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Since my lover ceased to woo,

I have roamed the wide world through,
To ease the heart he broke in two:
Is go de tu, mo muirnin slän! *

knowed it, and talked and wondhered. | the "Maiden's Lament " she was at; it had And some said, Randal was a lad o' sense; stayed in her head somehow, and rason for if he hadn't done it that way, Mauriade good she should sing it, the crayther! would have hindhered him, somehow. And the rest said, he should have let his friends wish him luck, before startin' on his first voyage; dhrink to his luck was all they meant, and all they missed too. But anyway, soon after that, when Donnell the runner* came through these parts, he tould that Randal MacNale had sailed in the Kate o' Kincarna, from Loughvogue, for Queenstown. He'll make some big voyage from yondher, they said; and that was the last they thought of him. Sure it takes no time at all to forget a man; it's the asiest thing in the world. Only one thing they remembered him by Mauriade.

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'Twas long before they'd belave it. The girl would let no one come near her; she'd fly, like a hunted thing; she'd hide, or shriek, or startle them off. She lived, no one knowed how, but some way of her own; and sure, they say, the witless ne'er come to want. No one could ever win to spake to her; but still she'd be seen, whiles, in some o' those same airy † places she'd been used to bide in; and only there would she stop or stay; every other place she'd go by at a flittin.' Then she took to

wearin' crowns o' flowers and weeds on her head; that's a sure sign o' the wits failed, wherever ye see it. And I mind, there was onst a moonlight night that month o' May, and a bhoy was frightened nigh out of his seven senses, be rason, he said, that passin' the fairies' thorn in the dark, he seed a sperit sittin' in among the branches, wid white rays round its head, and long arms stretched out, singin' a spell. And I heard an old woman say that what the bhoy see'd was the sperit o' the fairies' thorn; and that every May time, before the flowerin' o' the thorntrees begun, the sperit would sit there, in undher the branches, a whole night through, and sing, to keep the spell alive on the ould tree. But however that might be, I belave meself it was Mauriade yon night, wid just a crown on her hair o' the white, fluffin' ceanabhan. And be the same token, she would sing too, as I'd heard, long hours in the night; though she never was knowed to have sung when she had her wits by her. 'Twas always

Tramp, as opposed to authorized beggar. ↑ Eerie.

+ Bog-cotton.

I watched his shadow from the door,
I tracked his footsteps o'er the moor,
I prayed as I shall pray no more:
Is go de tu, mo muirnin slän!

One other thing Mauriade would do, and that was what I tould ye the first thing when I began. She'd walk out along that great cliff-look up there! out to the very end, and sit there for hours, keepin' watch out to sea, wid her hands shadin' her eyes if a ship came in sight. And though whiles a wind might be blowin' that could whirl a man over the edge in half a minute, still through rain or shine she would wait there, lookin' out for Randal's ship, to be bringin' him home.

At length and at last the ship did come, sailin' up the channel, bringin' him home.

It wasn't for months and months, till the corn was cut, and the stooks standin' in the fields, one day in September, a slip of a schooner came in and anchored out beyont Portnasilla. A boat put off, three men in her, and rowed for the little white coastguard station on the south side o' the bay.

They ran her in on the landin', and two o' the crew lifted a dead man out and laid him on the sand, covered wid a sail. The other man-he was a mate- went straight up to the lookout ground and spoke to the head boatman.

"We've brought you a man," says he; "died at sea name, Randal MacÑale."

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"Drowned?"

"Not drowned. Fell from the masthead yesterday, and never spoke again. But seein' one o' his mates knowed that this were his home here, and we bein' bound for Derry, and Portnasilla in our course as it were, Captain Grady, he says: Lay the poor chap in a spare berth, and to-morrow he can be rowed to the coastguard station and get buried in the place he belongs to. It's not three hours lost." Captain Grady, o' the schooner Kelpie, from Liverpool, bound for Derry. Goodmornin'. No time to spare."

They rowed away. The schooner spread her sails, and rounded Turnamona Head, and the coastguard carried poor Randal up into the boathouse.

Will it be thou, my bright faced darling!

me.

Next day he was buried. Not one o' them all, not Randal's own brothers, knowed what we did, Mick and "Brought back dead!" they said, "from his first voyage. Not a year since he started,

This was all the old woman's story. I have told it as she told it to me.

MOIRA O'NEILL.

Note. Founded on fact.

Randal's

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poor lad! 'twas a pity of him." grave may be seen to-day.

And no one ever knowed where Randal had sailed to, from the time he left Queenstown, to the time he joined the Kelpie at Liverpool.

