a name upon the poetic merits of an ode deemed not unworthy of his lordship's own transcendent powers is too valuable not to be recorded here. The passage alluded to occurs in vol. ii. p. 154 (second edition), of the abovementioned publication, and is as follows:

The conversation turned, after dinner, on the lyrical poetry of the day; and a question arose as to which was the most perfect ode that had been produced. Shelley contended for Coleridge's on Switzerland, beginning Ye clouds,' &c.; others named some of Moore's Irish Melodies and Campbell's Hohenlinden; and had Lord Byron not been present, his own invocation in Manfred, or the ode to Napoleon, or on Prometheus, might have been cited. Like Gray, said he, Campbell smells too much of the oil; he is never satisfied with what he does; his finest things have been spoiled by over polish. Like paintings, poems may be too highly finished. The great art is effect, no matter how produced. I will show you an ode you have never seen, that I consider little inferior to the best which the present prolific age has brought forth. With this he left the table, almost before the cloth was removed, and returned with a magazine from which he read the ode. The feeling with which he recited it I shall never forget. After he had come to an end, he repeated the third stanza, and said it was perfect, particularly the

lines

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

'I should have taken the whole,' said Shelley, 'for a rough sketch of Campbell's.' 'No,' replied Lord Byron, 'Campbell would have claimed it, if it had been his.''

On the discussion which has taken place regarding its authorship we do not enter, as this is not the object of the present paper; only we may remark, that we regard the claims of every other party as utterly ridiculous. We have perused the evidence adduced by the Archdeacon of Clogher and by the late Dr Miller of Trinity College, Dublin, which conclusively proves Mr Wolfe to be the author; and notwithstanding all that has been said, both in former and more recent times, we are of opinion that with equal justice may its authorship be claimed by an Indian prince or a Caffre chief as by the men to whom we have referred.

Of the other poems which have been published, the largest are those entitled Farewell to Lough Bray,'' A Birth-day Poem,' 'Patriotism,' and 'The Death of Abel.' The latter was a prize poem, and contains much powerful and touching description. He also composed several very beautiful songs, the most popular of which were the two following-the one adapted to the national Spanish air 'Viva el Rey Fernando,' beginning with the words

The chains of Spain are breaking,
Let Gaul despair and fly;
Her wrathful trumpet's speaking,
Let tyrants hear and die;'

Of

and the other, adapted to the Irish air 'Gramachree,' which we are told was composed after he had sung the air over and over till he burst into a flood of tears.' this favourite song we give the following stanzas :"If I had thought thou couldst have died, I might not weep for thee;

But I forgot, when by thy side,

That thon couldst mortal be!

It never through my mind has pass'd,
The time would e'er be o'er,
And I on thee should look my last,
And thou shouldst smile no more.
And still upon that face I look,

And think 'twill smile again;
And still the thought I will not brook
That I must look in vain!

But when I speak thou dost not say What thou ne'er left'st unsaid; And now I feel, as well I may,

Sweet Mary, thou art dead.'

But it was not merely as a poet that Mr Wolfe excelled when a student in the Dublin University. In every department of study he was distinguished, and in the year 1814 he was admitted with much honour to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. His mind was now directed steadily

to the study of that profession which was in after-life to occupy his attention, and few have devoted themselves to this honourable calling who had higher or more correct views of the qualifications necessary for a proper discharge of its duties. After finishing the regular course of study, and passing the usual examinations, he accepted a curacy at Ballyclog, Tyrone, in the north of Ireland. The change was great: he was far from society which he had long and keenly relished; he was at a distance from libraries and literary institutions; and without many of those worldly comforts which he enjoyed in the metropolis. He was notwithstanding, contented and happy. In a letter to a friend he says, 'I am now sitting by myself, opposite my turf fire, with my Bible beside me, in the only furnished room of the glebe-house, surrounded by mountains, frost, and snow, and by a people with whom I am totally unac quainted, except a disbanded artilleryman, his wife, and two children, who attend me, the churchwarden, and the clerk of the parish. Do not, however, conceive that 1 repine; I rather congratulate myself on my situation." The truth is, he chose the clerical profession as most congenial to his feelings; its studies, its duties, uninteresting and irksome as they might be to some, were far otherwise to him, and he was never happier than when engaged with his pulpit preparations, in visiting the poor member of his cure, and in preaching on Sabbath the truths of the 'glorious Gospel.'

