pealed; and in 1831 the candle and printed cottons' duty, amount. ing to £950,000. Here is a total exceeding thirty-two millions, and it does not include all the relief granted to Great Britain, even though we deduct duties that were imposed since the war. Up to 1822, according to this return, the relief granted to Ireland was £608,000, under the head of customs, excise, taxes and stamps. In that year and the next the assessed taxes were wholly repealed, the amount being about £300,000. In the latter year the spirit duty was reduced probably £400,000; and in 1824 the protecting duties, estimated at £300,000, were repealed, but that was practically so much encouragement withdrawn from manufacturing industry in Ireland, and transferred to manufacturing industry in Great Britain. Since that there has been a repeal of the leather and coal duties, in which Ireland has participated to the extent probably of £100,000. Here is a total of Irish tax remission amounting to £1,400,000, or £1,700,000, reckoning the removal of the protecting duties as "relief." In 1819 there was an imposition of new taxes, amounting altogether to £3,193,000, and which affected foreign wool, malt, tobacco, coffee, tea, and pepper. The portion of burden thus thrown upon Ireland may be estimated at £450,000. Since 1826, new duties, to the amount of 1s. 4d. have been imposed on spirits, amounting, on the present consumption, to £670,000. The entire customs' duties were "assimilated" in 1823, by which £200,000 was probably imposed on Ireland. Besides, there has been an "assimilation" of the post-office duties, and a new imposition of taxes on glass, paper, and that species of wine most commonly used in Ireland. Estimating the burdens under these heads at £80,000, which is manifestly far less than the actual amount, we have a total of new taxation to just the extent of "relief” granted, leaving out of consideration the amount of the protecting duties. Including that amount, the balance in our favour is £300,000, and in favour of Great Britain 32 millions!! If we received relief proportioned to the increase of our burdens since the Union, and to the British relief, the total of tax remission would have been £4,000,000 at the very least. If the Act of Union had been carried into full and fair effect to the present time, Ireland would have received that relief from taxation, and her surplus revenue, amounting at least to £2,000,000, including uncredited and absentee contributions, would, after payment of the full interest of the 67 millions before spoken of, be now applicable either to the remission of her debt, or to works of internal improvement. The Act of Union is termed, in the King's speech from the throne, an “inviolable" act. If the appellation were true, Ireland would be far in advance of her present position. Nothing but repeal itself would confer so great a benefit upon Ireland, as an act which would give full effect to the Act of Union. M. S. FABULA PERSICA: BY SIR WILLIAM JONES. TRANSLATED. It chanced, they say, as Persia's thirsty plain A single drop that hap'ly miss'd its way, "To this strange place, conveyed by means unknown— As from it these self-bumbling accents fell, A pitying oyster took it in its shell, There to a pearl it chang'd its form, and now The richest gem that decks our Monarch's brow, By its example serves to teach mankind How good it is to have an humble mind. ODE ARABICA: BY SAME. TRANSLATED. Whether, my friend, you snatch delight And while to music's dulcet sounds, Or hang upon their glance.— With it each zephyr vies, And balmy slumber sheds her dews Upon your closing eyes. These joys delightful Spring doth give,- B. B. The Church plate which was hidden in the old Manor-house, at the Reformation, THERE is an Irish river, which, by its channelled current, separates the forests and castle mansions of two wealthy manorial estates, whose legendary history of its banks and streams, its falls, islands, and ruined Friaries, whose walls it washes, should not glide with it into forgetfulness. The Anna Liffey has romance of its own, unsung, untold. One incident or two, connected with its course and flood, shall be essayed a rescue from oblivion. Some twenty miles before it meets the ocean tide, there is a branch, whose character, from the rough, grey rocks that dam up and fling back its brawling and fretted waves, is more stern and startling than the glassy, unrippled flow the peaceful river loves to murmur in;-a narrow, but impetuous rivulet pours down its foam and waters into a small creek, that juts into the shelving banks that enclose the fair and vast domain of a once powerful and widely-endowed monastery, the mouldering remains of whose shrines, chapels, and refectories, still survive, to prove that consecrated frame-work will not all decay--the turbulent point of conflux increases the agitation of the vexed and swollen stream. One small, verdant grassy tablet, which is yet inlaid with the memorial stone of some pious founder of the Abbey, preserves the epigraph of "the Chapel Island"-it being the keeling-place the most rigid of the brethren chose for their midnight prayers. Lower down, some hundred yards, upon the opposite side, where the river makes a turn, there is a beautifully-wild and natural bower, but deserted and untrodden; for, many years before, a peasant's children, strolling through the wood, upon an August evening, entered their favourite arbour, to rest, and share the wild fruits they had gathered a stranger there was sleeping; their fear yielded to their curiosity, and hand-in-hand they stopped to look upon him-still and sound was his sleep; they knelt down to listen, but his breathing could not be heard—he was deada gown of the University of the Trinity was folded, and wrapped around him whether death crept on him unguardedly, as he lay, or whether his sleep was a poisoned slumber, was never revealed; he was buried in the place, thenceforward known as "the Student's Bed;" and a dark and wild conjecture, which grew into tradition, environed the spot with a protecting superstition. But the holiness and awe of the monastery ruins-the green beauty of the Chapel Island-the traditional mystery that mantled the student's bed, could not interest, or thrill the minds and fears of the country's inhabitants, equally with the terror, danger, and enticing secret of the Ghoulagh's pool, whose black and sluggish waters never copied with its mimic umbrage, the mighty elm that projected over the dreaded and fa thomless abyss. The peasants bequeathed to their children the belief, that, at the general suppression and plunder of the religious houses, the Fathers of the institution flung great proportion of their valuable store into the river's channel, there to repose in its bed—a prize for the daring of futurity.