585. That advance may be considered to have been in the spirit of kindness, and from a desire to serve the working classes rather than as an investment of their money? Yes, but there would be investments if there were security. It is only this week that some of our men came to me and said, 'here is a sovereign we will pay towards the capital, and towards and for the association.' One young man who had saved £15, brought it and he said, 'I have confidence in the association, I will trust them with the £15;' and there are hundreds of working men who would do the same, but we cannot give them security. It is notorious that the savings' banks are not secure."*

The conclusion which we should therefore draw from the above apparently conflicting statements are, that for the purposes of extensive manufacture and wholesale trade, associations of the working men would be, if not utterly unfitted, yet under a very great disadvantage in competing with firms conducted by shrewd, active, intelligent, and experienced men of business: but, that as far as regards retail trades, which do not require for their conduct more than the average amount of knowledge or intelligence, they may be very successful. We would therefore hope, that as far as the trifling protection asked by for by them goes, as stated by one of themselves, the Legislature will act upon the evidence taken before, and the recommendations given by the last named Committee. The cherished prejudice in favor of unlimited liability may still be indulged, while conceding this small favor to associations sociations of working men-that any attempt at fraud upon the part of an ill-disposed or dishonest member, may be made the subject of speedy redress by a magistrate, and that any differences arising should be referred to some inexpensive tribunal, provided expressly for such a purpose.

There is one advantage in enabling the working classes to associate and carry on trade or manufacture on their own account, which should be sufficient to recommend such associations, even did they serve no other or further purpose; by permitting it we shall enable them to see that they are not suffering such injustice as they imagine, at the hands of their employers; that the average profits of such trades or manufactures are not so large as they estimated; and they will thus have before their eyes an unfailing proof, and one which

• See "Minutes of Evidence taken before Select Committee on Savings of Middle and Working Classes. Ordered by the House of Commons to be Printed, 5th July, 1850."

cannot be misunderstood-which will shew them what their labor is really worth.

It is neither our wish nor intention here to offer one word, or express any opinion as to the policy of the proposed measure which is still further to extend the suffrage, and place additional power in the hands of the working class. Though some efforts have been of late made and are making, it cannot be disguised that we have grossly neglected the great masses of the people, that we have not cared for them, have not educated them, have not legislated for them as we should have done; that they have been used by parties for party purposes; that as a class, independent of politics, or party, they have been ignored. The Reform Bill is a purely political move, and regards not, though it may have some effect upon, the elevation of the working class. Sooner or later they must become a great party in the State, and exercise an immense power for evil or good. There are, in our Constitution, sound and wholesome principles which require but an educated gaze that they should be recognized as the wisest that human wisdom has ever yet devised or man's experience tested; our institutions require but an educated gaze to be recognized as those under which the greatest amount of rational liberty, liberty alike from the despotism of a monarch, or of a mob, may be enjoyed; let us educate that class from whom so much is dreaded; let us care for them; let us do them full justice, not for the sake of party or politics, but for their own sake and for that of the common weal, and we shall find them the most ardent supporters and the boldest defenders of our Constitution and of our laws.

ART. II. JOHN BANIM.

PART III.

FIRST PLAN OF "TALES BY THE O'HARA FAMILY." MICHAEL BANIM'S SHARE IN THEM. THEIR DESIGN.

JOHN BANIM'S

MARRIAGE. REMOVAL TO LONDON. LETTERS. HINTS TO NOVELISTS. LITERARY STRUGGLES.

LETTERS. ILLNESS. LITERARY EMPLOYMENT. ILLNESS OF MRS. BANIM. LOVE OF HOME. LETTERS. PLAYS. HIS OPINIONS OF LITERARY MEN. ACQUAINTANCE WITH WASHINGTON IRVING. CONNECTION WITH DRURY-LANE THEATRE. LETTERS. PROGRESS OF FIRST SERIES OF "TALES BY THE O'HARA FAMILY." CONNECTION WITH ARNOLD AND THE ENGLISH OPERA HOUSE. OPINIONS OF KEAN, MISS KELLY, WASHINGTON IRVING AND OTHERS. LETTERS. ACQUAINTANCE WITH GERALD GRIFFIN. THEIR FRIENDSHIP. MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THEM. LETTERS. ILLNESS. PUBLISHES "REVELATIONS OF THE DEADALIVE;" EXTRACTS. OBTAINS PUBLISHER FOR "TALES BY THE O'HARA FAMILY."

LETTERS.

In the first and second parts of this Biography of John Banim,* we placed, carefully and honestly, before the reader, the whole life of the man, with all its strength and weakness; all its love, and hope, and energy, from his birth to his twentyfourth year, and we closed our last paper by recounting the circumstances and facts connected with his first success as a Poet and as a Dramatist.

