ith the Limerick Advertiser newspaper; but having written y, he migrated to London in his twentieth year, with the istinguishing himself in literature and the drama. Disapt very naturally followed, and Gerald betook himself to reor the daily press and contributing to the magazines. In ucceeded in getting an operatic melodrama brought out at sh Opera House; and in 1827 appeared his Holland-tide, er Popular Tales,' a series of short stories, thoroughly Irish, ing powers of observation and description from which much anticipated. This fortunate beginning was followed the r by Tales of the Munster Festivals, containing Card-drawHalf-sir, and Suil Dhuv, the Coiner,' three volumes. tionality of these tales, and the talent of the author in dee mingled levity and pathos of the Irish character, rendered eedingly popular. His reputation was still further increased blication, in 1829, of 'The Collegians; a Second Series of Tales inster Festivals,' three volumes, which proved to be the most of all his works, and was thought by many to place Griffin h novelist above Banim and Carleton. Some of the scenes deep and melancholy interest; for, in awakening terror, and the sterner passions and their results, Griffin displayed the Dower of a master. "The Collegians,' says a writer in the gh Review,' is a very interesting and well-constructed tale, cident and passion. It is a history of the clandestine union of man of good birth and fortune with a girl of far inferior rank, e consequences which too naturally result. The gradual deattachment which was scarcely based on anything better sual love-the irksomeness of concealment-the goadings of pride the suggestions of self-interest, which had been eglected for an object which proves inadequate when gained se combining to produce, first, neglect, and lastly, aversion, estingly and vividly described.' In 1830 Mr. Griffin was the field with his Irish sketches. Two tales, The Rivals,' acey's Ambition,' were well received, though improbable in ill arranged in incident. The author continued his miscellabours for the press, and published, besides a number of tions to periodicals, another series of stories, entitled 'Tales ve Senses.' These are not equal to his 'Munster Tales,' but rtheless, full of fine Irish description and character, and of k and touching power' which Mr. Carleton assigns as the shing excellence of his brother-novelist. thstanding the early success and growing reputation of Mr. he soon became tired of the world, and anxious to retreat toils and its pleasures. He had been educated in the Roman faith, and one of his sisters had, about the year 1830, taken This circumstance awakened the poetical and devotional and desires that formed part of his character, and he grew daily more anxious to quit the busy world for a life of religious duty and service. The following verses, written at this time, are expressive of his new enthusiasm: Seven dreary winters gone and spent, I left my Irish home and you. How passed those years, I will not say; With even mind and tranquil breast 'The warmth of nature and of God! Still be his care in future years To learn of thee truth's simple way, And when our Christmas days are past, And life's vain shadows faint and dim, When her pure hands are raised for him! Christmas, 1830. His mind, fixed on this subject, still retained its youthful buoy ancy and cheerfulness. He retired from the world in the autumn of 1838, and joined the Christian Brotherhood-whose duty it is to inIn the second year of struct the poor-in the monastery at Cork. his novitiate he was attacked with typhus fever, and died on the 12th of June, 1840. WILLIAM CARLETON. ' His WILLIAM CARLETON, author of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry,' was born at Prillisk, in the parish of Clogher, and county of Tyrone, in the year 1798. His father was a person in lowly station-a peasant-but highly and singularly gifted. memory was unusually retentive, and as a teller of old tales, legends, and historical anecdotes, he was unrivalled; and his stock of them was inexhaustible. He spoke the Irish and English languages with nearly equal fluency. His mother was skilled in the native music of the country, and possessed the sweetest and most exquisite of human She was celebrated for the effect she gave to the Irish cry e.' 