"Sure, the mail goes to all the villages in Ireland, sir."

"You pwovoking blockead !-Good heavens, how stoopid you Iwish are!-the village that leads to Dublin."

"Confound you-you must know!-the posting village, you know— that is, not the post town, if you know what a post town is.'

"To be sure I do, sir-where they sell blankets, you mane." "No!-no!no!-I want to go to the village where they keep postchaises-now you know."

"Faix, they have po'chayses in all the villages here; there's no betther accommodation for man or baste in the world than here, sir." Furlong was mute from downright vexation, till his rage got vent in an oath, another denunciation of Irish stupidity, and at last a declaration that the driver must know the village.

"How would I know it, sir, when you don't know it yourself?" asked the groom; "I suppose it has a name to it, and if you tell me that, I'll dhrive you there fast enough.'

"I cannot wemember your howwid names here-it is a Bal, or Bally, or some such gibbewish-"

Mat would not be enlightened.

"Is there not Bal or Bally something?"

"Oh a power o' Ballies, sir; there's Ballygash, and Ballyslash, and Ballysmish, and Ballysmash, and"--so went on Mat, inventing a string of Ballies till he was stopped by the enraged Furlong.

"None o' them! none o' them!" exclaimed he in a fury; something about dirt,' or 'mud.""

"'tis

"Maybe 'twould be gutther, sir," said Mat, who saw Furlong was near the mark, and he thought he might as well make a virtue of telling him.

"I believe you're right," said Furlong.

"Then it is Ballysloughgutthery you want to go to, sir."

"That's the name!" said Furlong, snappishly: "dwive there!" and, hastily pulling up the glass, he threw himself back again in the carriage. Another troubled vision of what the secretary would say came across him, and, after ten minutes' balancing the question, and trembling at the thoughts of an official blowing up, he thought he had better even venture on an Irish squire; so the check-string was again pulled, and the glass hastily let down.

Mat halted. "Yis, sir," said Mat.

66

66

I think I've changed my mind-dwive to the Hall!"

I wish you towld me, sir, before I took the last turn-we're nigh a mile towards the village now."

"No matte', sir!" said Furlong; "dwive where I tell you."

Up went the glass again, and Mat turned round the horses and carriage with some difficulty in a narrow by-road.

Another vision came across the bewildered fancy of Furlong-the certainty of the fury of O'Grady-the immediate contempt, as well as anger, attendant on his being bamboozled; and the result, at last, being the same, in drawing down the secretary's anger. This produced another change of intention, and he let down the glass for the third

I

time, once more changed his orders as concisely as possible, and pulled it up again. All this time Mat was laughing internally at the bewilderment of the stranger, and as he turned round the carriage again he exclaimed, "By this and that, you're as hard to dhrive as a pig; for you'll neither go one road nor th'other." He had not proceeded far, when Furlong determined to face O'Grady instead of the Castle, and the last and final order for another turnabout was given. Mat hardly suppressed an oath; but respect for his master's carriage and horses stopped him. The glass of the carriage was not pulled up this time, and Mat was asked a few questions about the Hall, and at last about the Squire. Now Mat had acuteness enough to fathom the cause of Furlong's indecision, and determined to make him as unhappy as he could; therefore, to the question of "What sort of a man the Squire was," Mat, reechoing the question, replied" What sort of a man, sir? -faith, he's not a man at all, sir; he's the divil."

Furlong pulled up the glass, and employed the interval between Mat's answer and reaching the Hall in making up his mind as to how he should "face the devil."

The carriage, after skirting a high and ruinous wall for some time, stopped before a gateway that had once been handsome; and Furlong was startled by the sound of a most thundering bell, which the vigorous pull of Mat stimulated to its utmost pitch; the baying of dogs which followed was terrific. A savage-looking gatekeeper made his appearance with a light-not in a lantern, but shaded with his tattered hat: many questions and answers ensued, and at last the gate was opened. The carriage proceeded up a very rough avenue, and stopped before a large, rambling sort of building, which even moonlight could exhibit to be very much out of repair. After repeated knocking at the door, (for Mat knew his squire and the other squire were not friends now, and that he might be impudent,) the door was unchained and unbarred, and Furlong deposited in Neck-or-Nothing Hall.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Such is the custom of Branksome hall."-Lay of the Last Minstrel.

Neck-or-Nothing Hall.

Canto E.

TEN good nights and ten good days
It would take to tell the ways,
Various, many, and amazing,
Neck-or-Nothing bangs all praising;
Wonders great and wonders small
Are found in Neck-or-Nothing Hall.

Racing rascals, of ten a twain,
Who care not a rush for hail nor rain,
Messages swiftly to go or to come,
Or duck a taxman or harry a bum,*
Or "clip a server,"t did blithely lie
In the stable parlour next to the sky.
Dinners, save chance ones, seldom had they,
Unless they could nibble their beds of hay,
But the less they got, they were hardier all-
'Twas the custom of Neck-or-Nothing Hall.

