a professor of history-there was none! I then sent to all the private collections within ten miles, and some much farther, but no such book as a history of Ireland was to be found in any of them. I applied to a quarter in London, where I was sure of success :-any other history was at my service; but not a line of Irish history had they. Poor as I was, 1 could not endure the stigma to rest on all the English; so I bought Leland, in three good volumes; and I positively declare that, of all the English friends who have noticed it in my precious cabinet of Irish bog-yew, not one had read the book. Now, if this be not the devil's doing, to blind our eyes, and harden our hearts against the claims of our dear brethren-whose is it? Yet there is a work I would rather see than Leland's, in the possession of my friends. Christopher Anderson's Historical Sketches of the native Irish, is a gem such as six shillings will not often buy.

I have rambled from my garden, but not from my point. Ireland is such a spot as I have faithfully described; for what I have written is unadorned fact. Ireland is a garden, where what was originally good, has run to rampant mischief, only bearing abundant token that it needs but to be pruned and trained, to become again most innocently lovely. Ireland is a garden, where what is radically bad, has, through our wicked neglect, taken root, and well nigh usurped the soil, to the

extirpation of many a delicate plant, that was thrust out to make way for its noxious growth. Ireland is a garden, where he who only lounges for his amusement, or dwells for his convenience, will be ought to be-scratched, and stung, and tripped up, and bemauled: but where he who, with axe and pruning-hook, assails the bad root, and dresses the good tree, who gathers up, and binds together, and weeds, and plants, and waters, looking to God for the increase, may, and will, behold his share of the desert transformed into a blooming Eden-the wilderness into the garden of the Lord. Furthermore, he shall find, when his work is ended, a resting-place, where the ocean of eternity shall lie before him in all the unruffled majesty of bright repose, while the winds are held fast in the hollow of God's hand, and the sun shines forth, even. the Sun of Righteousness, to beautify with celestial splendour the interminable prospect of delight. "Not of works," God forbid! No, but of that grace which alone, in the face of Satan and all his hosts, can gird us to the mighty deed of hurling great Babylon from her usurped seat and which does not choose and sanctify an instrument here, to be cast into the fire when the work is accomplished.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE JESSAMINE.

THAT dear little modest flower, the Jessamine, with its milk-white blossoms half hid in the masses of cool refreshing green, used to adorn the most limited spot, in the shape of a garden, that ever I was confined to, as a promenade. It was, in fact, merely a gravelled walk, raised to the height of a couple of steps above the level of the paved court, which formed the rear of some premises where I was an inmate. The further side, and the extremities of this walk, were bounded by an exceedingly high wall; and nothing could have been more ruefully sombre, or more widely removed from any approach to the picturesque, had not the old wall possessed a mantle of Jessamine, the most luxuriant that I remember ever to have seen. The slender branches had mounted nearly to its summit; then, finding no farther artificial support, through neglect, which shall presently be accounted for, they bent downward, shooting out in unchecked profusion, until the whole space might

with strict propriety be called a bower. The upper part of the wall was more gaudily attired, in all the variations of green moss, yellow and blue creepers, and the dark red of the wall-flower. Beyond these, nothing appeared but a strip of sky. At the foot of the rampart some thrifty hand had arranged a narrow plantation of balm, sage, parsley, and thyme, so close that the introduction of any other shrub was impossible: of course, the old wall possessed the sole claim to the designation of a flower-garden; and, circumstanced as I then was, I learnt to be thankful for any medium that led my eye to the brighter world above; for, in truth, all sublunary things were exceedingly dark around me.

It was impossible, at least to me, to avoid iden tifying the Jessamine with her who owned that narrow spot, and who was peacefully journeying on, to take up her last earthly abode in one still narrower. Disease had blanched her cheek to the whiteness of the flower, and bowed her frame like its declining branches; while the nature of her malady forbade the continuance of her once favourite occupation of training and propping the Jessamine. Cancer, in its worst and most excruciating form, had seized upon her; and, at the time whereof I speak, it had spread from the side to the arm, reducing her to a state of suffering not to be conceived but by those who have closely

watched the progress of that deadly complaint, devouring its victim piecemeal.

Often have I gone out from the presence of the dear sufferer, to meditate upon the amazing power of divine grace, which she abundantly possessed; a rich treasure in an earthen vessel so deplorably marred as to make it doubly apparent that all the excellency of that power was of God. I found it hard, in an early stage of my Christian experience, to reconcile the acuteness of her bodily anguish with those promises of holy writ which describe the believer as possessed of all things-godliness as having the promise of this life, as well as that which is to come-and the Lord as withholding no good thing from them that walk uprightly. I could not comprehend how such exquisite patience should be visited with tribulation so severe; for I had still to learn, that the tribulation wrought the patience. Hundreds of times have I paced up and down that confined path, murmuring against the cross that my friend so cheerfully bore; and questioning the love that so grievously afflicted her. Sometimes the dumb boy, then in the first steps of instruction, would come to me, increasing my perplexity by showing that the same thoughts occupied his mind. In his imperfect phraseology, he would again and again say, 'Poor Mrs. C. much hurt. What? God love Mrs. C.? God hurt Mrs. C. What? The word-what! inter