'I have often been present,' says her son, when she ised the keene" over the corpse of some relative or neighbour, readers may judge of the melancholy charm which accomhis expression of her sympathy, when I assure them that the clamour of violent grief was gradually diminished, from ad, until it became ultimately hushed, and no voice was heard own-wailing in sorrowful but solitary beauty.' With such Carleton could not fail to imbibe the peculiar feelings and tions of his country. His humble home was a fitting nursery genius. rst schoolmaster was a Connaught man, named Pat Frayne, otype of Mat Kavanagh in The Hedge School.' He also reome instruction from a classical teacher, a tyrannical blockwho settled in the neighbourhood; and it was afterwards o send him to Munster, as a poor scholar, to complete his on. In some cases a collection is made to provide an outfit youth thus leaving home; but Carleton's own family supplied Is supposed to be necessary. The circumstances attending rture, Carleton has related in his fine tale, The Poor Scholar.' ourneyed slowly along the road, his superstitious fears got the f his ambition to be a scholar, and stopping for the night at inn by the way, a disagreeable dream determined the hometo return to his father's cottage. His affectionate parents ually joyed to receive him; and Carleton seems to have done some years but join in the sports and pastimes of the peo1 attend every wake, dance, fair, and merrymaking in the urhood. In his seventeenth year he went to assist a distant - a priest, who had opened a classical school near Glasslough, of Monaghan, where he remained two years. A pilgrimage ar-famed Lough Derg, or St. Patrick's Purgatory, excited his tion; and the description of that performance, some years rds, not only,' he says, 'constituted my debut in literature, s also the means of preventing me from being a pleasant, Dodied parish priest at this day; indeed it was the cause of ng the whole destiny of my subsequent life.' 6 at this time chance threw a copy of Gil Blas' in his way, and e of adventure was so stimulated by its perusal, that he left ve place, and set off on a visit to a Catholic clergyman in the of Louth. He stopped with him a fortnight, and succeeded uring a tuition in the house of a farmer near Corcreagh. This, er, was a tame life and a hard one, and Carleton resolved on tating himself on the Irish metropolis, with no other guide certain strong feeling of vague and shapeless ambition. He se particulars concerning the personal history of the novelist are contained troduction to the last edition of the Traits and Stories. entered Dublin with only 2s. 9d. in his pocket. From this period we suppose we must date the commencement of Mr. Carleton's literary career. In 1830 appeared his Traits and Stories,' two volumes, published in Dublin, but without the author's name. The critics were unanimous in favour of the Irish sketcher. His account of the northern Irish-the Ulster creachts--was new to the reading public; and the dark mountains and green vales' of his native Tyrone, of Donegal, and Derry, had been left untouched by the previous writers on Ireland. A Second Series of these tales was published by Mr. Carleton in 1832, and was equally well received. In 1839 he sent forth a powerful Irish story, Fardorougha the Miser, or the Convicts of Lisnamona,' in which the passion of avarice is strikingly depicted, without its victim being wholly dead to natural tenderness and affection. Scenes of broad humour and comic extravagance are interspersed throughout the work. Two years afterwards (1814) appeared The Fawn of Spring Vale, the Clarionet, and other Tales,' three volumes. There is more of pathetic composition in this collection than in the former; but one genial, light-hearted, humorous story, The Misfortunes of Barney Branagan,' was a prodigious favourite. In 1845 Mr. Carleton published another Irish novel, Valentine M'Clutchy;' in 1846, Rody the Rover;' in 1847, The Black Prophet;' in 1849, The Tithe Proctor;' in 1855, Willy Reilly;' and in 1860, The Evil Eye.' A pension of £200 was settled upon the Irish novelist. He died January 30, 1869. The great merit of Mr. Carleton is the truth of his delineations and the apparent artlessness of his stories. If he has not the pas sionate energy-or, as he himself has termed it the melancholy but indignant reclamations'-of John Banim, he has not his party prejudices or bitterness. He seems to have formed a fair and just estimate of the character of his countrymen, and to have drawn it as it actually appeared to him at home and abroad-in feud and in festival -in the various scenes which passed before him in his native district and during his subsequent rambles. The lower Irish, he justly remarks, were, until a comparatively recent period, treated with apathy and gross neglect by the only class to whom they could or ought to look up for sympathy or protection. Hence those deep-rooted prejudices and fearful crimes which stain the history of a people remarkable for their social and domestic virtues. 