which I have never seen but once, and that even passing in the street, have left an impression upon me more deep, immediate, and defined, than that produced by others, with which from time and opportunity, I ought to be thoroughly familiar. I have felt more than once, on such occasions, a sudden and indescribable sensation of almost recognition; as if I had been wandering through the world, like one of Plato's divided spirits, in search of this very being, and exclaimed "Here it is at last!"*

Two or three years after the vision at the post-house, I was crossing from Dublin to Holyhead. It was before the steam-boats were established; consequently during the undisputed reign of that most ingenious of all inventions for human torture-a packet.

A packet is a small vessel, it is true; but it contains in my view as many horrors as a large one;-nay more; for of necessity the great majority of the passengers are not used to the sea, and the shortness of the voyage prevents their becoming so. Nine out of ten are, therefore, sick-and, as the whole set of them are piled, like fowls in a coop, in a cabin of a few feet square, the size of the vessel operates only as a condensing power of abominations. For my own part, I am bon marin, as far as stomach goes; and at the time I mention, had never been seasick. We embarked at night, at the Pigeon-house, which is built upon a pier running out two or three miles into Dublin bay. It was a beautiful night; and we had a fine fresh breeze, which sent the vessel gallantly through the water. I remained on deck, of course,—which I paced, although there was a good deal of motion, for I have at least gained so much by my voyages as to have pretty good sea legs. The Irish are very proud of the beauties of Dublin bay-and justly, for they are great. It was impossible to see them to more advantage than at this moment. Indeed, I think all sea-views are best "visited by pale moonlight." The waves, as they rise, glitter without dazzling, and the general light is strong enough to shew the beauties of the prospect, and yet sufficiently subdued to throw a most becoming softness and indistinctness over the whole. As we cut rapidly out of the bay, with this beautiful light shining down upon the beautiful scene, and the fresh salt breeze blowing inspiritingly upon me, I began almost to forget that I was condemned to sixty miles of sea, and caught myself repeating in a buoyant tone

"Oft had he ridden on that winged wave,

And loved its roughness for the speed it gave,"

almost before I was aware of the folly I was committing. It was not long, however, before I had occasion to observe the want of seamanship of the couplet, which so practised a sailor as Lord Byron would never have been guilty of in prose. When we cleared the land, the wind (which had hitherto been a pretty fair side-wind) began to draw a-head ; and of course the "roughness" of our progress became greater, and its "speed" proportionately less. I was sailor enough to perceive that if matters went on as they appeared likely to do, we should have a long passage, which at once cured me of the slight fit of romance into which

* My readers will please to observe that the pronoun "it" is equally applicable to a face of either sex.

I had been trepanned, and punished me for it at the same time. We hauled closer to the wind, which caused the vessel to lie over so: much as to stop my walk; so "I wrapped my old cloak about me," and took my station against the taffrail. I tried to enter into conversation with the man at the helm; but he was a surly Welshman, and either could not or would not speak a word of English. The few passengers who had remained on deck at first, gave in one by one, and slunk away to their births, some to sleep, but the great majority to be sick. For me, with all my stomach, I was well convinced what would be the inevitable consequence of a descent into the tartarus of a cabin, and had, therefore, no sort of idea of going below. By degrees, however, black clouds began to gather and approach from a-head, which foreboded not only rain, but also the extreme slowness of the progress we were likely to make. Both prognostics were accomplished: for the rain soon began to fall, in a manner which proved to me that it would not be very long before my water-proof cloak was wet through. With the rain, also, the wind increased-which, as we were close hauled, made the vessel pitch much more strongly. At last the spray began to wash over the deck in thick showers, and I found that I must determine at once on being drenched and on remaining in my wet clothes during a long passage, or risk the encounter with all the horrors I might meet below.

I accordingly descended, and crept to the birth which I had had the foresight to secure in case of need. I did not close an eye-that of course; I was not sick;-but the Seven Sleepers themselves could not have rested in the births of a packet. The very uncomfortable human noises which surrounded me would, of themselves, have been enough to keep any body but a boatswain awake. But besides, each pitch of the vessel drew out every limb to a stretch of the sinews very far from agreeable :-I occupied myself in trying to draw from it an idea of what the rack was. As the night advanced, every five minutes some redhot Irish voice called out "Stewart!"-as it is pronounced Hibernicèare we near the Head?"-"Stewart! are we half-way over?". "Stewart! how long will it be before we'll be in?"-Every impatient answer to which questions proved that we should not "be in" for four-and-twenty hours at least.

