special invitation for a few days at Mr. Crawley's. The latter had come to take possession of an estate purchased for him by his eldest brother, the attorney, in the neighbourhood of Dunore; whence they were to proceed on a visit to the bishop of the diocese.

Ifever there was a period in the history of a country when it might be said, that

Crime gave wealth, and wealth gave impu. dence,"

it was that period in the history of Ireland, when rebellion, excited for the purpose of effecting a ruinous union, · called forth all the worst passions of humanity, and armed petty power with the rod of extermination; placing torture at the disposal of personal vindictiveness, and making falsehood, treachery, and corruption, the stepping-stones to power, office, and emolument.

The wealth, influence, and importance of the Crawley family took their

date from that memorable and fright ful epoch in the tragedy of Irish history, which produced both moral and political ruin to a long-devoted country, under every form of degradation, of which civilized seciety is susceptible. Previous to that period the three brothers had remained buried in the obscurity which belonged to their social and intellectual mediocrity. The eldest, Darby Crawley, the country attorney, found his highest dignity in being the factotum of the two Barons Fitzadelm, the agent of their embarrassed property, on which he lent them money saved by his father in their service, until the little that remained of the estate fell into his hands. Through the interest of his employer he had been put into the commission of the peace.. The year 1798 found him a magistrate, and fortune and his merits had done the rest.

The second brother, whose gravity was mistaken for ability by his father,

(the illiterate land-bailiff of the Fitzadelms) was made a gentleman by the patent of a college education, and the legal degree of barrister-at-law. He had plied in the courts with an empty green bag, and more empty head, year after year, with fruitless vigilance, till his energy in the melancholy prosecutions, produced by the rebellion, obtained him notice, patronage, place, and a silk gown.

The third brother, at once pompous and officious, servile and oppressive, formed alike to tyrannize or cringe, had been placed a clerk in a government office; where, by his pliancy and industry, he made himself useful to a personage of shallow endowment and official importance, whose political views and flimsy attainments rendered agents thus qualified necessary to his purposes. The dull but zealous commissioner, who could not be daunted, because he could not feel, was deemed

a proper person to represent a government borough in the Union parliament; and having effected "this most filthy bargain," was rewarded with the place of first commissioner of a particular board, one of those boards instituted and perpetuated for the purpose of paying such debts to such creditors as the members of the Crawley family.

Mr. Commisioner, like his elder brothers, characteristically represented the BUREAUCRATIE, or office tyranny, by which Ireland has been so long governed; whose members, arrogating to themselves exclusively the virtue of loyalty, and boldly assuming its insignia and device, have become formidable and oppressive to all who thwart their career, question their title to this unfounded assumption, or insinuate that their loyalty lies more in their places 'than their principles. The basis of fortunes being thus broadly laid, industry and zeal were not wanting to these wise

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men of Gotham, for raising the superstructure to the imposing elevation which it now exhibited. The elder brother, Darby, was inferior in acquirements and destitute of that education which his father's increasing prosperity had enabled him to bestow upon his younger sons; his success, however, was equal to their's, and his places and avocations were still more numerous. He had been a crown-solicitor, at a moment when that place was the most inordinately lucrative: he was treasurer of a county; and he united to these trust-worthy situations those three capacities, whose unity is named in the country parts of Ireland, "the tripple tyranny of the land:" he was agent to an absentee nobleman, an active magistrate, and captain of a yeomanry corps.

As agent, he kept off the landlord by misrepresentations of the political and local state of the country, and worried the tenants, by obliging them to labour