Dead and buried; rest his sow!! But Mauriade alive and wandherin', clane left to herself; that was the worst. Many a time I heard it said since, "How did she know?" Well, there's no sayin'. She never saw that boat come in; 'tis still the way. What we watch for longest, we wake when it's past. So Mauriade never looked on Randal again. She was far away, who knows where? at the time they buried him. But the truth was borne to her some way that Randal was dead.

Now Hallowmas that year fell on a Sunday. And goin' to the chapel to hear mass, there was a little crowd standin', not at the chapel wall, but inside on the buryin'-ground, all round Randal's grave, under an eldher-tree. The stone was over it now, flat on the grass, and his name on it,

RANDAL MACNALE. Died at Sea.

But beneath that- och, the pity to think
of it! —and this was what they were look-
in' at. Poor Mauriade had graved wid a
sharp flint on the stone a ship, like as if it
was lyin' still, anchored fast; and undher
that had written wid the flint, -

Mavourneen, mavourneen!
Your ship is in harbor.

Your soul is in heaven.

Sorra one o' them standin' there but blest the poor girl in their hearts. Maybe it was the first time too. But there! some blest her at last.

From The Nineteenth Century. CONSTANTINOPLE REVISITED.

I HAD last visited Constantinople and the Bosphorus in the year 1857. Going by rail vid Vienna to Belgrade, I journeyed thence by road in a very rough way to Sofia, Philippopolis, and Adrianople, seeing in this way something of the then Turkish provinces of Bulgaria and Roumelia. I returned by Athens and Rome.

I spent the month of September on the Bosphorus at Therapia, going most days to Constantinople by steamers, then recently established-a voyage of which one never wearies, so great is the beauty and interest of the Bosphorus and its banks.

Lord Stratford de Redcliffe then reigned supreme at Constantinople; his mode of dealing with the Porte was most imperious, and rather that of a master than of the Turkish ministers with the utmost an agent of a friendly power. He treated hauteur; with some of them, whose hands he declined to communicate personally. were supposed to be stained with blood, If his demands were refused he went direct to Sultan Abdul Medjid, and fairly bullied that weak but gentle and wellintentioned sovereign into acquiescence.

While at Therapia, I saw much of the staff of the British Embassy, and something of their chief, who occasionally asked me to join him in his rides in the forest of Belgrade. The relations beAy! for that was the last known o'tween the ambassador and his staff, at the Mauriade. Next day but one the tide washed in a poor drownded crayther; washed her into this cove and left her lyin' here, at the foot o' the cliff Carrigmōr. It was Mauriade.

Would ye not think they'd have laid her to rest beside her bhoy that she loved to the last? Och, no! but she had drownded herself, they said. She mightn't lie with the dead that God had called. And they buried her outside; alone, forever on.

To my thinkin', the dead would have rested no worse for one poor misfortunate girl laid among them.

Out of her mind.

time I refer to, were very strained, and many were the stories current at the Embassy of conflicts between them. The description of the great Elchi, under the name of Sir Hector Stubble, in the "Roving Englishman," by the late Mr. Granville Murray, who had served under him, though overdrawn, cannot be wholly disregarded in an estimate of his character, and of the personal part which he had in bringing about the most useless of all wars, one which entailed misgovernment and bankruptcy on Turkey.

Lord Stratford spoke freely in conver sation of his policy, of the condition of Turkey and its prospects, and of the

In the autumn of this year I again visited Constantinople, passing again through Vienna, Belgrade, and Sofia, this time by rail the whole way, and returning again through Athens and Italy. It was most interesting to recall the many changes which had occurred in the interval, and to compare the Turkish Empire and the condition of its capital with what I had recollected. What more remarkable series of events in disintegration of a great empire have ever been crowded into so short a period? The only comparison is with its predecessor, the Byzantine Empire. There is, indeed, a striking parallel between the stages of accretion and conquest by which the Ottoman Empire was founded and those by which it has of late years been rent and reduced.*

character of its statesmen. He was under | and from which she emerged only by surno illusion as to the misgovernment of the rendering provinces to every one of the country; he knew that if left to themselves great powers. the Turks would do nothing, and that all the reforms promised by the Hatti Humayun, which he had obtained with such labor and difficulty at the conclusion of the Crimean War, would remain unexecuted and be a dead letter. He considered that England had been betrayed at the Congress of Paris, that the clause in the treaty which embodied the Hatti Humayun was nullified by the provision that its recognition did not entitle the great powers, either collectively or separately, to interfere in the internal affairs of Turkey. He held that this was fatal to the enforcement of the new reforms. He maintained that the only way to induce the Turks to act in accordance with them was through threats and fear, and that some external power should bring such pressure to bear on them. This might be done by England alone, or by England in alliance with France, or by the great powers collectively. He preferred the first of these; he had little hopes of the last; but the treaty had extinguished all methods equally.