Whilst visiting his family, after the production of Damon and Pythias, Banim frequently wandered away through the lovely scenery of the county Kilkenny; he generally resided, on these occasions, with some friend of his father, and was always accompanied by his brother, Michael. Few counties in Ireland can present scenery more varied or picturesque than Kilkenny. Thomastown, Jerpoint, and Kells, possess monuments of older days, interesting and valuable to the antiquary: Inistiogue, and Woodstock, once the residence of the authoress of Psyche, are glowing in all the pride of leafy loveliness; and every feature of sylvan beauty is enhanced by the proximity of the bright, pure, gentle-flowing Nore. Banim's favorite spot, amidst these scenes, is thus described in The Fetches:

• SEE IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, Vol. IV. No. 14, p. 270; and No. 15, p. 527.

"It rises from the edge of the Nore, at about thirteen miles from Kilkenny, into curves and slopes, hills and dales, piles of rock, and extensive spreads of level though high ground; hills and dales are thickly or wildly planted; and mountain streams, made rough and interesting by the stony impediments in their course, seek their way through the bending and shivered banks and fantastic woods; sometimes leaping over an unusually steep barrier. The waterfalls send their chafings among the woods and hollows, which on all sides, and at a distance, reply; and these voices of nature, together with the nearly similar noise of the rustling trees, or the crackling of their knotted arms in the blast, are the only, or the overmastering sounds that disturb the solitude.

A

Extrinsic interest has lately attached to this fine scenery, on account of its having been the last residence on earth of a lady not unknown in the literary world. In fact, the present proprietor is a Mr. Tighe; and here the gentle author of Psyche,' that gentleman's aunt by marriage, breathed the last notes of her femininely sweet song, and the last breath of a life she was almost too good and pure to have longer breathed, in a bad and gross world. Here she sang, in sighings of the heart, her last melancholy farewell to the • Odours of Spring'; and, alas, the flowers she addressed had not wasted their perfume till they were tranplanted to her grave. beautiful girl, long the humble protégée of the minstrel, culled them with her young hands, and in recollection of notes that the silent tongue had once murmured, placed them on her bed of clay, and thus in the tears of beauty and of youthful sorrow, they were there nurtured. The grave is one of many in the church-yard of the village that skirts the domain. The river runs smoothly by. The ruins of an ancient abbey, that have been partially converted into a church, reverently throw their mantle of tender shadow over it: simple primroses and daisies now blossom round. It is a place for the grave of a poetess.

But, when Tresham visited this district, it had, for him, the single yet abundant interest of its own beauty. Even as he approached it, the introductory scenery grew fair and enchanting. The country outside of Kilkenny was uniform; but at last, from the highest point of a rough, mountain-road, his eye was at once flung over a semicircular extent of hill, dell, and mountain, broken into every desirable shape of the picturesque, and thrown and tossed about, as if in the awful sportiveness of the creating hand. Hill bestrode hill, the guardian giants of the race appearing pale and mysterious in the distance; while through the midst, in the depths of a spacious valley, the lady Nore curved on her graceful course.

It was the first approach of an unusually fine evening in September, and the red sun, setting over an extreme vista at Tresham's back, lackered all the opposite scene with gold: producing, at the same time, those stretching shadows that make evening the painter's best hour for the study of his chiaro-scuro. At every turn of this road the scene only changed into another mode of beauty. From a nearer point appeared the lowly village of Inistiogue; a few white cottages, glinting, like white stones, at the bases,

and in the mighty embrace of hills, richly planted. Its light and not inelegant bridge spanned the crystal river, groups and groups of trees massing behind it; and, over all, the high grounds of Woodstock rising in continued and variegated foliage. Tears of pleasure filled Tresham's eyes. He felt it was happiness to live in so fair a world; alas !- he enjoyed the scene as if he had been doomed to enjoy it."*

Amidst these quiet haunts, Banim loved to linger. The first round of life's great ladder of fame was, he fancied, passed, and the jostling crowd who, panting and eager, thronged its foot, were no longer to be feared; and day dreams, such as only the young poet knows, made bright and joyous the hopeful musings of that autumn after he had seen "one of his sky-rockets go off." It was not that he felt unwilling still to labor, and fast, and watch, and wait. Fame to him was like that image of Love in Gondibert-and made all and everything bright and sunny

"As if the thing beloved were all a Saint,
And every place she entered were a shrine."

The sad times of walking about the streets for lack of lodging of "whistling for want of a dinner," were past-but the strong will, the earnest love of literature, were true and daring as ever. Plays, Essays, Novels, and Poems were designed, and talked over, with Michael, who was the confident now as

ever.

It is a well known fact, that the genius which constitutes the Dramatist is nearly akin to that which forms the Novelist; and in discussing the plans of his future life with his brother, Banim resolved to make his next venture as a writer of Irish fiction. At this period, 1821, Miss Edgeworth was in the full possession of the public taste as the best and only Irish novelist. That reputation which she had obtained through the Tales of Fashionable Life, and through the Moral Tales, was out-topped by the success of the Essay on Irish Bulls, and of Castle Rackrent. These, however, were but the elegant drawing-room portraitures of Irish life and character, which might be represented in conjunction with the performances of that famous bear, in She Stoops to Conquer, who only "danced to the genteelest tunes." They wanted vigor and individuality, and were entirely deficient in that dramatic power, without which any (most of all an Irish) novel must be weak. Admirably as Miss Edgeworth's genius might qualify her for the composition