SETTLING THE CONTRACT.

MRS. MILLAMANT, the young widow, solus (Repeating)

Like Phoebus sung the no less am'rous boy.
Enter MIRABLE.

Mir. (Repeating)

Like Daphne she, as lovely and as coy.

Do you lock yourself up from me to make my search more curious? Or is this pretty artifice contrived to signify that here the chase must end, and my pursuit be crowned, for you can fly no further?

Mrs. Mill. Vanity! No; I'll fly and be followed to the last moment. Though I am upon the very verge of matrimony, I expect you should solicit me as much as if I were wavering at the grate of a monastery, with one foot over the threshold. I'll be solicited to the very last-nay, and afterwards. Mir. What, after the last? Mrs. Mill. Oh, I should think I were poor, and had nothing to bestow, if I were reduced to inglorious ease; and freed from the agreeable fatigues of solicitation.

Mir. But do not you know that when favours are conferred upon instant and tedious solicitation, that they diminish in their value, and that both the giver loses the grace, and the receiver lessens his pleasure?

Mill. It may be in things of common application; but never sure in love. O, I hate a lover that can dare to think he draws a mom. ent's air independent on the bounty of his mistress. There is not so impudent a thing in nature as the saucy look of an assured man, confident of success. The pedantic arrogance of a very husband has not so pragmatical an air.-Ah! I'll never marry, unless I am first made sure of my will and pleasure. Mir. Would you have 'em both before marriage? Or will you be contented with only the first now, "and stay for the other till after grace?"

Mrs. Mill. Ah! don't be impertinent-My dear liberty, shall I leave thee? My faithful solitude, my darling contemplation, must I bid you then adieu? Ay, adieu-My morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent slumbers, ye douceurs, ye sommeils du matin, adieu I can't do't, 'tis more than impossiblePositively, Mirable, I'll lie a-bed in the morning as long as I please.

Mrs. Mill. Ah! idle creature, get up when you will -And, d'ye hear, I won't be called names after I'm married; positively I won't be called names.

Mir. Names!

Mrs. Mill. Ay, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel, love, sweetheart, and the rest of that nauseous cant in which men and their wives are so fulsomely familiar; I shall never bear that. Good Mirable, don't let us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir Francis; nor go in public together the first Sunday in a new chariot to provoke eyes and whispers; and then never be seen there together again; as if we were proud of one another the first week, and ashamed of one another ever after. Let us never visit together, nor go to a play together, but let us be very strange and well bred; let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; and as well bred as if we were not married at all.

Mir. Have you any more conditions to offer? Hitherto, your demands are pretty reasonable.

Mrs. Mill. Trifles, as liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I please; to write and receive letters without interrogatories or wry faces on your part; to wear what I please; and choose conversation with regard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse with wits that I don't like because they are your acquaintance; or to be intimate with fools because they may be your relations. Come to dinner when I please, dine in my dressing-room when I'm out of humour, without giving a reason. To have my closet inviolate; to be sole empress of my tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.

Mir. Your bill of fare is something advanced in this latter account. Well, have I liberty to offer conditions that when you are dwindled into a wife I may not be beyond measure enlarged into a husband?

Mrs. Mill. You have free leave; propose your utmost; speak, and spare not.

the marginal notes, though, to prevent criticism. Only mark it with a small asterism, and say, Jehu was formerly a hackney-coach

man.

Lady F. I will. You'd oblige me extremely to write notes to the whole poem.

Brisk. With all my heart and soul; and proud of the vast honour, let me perish!

Lord F. He, he, he! My dear, have you done? Won't you join with us? We were laughing at my Lady Whifler and Mr. Sneer.

Lady F. Ay, my dear, were you? Oh! filthy Mr. Sneer! he's a nauseous figure, a most fulsamic fop, pho! He spent two days together in going about Covent Garden to suit the lining of his coach with his complexion.

Lord F. Oh, silly! Yet his aunt is as fond of him as if she had brought the ape into the world herself.

Brisk. Who, my Lady Toothless? Oh! she's a mortifying spectacle; she's always chewing the cud, like an old ewe.

Lord F. Fie! Mr. Brisk, 'tis eringoes for her cough.

