who followed him as a plague to infect his mind and inspire him with impious thoughts and wicked designs, was called Demel."

To part from Colmekil, leaving him in the hands of such a biographer, might seem to imply a sneer at his pretensions to a respectable name, and praiseworthy actions. I shall therefore establish him in the opinion of the reader, by an eulogy gleaned from a very different source; namely, the speech of a Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. Irving, of Little Dunkeld, delivered, in the year 1818, before the Commission of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, met to consider the necessity of erecting new parishes in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland:

"The Highlands and Isles were the seat of religious knowledge when the rest of Britain, I may say of Europe, was involved in ignorance and barbarity. This arose from the exértions of the disciples of Columba, the missionaries of Iona, whose light was never totally extinguished in the Highlands and Isles; and I must do the Popish hierarchy the justice to say, that her priests, or parish ministers, though they taught errors not yet altogether eradicated from amongst Protestants, propagated most diligently the fundamental truths of the Gospel, as I had often an opportunity of observing."

Upon a future occasion, I shall recur to this speech of Dr. Irving, of Little Dunkeld.

The next Irish priest likely to prove most interesting to us, and living a little later than Colmekil, appears to be the princely-born, the immaculate, but the hard-hearted woman-hater, St. Kevin, or Colmegen, (fair-begotten). His precocious talent for sanctity was as surprising as that of poor Chatterton for poetry. At twelve years of age, he was placed under the care of three eminent anchorites, Dagain, Lochan, and Enna: and at fifteen, having diligently studied with them the Holy Scriptures, he took the monastic habit. "Some time after," when, it is presumed, he could not be more than twenty, he founded the monastery of Glendalough (valley of the lakes), in perhaps the most peculiarly romantic spot in the county of Wicklow. His reputation, and that of his new establishment, attracted crowds of pious peo-. ple, and the solitude of Glendalough became covered with a celebrated and holy city. Having been created a bishop, Kevin erected a cathedral church, in the same place, to St. Peter and Paul. The ruins of seven or eight buildings yet stand in the lonely valley, bleached and weather-stained and moss-spotted, some of them half embedded in their own rubbish, or in the greensward that hides it. Separate from every other relique, and much more ancient than every other, towers one of those round pillars, found only in Ireland and the East, upon the era of the building of which, or upon their use or purpose, no two antiquaries can agree. Doubtless, it was Kevin's attraction to found in Glendalough his first monastery; for, whenever the primitive priesthood of Ireland met with one of those mysterious indicators of a forgotten people, there they constructed their simple cells. Hewn in the solid and perpendicular rock of a mountain, which blackens with its shadow the waters of the valley, is a cave well-known as "St. Kevin's bed," and as the scene of his abominable cruelty to the love-sick Cathleen. It hangs at a fearful height over the lough, and in order to enter it, you must first ascend above it, and then creep down an in-sloping ledge,

where a single false step were destruction. And yet, to the edification of the natives, the then Great Unknown safely achieved the task two or three years ago; and so did the poor Cathleen thirteen hundred years ago, but not with his impunity. The young, the comely, the famed St. Kevin, had been haunted by her fluttering sighs, and her sad, sad glances, out of all his cloisters in the valley, and he scaled this mountain and hewed this cave to hide himself from her. But the persevering maiden, rendered sagacious by a passion that indeed often makes us wise (after it has made us fools), tracked him, in her searchings and wanderings, after his disappearance, by the fresh-pulled green rushes which he had provided for his flinty couch; and which, during his progress up the mountain, had fallen from his bundle. Careless of the perils of her way, she suddenly presented her blue, tearful eyes, her streaming golden hair, and her glowing cheeks, at the threshold of the boy-hermit's cell and he, as suddenly, started from his chilling meditations, and pushed her into the deep, black waters beneath. The young tiger! Had Potiphar's wife been-not Potiphar's wife, but a tender, lovelorn, love-inspiring virgin, it is odds that Joseph himself would have left him the shadow of a precedent for such conduct: at all events, the generous-hearted brother of the little Benjamin could never have murdered the poor girl. Even St. Senanus, in the opinion of Mr. Thomas Moore, must have hesitated; for the melodious bard of Erin, though he faithfully records the rude refusal of the saint of the Shannon to allow the lady to land out of her skiff, on a very dark night, upon the shores of his prudish Island, yet surmises, that if she had taken no notice of his surliness, but waited till morning,

"And given the Saint one rosy smile,

She never had left his lovely isle."

By the way, the beautiful version of this tragical story of Cathleen and Kevin in the Irish Melodies, endeavours, in poetical mercy to Kevin's character, to soften the atrocity of his act. Mr. Moore insinuates that previous to the real appearance of his unhappy admirer, the barbarous young saint had been asleep and dreaming of her proffered endearments, and that when he actually pushed her into the lake, he had only started up, in the impulse of his dream, to inflict that unmeasured punishment upon her shadow. But this account would sink, rather than raise St. Kevin, in the opinion of all Christian people. In the situation of a dream, above all other situations, his iron nature ought to have been off its guard; but instead of that it prompts him to be as ferocious as in his most severe waking moments even he could be. So that Mr. Moore would, for his sake, have done better by adhering to the plain prose of the fact, as authentic tradition relates it.

