oven, and there bakes him alive, the fate of the baker excites no pity, and the inhumanity of his persecutor no indignation. And when Lorrequer gratuitously details to a perfectly inoffensive stranger an elaborate falsehood, and afterwards shoots the man he has insulted, without the least consciousness of any reason why he should fight him at all, we laugh at the drollery of the misdeed described, without for a moment attributing either to ourselves or the author any participation in the immorality of the conduct which causes our merriment.”

The laughter is good for us, though the example may be questionable. We like our companions; and love these early etchings of heroes with long legs and trousers tightly strapped over the neatest of Wellington boots, and whose life is full of "go." But the "falls"—what wonderful falls these buoyant beings get! Englishmen supposed that the sculls of Irish dragoons were as thick as the head of a fossil Elk-one of those antlered ornaments which adorn the halls of the Irish gentry—and as strong, too, for no amount of punch drank overnight is ever found followed by headache.

Let us hope, however, that it is in the book only we like such society: out of it, we should hardly care to know Mr. Lorrequer, or even Captain O'Malley, while in those novels marked by ripeness, sobriety, and incisive observation of men and things-we venerate the Knight of Gwynne, and respect Kenny Dodd.

Perhaps one is disposed to view with increased interest his earlier heroes, on re-acquaintance after a long

DARE-DEVILS EXTINCT.

213

alienation, because they are of a race well-nigh extinct. The Encumbered Estates Bill has cleared the land of. some of the best of such rollicking spendthrifts and daredevils; and competitive examination has weeded the service of much that formerly flourished in rank luxuriance. The subaltern whom we meet now-a-days at dances, drums, and drawing-rooms, is of a wholly different type-men to whom we feel a greater confidence in introducing the wives and daughters of Erin. He has less padding and inflation than of yore, more ballast and less push. With épaulettes, have been relinquished other attributes equally brilliant but equally useless, if not equally objectionable. Their white belts, faced with brass and stiff with pipeclay, have been laid aside with habits, not very stiff certainly, but which include white lies and whiter cheeks, the penalty of their dashing life; and no longer we hear them singing uproariously under sometimes too palpable influences

"Oh love is the soul of an Irish dragoon,

In battle, in bivouac, or in saloon,

From the tip of his spur to his bright sabretache.
With his soldierly gait and his bearing so high,
His gay laughing look, and his bright speaking eye,
He frowns at his rival, he ogles his wench,

He springs in his saddle and chasses the French-
With his jingling spur and his bright sabretache."

Opinions will differ as to the good breeding displayed in saloons of frowning on some and ogling others, however much we may admire dragoons springing in their saddles in pursuit of the foe.

The earlier novels to which McGlashan stood sponsor are pervaded by an aroma of hot punch. Lever's fellowstudents and colleagues of the Burschen Club describe him as most temperate. To what influence, therefore, may we trace the rollicking tone of "Lorrequer," "O'Malley," "Hinton," and "Burke "-a tone relinquished from the day that an English publisher took him under his wing. For years McGlashan had been Lever's mentor from number to number of every story. And the pleasant Scot was exactly the man to illustrate and enjoy the jolly habits of these heroes, of whom he was quite as much the father as Lever himself.

Mr. Mason and others, who had been McGlashan's school-fellows at Edinburgh and his boon companions in after life, while bearing evidence to his worth and wisdom, tell great anecdotes of his powers as a punch drinker. Give McGlashan good Islay and tell him a good story, and he remained quite absorbed in the enjoyment. It happened one night at Mr. Mason's house that, under these influences, as he sat before a strong fire, he continued quite unconscious of the literal roasting his legs were undergoing; though keenly alive next day to the surgical treatment then, and long after, necessary. Poor McGlashan's mind was usually so overburthened with the cares of business that, overnight, he sought to forget them; and when sipping his wine would sometimes be heard muttering, "£200 on to-morrow; £300 on Wednesday, £85 on Thursday," and so on-in reference to the bills then coming due.

A CORDIAL INVITATION.

215

Lever, in impressing on him the necessity of prudence, told a story which he had heard from Lord G. Seymour who, in arraigning an old butler for intemperance, the man, not sober, hiccoughed and said, "I never took anything to hurt my constitution." It was overwork, rather than the use of stimulants, of which Lever warned the old publisher. He reminded him that, all his life through, he had done the actual labour of half-a-dozen good heads per diem. It was more than time to give himself fair play, and enjoy a long life with all the fruits of his honourable industry around him. Modesty, the handmaid of genius, peeped forth prettily in this advice to McGlashan. He added that this was not all disinterested counsel. Το McGlashan he looked for advice and aid in many a future project. Often had Lever told him that he was the only man that ever really understood either what he could do, or how he ought to do it. Once more he urged him to come to Florence, where a gossip of a still night over the Arno would refresh him more than solitary rambling. But McGlashan rejected the final counsel; and made a melancholy tour, alone, from inn to inn; which led Lever to say that of all poor fun there is nothing poorer than being obliged to do host and say

welcome to oneself.

"Glencore was hailed by the more demure of the professional critics as a step in the right direction, exhibiting a difference between the earlier books and it as wide as that between a Tipperary row and a

feudal tournament; but that if they were called upon to decide on the author's claim to a permanent reputation they should not regard "Glencore" as his highest testimonial. Billy Traynor, and the lady diplomatist were careful studies: Lever v. Leiven had all the attraction of diamond cut diamond, the princess of that name having been incisively sketched by him as a political intriguante. His early admirers resisted the change. They thought that it was like playing "Hamlet" with the same company that had previously performed in "She stoops to conquer." They withheld their sympathies from the more grave heroes whose features were associated, so to speak, with Tony Lumpkin, and Young Hardcastle. The reading world like old playgoers, enjoy to see old favourites in old parts; and they continued to protest against change. It has been remarked by Mr. Dicey that, had anybody but the author of "Jack Hinton written the "Dodd Family" or "Kilgobbin," he would have passed at once to a rank into which Lever never effected a solid entrance.

Nothing can be more unlike "Lorrequer" than the later works of his manhood. A matured judgment, ripe experience, and height of aim are everywhere as apparent in the later volumes as is the absence of ballast in the first. But bright flags and swelling sails look more attractive in the distance than the steady ballast lying below. It was by the very levity to which we refer that Lever rose: unlike Jerry Keller who dryly complained that he sank by his levity