bounds of sober Christian truth, as some said, "had given themselves up to far-fetched speculations and airy mysticism."

Describing this school of religionists, one perhaps might say "they had spun gossamer threads of biblical misinterpretation, which, floating from text to text, as from spray to spray, sparkled in a sunshine of their own making.'

We do not assert that this is a correct representation of their bible criticism or their special views. Our province is not to criticise; we merely inform the reader of the way in which they and their ideas were spoken of by several persons, and we only mention the matter at all because of its effect upon the high-strung sensitive physique of Katie Rowan.

She was taught, and she accepted the doctrine, that the present dispensation had utterly failed, and was about to end-and that all that Christianity had done, or was intended to do, was to gather out from the nations a band of witnesses.

By an ingenious manipulation of phrases and dates from the prophetical books of Scripture, it was now near 20 years ago-pressed upon her settled conviction that a given hour might, and within three or four years must, see the end of the present condition of sublunary things; and every occurrence in nature or in the political world-every great thunder storm, every unusual downpour of rain, every visitation of sickness, in whatever land, and every war or rumour of war, and manifestation of social unrest the world over-was looked upon by Katie as the sure prognostic of the final catastrophe that was speedily approaching. Poor Katie, absorbed in visions of a sublime future at hand, and her mind wound up to the highest pitch of tension, was altogether divorced from common life, and would not have been surprised to hear, at any moment, the angelic trump that would wake the slumbering dead, and inaugurate the great millenium age of purity and peace in the world that the trumpet did not sound was indeed a trial to her ardent expectation and desire.

In vain did her brother set before her the fact that never-in any period-has the course of time been without the phenomena she enumerated; that war, insurrection, pestilence, tempest, and earthquake have-in one place or another-marked every decade of the world's history. Katie was invulnerable to every argument. "Yes, it might be so, in a measure,' was the easy answer, "but not in the degree which is now evident." She had, in fact, made up her mind that she had got possession of a stupendous truth, and, with all the devoutness and intensiveness of a trusting and enthusiastic nature, she clung to it. In her view, there

fore, there was nothing in the world, whether in nature, science, or art, much worth thinking of or acting about-that her duty was a passive waiting and watching. "What use can there be in pursuing the aims or meddling in the strife of an expiring age," she would urge. "There was one on the very eve of coming who would bring in the age of gold, and, with a rod of iron-and that in an hour-would break in pieces the oppressor, set the captives free, and reign in bodily presence over an emancipated world."

Garrett, sometimes a little annoyed at what he called Katie's transcendentalism and dreaminess, would rally her upon her "wonderful expectations;" but the young girl, strong in her belief, was proof against his every assaultsaid she was "grieved at Garrett's want of faith, and hoped he would one day come, and that not too late, to think as she did." His answer was "I commend to you, Katie, a passage from a great German scholar." "What is it!" she asked. This," he said, “ Sickly pietism has divorced religious feeling from culture and a rational belief, and has degraded it into a dismal faith, whose object is to rob existence of every element of charm and zest.' Good bye, Katie dear; I'm off to lecture."

Ir has been asked, and without gaining a satisfactory reply, how it comes to pass, that medical students, who, as a rule, are the most rollicking and rowdy of embryo professional men, turn out in after years the most proper and sedate members of society. No one in any town or city of the kingdom, not excepting the clergyman, is more staid and correct, in all his goings and comings, than is the doctorand yet peradventure the very same individual, during his period of attendance at dissecting room and lecture, was a leader in practical jokes and merry "sprees" of the most pronounced character.

The Medical School which Garrett attended was not more exempt than others, from that love of wild enterprise and fun-yet free from wanton mischievousness-which commonly obtains in such establishments.

"I say Garrett," said a comrade to him one day, "have you heard what Noblett proposes to do? No less than to try his powers in the Nationalist's Hall. You know what he can do in his own peculiar line. We expect the rarest fun, and he hopes a good lot of us will be there, to enjoy the joke, and, also, to protect him,

as it is likely it will be necessary. You'll come, won't you?"