His residence at Ballyclog, however, was only for a few months, after which he removed to Castle Caulfield, the principal village of the parish of Donoughmore. Te remove himself, furniture and equipage, to his new situation, was by no means a difficult task. One waggon,' he informs us, 'contained his whole furniture and family (with the exception of a cow, which was driven alongside of the waggon), and its contents were two trunks, a led and its appendages; and on the top of these sat a woman (his future housekeeper) and her three children, and b their side stood a calf of three weeks old, which had be come an inmate of the family.' The parish was extensive-the population, though not large, was widely scattered-and as it was a wild hilly country abounding in bogs and trackless wastes, it was no easy task to keep p that pastoral visitation and superintendence so essential to ministerial usefulness and success. But he grudged no labour; he was 'instant in season and out of season,' in acquainting himself with the character and circumstances of those among whom he laboured, and in inparting to them instruction and consolation. His views of preaching were thoroughly correct-mere flower an rhetorical grace were vain, in his estimation, yea, a prestitution of the pulpit, unless there was, at the same time, an exhibition of those great doctrines which should form the theme of the messenger of truth;' and as his preaching was of this useful character, and as his manner wa earnest and affectionate, he soon gathered around him a large congregation.

Whilst he was in 'labours abundant,' typhus fever broke out with great violence in the parish, and increased his toils, already sufficiently numerous and arduous. The fatigue which he endured in travelling from house to house, and administering comfort to the sick, the dying, and the bereaved; his frequent exposure to rain and cold, and the want of sufficient attention when he returned home from such visitations, soon told on his health, and laid the seeds of a disease which carried him to an early grave. A troublesome cough succeeded these incessan! labours; consumptive symptoms began to appear, and his health daily declined, until it was with the utmost diff culty he could discharge his official duties. But, though urged by his parishioners and friends to take relaxation and seek medical advice, so interested was he ins work, and in the welfare of his attached flock, that it long before he complied with their request. At le he yielded, and bade adieu to his people with a sort heart. By the same earnest solicitation, he left for Scotland, in the hope that a change of scene, t with a suspension of labour, might benefit his hea

recruit his weakened frame. He visited Edinburgh, and when there consulted the principal physicians as to his complaint; but the disease had made so much progress as to render recovery almost hopeless. After a few weeks he returned to his cure somewhat better, and never were a people more rejoiced than when they saw him once more in the midst of them. As he hurried along to his humble cottage, the poor people and children ran out to their cabin-doors to welcome him, with looks and expressions of the most ardent affection, and with all that wild devotion of gratitude so characteristic of the Irish peasantry. Many fell upon their knees, invoking blessings upon him; and long after he was out of hearing they remained in the same attitude, showing by their gestures that they were still offering up prayers for him; and some followed the carriage a long distance, making the most anxious inquiries about his health.' But their joy was of short duration. The recovery was only partial; the unfavourable symptoms continued and increased, and, at the urgent solicitations of friends and medical advisers, be removed to Dublin. To leave his affectionate people; the religious classes he had formed for the instruction of the young; to be unfitted for performing that work on which his heart was set; to know of no proper substitute; and to have little prospect of ever being able to resume his studies-all this was to him a trial of no ordinary severity. But necessity required that he should retire from his sphere of labour, and he was resigned; and could an active devoted minister have been got as his successor, his mind would have been at rest. Not finding a properly qualified substitute, and as his health was not improving, he respectfully intimated his resignation to the primate, but it was not accepted till about a year after. The anxiety and grief occasioned by not obtaining a proper substitute was great; many a time was he heard to say, 'What is to beCome of poor Castle Caulfield, and my poor people there? I do not know that any circumstance would give me more pain than that my poor flock should fall into the hands of careless, worldly-minded pastor.' Indeed, fain would he have returned to his post, had not his friends dissuaded im.

Towards the close of the year 1821, he was advised to Ery a change of scene and climate, and with this view e resolved on going to the south of France. Preparaions were made for his departure; he went on board, but he vessel was driven back to Holyhead by adverse gales, and he felt so much worse in consequence that it was deemed prudent to abandon the plan. He remained at Holyhead a few weeks, much weakened in body and depressed in spirits, and after he was somewhat recovered he removed to Exeter, where he spent the winter and pring. During his stay there, he was offered unsolicited he curacy of Armagh, and some of his friends thought hat by summer he might be able to undertake its duties. But when removed to Dublin, his cough returned with ncreased violence, and he was recommended by his medial advisers to take a trip to Bourdeaux. The voyage lid him little if any good; the marks of decay became more and more visible, his strength failed apace, and the Triends at one time most sanguine of his recovery, now eared that all was over. As the last resource, he removed in November to the Cove of Cork, a place much requented by invalids during the winter months, in the ope that by spring he might be so much recruited as to e able to seek a warmer clime. But the Cove of Cork, heltered though it was, did not give him relief or resusitate in the least his sickly frame. He grew daily weaker, nd died on the 21st of February, 1823.