-The chased chalices of the persecuted monastic worship-the glittering and golden lamps-the cups of Indian silver-the amulet-rings-the pearl crucifixes-the festival plate, rich in "The grandeur and glory of jewelled gold"— the unclipped and unknown coins, with the bones and skeletons of the lost and drowned-all slept-safe, alike from the searches of mourning friends, and avarice's never-ceasing thirst. It has been said, that the spirit of a young and lovely girl, who disappeared one spring night, when returning late along the river's verge-and the cowled phantom of a long-buried monk, have been seen by belated wanderers-her form shivering over the deadly brink, on the bank opposite the monk's uneasy shade, who would gaze down into the cold and watery treasure-house of perished wealth, (the river running on, between the shadows, like twilight between the realms of the moon and sun,) and then flit away among the cloister arches. It was the clear and frosty afternoon of Christmas-eve; the faithful bird that warbles his winter melody was singing cheerfully on the bared branches of the torpid trees, and the sun shed down a feeble glitter on the hard iced ground and chilling river. The low door of a cottage hid in the most sequestered glade of the wood was unlatched, and a man wrapping a dark wide cloak around his figure, which was dignified and tall, nodded an adieu to the companion he left behind, and walked solitarily on through the forest. Albert M'Carthy and his orphan brother were the sons of a rich and reputable merchant, who, dying in their early childhood, entrusted them with their heritage into the hands of a guardian, who betrayed and robbed them; their hopes, but not their spirits, he destroyed. The brothers preserved each a massive gold chain and ring-a birth-day present of their father; these they took off and laid by until better days should come, and their pride they enshrined with them also. The degrees which the college liberality offers in lieu of the servitude she can wring from the penury of genius, they worked for and obtained. The times were turbulent, and trembling on that awful political crisis from whose rockings the land has not yet all rested. They saw the turn of the tide would come to waft the bold to power and eminence, or the grave, and waited for it. Like two young trees, the last of the forest, unhewn by the settler's axe, they had grown up inseparably and fondly attached-they had vowed to breast the stream of life and fortune, or together sink. The fire of Albert's temperament, too prone to yield to temptation and flash into error, was allayed and restrained by the advice and affectionate entreaties of Edward M'Carthy, whose actions were always guided by principles of stern and Spartan honor. Albert entered the Student's Bed; to his surpise, it contained an occupant, a silver-haired man, advanced to the farthest extremity of old age, though destroying time had not dulled the powers of intellect, was lying down upon a dried bed of withered foliage, contemplating earnestly those analogous emblems of the decline of our life's short and changeful season. He looked up piercingly into Albert's face, as he drew near him, and courteously raised his hat. "Youth and age, young man, will both have their winter, and both may feel it too; should I die here, as is my trust I shall, I think you will have the charity to close my eyes and lay me with my clay; you have not been long enough in the world to have lost humanitycherish the cherub before it wings its way for ever from your heart; it will bless you for it." "I promise you your prayer, old man." May your own be heard when next you offer them. Know you the history of this place? You do not-listen then." And the old man with elevated hand and burning eyes told Albert THE TRADITION. Whoever shall be in the student's bed on the first midnight of each August, alone or with a companion, (three must not enter,) shall hear or discover that which shall be an interest and a remembrance to their life's last hour. Albert smiled with incredulity; but with his parting words the dying man charged him solemnly to slight not his saying, but remember. His corse was laid in the boat that was his bier. The brothers carried it to the cloister ground, and gave it there a grave. The tale they thought no more of. The twilight of the first evening in August, 1796, was cool and tranquil; the fairy breeze, which in vain endeavoured to ruffle and freshen the current of the Liffey, sighed languidly across its warm stream, which yet retained with glowing fidelity the power and ardency of that day's scorching sun. The refracting sands were shining and hot as the wearisome and barren tract of the great and everlasting desert. Albert and Edward M'Carthy stood upon the high green bank which was nearly undermined by the deep and gushing streamlet, which, sweeping down in its rocky gully the shrubbed declivity of the opposite demesne, from a pure small spring that in olden days supplied the cloisters, barred off the chapel island from the territory that owned the abbey's sway. Their rods were untied-their lancewood joints screwed home-the knot of their casting lines secured-the floating fly which appeared the evening's favourite of the trout that rose at it, caught and set up, and the unreeled line dipped and thrown out. "We have lost time to-night, Edward; 'tis nine o'clock, and I fear the fog will soon be on us; a mist is rising from the low grounds now. I think we had better separate; let us divide the river and not encroach. I shall go lower down and fish on from the Ghoulagh, then wait for you-say where ?" "I shall meet and join you at the student's bed. St. Anthony, if it was he who sent the draught of fishes, be with you." And the brothers parted. VOL. I. NO. XII. 5 F |