There is a pretty circumstance connected with this tale, about the sky-lark never being heard or seen in the neighbourhood of Glendalough, which I fear I forget, or at least do not distinctly remember. Perhaps the peasants, giving different accounts of the means by which Cathleen discovered her murderer's retreat, told me something like what follows. After much disconsolate wandering through the valley, she sat herself down to rest upon the shores of the gloomy water, and fixing her eye on one of those aerial songsters, as he shot upward from a tuft close at hand, unconsciously followed his ascent into the

heavens, until, as he passed Kevin's bed, the morose Saint peeped out to deprecate his interruption in his devotions, and thus became revealed to her glance; and after the catastrophe, the Saint, blaming the skylark for the whole misfortune, cursed him in all his generations, and commanded him and them never again to appear in Glendalough; an injunction which ever after, and to this day, he and they reverently observe.

We have already found Dr. Ledwich vainly endeavouring to deny the existence of St. Patrick. We now meet him making a similar attempt on the life of the next old Irish priest we would glance atSt. Canice, namely, or Kenny. In his "Antiquities of Irishtown and Kilkenny," the Doctor says" The first settlement of the Gael seems to have been on low ground, along the margin of Nore"-(my native Nore! my own gentle, curving, crystal river! on thy tufted banks were woven my first wild-garlands of song, and wooed and won the smiles that then and now make sunshine for my heart! Blooming and joyous be those banks for ever! Clear and untroubled thy waters, laughing in the sun!-Still may the earliest water-lilies spring up upon thy edge, and the earliest sigh of spring dimple thy shining face! At the mere sound of thy soft name, behold how I leave the dry Dr. Ledwich to gambol one moment by thy side-but I must return to him-and to repay thee for the separation, perchance, my native Nore, thou may'st some day command exclusive honours from my pen. Reader, forgive me, and look back to the last word of the quotation.) "The high land was covered with a wood, and from this circumstance had a Celtic name, and was called Coil or Kyle-ken-uï, the wooded head or hill, near the river, and by the natives, Cillcannigh, or Kilkenny!" Stating, however, that by other accounts Kilkenny is named after St. Canice, or Kenny, and his cil or kil, built near the old round tower which he found on the spot, Dr. Ledwich proceeds to scout the vulgar and groundless notion."- "We have," he continues, "numberless instances of the monks, in dark ages, personifying rivers and places like the heathen mythologists. Thus they have made of the river Shannon or Senus, St. Senanus, and of the town of Down or Donun, St. Dunus." How does he know? and is it not just as good an assertion-for the Doctor only asserts that of St. Senanus, and St. Dunus, they made Senus or Shannon, and Donun or Down?-are not places called after persons, as often, at least, as persons are invented out of places? But no matter. All this means, though the meaning is only insinuated, that no such person as Kenny built a cil or kil on the site of the present cathedral of St. Canice; for if it be admitted that a man of that name did so, Kil and Kenny joined together, would certainly come nearer than does the Doctor's round-about derivation to the compound-Kilkenny. Would he say that the syllable Kil, which begins so many old names of places in old Ireland, is not generally allowed to mean church? P. 71 of his own work, he admits that in several instances it does: and why not in this one? Merely because he wants to make problematic the exist

*

* For example: a nervous English writer of Erin met a fierce-looking Irish giant, with a great shillelagh in his hand, on the road side, and the following dialogue occurred between them. "Pray, where have you been?"-" I went to Kilone!"" And where are you going?"-"I'm going to Kilmany!"-" And then?""I'll be going to Kilmore!"-"Ay? and then ?"-" Why, then, I'll go to Kilenall!"-The catechist ran away.

ence of the good St. Kenny. But he stands alone in his etymology. "The Nore floweth beside Kilkenny," writes Camden; "which is as much as to say, the cell or church of Canice, who for the sanctity of his life was much renowned." Holinshed also testifies against the levelling Doctor:-" Canicus, a holy and learned abbot, after whom this town is called Kilkenny, was born in the county of that name, or, as some think, in Connaught. So does Ware, Harris, Archbishop Usher; and hear even the Encyclopædia Britannica (ed. 1792): “ Kilkenny takes its name from the cell or church of St. Canice, who was an eminent hermit."