"Noblett is a rare genius in his way," answered Garrett, "and I should dearly wish to see the bewilderment and mystification he will certainly work on those who do not know his secret; but I'm sorry to say that some reading that I must get through will render it quite impossible for me to be present." "Oh, bother the reading," was the reply. "That's always the way with Rowanyou, reading, reading. I tell you what, my good fellow, if you don't take jolly good care you'll get Materia Medica and Osteology, and all the rest of it, on the brain-so you will-and will die a raving maniac; and then you know the words of Byron on Kirk White

'Like the struck eagle stretched upon the plain.' There, the quotation is rather rusty, and I need not go on with it."

"Thank you for your care and thought about me," said Garrett, "but what I have said is, indeed, the case, and you must excuse me."

"No, Garrett, we'll not excuse you, and that's the long and the short of it," was the reply of one that was joined in by others. "If you won't go for the fun of the thing, you must on Noblett's account, you're about the stoutest among us, he'll want the guardianship of your two good fists, my fine fellow, and you know you owe him some services for all the prizes you have taken from him."

Garrett still persisted in his inability to go, but was met with several interjections of "nonsense," "fiddlesticks," and such like. The result may be surmised, the voice of the many prevailed against his better judgment and real wishes.

"I'll call for you at seven o'clock," said his friend Tom Littledale, "and take you to our rendezvous, for we have agreed to meet at a certain place, and then go together." The place of meeting was in Street, in a large room hired for the purpose. At the end of the room was an elevated platform, over which green flags were artistically draped, one large banner being emblazoned with the Irish harp and crown, while the English Royal Arms were conspicuously absent.

Arriving early, the band of medical students a rather large one-found the room but half occupied, so that easily they took up a position, as they had pre-arranged, close to the platform. It was well they came in time to accomplish this, for soon afterwards, men, most of them of the artizan class, thronged the room, up to the very entrance.

A band of music, from a gallery on high at the end of the room fronting the platform, filled up the interval, before the meeting, with well played national tunes. "Garryowen,"

"The Wearing of the Green," "Erin-go-bragh," and other spirited airs, enlivened the time, and stirred the pulses of the awaiting assembly.

At last the speakers, amidst thunders of applause, appeared upon the platform. In due order, a chairman (a well-known Dublin tradesman) was chosen by acclamation to preside, and the proceedings began. Dryden writes of certain Englishmen, two centuries ago, who,

"Tempting the depths of eloquence profound,

In the unmanageable stream were drowned." Of the sister land a historian writes, "Of the many gifts which nature has bestowed on Irishmen, the fatallest is, perhaps, the fluency of speech--the fertility in florid diction which at once exhausts the energies that should take the form of action, and makes them the victims of their own illusions. Ideas so brilliantly expressed seem too beautiful to be untrue. Their eloquence flowing like a mountain torrent, and metaphor and simile flashing like prismatic colours in the spray."

We are far from thinking with Froude that eloquence is a universal Irish gift, yet it is certain that at the national meeting before us no mean powers of utterance were displayed by the various orators called upon to speak.

We shall pass over several glowing effusions to give the reader a sentence or two from the speech of a young orator of genius, Malachy O'Byrne, which, enunciated in a clear, racy, and deep-toned voice, produced a powerful effect upon the audience; an effect, not a little enhanced too by his handsome face and graceful elocution. That he was a sincere enthusiast besides, and had an ardent love for Ireland was evident. Indeed the sequel of his history will prove that he loved his country "not wisely, but too well."

"O, my brothers," he cried, "love your country; your country is your home, the fair and stately house which God has given you, defined by natural limits, where are around us, those whom we understand best, and with whom we most readily sympathise, and who are inspired with a common natural genius, to work out a special destiny, amid the sister nations of the world.

"But our country, my brothers, is the victim of a power which refuses us equal rights, and which suppresses, and for six centuries has suppressed the ideas, energies, and aspirations of the Irish people.

"No nation, my brothers, can rise to its true mission, intended by providence, or to its real manhood, without independence, and there can be no independence without liberty.

"You, my brothers, are by right the true masters of your native soil; you are the sole interpreters of your own law of life.

Advance, perform, strive, pull up evil by

"Dare to confront the tyranny which oppresses you as a Colossus of brass, and it will become an object of contempt, for you will detect its feet of clay.

