retired region where he worked. Mortimer O'Sullivan styled it the "best of the batch."

The following, his last preface from Trieste, tells. The character he sketches was doubtless that which he uniformly sought to present in his own person.

"A longer and deeper experience of life has succeeded to the time since I wrote this story, but in no land nor amongst any people have I ever found the type of what we love to emblematise by the word gentleman, so distinctly marked out as in the educated and travelled Irishman of that period. The same unswerving fidelity of friendship, the same courageous devotion to a cause, the same haughty contempt for all that was mean or unworthy these, with the lighter accessories of genial temperament, joyous disposition, and a chivalrous respect for women, made up what I had at least in my mind when I tried to present to my readers my 'Knight of Gwynne." Lever states that his "character of the Knight was not altogether ideal;" and that "several persons concurred in the belief that he had taken as his model the Knight of Kerry." The present Knight, however, informs us that his father and Lever never met. "I have no reason to suppose," he writes, "that "The Knight of Gwynne' was drawn after my father; the peculiarity of the title would inevitably give a colour to the notion, but I have no sufficient grounds for thinking it. You may not be unaware that a personage exists in Ireland known as the Knight of Glynne." Lever's "Knight of Gwynne" was a more carefully studied

ORIGINAL OF BAGENAL DALY.

127

performance than its predecessors. With steady aim he kept his leading characters under greater strictness of discipline, and made them "point a moral and adorn his tale."

The convictions of a true patriot found utterance when he said, "I have not tried to conceal the gross corruption or an era which remains to us as a national shame; but I would wish to lay stress on the fact that not a few resisted offers and temptations, which, to men struggling with humble fortune and linked for life with the fate of the weaker country, must redound to their high credit. All the nobler their conduct, as around them on every side were the great names of the land trafficking for title and place, and shamelessly demanding office for their friends and relations as the price of their own adhesion."

This otherwise exhaustive introduction is silent as regards the original of Bagenal Daly, who performs so important a part in it. But any person who has read "The Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation," by Sir Jonah Barrington, published at Paris in 1833, cannot fail to be struck by the account there given (pp. 184-5) of Beauchamp Bagenal, whose singular life and exploits is transferred, word for word, to the novel. "For Bagenal Daly," he simply writes, "I was not without a model;" leaving to his future biographer or annotator a tough point for research.

"The Knight of Gwynne,'" observes Blackwood, "is certainly one of the most lovable characters that Mr. Lever has ever drawn; and he monopolises so much

of our sympathy, that we hope to be forgiven for extending less of it than he probably deserves to Bagenal Daly, notwithstanding the vigour with which that character is drawn, the remarkable originality of it, and the fidelity with which it represents and sustains a most peculiar combination of qualities, intellectual as well as moral."

Though Lever opposed O'Connell, and while discharging editorial duties, waged war against Repeal, his latest political utterances favoured Home Rule. An "O'Dowd Paper" was rejected by Blackwood on these grounds, and the Proofs of it, presented by Lever himself, are now in the hands of the Rev. Joseph Galbraith, F.T.C.D. Letters to Mr. Spencer at this time state that he should like to see "Home Rule" but not "Rabble Rule." Popular sympathies mark his later writings. The beautiful "Nina" in "Kilgobbin-" that brightest heroine of his creation-after refusing all sorts of offers, is captivated by an escaped head-centre of the Fenians and elopes with him!

But there was no rebel feeling in Lever when at Riedenburg. The more he saw of other governments the more he valued the constitution under which he had lived at home. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder; and, under the influence of this feeling, we find him raising the British flag on his tower, and his own voice at the same time in praise of it. The lines are unpublished, and we are indebted to Lever's amanuensis, Mr. Pearce, for having preserved them.

MILITARY MANEUVRES.

129

ON THE ENGLISH FLAG BEING HOISTED ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE

BATTLE OF WATERLOO, ON THE TURRET-TOWER OF RIEDENBURG, 1846.

Up! up with the banner! for Tyrol now sees,
'Mid her mountains so rugged and steep,

The flag that has braved both the battle and breeze,
And conquering waves over the deep.

Like one brilliant star in the darkness of night,
The red cross of England now see,

To cheer by its presence, and guide by its light,
The people that long to be free.

The lilies of France, that, so valiant of yore,
Are withered, or drooping, or dead,

And the Arab insults now the fam❜d tricolor,
By Gaul's proudest chivalry led.

The Austrian banner floats not o'er the free
Its dark folds, the colour of night
Waves like a pall, o'er the fair Italy,

From that land where freedom saw light.
There's only one banner that never has failed,
One nation been foremost in fight;

There is but one people that never has quailed
To conquer or die for the right.

No star-spangled ensign, no banner of black

Can ever bring hope to the slave,

Like the red, blue and white, of our own Union Jack,
The flag of the free and the brave.

He had good opportunities, even here, of gratifying his old love for military spectacle. "The General and Camera," he writes, "dined here a couple of days since; the manœuvres were very handsome and picturesque; the troops bivouacked by moonlight in the Bregenzerwald, and the fires were all dotted over the hills, the cannon thundering away at sunrise, and the whole place alive with skirmishers!"'*

* Lever wished to see in his new home the pleasant face of Phiz, with whom cheery days had been whilom passed, and to hear some literary gossip "from the big village." He invites him (Sept. 1845), to come and

VOL. II.

K

It was about this time that another welcomed letter from Miss Edgeworth came. She told him how she had been in the habit of reading his story aloud to the audience of her nephews and nieces;-"a simple announcement," he writes, "that imparted such a glow of proud delight to me, that I can yet recall the courage with which I resumed the writing of my tale, and the hope it suggested of my being able one day to win a place of honour amongst those who, like herself, had selected Irish traits as the characteristics to adorn fiction."

But, if he was to go on writing, he must needs see more of the world. Again he craved for change. To Como his thoughts now pointed: Como-a spot, as he said, so beloved of opera dancers; the day-dream of prima donnas; the elysium of retired baritones!

It will be remembered that a MS. on the Tyrol was destroyed by fire at Curry's printing-office in 1841. Lever's thoughts reverted to an old and favourite subject

take a ramble through Switzerland and the Tyrol, promising to drive him with his own nags.

"I wish I could accept it, but alas-Heigh-ho, Harry,' I can't—I have just taken a sort of a holiday and now must buckle on my harness again, and work, work, work! I will do the pretty for 'The O'Donoghue' title-page. I am in dreadful poor-law-union state of inanition regarding literary news. Of course you read or heard of Dickens's theatricals? Bulwer, for want of something else to do, is blowing the trumpet for the water doctors! "To what strange uses,' &c. He must either have water on the brain, or a cataract in his eye."

Touching the illustrations for "The Knight," Phiz sends some of "the Heads of the People," and promises "to do his endeavours" strenuously to co-operate in making all the men brave; but the task of making the women virtuous he leaves to Lever.