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I passed the night without sickness; but in the morning I began to be so weary and uncomfortable, that I resolved to go upon deck again, coûte. qui coûte. But I had scarcely got my head above the companion ladder, before I saw that the weather was such as to render my staying there totally impracticable. I was therefore obliged to return, and thenthe first mouthful of the thick, foul air, poisoned by the abominations of the whole night, quite upset me; and for four-and-twenty hours I felt, for the first time, the horrors of that most dreadful of all maladies, sea-sickness. I call it so in sober seriousness, for it is so for the time it lasts. Why it should be always the subject of a joke, I never could give the most distant guess. It is impossible for any thing to be less of a jesting matter to him who feels it; and really I think it comes within that class of human calamities which are usually reckoned too serious for ridicule. I think we might as well laugh at a man for having a typhus fever.

We were six-and-thirty hours on the passage!-At last, the wel

comest news I ever received in my life came down,-that we were running into the bay at Holyhead. I had somewhat recovered by this time; so I instantly jumped out of my cot, and began to arrange my toilet as well as I could. While I was doing this, I looked towards the birth which was immediately over mine: its occupant had suffered dreadfully, as I had full well heard during the whole time I had lain beneath him. The curtains were drawn,-but just at that moment a hand put them slowly back, and out came- "the Head!!!" I literally staggered with surprise, and (shall I own it?) there mingled in the feeling a something which might almost be construed as approaching to fright. For nothing human ever resembled "the Head" as I now saw it. The immense flat cheek was, from the violence of the sickness, quite sunken and yellow; the hair, which was black slightly grizzled, was matted and tangled into every shape, and the ends started rather than straggled, in every direction; the eyes were dim, sunken, lost: so exhausted was the unfortunate man, that it seemed to be with difficulty he opened them sufficiently for another person to see that they existed. The corners of his mouth were drawn down, and his interminable chin was encrusted with the marks of the disorder under which he had suffered. But, perhaps, that which added the most to the ghastliness of his appearance was, that the neckcloth (he was dressed all but his coat) had been tumbled and twisted into a dirty rope, which left his long and loose neck exposed. There is nothing so meanly disfiguring to any man as this; but, in the present case, it added to the already supernatural length of the head, and to the general gauntness of the whole aspect, in a manner which might almost excuse the little emotion of dread which his sudden and most unlooked-for appearance had occasioned me.

He shortly after came upon deck, and had now sufficiently re-adjusted himself to look very much the same as I had seen him a few years before; except that he was still cadaverously pale, or rather yellow, and that his eyes were still deeply sunken, and were expressive of considerable exhaustion. I now found that he was an Englishman, and his signature in the steward's book made me acquainted with his namé.

After this, I met him twice in London-once in the street, and again, a couple of years after, in the pit at the Opera. I then lost sight of him for a considerable time, and began to fear that my long-headed friend was dead. I was afraid that, like John Bull in the song of Nongtongpau, I should, after having met him in so many variations and combinations of circumstance, at last fall in with his funeral. I had some thoughts at one time of inquiring of the Phrenological Society concerning him; for I was sure they could not allow so remarkable a skull to descend into its grave without having a cast of it taken, for the promotion of their scientific and very useful studies. I should, indeed, like to know what organs went to the composition of such a head, and whether or not it had more than the usual number. When the worthy society aforesaid allowed so many to the surface of a Swedish turnip,*

The story of the cast of a Swedish turnip being passed upon the Phrenologists as that of the skull of Professor Von Tornhippson, a learned Swede, is well known. They reported him to have all the finenesses becoming a person of such “e-ru-dîti-on."

surely a real human head of such extraordinary dimensions must have an extra number to its own share.