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Think, my brothers, of those who have struggled in the high and sacred cause before you; who have shed their life-blood upon the altar of their country's freedom; who have been sublime martyrs for their native land. Oh! that we may rise to the sanctity of that idea for which they died."

The orator had reached this stage of his harangue, uttering words of grandiloquent sound, but, perhaps, of little practical and definite meaning, but for this reason all the more effective upon the emotions of his halfeducated auditory, when suddenly a voice, during a short pause in one of his flowing periods, addressed him-seeming to come from the empty space between his head and the ceiling

"Malachy O'Byrne! Malachy O'Byrne!" it said, "In the name of the Holy Virgin and the Saints, I call upon thee to hear me.' The

young man started at the sound of his name, and looked up, as all around him and before him did, to catch sight of the speaker. But no form was visible, nothing but empty air; and as there was no opening in the ceiling from which the words heard could have possibly come, the young man and the other up-gazers with him came to the conclusion that their ears had deceived them, and that they had been the victims of a temporary hallucination.

The orator, therefore, recovering his classical posture, and gathering up his energies, was about to resume his speech, when a second time, in more solemn and commanding tone, the same mysterious voice was heard to repeat the young man's name and demand his attention. Turning pale as death, he darted his glance into the vacant space above his head, lost in wonder and trepidation, but fully convinced that he was the object of some supernatural visitation-his being a member of the Roman Catholic Church served both to suggest and confirm this belief, for that such visitations, and that in no small number, are up to the present day vouchsafed to men, is the assured declaration of her highest ecclesiastical authorities.

Kneeling in awe upon the platform, but with head raised, the young man had courage to say, "In the name of God, who art thou? speak, for I am ready to hear thee."

"I am the spirit of Daniel O'Connell," was the answer; 66 now for sixteen years being purged from the stains of mortal life in purgatorial fire, but I am this day released to ascend to the regions of eternal blessedness, and, on my way, I have been permitted to visit thee, young man, and admonish thee.

"Malachy O'Byrne, forbear to urge thy countrymen to insurrection and deeds of blood; such as you, years ago, refused my council, and broke my heart-refrain from following them, cease from the madness of an appeal to arms, and by moral means alone seek the regeneration of thy country; I have spoken it, Malachy O'Byrne, farewell."

Not only had the young man fallen to his knees, but also the whole assembly, and the words of the warning and rebuking spirit were heard amid a silence that was only broken hy whispered prayer and heavy breathing.

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There was a lengthened pause, and many the kneelers believing, indeed, that they were witnesses of a very wonderful, yet, as Roman Catholics, not of an exceedingly unusual occurrence, were recovering themselves from an overpowering sense of dread, when a second time, a voice broke forth as before, without an accompanying bodily appearance.

On this occasion, however, the words spoken did not proceed from the upper air, but, in sepulchral tones, seemed to come from beneath the platform.

"Malachy O'Byrne! Malachy O'Byrne!" said the deep, hollow-toned voice, "I call upon thee but not in the name of any one in Heaven or on earth-to hear me."

"In the name of God," said the young man, the cold perspiration bursting from every pore, "who are thou? Speak, I am ready to hear

thee."

"Use not the sacred name to me, young man," man," was the reply, "I cannot brook it; but I am the spirit of Robert Emmet, as true a patriot as ever lived; sealing his love of country with his heart's blood; but, as a heretic, condemned, of course, to exile from heaven. For a little moment, however, I have a respite to the cool atmosphere of earth, and it is to add my warning to that of the sainted Liberator, whose voice thou hast already heard, and whose words, I trust, will ever be treasured in thy bosom. Desist, young man, from schemes such as, more than six decades since, brought me to a felon's grave. I have said it, Malachy O'Byrne, farewell!"

The effect of this second message from the spirit world was, perhaps, more powerful than that of the voice before. Those whose scepticism, though rudely shaken, had yet in some degree sustained them, now utterly routed in their unbelief and confounded, with rigid features

and blanched cheeks, and heads stooped low, cowered on the floor in their terror.

One might suppose that fright would have the effect of driving many from the room; but no-terror, when it arises from belief in a supernatural cause, has a strange and mysterious fascination over the human being, and hence, as though spell bound, each one remained in the spot where he had knelt, statue like, as though petrified or frozen.