'In domestic life,' says Mr. Carleton, there is no man so exquisitely affectionate and humanised as the Irishman. The national imagination is active, and the national heart warm, and it follows very naturally that he should be, and is, tender and strong in all his domestic relations. Unlike the people of other nations, his grief is loud but lasting; vehement but deep; and whilst its shadow has been chequered by the laughter and mirth of a cheerful disposition, still, in the moments of seclusion, at his bedside prayer, or over the grave of those he loved, it will put itself forth, after half a life, with a vivid power of recollection which is es almost beyond belief.' A people thus cast in extremesly and humorous-passionate in affection and in hatredg the old language, traditions, and recollections of their -their wild music, poetry, and customs-ready either for for evil-such a people certainly ailords the novelist abunerials for his fictions. The field is ample, and it has been ltivated. Picture of an Irish Village and School-house. lage of Findramore was situated at the foot of a long green hill, the outich formed a low arch, as it rose to the eye against the horizon. This hil ed with clumps of beeches, and sometimes inclosed as a meadow. In the July, when the grass on it was long, many an hour have I spent in solitary t. watching the wavy motion produced upon its pliant surface by the sunny the flight of the cloud-shadows, like gigantic phantoms, as they swept rapit, whilst the murmur of the rocking trees, and the glancing of their bright the sun, produced a heartfelt pleasure, the very memory of which rises in nation like some fading recollection of a brighter world. foot of this hill ran a clear deep-banked river, bounded on one side by a h level meadow, and on the other by a kind of common for the village ose white feathers during the summer season lay scattered over its green It was also the play-ground for the boys of the village school; for there ran of the river which, with very correct judgment, the urchins had selected as ing-place. A little slope or watering-ground in the bank brought them to f the stream, where the bottom fell away into the fearful depths of the whirlr the hanging oak on the other bank. Well do I remember the first time I to swim across it, and even yet do I see in imagination the two bunches of cons on which the inexperienced swimmers trusted themselves in the water. two hundred yards above this, the boreen [little road] which led from the the main road crossed the river by one of those old narrow bridges whose e like round ditches across the road-an almost impassable barrier to horse On passing the bridge in a northern direction, you found a range of low houses on each side of the road; and if one o'clock, the hour of dinner. drew might observe columns of blue smoke curling up from a row of chimneys, de of wicker-creels plastered over with a rich coat of mud, some of old ottomless tubs. and others, with a great appearance of taste, ornamented k circular ropes of straw sewed together like bees' skeps with the peel of a d many having nothing but the open vent above. But the smoke by no means by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it bursting e doors and windows; the panes of the latter, being mostly stopped at other h old hats and rags, were now left entirely open for the purpose of giving it ape. e the doors, on right and left, was a series of dunghills, each with its consink of green, rotten water; and if it happened that a stout-looking with watery eyes. and a yellow cap hung loosely upon her matted locks, ith a chubby urchin on one arm and a pot of dirty water in her hand, its unious ejection in the aforesaid sink would be apt to send you up the village r finger and thumb-for what purpose you would yourself perfectly underlosely, but not knowingly applied to your nostrils. But, independently of I would be apt to have other reasons for giving your horse, whose heels are ime surrounded by a dozen of barking curs, and the same number of shoutins, a pretty sharp touch of the spurs, as well as for complaining bitterly of r of the atmosphere. It is no landscape without figures; and you might if you are, as I suppose you to be, a man of observation-in every sink, as along, a 'slip of a pig' stretched in the middle of the mud, the very beauluxury, giving occasionally a long luxuriant grunt, highly expressive of his nt; or perhaps an old farrower lying in indolent repose, with half-a-dozen nes jostling each other for their draught, and punching her belly with their outs, reckless of the fumes they are creating; whilst the loud crow of the |