During his protracted illness he was exceedingly paient, always resigned, and often cheerful. The Bible, hat book which can alone give comfort to the dying, was is constant companion, and, cheered with its promises, e looked forward with comfort to the hour of his dearture. Indeed, he was favoured in the end with a peace nd a composure of mind that fall to the lot of few. eems to have known the moment he was to cast off this mortal coil,' and he took farewell of the relatives

He

and friends who were around with as much calmness as if he had been leaving them merely for a little. The scene is thus touchingly given by his affectionate biographer: On going to bed he felt very drowsy, and soon the stupor of death began to creep over him. He began to pray for all his dearest friends individually; but his voice faltering he could only say God bless them all! The peace of God and of Jesus Christ overshadow them, dwell on them, reign in them! My peace,' said he, addressing his sister, (the peace I now feel) be with you.' His speech again began to fail, and he fell into a slumber; but whenever his senses were recalled, he returned to prayer. He repeated part of the Lord's prayer, but was unable to proceed; and at last, with a composure scarcely credible at such a period, he whispered to the dear relative who hung over his deathbed, Close this eye, the other is closed already; and now farewell.' Then, having again uttered part of the Lord's prayer, he fell asleep. He is not dead but sleepeth.'

'His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain.
The long remember'd beggar was his guest,
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast:
The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd;
The broken soldier, kindly bid to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away,
Wept o'er his wounds or tales of sorrow done,
Shoulder'd his crutch and show'd how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learn'd to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their wo;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And even his failings lean'd to virtue's side;
But, in his duty prompt at every call,

He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all.'

Mr Wolfe was modest and humble, notwithstanding all his superiority of talent, learning, and poetic genius. He loathed everything like pride of intellect, everything which savoured of literary affectation. Though he had a profound respect for men of genius and learning, he esteemed them all the more when, with intellectual endowments, they exhibited those moral qualifications, those Christian virtues which make man truly distinguished. He was the accomplished scholar, but he was at the same time the humble, the devout Christian.

His career we have seen was short, and his lot was in some respects a hard one. Donoughmore was a poor situation for such rare attainments, and we cannot think of his privations without shedding a tear. His home was of the most cheerless description, and his worldly comforts were small indeed. His cottage we are told 'exhibited every appearance of the neglect of the ordinary comforts of life. A few straggling rush-bottomed chairs piled up with his books, a small rickety table before the fire-place, covered with parish memoranda, and his trunks, containing all his papers, serving at the same time to cover the broken parts of the floor, constituted all the furniture of his sitting-room. The mouldy walls of the closet in which he slept were hanging with loose folds of damp paper; and between this wretched cell and his parlour was the kitchen, which was occupied by the disbanded soldier, his wife, and their numerous family of children, who had migrated with him from his first quarters, and seemed now in full possession of the whole concern. entertaining him merely as a lodger, and usurping the entire disposal of his small plot of ground as the absolute lords of the soil.' What a home, and what society for such a man as Charles Wolfe!

It was when in this comfortless dwelling that he wrote the sermons which delighted the poor peasantry of Do

followed by obstreperous sounds of mirth, which bore a very marked proportion to the depth of mud and water the poor northern had been accommodated with, while, to add to his perplexity, numerous pale lights danced around him occasionally in every direction. At length fully convinced that he was the sport of the gentry,' whose existence he had hitherto disbelieved, and having heard in his childhood that the turning of clothes was a charm against their power, he formed the resolution of turning his jacket, which he had scarcely accomplished ere he found himself at the back of my house, and within a few yards of the spot he had started from six hours before, and fearing a prolongation of his disagreeable nocturnal ramble, he had bolted into my dwelling in the unceremonious manner already described.

The report of the mischievous trick that had been played on poor Bryan O'Donnel by the gentry, with all its attendant circumstances, spread like wildfire in the country. That it had been inflicted on him as a punishment for his expressed disbelief in the morning-for our conversation had got wind-no one in the neighbourhood for a moment doubted; in fact, the short interval of time that had elapsed between his expressions of doubt and of his having been forced into a conviction of the existence of such beings, together with his having felt the effects of their power on the very spot where those doubts had been expressed, were circumstances, in the opinion of the old folks, quite conclusive, and apparently afforded them much pleasure.