Again, there was, for a time, that tremulous air in the room, which is produced by the unsteady hush and nervous agitation of an awe-stricken and terrified multitude; when, for the third time, a voice, without a bodily presence, was heard to speak from vacancy.

Malachy O'Byrne," it said, "I do not wait that thou should'st ask me who I am, for I perceive that, overcome with dread, thou can'st not speak to me. But I am the Spirit of the great and good King William, Prince of Orange, come neither from Purgatory nor Hell, but direct from the pearly gates of Paradise.

"My message is, that thou, and all here this day, become members of my Holy Brotherhood, and devoutly drink, at the appointed time, to 'my glorious, pious, and immortal memory.'

At this strange and unexpected deliverance of the kingly spirit, there was a titter-and a sound of suppressed laughter, and it came from that part of the room where it was observed the medical students had taken up their station.

In a moment the nature of the hoax that had been played upon the multitude became manifest, and the duped crowd became frantic with fury. Their previous state of subdued and awful dread only served to give an unmeasured force to their angry revulsion of feeling. With a roar of indignation every man sprang to his feet, and some brandishing heavy sticks, and others their tightened fists-they rushed upon the group of young men who had dared to sport with their fears and superstitious weak

ness.

The offenders thus savagely assailed, pressed more closely together, and finding themselves in a desperate case, resolved to meet force with force, and in a compact body to successfully repel their foes, or sell their lives dearly. Several of them, to this end, drawing from concealment heavy loaded life preservers, and a few, a more deadly weapon, their dissecting knife.

The furious crowd of their enemies, nothing daunted, advanced to their work of vengeance, and soon, amid a tempest of riot, ugly and dangerous wounds were given and taken.

The group of students, after a little, seeing that their position before the platform was untenable, as presenting to their antagonists

three sides of attack, withdrew steadily to a recess between one end of the platform and the side wall of the room-a strategetic station far more defensible, as exposing no flank to their enemy, only a contracted front being assailable. In this stood their stoutest men, to bear the maddened onset of those who, borne beyond themselves, were bent upon nothing less than their destruction. And in the number of those who volunteered to take the foremost post of danger and of honour was Garrett Rowan, who hitherto had maintained a silent and retired place among his comrades.

Soon he found both opportunity and need for the exercise of all his skill of ward and fence, and of his highest meed of courage and of fortitude. One savage assailant he brought to the ground with a tremendous blow from his blackthorn, and in an instant after saved his head from fracture, by a dexterous guard, through a rapid flourish of the same weapon. There was a horrid din of clashing sticks and passionate vociferation, the latter confined, however, to the attacking crowd. Garrett, silent and defiant, and with teeth hard set, waged the game of battle, well seconded by his fellow students, who fought manfully right and left of him.

Numbers, however, proved after a little to be the prevailing element in the struggle. Garrett saw, with pity and rage, two of his bravest fellow combatants felled to the ground; then heard three or four pistol shots; then, in an instant, was conscious of a jerk and twinge in the lower part of one leg, felt afterwards a warm trickle descend his stocking, became a little faint, which, putting him off his guard, exposed him to a furious blow upon the temple. Then, all unconscious, he fell to the floor, and remembered nothing more until he woke to life and found himself stretched upon one of the beds in a large ward of not his own hospital.

His deliverer had been Malachy O'Byrne, the principal victim of the clever, but certainly unjustifiable practical joke which Ned Noblett had played upon the Nationalists. For a time O'Byrne had looked, with a large measure of complacency, upon the avenging onset of his friends on the band of students, who had made him the subject of their grim, if dramatic, piece of pleasantry. He should like to see some of them get a little wholesome drubbing— "that he would." Then after a little, when victory seemed to waver in the balance, his heart beat with no small degree of suspense and painful anxiety. When, however, the tide of battle turned decidedly against the assailed, and many of the student band had fallen to the earth, covered with blood and desperately punished, his sympathies powerfully swayed to their side

-class feeling was aroused within his breast, and the rescue of these young men, of his own social rank, became to him a matter of intense concern and pressing expediency.