In spite of this much might have been done in the years succeeding the Crimean War, when the influence of England was still great, by the vigorous action of the ambassadors. Lord Stratford, however, was succeeded by Sir Henry Bulwer, Lord Dalling, who, although a man of great diplomatic skill, was of very different char. acter and calibre, and who appears to have cared little for reforms in Turkey. He allowed himself to be placed under personal obligations to the sultan, which destroyed his influence in this direction. He was succeeded by other ambassadors, and during nearly twenty years no effective pressure was exercised on behalf of England for the enforcement of reforms and good government as solemnly promised. The Treaty of Paris in this respect remained unexecuted. The influence gained by England, as the mainspring of the alliance against Russia, which cost us so much blood and treasure, was allowed to lapse. No effort was made by the great powers, singly or collectively, to compel or induce the enforcement of the treaty. They fell back on the old intrigues, rivalries, and jealousies which formed the main work of the ambassadorial clique at Constantinople. Finally, misgovernment in Bosnia and Bulgaria culminated in fresh outbreaks and in another war with Russia, in which Turkey was without an ally,

Looking broadly at the result of these changes, it cannot be denied that in substance the great powers have, during the last fifteen years, divided between them the spoils of a great part of the Turkish Empire, under whatever phrases and socalled temporary arrangements they may please to conceal the operation.

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and Herzegovina; England is in practical Occupation of Egypt, and has acquired Cyprus; France has taken political control of Tunis; Greece has annexed parts of Thessaly and Epirus; Russia has had a comparatively small share of the plunder, unless we hold Bulgaria to be a mere dependent province to it, ready to do its behests at any moment, and prepared to become a part of the Russian Empire proposition which is absolutely disclaimed by its leading men. Apart from this, Russia's share has been inconsiderable namely, Kars and Batoum, and a small part of Roumania - though its position, from which it may demand more, is greatly strengthened.

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Austria has possessed itself of Bosnia | color of an intense blue, and courting the rays of an almost tropical sun, sometimes dark, solemn, and mysterious under the influence of gusts and storms from the Euxine. It is the constant changes between these two extremes, with a thousand subtle influences of clouds and wind, of reflected hills, and of varying currents, which constitute the charm of the Bosphorus; while the deep historic interests with which it is connected can never be absent from the mind. This swift and deep stream divides not merely two continents, but two civilizations, that of the East and of the West. From the beginning of history these two civilizations have contended across the Bosphorus for the mastery, each in turn attempting to invade the domain of the other, but without either being able to effect more than a temporary lodgment on the other side. In spite also of this long-maintained struggle, each has practically remained without permanent influence on the other, either in respect of race, or ideas, or morals, or any of the main elements of civilization. It was the stand made by Constantinople under the Byzantine Empire which for generations and centuries resisted the power of the Ottomans and broke the wave of their advance on Europe. When at last the city fell, the wave rolled on into Europe, but with much diminished force. The action has since been reversed, and Constantinople has become the same kind of bulwark against a counter-advance from Europe on Asia, a movement of which we are now the witnesses.

There can be no doubt that the sum of human happiness has been enormously increased in all these disjecta membra of the Turkish Empire; and nowhere more so than in Bulgaria and the provinces added to Greece, which have had the benefit of self-government. It would be very instructive to make a full and detailed comparison of these provinces with those which still remain under the rule of Turkey.

In the short time I spent in Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria I could not attempt to do more than arrive at certain general impressions in comparison with those formed in the previous visit, at the distant date I have referred to.

The general outward appearance of Constantinople and its suburbs as seen from the Bosphorus is the same as ever. There is the same splendid array of mosques with their domes, so well set off by minarets, and forming so great a feature in the view of the city when approaching from the Sea of Marmora; the same picturesque variety of many-colored houses on the Stamboul side of the Golden Horn; the same Genoese-looking suburbs of Pera and Galata, surmounted by the ponderous palaces, from whence the ambassadors of the great powers have watched the decay of the Turkish Empire, in jealous hope of sharing in the spoil or of preventing others from doing so; the same line of marble palaces on the Bosphorous, and clusters of kiosks and villas the whole distance to the Black Sea; the same mixture of nature and art, of gardens and buildings mantling the hills on either side, which give to the Bosphorus the charm of variety and beauty.