Lady F. Then she's always ready to laugh when Sneer offers to speak; and sits in expectation of his no jest, with her mouth open.

Brisk. Like an oyster at low ebb, egad! Ha, ha, ha!

Lady F. Then that t'other great strapping lady; I can't hit of her name; the old fat fool that paints so exorbitantly.

Brisk. I know whom you mean: but deuce take me, I can't hit of her name neither. Paints, d'ye say? Why, she lays it on with a trowel; then she has a great beard, that bristles through it, and makes her look as if she were plastered with lime and hair, let me perish.

Lady F. Oh! you made a song upon her, Mr. Brisk.

Brisk. Eh! egad! so I did. My lord can sing it. Tis not a song, neither. It's a sort of an epigram, or rather an epigrammatic sonnet; I don't know what to call it, but it's satire. Sing it, my lord.

SONG-LORD FROTH.

Ancient Phillis has young graces,

'Tis a strange thing, but a true one; Shall I tell you how?

She herself makes her own faces,
And each morning wears a new one;-
Where's the wonder now?

Brisk. Short, but there's salt in it; my way of writing, egad!

EXTRACTS FROM

"THE MOURNING BRIDE."

Music has charms to sooth a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd,
And, as with living souls, have been inform'd
By magic numbers and persuasive sound.

Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent
The base injustice thou hast done my love:
Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past distress,
And all those ills which thou so long hast mourn'd;
Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn'd.

Seest thou how just the hand of Heav'n has been?
Let us, who through our innocence survive,
Still in the paths of honour persevere,
And not from past or present ills despair;
For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds;
And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.

[Turlough Carolan, or O'Carolan as he is more properly called, was born in the year 1670 at the village of Baile-nusah or Newton, in the county of Westmeath, and not at Nobher, as is generally, but erroneously, stated. His father was a small farmer, and his mother the daughter of a peasant in the neighbourhood. Goldsmith speaking of him says that

"he seemed by nature formed for his profession; for as he was born blind, so also he was possessed of a most astonishing memory, and a facetious turn of thinking, which gave his entertainers infinite satisfaction." As to the blindness, Goldsmith is in error, for Carolan was born with perfect eyesight, but early in life, or about his fifteenth year, an attack of

at Cruisetown, county Longford, and there he made the acquaintance of the Bridget Cruise whom he afterwards immortalized in one of his songs.

While still a boy Carolan moved with his father to Carrick-on-Shannon, and there he attracted the attention of a Mrs. M'DermottRoe, who admired him for his intelligence. Placing him among her own children, she had him carefully instructed in Irish, and also to some extent in English. She also caused him to learn how to play the harp, not with the view to his becoming a harper, but simply as an accomplishment. Hardiman says he afterwards "became a minstrel by accident, and continued it more through choice than necessity." Charles O'Conor-who places Carolan before us as a reduced Irish gentleman who lost his property in the troubles of the time says "he was above playing for hire; at the houses where he visited he was welcomed more as a friend than an itinerant musician." In his twenty-second year he suddenly determined to become a harper, and his benefactress providing him with a couple of horses and an attendant to carry the harp, he started on a round of visits to the neighbouring gentry, to most of whom he was already known. In his journey he did not forget to visit Cruisetown, and though he might not behold beauty of form, his mind was doubly alive to the beauty of soul which he believed existed in his old school-fellow Miss Cruise. To her he poured out song after song, and at last in plain prose acknowledged his affection and met with a refusal. How ever, it is said that the young lady was anything but averse to him personally, her rejection being founded chiefly on financial reasons. Leaving Cruisetown his real career as an itinerant musician began, and for years he wandered all over the country, gladly received wherever he came, and seldom forgetting to pay for his entertainment by song in praise of his host.

When approaching middle life, Carolan went on a pilgrimage to what is called St. Patrick's Purgatory, a cave in an island on Lough Dearg in county Donegal. While standing on the shore he began to assist some of his fellowpilgrims into a boat, and, chancing to take hold of a lady's hand, he suddenly exclaimed, "By the hand of my gossip! this is the hand of Bridget Cruise." So it was; but the fair one was still deaf to his suit, and soon

family. With her he lived very happily and learned to love her tenderly, though she was haughty and extravagant. On his marriage he built a neat house at Moshill in county Leitrim, and there entertained his friends with more liberality than prudence. The income of his little farm was soon swallowed up, and he fell into embarrassments which haunted him the rest of his life. On this he took to his wanderings again, while his wife stayed at home, and busied herself with the education of their rather numerous family. In 1733, however, she was removed by death, and a melancholy fell upon him which remained till the end. When the first agony of his grief was past he composed a monody on her death, a composition which we quote, and which in the original Irish is peculiarly plaintive and pathetic.