Having now set the old Saint on his legs again, let us mortify the Doctor's friends (for it will mortify them) by continuing his history. "So remarkable was he for piety and learning, that he was reputed of all men to be as well a mirror of the one, as a paragon of the other. Being stepped farther into years, he made his repair into England; where, cloistering himself in an abbey, he was wholly wedded to his books and his devotions. Having received orders, he travelled, by consent of his fellow monks, to Rome; and in Italy he gave such manifest proofs of his piety, as to this day, in some parts thereof, he is highly renowned."-Holinshed. "He returned from Italy to Ireland, where he was occupied preaching to the inhabitants of the northern parts; and returned again into Britain, living an eremitical life at the foot of a great mountain, amongst the Picts. But some religious men of Ireland discovering where he was, sent messengers to him, and persuaded him, against his will, to return to a more useful life, in preaching the Gospel in Ireland."-Sir James Ware, Writers of Ireland. Ware adds that he wrote a life of Colmekil, and a volume of the Four Evangelists, called by the ancients Glas-Kynnock.

What does Doctor Ledwich want to do by these attempts to destroy our belief in the old Priesthood of Ireland?

LONDON LYRICS.

Merchant Tailors' School.

AT Merchant Tailors' School, what time
Old Bishop held the rod,

The boys rehearsed the old man's rhyme
Whilst he would smile and nod.

Apart I view'd a little child

Who join'd not in the game:
His face was what mammas call mild
And fathers dull and tame.

Pitying the boy, I thus address'd
The pedagogue of verse:-
“Why doth he not, Sir, like the rest,

Your epigrams rehearse ?"

"Sir!" answered thus the aged man,
"He's not in Nature's debt;

His ears so tight are seal'd, he can-
Not learn his alphabet."

"Why not?" I cried ;-whereat to me

He spoke in minor clef:

"He cannot learn his A, B, C,

Because he's D, E, F.”

THE LAST OF FROBERG'S REGIMENT.

IT was, I think, in the year 1807 that an event, or rather a series of events, marked by no ordinary features, took place in the Island of Malta. The wonder-workers who patch up romances out of the refuse of fiction and scraps of incredible history, have not, hitherto, employed the circumstances, some of which will be now detailed, to assist the sluggishness of their wits; and no other reason can be assigned for this omission than that the facts themselves have not been accessible to them. They were hushed up at the time by those who had any interest in them as performers or bystanders, for the discredit with which the promulgation of them would have been attended. Their origin carried with it some imputation upon the discernment and honesty of our Government; and the extent to which they were driven seemed, in no small degree, owing to the uncertainty and feebleness of the measures instituted by the local authorities. The period, also, was a stirring one; and those who actually were acquainted with these events, undervalued their importance when set by the side of the great political occurrences of the day; and perhaps also from regarding them at too close a point of view, were prevented, as in all other cases, from measuring their real magnitude. A stranger piece of detached history will not, however, be discovered in the busy annals of that critical time; and some amusement may be found in the imperfect recollections which a score of years has not been able to efface.

During the progress of the war, when the necessity of large military supplies was hardly satisfied by the resources of our own country, the expedient was adopted by our Government of entering into a commercial contract with different speculators, who engaged, for a certain remuneration, to levy troops according to the emergency from the peasantry of different countries, to be rendered disposable for foreign service, where that service did not appear to require more trustworthy or more veteran troops. A French noble, devoted to the Bourbons, and par consequence an emigrant at the time, proposed to raise for the Mediterranean service, a regiment composed entirely of Greeks. The bargain was struck, and M-proceeded to gather together from the Levant, the Archipelago, and the Continent, a horde of various men, Greeks, Albanians, Sclavonians, and what not, who were to be enrolled under the English banners, with the title of Froberg's Regiment. He took with him some German coadjutors, not merely to assist in raising the recruits, but also to assist in their training, and to introduce the discipline of their own nation. In a short time the men were equipped, and so far brought into a show of martial order, as to be deemed fit for employment on some southern station. Accordingly, they were transported to Malta, and appointed to occupy one of the insulated districts of strong fortification with which that renowned Island is covered. Fort Ricasoli, placed at the extreme projection of an angular neck of land, corresponds with Fort St. Elmo on the opposite shore, and the two together command the entrance of that harbour, which is esteemed one of the most easy and secure in the world. In itself a post of considerable strength, it is additionally guarded by the outworks which extend and ramify with the extension of the ground itself, until they fall into the Cotonera Lines, a series of communicating fortifications in the interior, planned, I believe, and in part executed, by French engineers, during the occupation of the island by Napoleon. From the sea, this fort, if tolerably garrisoned, would be quite impracticable. From the land-side it could only be reached by surmounting a long succession of strongly defended posts, at each of which the assailants would be subject to immense, almost insuperable disadvantages of position.

It was here, then, that Froberg's Regiment was destined to pass its noviciate; and in order to perfect them still farther than their first commanders unassisted could have done, an English drill-serjeant or two, with an officer, were appointed to the same duty, and some artillerymen, as usual, remained in the garrison to superintend the guns. Still, however, the German adjutant and his co-operators had the chief burthen of methodizing these crude