exigency of Scripture. His conception was distinctly that of a being to whose operation all the evil of all times and all places is owing, of a veritable a diffused through the earth's atmosphere. Hence his mind had to take up with the notion of a multiplicity of devils; for he could only conceive the Arch-spirit acting corporeally through imps or emanations. Goethe's Mephistopheles might pass for one of these.

It would be possible farther to illustrate Luther's conception of the Evil Principle by presenting a great many of his specific sayings respecting him. It would be found from these that his conception was that of a being to whom evil of all kinds was dear. The Devil with him was a meteorological agent. Devils, he said, are in woods, and waters, and dark poolly places, ready to hurt passersby; there are devils also in the thick black clouds, who cause hail and thunders, and lightnings, and poison the air, and the fields and the pastures. When such things happen, philosophers say they are natural, and ascribe them to the planets, and I know not what all. The Devil he believed also to be the patron of witchcraft. The Devil, he said, had the power of deceiving the senses, so that one would swear he heard or saw something, while really the whole was an illusion. The Devil also was at the bottom of dreaming and somnambulism. He was likewise the author of diseases. "I hold," said Luther, "that the Devil sendeth all heavy diseases and sicknesses upon people." Diseases are as it were the Devil striking people; only in striking he must use some natural instrument, as a murderer uses a sword. When our sins get the upper hand, and all is going wrong, then the Devil must be God's hangman, to clear away obstructions and to blast the earth with famines and pestilences. Whatsoever procures death, that is the Devil's trade. All sadness and melancholy come of the Devil. So does insanity. But the Devil has no farther power over the soul of a maniac. The Devil works in the affairs of nations. He looks always upward, taking an interest in what is high and pompous; he does not look downward, taking little interest in what is insignificant

and lowly. He likes to work on the great scale; to establish an influence, as it were, over the central minds which manage affairs. The Devil is also a spiritual tempter. He is the opponent of the Divine grace in the hearts of individuals. This was the aspect of the doctrine of Satanic agency which would be most used in preaching; and accordingly Luther's propositions on the point are very specific. He had, as it were, ascertained the laws of Satanic operation upon the human spirit. The Devil, he said, knows Scripture well, and uses it in argument. He shoots fearful thoughts, which are his fiery darts, into the hearts of the godly. The Devil is acquainted even with those mysterious enjoyments, those spiritual excitements, which the Christian would suppose a being like him must be ignorant of. What gross inexperienced fellows, he says, are these Papist commentators! They are for interpreting Paul's "thorn in the flesh" to be merely fleshly lust; because they know no other kind of tribulation than that. But though the Devil has great power over the human mind, he is limited in some respects. He has no means, for instance, of knowing the thoughts of the faithful until they give them utterance. Again, if the Devil be once foiled in argument, he cannot tempt that soul again on the same tack. The Papacy being with Luther the grand existing form of evil, he of course recognised the Devil in it. If the Papacy were once overthrown, Satan would lose his stronghold. Never on earth again would he be able to pile up such another edifice. No wonder, then, that at that moment all the energies of the enraged and despairing Spirit were employed to prop up the reeling and tottering fabric. Necessarily, therefore, Luther and Satan were personal antagonists. Satan saw that the grand struggle was with Luther. If he could but crush him by physical violence, or make him forget God, then the world would be his own again. So often did he wrestle with Luther's spirit; often in nightly heart-agonies did he try to shake his faith in Christ. But he was never victorious. "All the Duke Georges in the universe," said Luther, "are not equal to a single devil; and

"I would

I do not fear the Devil." wish," he said, "to die rather by the Devil's hands than by the hands of Pope or Emperor; for then I should die at all events by the hands of a great and mighty prince of the world; but if I die through him, he shall eat such a bit of me as will be his suffocation; he shall spew me out again; and at the last day, I, in requital, shall devour him." When all other means were unavailing, Luther found that the Devil could not stand humour. In his hours of spiritual agony, he tells us, when the Devil was heaping up his sins before him, so as to make him doubt if he should be saved, and when he could not drive him away by uttering sentences of Holy

Writ, or by prayer, he used to address him thus: "Devil, if, as you say, Christ's blood, which was shed for my sins, be not sufficient to ensure my salvation, can't you pray for me yourself, Devil?" At this, the Devil invariably fled, "quia est superbus spiritus et non potest ferre contemptum sui."

What with Luther was wrestling with the Devil, we at this day would call low spirits. Life must be a much more insipid thing now than it was then. O what a soul that man must have had, under what a weight of feeling, that would have crushed a million of us, he must have trod the earth!