There is also the same ever-flowing rush of water from the Black Sea, dividing Asia from Europe, often resplendent with

Landing at the bridge of Constantinople, the changes on either side of the Golden Horn were far less than I expected

less, probably, than in any capital of Europe - certainly less than in Vienna or Rome. In Stamboul many of the streets have been widened. Fire rather than design has been the cause of improvement. From time to time great fires have occurred, which burnt down quarters of the town, enabling the widening of the streets before rebuilding. It has fol. lowed, also, that the picturesque wooden houses have in many parts disappeared and have been replaced by buildings of stone, of a third-rate French type. Enough, however, remains of the old town, of its bazaars and mosques, its fountains and khans, to supply endless pictures of picturesque interest.

Above all, there remains unchanged the Mosque of St. Sofia, which internally sur passes all other churches in the world as

much by its great impression of space, its beauty of proportion and richness of materials, as it does by its age; there remain also the triple walls of the Byzantine city with their high flanking towers, stretching for seven miles from the Sea of Marmora to the Golden Horn, intact in every respect, save where the breach was effected in that fatal year when the city fell to the Moslem invaders the most perfect and most successful fortifications which man has ever erected, for they withstood for centuries and through twenty sieges the attacks of invaders. It is need less, however, to advert to the many points of deep historical interest.

in preference to the European side, under the belief that the day is at hand when they will be driven from Europe. There is much less appearance of wealth than there used to be. The trade of Constantinople is greatly reduced. It is no longer an emporium. Steamers pass through the straits to the Danube and Sea of Azof, and do not stop for trans-shipment. There are very few wealthy Turks, other than those in official positions, with the means of levying backshish. The number living on independent means not in the employ of the government is very small. There is no hereditary class of men of high birth or wealth. Few Turks die possessed of high means. The bulk of them leave their affairs in an embarrassed state.

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With respect to the appearance of the people, I was struck with the fact that Constantinople is much more cosmopoli- The great ministers of past times, the tan than it used to be. It is no longer contemporaries of Lord Stratford- Reseasy to distinguish the Turks from Greeks chid, A'li, Fuad Pashas have left no or Armenians. They all wear the same descendants whose names are known fez, and are otherwise dressed in Euro- either for their wealth, status, or capacipean style; with the exception of the ties. The ministers of the day have risen mollahs, a very numerous class, and a few from the lower ranks; many of them have hadgis, no Turks are seen in the Eastern little or no Turkish blood about them. garb. The women also have given up The present prime minister, Kiamil their slippers, and have adopted French Pasha, was a native of Cyprus, and, shoes with their high heels. The yasmak though a Moslem by religion, is believed is also greatly reduced, and no longer to be a Jew by descent. He began life as really hides the face when there is any an employé of the government in a very thing to attract. So far as I could judge, humble position. The present finance the laboring classes seem to be well minister, Hagop Pasha, an Armenian, was clothed and well fed; there are very few a clerk at a low salary in the Ottoman beggars as compared with olden times, Bank; from thence he was recommended and little appearance of abject poverty - to the sultan to look after the Civil List, nothing, in fact, to compare with the slums and was soon after promoted to the post of our great Western cities. There is of finance minister, retaining also control evident change in the relations of the of the Civil List. He is a man of great Turks to the Christian population. In financial capacity. He is said to have 1857 it was common to see Turks pushing enormously increased the income of the their way through crowds with haughty sultan derived from the crown property, disdain; they now jostle with a common partly by reviving many rights which had herd like others; one seldom sees black gone into abeyance; partly by calling upon eunuchs about, once a common feature of private owners to produce their titles; Constantinople. partly by judicious investments. It is said In Stamboul itself, which in the earlier that the sultan has of late made great savyears was almost confined to Moslems, ings in spite of his large expenditure, and there now appears to be a large proportion has invested them in foreign securities. of Greeks and Armenians. The principal The sultan, by reason of his great streets are held by them. There are prac- wealth and unlimited power, and by his tically few Turkish merchants or trades-religious status, completely overshadows men. One is struck by the great increase all his countrymen; he is a personality, in the number of soldiers, due to the con- however, not only by reason of his excentration of troops at the capital. Vast alted position as the ruler of what is still barracks crown the heights in all direc- a great empire, and the religious head of tions, and form an unsightly feature in the a hundred millions of Moslems throughotherwise beautiful views. out the world, but also of his own capacities, which within a certain range are unquestionably great. Brought up in the strict seclusion which, in consequence of the law of succession to the throne, is the

There has been a great increase of buildings on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, and this seems to justify the current statement that the Turks build there

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