Looking down from his vantage ground upon the platform, he admired the undaunted stand the students had made against their countless foes, and the splendid method of their style of battle. The conduct of Garrett Rowan especially attracted his attention, and he saw him fall cruelly wounded, with a deep feeling of admiring pity. So strongly were his emotions stirred that he sprang from the platform and interposed himself between the fallen young man and those who were about to complete upon him their work of murder. The shots he had heard specially drove him to this interference, as pistols he felt were not legitimate weapons in such a fray as that which had unfortunately broken out on this occasion.

"Stand back, friends," he cried, holding his hands firmly before him, "I claim the protection of this fallen man; not one of you, I swear, shall further injure him. Shame on you, men, to trample on a fallen enemy. Brave fellow, he has fought well, and remember, too, he is an Irishman."

"Thrue for ye, Mr. O'Byrne, he has fought well; see, if ye plaze, Surr, the blessed signs of it-look at the mark he has put on me," and he that spoke, his face all covered with blood and dust, pointed to an ugly wound over his eyebrow. "By this and by that, I'll pay him off fur it-that, I will," and the fellow, raising his bludgeon, moved forward to bring it down crushingly upon the head of the prostrate Garrett Rowan. Quick as thought O'Byrne grasped the poised weapon, gave a deft twist of his wrist, and wrenched the stout and heavy stick from the savage man who had wielded it; then whirling it on every side, he kept at a distance those who had ventured to disobey him.

"Yes, I commend your prudence," he cried to those who had fallen back. "He that moves a step towards him whom I have taken upon me to defend, does it at his peril. Shame upon you, I repeat, to assail a helpless fellow countryman. Is this the spirit they should show who profess to love their native land, and to be jealous of the honour of old Ireland? No, friends, this must be our motto and our watchword, 'A brave and stern battle with a standing foe, but mercy to the fallen!"" Others who had been on the platform observing O'Byrne's act, and admiring it, and hearing his words, joined him as mediatorstood between the crowd of artizans and the defeated students-and with hand and voice holding back the excited and furious throng, at length succeeded in quelling the riot.

Soon as possible, O'Byrne turned his friendly care to his protégé, examining and binding up his wounds, which he was capable of skilfully doing, because, like Garrett himself (who still remained unconscious), he was a medical and surgical student.

The blow which Garrett had received upon the temple was serious, but the worse hurt was that received from the pistol bullet, one bone of the lower leg, though not shattered much was badly broken, not far below the knee.

By the time O'Byrne had, in a temporary way, bound up the injured limb, Garrett's fellows, not so seriously hurt as he was, had been borne from the room, or unhurt had of themselves taken their departure. Hence when Garrett was ready for removal, there was no one at hand that could identify him.

"I'll have him taken to my own hospital," after some debate, said the young surgeon, acting the good Samaritan, and thus it came to pass, that Garrett, upon waking to conscious life, several hours after he had received his injuries, found himself, as has been stated, surrounded by strangers, in the ward of M. S. Hospital.

Upon collecting his senses, and ascertaining where he was, the first solicitude of Garrett was to have the news of his whereabouts conveyed to his mother and sister, and his critical condition made known to them, in a manner as little alarming as possible.

Perceiving, with surprise, that the young orator, upon whom Ned Noblett had exercised his rare skill as a ventriloquist, was standing near his pallet in the ward-indeed, when Garrett had been utterly unconscious, O'Byrne had been most tender and assiduous in his attentions to him-Garrett gave theyoung man a wistful look, which, catching O'Byrne's observation, drew him close to his patient's side; and, stooping down, he enquired in a gentle voice, whether he wished to make any communication to him.

"Yes," said Garrett, feebly, "I greatly wish a message to be borne to my poor mother, informing her of my locality and state, and in a way not to frighten her. Do you know of any one at hand that would do me this great kindness?"

Do you think you could trust me?" was the question in reply. "If you can bring yourself to commission me, I am, sir, at your service for the task you mention; and any deficiency in the mode of performing it, I assure you, will not be owing to a want of will upon my part to do the best for you."

very

"I thank you from my heart," said Garrett. "Your kind offer is more than, from late circumstances, I could at all look for. Yes, I