Two or three days after the circumstance I have just related took place, one of the Portnacloy men, whom for the reason already mentioned I shall take the liberty of calling Andrew M'Neil, a very well conducted, inoffensive, but rather timid man, was sent according to custom to the next station to the eastward, called Port Turling, in order to bring any letters or orders that might arrive there from 'head-quarters' for the western stations; and as in so backward a place the return of the orderly was an event all felt interested in, his arrival was anxiously looked for by every person at the station. The usual time of the orderly's return, however, had passed, the day had closed some hours, but no Andrew M'Neil had made his appearance, and I was endeavouring to assign some plausible reason for his absence-at one time attributing it to his having lost his way, for the night was foggy, and at another, to his having been prevented from leaving Port Turling by the closeness of the weather-when my door slowly opened, and in tottered the unfortunate orderly, a tolerably good representative of the gentleman 'who drew Priam's curtain at the dead of night.' I cannot exactly say, with the strict regard to truth that pervades my narrative, that his hair was erect, for this simple reason, the poor man was a candidate for a wigship, but his eyes were fixed and disagreeably protruded from their sockets, something like a lobster's; the blood appeared to have deserted his cheeks and to have congealed in his lips, the dirty whiteness of the one forming a remarkable contrast with the blueness of the other, and the perspiration trickled down his cadaverous countenance in drops almost as large as horse-beans, and, for auglit I know to the contrary, quite as cold as ice; in short, he was terror personified.

While I eyed poor Andrew with the greatest horror -for fear is very catching-the watchman, who had seen him pass the watch-house, and suspected from his appearance that something uncommon had taken place, which suspicions a peep in at the door had fully confirmed, communicated his ideas on the subject to those nearest to him, and the report having spread all over the station with the rapidity of lightning, long before the poor fellow had sufficiently recovered himself to utter one syllable respecting the cause of his fright, every person was as fully convinced he had seen the gentry' as if in possession of the particulars. Curiosity, therefore, got the better of all etiquette on the occasion, and my house was shortly taken by storm by a motley group, who, open-mouthed, open-eyed, and with fingers as stiff and as straight as the

carbine ramrods of the station, regarded the terror-stricken orderly with countenances as fear-fraught as his own. When I recovered from the surprise the melancholy appearance of the poor fellow had thrown me into, I ordered, as in O'Donnel's case, the mountain panacea to be administered, the good effects of which exceeded my best wishes and expectations, as in a few minutes poor Andrew M'Neil recovered in some degree the use of his tongue; the first use he made of which was, most devoutly to return thanks to all the saints in the calendar for his happy deliverance, which act of devotion added not a little to the terrors already depicted on the countenances of those around him. The administration of a second dose of the crathure' followed the first, and he so far shook off his fears as to be enabled to relate pretty intelligibly the following extraordinary account of what had occurred to him on his return from Port Turling.

The orders, it appeared, had not arrived from the eastward till late, he had consequently been unable to leave Port Turling before dark. And here, in justice to the man, let me observe, that men of stronger nerves than he possessed would, I feel assured, have felt a sensation far from agreeable on the occasion; for the two places were four miles asunder-he had nothing to direct him but a clew of white stones placed on sods at equal distances-an invention of mine to prevent accidents in fogs, and extending from one station to the other; his path skirted two bleak boggy mountains, crossed two glens -one in particular, called by the inhabitants the 'Granny,' wild in the extreme--and then led over the top of a mountain about eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. Not a hut, even of the most wretched description, lay within miles of him on either side, and to add to all this, the night, as has already been mentioned, was so very foggy that he could scarcely distinguish the milkquartz directing stones, although they were only five yards apart.

Notwithstanding, however, the dreary walk he had before him, the attendant probabilities of encountering pookies on his journey, and of sounding the depth of every bog-hole in his route, he left Port Turling, according to his own statement-which, by the by, I very much doubted-no wise intimidated; and he had cleared one half of his journey with no other accident than an occasional fall, when, on descending the west side of the deep Granny glen, he, to his great surprise, found himself suddenly surrounded by numerous pale lights that appeared to dance around him. This occurrence, if it had no other effect, seemed in a great measure to have shifted his centre of gravity, for he immediately commenced floundering in his boatmate O'Donnel's best style, though his performance did not appear to have afforded similar amusement, for, with the exception of the splashing he himself made in the water, every thing around him was as silent as death.

'Thus accompanied by lights, and falling every minute, what with scrambling, crawling, and rolling, he contrived to reach the bottom of the glen, and had just crossed the little stream that ran through it, when, to his utter amazement and dismay, he found himself at the gate of a magnificent castle, which immediately flew open and displayed a hall most brilliantly illuminated. Numerous servants, also, made their appearance most splendidly apparelled, who with one accord saluted him with You are heartily welcome Mr M'Neil, to this castle of the 'gentry;'' and leading him forward to a large foldingdoor, which likewise flew open at his approach, a sight presented itself that surpassed in magnificence any thing he had ever heard or thought of before.

In a magnificent apartment, the sides of which shone with all the brilliancy of the noonday sun, and glittered with all the hues of the rainbow, and seated round a table that appeared to groan beneath the weight of the costly vessels of plate and delicious viands that covered it, he beheld a large party of ladies and gentlemen superbly attired, and surpassing in beauty any he had ever beheld, and who were busily employed dispatching the good things