Doogort is a small village of neatly-built, whitewashed houses nestling at the foot of the Slievemore mountain. At the hotel we made the acquaintance of Mr. John Sheridan, widely known among the tourist world as sportsman, naturalist, and antiquary. As proprietor of the hotel he has entertained many celebrities in his time, and is proud to number Lady Zetland and Miss Balfour among his late visitors. He is full of information and anecdote about the island, and is never happier than when showing his specimens or antiquities to visitors.

Notwithstanding our drive I felt energetic enough afterwards to climb the great mountain of Croghan and see its wonderful cliffs, two thousand feet in almost sheer descent. We did not find the ascent very troublesome. There was plenty of heather and grass underfoot, and the ground abounded in wild orchids and London pride. We reached the top in an hour and fifty-five minutes, including twenty minutes for rests at intervals. At every step the view grew more beautiful, till at length we reached the summit. Below lay the great Atlantic, with no land between us and America. Two schooners, sailing idly over the summer sea, seemed mere toy ships. Inland, all the world appeared to lie at our feet. The lodge was a tiny speck of grey, with only the smoke from its chimneys to indicate its whereabouts. Even great Slievemore looked stunted, while the Keem cliffs, that yesterday appeared to us so vast, seemed like small green mounds. To the south, on the other side of Clew Bay, lay the islands of Innisturk and Innisboffin, and, beyond them, the long range of the Connemara mountains. A little to our right as we looked out to sea, and, as it were, almost at our feet, stretched Saddle Head and Achill Head, the latter a succession of dark, jagged peaks running out into the soft grey sea. The gentle, languorous grey of evening was stealing over the eastern heavens, and a great bar of gold stretched across the western horizon on the pearlcoloured ocean. It was a dream of the daylight.

After dinner that evening we all assembled in the glass-covered verandah to listen to some of the experiences of old Gaughan the guide. Sitting well forward on an inverted hamper, with a glass of his beloved whiskey in his hand, the old man looked curiously picturesque. His high forehead, lined and deeply wrinkled, terminated in a narrow bald crown, from underneath which straggled long, thin locks scarcely tinged with grey. Heavy grey eyebrows overshadowed small but keen and twinkling blue eyes. His nose and upper lip were very long. The lower lip protruded a good deal, and his chin, which receded abruptly, was fringed with scanty hair. Two deep furrows ploughed his face on

each side, but not unkindly. Over his whole countenance spread an expression of humour and geniality, which was intensified when he broke into speech-and Jack could not long be silent. He wore a coat green with age, a pair of heavily-patched, baggy trousers, and a red woollen comforter, which enfolded his neck many times.

Jack was first asked his opinion of whiskey, which has already been quoted.

"Did you ever taste champagne, Jack?" asked one of the party.

What is that for?'

"Aye, I did. There was a gintleman come here to go up Croghan, an' whin we got to the top he had for his lunch bread an' other things, an' champagne in thim gold bottles. 'Hallo! Jack,' sez he, here's a loaf an' some champagne for yez.' 'An' what is this for?' sez I, after tashtin' it. sez he. 'Yes,' sez I, 'what's it for?' sez I. women that's for,' sez I, 'that shweet thing! but for sick women? It's so wake-it's no use.' he added, after draining the glass he held, turning his twinkling eyes on us.

Shure it's for sick What's it good for An' no more it is,"

"Well, Jack, you'd better have some more whiskey," said Mr. O'D- "You don't believe in the Blue Ribbon Army, then?"

"Is it the Blue Ribbon

"Arrah! Good luck, good luck, your honour," returned the old man, holding out his glass to be refilled. Army?" he added, with a fine contempt. sort of army that."

"Arrah! It's a poor

"I niver seen a train

We asked if he had ever seen a train. but ance," he said, "an' thin I wint in her as far as Claremorris, an' I wouldn't go on her agin. I'd sooner walk it. She's very dangerous; shure if she wint off the track isn't all that's in her killed? If the man that's dhrivin' her had a dhrap o' whiskey taken, wouldn't he kill all that's in her? I'll niver go in her agin, she roarin' an' rattlin', an' whustling an' scramin'! Arrah! I'll niver go in her agin―niver, niver."

We now varied the evening by a few songs, our guide giving us several ditties in Irish in a sort of weird monotonous chant, ending each with a curious shout. Mr. B sang a comic song called "Mullarkey's Supper Party," in which the courting and love-making of Mr. Mullarkey's guests were described with the most vivid Irish humour. Gaughan was intensely pleased with this, punctuating the different verses with a delighted "Ha! Ha!"

"An' now mebbe the Colonel will sing?" he said, turning to

Captain S, who, tacitly accepting his promotion at the guide's

hands, disclaimed any musical ability. said Gaughan. "Shure, doesn't the marching at the head of his army!"

"Arrah! What's that?" Colonel sing whin he's

An anecdote followed illustrative of the belief of the peasant of the west in the varied powers of their priest. "Three months ago, ladies and gents all, there was no sand at Dooagh, only rocks, an' the poor people were losht for want of sand; so Father rode out into the sea on his pony, and ever since thin we've had lots of sand, an' it's comin', comin' ivery day!" "Did you see Mr. Balfour when he was on the island, Gaughan?" we asked.