If the world were not composed of a race of ungrateful scoundrels, who share your prosperity while it lasts, and, even when gorged with your venison and burgundy, abuse the generous giver of the feast, I am sure I merit a good name and a high reputation in Ireland, at least, where my generosity was unbounded, and the splendour of my mansion and entertainments unequalled by any other nobleman of my time. As long as my magnificence lasted, all the country was free to partake of it; I had hunters sufficient in my stables to mount a regiment of dragoons, and butts of wine in my cellar which would have made whole counties drunk for years. Castle Lyndon became the head-quarters of scores of needy gentlemen, and I never rode a-huntng but I had a dozen young fellows

the best blood of the country ridas my squires and gentlemen of horse. My son, little Castle ndon, was a prince; his breeding

manners, even at his early age, red him to be worthy of the two

noble families from whom he was descended, and I don't know what high hopes I had for the boy, and indulged in a thousand fond anticipations as to his future success and figure in the world. But stern Fate had determined that I should leave none of my race behind me, and ordained that I should finish my career, as I see it closing now-poor, lonely, and childless. I may have had my faults, but no man shall dare to say of me that I was not a good and tender father. I loved that boy passionately, perhaps with a blind partiality; I denied him nothing. Gladly, gladly, I swear, would I have died that his premature doom might have been averted. I think there is not a day since I lost him but his bright face and beautiful smiles do not look down on me out of heaven where he is, and that my heart does not yearn towards him. That sweet child was taken from me at the age of nine years, when he was full of beauty and promise; and so powerful is the hold his memory has of me

that I have never been able to forget him; his little spirit haunts me of nights on my restless, solitary pillow; many a time, in the wildest and maddest company, as the bottle is going round, and the song and laugh roaring about, I am thinking of him. I have got a lock of his soft brown hair hanging round my breast now; it will accompany me to the dishonoured pauper's grave where soon, no doubt, Barry Lyndon's wornout old bones will be laid.

My Brian was a boy of amazing high spirit (indeed, how, coming from such a stock, could he be otherwise?), impatient even of my control, against which the dear little rogue would often rebel gallantly; how much more, then, of his mother's and the women's, whose attempts to direct him he would laugh to scorn. Even my own mother ("Mrs. Barry of Lyndon" the good soul now called herself, in compliment to my new family) was quite unable to check him, and hence yon may fancy what a will he had of his own. If it had not been for that, he might have lived to this day, he might but why repine? Is he not in a better place? would the heritage of a beggar do any service to him? It is best as it is-Heaven be good to us! -and that I, his father, should be left to deplore him.

It was in the month of October I had been to Dublin in order to see a lawyer and a monied man, who had come over to Ireland to consult with me about some sales of mine and the cut of Hackton timber, of which, as I hated the place and was greatly in want of money, I was determined to cut down every stick. There had been some difficulty in the matter. It was said I had no right to touch the timber. The brute peasantry about the estate had been roused to such a pitch of hatred against me, that the rascals actually refused to lay an axe to the trees, and my agent (that scoundrel Larkins) declared that his life was in danger among them if he attempted any further dispoilment (as they called it) of the property. Every article of the splendid furniture was sold by this time, as I need not say, and, as for the plate, I had taken good care to bring it off to Ireland, where it now was in the best of

keeping, my banker's, who had advanced ten thousand pounds on it, which sum I soon had occasion for.

I went to Dublin, then, to meet the Englishmen of business, and so far succeeded in persuading Mr. Splint, a great ship-builder and timber-dealer of Plymouth, of my claim to the Hackton timber, that he agreed to purchase it off-hand at about onethird of its value, and handed me over 5000l., which, being pressed with debts at the time, I was fain to accept. He had no difficulty in getting down the wood, I warrant. He took a regiment of shipwrights and sawyers from his own and the king's yards at Plymouth, and in two months Hackton Park was as bare of trees as the bog of Allen.

I had but ill luck with that accursed expedition and money. I lost the greater part of it in two nights' play at Daly's, so that my debts stood just as they were before; and before the vessel sailed for Holyhead, which carried away my old sharper of a timber-merchant, all that I had left of the money he brought me was a couple of hundred pounds, with which I returned home very disconsolately, and very suddenly, too, for my Dublin tradesmen were hot upon me, hearing I had spent the loan, and two of my wine-merchants had writs out against me for some thousands of pounds.

I bought in Dublin according to my promise, however-for when I give a promise I will keep it at any sacrifices-a little horse for my dear little Bryan, which was to be a present for his tenth birthday, that was now coming on. It was a beautiful little animal and stood me in a good sum. I never regarded money for that dear child. But the horse was very wild. He kicked off one of my horse-boys, who rode him at first, and broke the lad's leg, and, though I took the animal in hand on the journey home, it was only my weight and skill that made the brute quiet.

When we got home I sent the horse away with one of my grooms to a farmer's house to break him thoroughly in, and told Bryan, who was all anxiety to see his little horse, that he would arrive by his birthday, when he should hunt him along with my hounds, and I promised myself no small pleasure in presenting the