P. M-E.

DEAR SIR,

HAVING now got through the Pass of Cooleagh, I descended to a little hamlet, consisting of a few cabins, out of the thatch of one of which a stick appeared with a sod of turf at the end of it-which all Irishmen know conveys information that a certain extract of turf smoke is to be disposed of there, to all those who have honour bright. At this place of entertainment I stopt, and directing my servant to feed my horse, enquired for the lake of Gougan Barry, that I knew was in this direction. There is no collec

tion of cabins in Ireland that does not contain some idle, chatty, knowledgeable personage-a lounger about the smith's forge-a collector and dealer in news, stories old and recent- a man who knows how to live by his wits, just as well (though in a different way) as in Paris and London. Such a genius presented himself to my notice. The lazy gait, the lively eye, the quaint but intelligent features of the man, announced just such a gossipping fellow as I wanted. "If your honour wants to go to the blessed Lake, I'll show you the way and attend you, with a thousand welcomes.-Many's the good gentleman from Cork and Bandon, and even all the ways from Dublin, I have been at Gougan with; not a man in Muskerry knows the sweet place better." You are the very man I want;-come, let us start." "Ah, but, your honour, don't be after using those long legs of your's so fast-seeing as how I am a little troubled with shortness of breath, and I am kilt with a quinsy which I got last Candlemas at Judy Sullivan's wake;

66

So,

please your honour, just now be after going a little asier fair and asy goes far in the day."

So out we set across a bog, attended by all the little children of the hamlet, a set of merry, noisy, naked little urchins, that ran along side of me, simply to enjoy the pleasure of looking and laughing at the stranger. Some of them could speak a little Englishthe rest chattered away in Irish, and danced and cut capers like lambs about a rath on an evening in May. Some were in a state of complete nudity, save and except a coarse woollen shirt, that came down half way the thigh, and was bound about the waist with a suggan or straw rope. The day was sharp and dry, befitting the month of March; and yet these young savages were as warm, and ruddy, and happy in this simple tunic as if they were clothed from top to toe. What fine trainings for young soldiers-what fine tools for the officina gentium !—Such are the materials out of which discipline and talent, working in after times, shall make invincible

armies. Having dismissed these urchins with a few halfpence, I was left alone with my Cicerone; and walking on for about a mile over one or two hilly ridges, at length, at the turn of a craggy mountain point, I saw a beautiful circular vale before me, surrounded on every side, except where I was standing, by craggy mountains, that rose like mural battlements around. So perpendicular to the north and west were they, that they bore neither heath nor furze; the ledges of the stratification were all bare and waterwashed, except that here and there some white lichen or yellow moss variegated the grey undulation of the rock veins and in the middle of this mountain vale lay the lake of Gougan Barry, and out of that smooth glassy lough rose an island covered with ash trees, through whose boughs were seen some moss-crowned walls and ruins.-The day was certainly as fine for viewing a mountain-scene as could be desired the atmosphere transparently clear -the sun abroad in heaven; there was a braciness in the air, that nerved you to