"Troth, I niver did see Mr. Balfour," he returned. "Och! musha, I wish I could see Mishter Balfour! Shurely ivery man in Achill would be dead but for him. If I was a jury or a barrishter fit to do it, I'd make a lord-liftinant of him. I'd make a king in Ireland of him forever, forever. Hadn't I as good piaties as any man in the island?—and I haven't eaten a piatie since Christmas. But for Mishter Balfour you couldn't walk in Dooagh for corpses, an', troth, I'd say it up to his face. An' three cheers for Mishter Balfour night and day! An' sorra night but I goes on me knees to pray for him to have luck at the lasht day thro' the grace o' God! An' may his sowl go to Hiven the lasht day! All the village pray for him night an' day."

When the old man at last rose to depart, he made us a little bow, and swaying gently over his final "drap o' whiskey," said, "Here's your good health, and may the Lord Almighty bless yez night and day, you ladies and you gentlemen." With feelings of genuine regret we bade him good-bye. He was a good type of the old-fashioned western peasant-courteous, humorous, with a tact and acuteness of perception to be wondered at and envied.

The morning broke damp and drizzly, and at breakfast our spirits suffered a little. It was the end of a simple pleasure of which we had not partaken to satiety-pleasure of that sort which lingers longest in the memory. Regretfully we did our packing, and shortly after said good-bye to kindly Mrs. G and her helpful daughter, and found ourselves on our way back to civilization.

M. B. PATTISSON.

VOL. CVIII.

Q

The Personality of Margaret Fuller.

"THE impassioned bolero and fandango are the dances for me. They express not merely loving, but living; they express the sweet southern ecstasy at the mere gift of existence."

So wrote Margaret, and therein expressed what her biographers cannot too much emphasize, namely, her passion for life-life full, free, untrammelled; life of mind and heart; life for every faculty, every instinctive craving of her nature.

Emerson and Carlyle both speak of her "mountain Me," but if she thought herself head and shoulders above the ordinary woman, at least it was because she found herself there, crowned queen in virtue of her innate "queenhood," and not from any vulgar self-conceit; still less on account of any lack of insight into or sympathy for her fellow-humans.

We of to-day have much the same idea of her that was in the mind of the general public of her own time, viz., that of a “bluestocking," a somewhat stern, sarcastic, and disagreeable being; who no doubt did good work as a pioneer in the great WomanCause (of the name of which we are getting very tired), but who, on the whole, was not one whom we should ever take to our hearts, or wish to know in the intimacy of daily life.

That this personality is very vivid, many-sided, and lovable withal, must, however, become a conviction with us when we find that she was the valued friend of Emerson, Dr. Channing, Dr. Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Martineau, etc., to say nothing of the crowd of people of all classes, ages, and professions who came to her and counted it the greatest privilege of their lives to call Margaret Fuller "friend." She once remarked, "I have more than one hundred correspondents."

We who have access to her private letters, her journal, her autobiography, have no need to join outsiders in a hasty and uncomprehending condemnation. To most, if not all, of those who became her life-long friends the first impression was

unpleasant. It was just in proportion as they knew, that they admired and loved her. And we may step with these inside the magic circle and feel, if but for a few minutes, the spell of her grand personality.

In trying to do this we are met at the outset by a singular difficulty.

Madame Récamier, Madame de Staël, Bettina von Arnheim, Rahel Levin, show their best selves to us in their books or their letters. It is not so with Margaret. She cried, "After all, this writing is mighty dead. Oh! for my dear old Greeks, who talked everything-not to shine as in the Parisian saloons, but to learn, to teach, to clear the mind!"

Her writings, clear as they are, in style concise, playful, or poetic, rich in thought and containing many gems of expression and insight, are still to a certain extent disappointing. One feels in reading them that her best finds no medium in pens, ink, and paper. It is like looking at the portrait on the title-page of one of her works. There is the strength-and the picture is true so far as it goes; but the rich, brown hair and light complexion of the living head are a more or less intense shade of grey; and under the heavy eyelids one catches scarce a glimpse of eyes that, in speaking, appeared swimming "with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life."

It was when you met Margaret face to face, when her eye flashed into yours, when her thought leapt warm from heart and lips, that her face and figure showed to advantage and her speech rose to glorious eloquence. Then she was sibyl, prophetess; and reached the truest expression of herself.

Hungry and thirsty for life, she was at war with everything that would deprive herself or others of it. At war, therefore, with all falsehoods and shams, with all mere conventions, with cramping circumstances, with pettiness in every shape.

The ideal of her childhood-the will, the resolve of man as expressed in the Roman, and its conquering force-was the ideal of her womanhood; and this, equally in both periods, lived alongside an intense and passionate love of beauty which was nothing if not Greek.

But it is necessary to say something of her studies before plunging with her into the full sea of American society.

Mr. Fuller believed in forcing a child's intellect to its utmost possibility of tension. He taught Margaret himself, and we have a picture of her at the age of six waiting in a great state of nervousness for him to come home from his office that she might repeat her lessons to him, those being chiefly Latin, history, and