One lord there sat in that terrible hall;
Two ladies came at his terrible call,-
One his mother, and one his wife,

Each afraid of her separate life;

Three girls who trembled-Four boys who shook

Fibe times a-day at his lowering look;

Sir blunderbusses in goodly show,

Seben horse-pistols were ranged below;
Eight domestics, great and small,

In idlesse, did nothing but curse them all;
ine state-beds, where no one slept-
Ten for family use were kept;
Dogs Eleven with buins to make free,
With a bold Thirteen § in the treasury!
Such its numerical strength, I guess;
It can't be more, but it may be less.

§ A shilling, so called from its being worth thirteen pence in those days.

The bird's-eye view which the doctor's peep from Parnassus has afforded, may furnish the imagination of the reader with materials to create in his own mind a vague, yet not unjust, notion of Neck-orNothing Hall; but certain details of the hall itself, its inmates, and its customs, may be desired by the matter-of-fact reader or the more minutely curious, and as an author has the difficult task before him of trying to please all tastes, something more definite is required.

The hall itself was, as we have said, a rambling sort of structure. Ramifying from a solid centre, which gave the notion of a founder well to do in the world, additions, without any architectural pretensions to fitness, were stuck on here and there, as whim or necessity suggested or demanded, and a most incongruous mass of gables, roofs, and chimneys, odd windows and blank walls, was the consequence. According to the circumstances of the occupants who inherited the property, the building was either increased or neglected. A certain old bachelor, for example, who in the course of events inherited the property, had no necessity for nurses, nursery-maids, and their consequent suite of apartments; and as he never aspired to the honour of matrimony, the ball-room, the drawing-room, and extra bed-chambers, were neglected; while, he being a fox-hunter, a new kennel and range of stables were built, the diningroom enlarged, and all the ready-money he could get at spent in augmenting the plate, to keep pace with the racing-cups he won, and proudly displayed at his drinking bouts; and when he died suddenly

*This is not the word in the MS.

Serving mass occupies about twenty-five minutes.

(broke his neck), the plate was seized at the suit of his wine-merchant ; and as the heir next in succession got the property in a ruinous condition, it was impossible to keep a stud of horses along with a wife and a large family, so the stables and kennel went to decay, while the lady's and family apartments could only be patched up. When the house was dilapidated, the grounds about it, of course, were ill kept. Fine old trees were there, originally intended to afford shade to walks which were so neglected as to be no more walkable than any other part of the grounds-the vista of aspiring stems indicated where an avenue had been, but neither hoe nor rolling-stone had, for many a year, checked the growth of grass or weed.-So much for the outside of the house: now for the inside.

That had witnessed many a thoughtless, expensive, headlong, and irascible master, but never one more so than the present owner; added to which, he had the misfortune of being unpopular. Other men,

thoughtless, and headlong, and irritable as he, have lived and had friends, but there was something about O'Grady that was felt, perhaps, more than it could be defined, which made him unpleasing:-perhaps the homely phrase "cross-grained" may best express it, and O'Grady was, essentially, a cross-grained man. The estate, when he got it, was pretty heavily saddled, and the "galled jade" did not "wince" the less for his riding.

A good jointure to his mother was chargeable on the property, and this was an excuse on all occasions for the Squire's dilatory payment in other quarters. "Sir," he would say, my mother's jointure is sacred -it is more than the estate can well bear, it is true-but it is a sacred claim, and I would sooner sacrifice my life-my honour, sir, than see that claim neglected!- "Now all this sounded mighty fine, but his mother could never get her jointure regularly paid, and was obliged to live in the house with him: she was somewhat of an oddity, and had apartments to herself, and, as long as she was let alone, and allowed to read romances in quiet, did not complain; and whenever a stray ten pound note did fall into her hands, she gave the greater part of it to her younger grand-daughter, who was fond of flowers and plants, and supported a little conservatory on her grandmother's bounty, she paying the tribute of a bouquet to the old lady when the state of her botanical prosperity could afford it. The eldest girl was a favourite of an uncle, and her passion being dogs, all the presents her uncle made her in money were converted into canine curiosities; while the youngest girl took an interest in the rearing of poultry. Now the boys, varying in age from eight to fourteen, had their separate favourites too :-one loved bull dogs and terriers, another game cocks, the third ferrets, and the fourth rabbits and pigeons. These multifarious tastes produced strange results. In the house, flowers and plants, indicating refinement of taste and costliness, were strongly contrasted with broken plaster, soiled hangings, and faded paint; an expensive dog might be seen lapping cream out of a shabby broken plate; a never-ending sequence of wars raged among the dependant favourites; the bull dogs and terriers chopping up the ferrets, the ferrets killing the game cocks, the game cocks killing the tame poultry and rabbits, and the rabbits destroying the