Carolan did not survive his wife long. In 1738, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, he paid a visit to the house of his early benefactress, Mrs. M'Dermott-Roe, and there he fell ill and died of a disease, brought on it is said by overindulgence in drink.

Carolan was, as Goldsmith says, "at once a poet, a musician, and a composer, and sung his own verses to his harp." Goldsmith also says that of all the bards Ireland produced, "the last and the greatest was Carolan the blind." With a single exception of no importance all his songs, which numbered over two hundred, were written in the Irish language, in which also they appear to most advantage. The style of his music may be best studied in the air to "Bumper Squire Jones," which Carolan originally composed to words of his own. Though essentially Gaelic, his style has also something of Italian in its manner. was much admired by a great contemporary, Geminiani, who declared Carolan was endued with il genio vero della musica.

It

It is a great pity so few, and these not the best, of Carolan's compositions are extant. For this state of things we may thank an unfilial son, who in 1747 published a collection of his father's music, but omitted from it most of the best compositions. However, what we have is still of high merit, and deserves to be cherished by every true musician, as well as by every lover of the scattered reliques of poetry and music left us of the time when Ireland was indeed the "Land of Song."

We append an elegy on the death of Caro

GENTLE BRIDEEN.

(GEORGE SIGERSON, M.D., TRANSLATOR.)

O gentle fair maiden, thou hast left me in sadness; My bosom is pierced with Love's arrow so keen; For thy mien it is graceful, thy glances are glad

ness,

And thousands thy lovers, O gentle Brideen!

1 M'Cabe, says Miss Brooke, was rather of a humorous than a sentimental turn; he was a wit, but not a poet. It was therefore his grief and not his muse that inspired him on the present occasion.

The circumstances which gave rise to this elegy are striking and extremely affecting. M'Cabe had been an unusual length of time without seeing his friend, and went to pay him a visit. As he approached near the end of his journey, in passing by a church-yard, he was met by a peasant, of whom he inquired for Carolan. The peasant pointed to his grave and wept. M'Cabe, shocked and astonished, was for some time unable to speak; his frame shook, his knees trembled, he had just power to totter to the grave of his friend, and then sunk to the ground. A flood of tears at last came to his relief, and, still further to disburden his mind, he vented its anguish in the following lines. In the original they are simple and unadorned,

beauty in composition extremely difficult to transfuse into any other language. I do not pretend in this to have entirely succeeded, but I hope the effort will not be unacceptable; much of the simplicity is unavoidably lost; the pathos which remains may, perhaps, in some measure atone for it.

I came, with friendship's face, to glad my heart,
But sad and sorrowful my steps depart!

In my friend's stead a spot of earth was shown,
And on his grave my woe-struck eyes were thrown!
No more to their distracted sight remained,
But the cold clay that all they lov'd contained.
And there his last and narrow bed was made,
And the drear tombstone for its covering laid.
Alas! for this my aged heart is wrung,
Grief chokes my voice, and trembles on my tongue,
Lonely and desolate I mourn the dead,
The friend with whom my every comfort fled!
There is no anguish can with this compare!
No pains, diseases, suffering, or despair,
Like that I feel, while such a loss I mourn,
My heart's companion from its fondness torn!
Oh, insupportable, distracting grief!
Woe, that through life can never hope relief!
Sweet-singing harp- thy melody is o'er!
Sweet friendship's voice-- I hear thy sound no more!
My bliss, my wealth of poetry is fled,
And every joy, with him I loved, is dead!
Alas! what wonder (while my heart drops blood
Upon the woes that drain its vital flood)

If maddening grief no longer can be borne,
And frenzy fill the breast, with anguish torn!

2 The present Marquis of Sligo is descended from this inspirer of Carolan's muse.