But, last year, I met my man again; and, as usual, in a distant part of the world from where I had before seen him, and at a moment when his appearance was quite unlooked for. During the course of last autumn, I happened to be at Florence. I met there a friend of mine who had been in Italy some time; and who undertook to shew me the lions, kindly adding his assistance to enable me to judge of them when seen. Like most other of our countrymen who have passed a few months under an Italian sky, he was, in all matters of art, an amateur, and beginning strongly to doubt whether he ought not rather to be termed a conoscento. He had his own little theory touching the relative merits of the two Venuses, and of those of the more celebrated one in comparison with the Apollo. He knew the history and traditions of every piece of architecture, sculpture, and painting, from the days of Michael Angelo downwards, and was not slow of communicating them. In short, under his pilotage, I safely avoided those rocks and shallows so perilous to inexperienced critics-so I very willingly resigned myself to his skilful guidance. One day he took me to Bartolini's. No Englishman who has taste and fifty guineas can be at Florence without sitting to this celebrated sculptor for his bust ;some indeed, who have more taste and more guineas, prefer a full-length statue; while those who possess a treble portion of both, petrify themselves, cum suis, into a group. I shall not say in which commodity I was deficient; but I went only for the purpose of going over the atelier, to inspect the treasures it contains. My friend, however, wished to speak with Bartolini, and took me with him to the room where the artist was at work. The servant told us that there was a sitter with him, but as my friend desired only to see him for two minutes, we were admitted. A green curtain hangs before the door on the inside;when this was withdrawn for us to enter, I beheld the sitter and his bust-"the Man with the Head," and its duplicate in stone! There he was, with his neck bare, and a cloth thrown across his shoulders to represent the folds of the Roman toga! And, then, the rigid imperturbable likeness of the lengthy marble copy!-For the nonce, it was too much. I stopped short in amazement on the threshold, and exclaimed, with the ghost-seer in the story, Ah, ciel! en voilà deux!

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V.

My readers, I conclude, are acquainted with the ghost story of the young Frenchman who lost his betrothed on the eve of marriage, and who believed he saw her spirit every night in her bridal dress. His friends, to prove to him the folly of his belief, dressed a twin sister (or, I believe, a twin-like cousin) of the deceased in a dress precisely similar, and placed her at the foot of the widowed bridegroom's bed, exactly at the hour the spirit came. He looked up, and crying out "Ah! ciel ! en voilà deux !" fell back dead upon his pillow.I do not say that the sight of the two heads had an equal effect upon me.

WHILE music excited in Ireland the same enthusiasm, and was cultivated with more science, than when "in early Greece she sung," the drama partook of the triumph. Two royal theatres and an Italian opera-house could scarcely supply the cravings of the public taste; and an audience, noted for its critical acumen, gave to the Irish stage a classical character, and developed a competition which drew forth candidates for dramatic fame even from the higher classes of society, conferring that respectability upon the members of the stage, which ought at all times to belong to a profession which holds so decided an influence over the morals and the manners of a nation.†

But though the circumstances of the times rendered the home residence of the Irish gentry more permanent than it has since ever been, or perhaps ever was before, the fashion universally prevailed of sending the youth of good family to make the grand tour; and the young and travelled aristocracy, the Fitzgeralds, the Caulfields, the Kirwans, the O'Neils, the Blakes, came back, no less to improve the tastes of their country, than to defend her cause, and to enlarge the sphere of her energies. A variety of refined amusements and elegant enjoyments, hitherto unknown in Ireland, came in their suite; which while they gave employment and food to the lowly and the industrious, tended to disseminate that taste for factitious pleasures, and that craving for refined gratifications, which though not in themselves the efficient causes of civilization, are in no small degree favourable to its developement.‡ Pleasure, lured to the Irish shores from distant regions, planted her gay standard, and raised her brilliant pavilions in the capital, at that time crowded with the wealthy and the educated. The ridottos of the music hall, with their fantastic arrangements and sylvan scenery §, recalled the similar festivities of the Italian carnival. Palaces succeeded to the cumbrous mansions of the seventeenth century; and Charlemont house, with its beautiful architecture, its splendid library, and invaluable collections, still preserved in all their integrity by the present noble owner, stands a singular monument not only of the pure taste and magnificent spirit of an Irish nobleman, who had even higher claims to the admiration and respect of his country, but of the genius of the times, and the prosperity-the short-lived prosperity of the land in which such

"Italian singers were invited over, and the fair dames of Ireland learned to expire at an opera."-History of Irish Music.

Barry, Sheridan, Mossop, Diggs, Daly, Crawford, and others of a more modern date, were all gentlemen of family, and members of the Irish University. They lived with their own class, and some of them went to court. The intimacy of Sheridan with successive lords lieutenant is recorded in the life of his celebrated wife, written and recently published by their accomplished grand-daughter.

If a desire for luxuries and refinements is in all classes the natural check to excessive population, and to the degradation of the species, that check is wholly wanting in Ireland-not only the peasant, but the tradesman sees no attainable object of enjoyment in the possession of a class just above himself in ease and comfort, which might stimulate his ambition. The connecting link between the rich and poor is wanting; for middlemen are no refiners of manners. As a familiar illustration, let the reader imagine that, except in towns of the first class, few vegetables beyond a cabbage or a potatoe are to be found in the market. There is absolutely no demand for such luxuries to repay the culture.

§ One of these rooms painted in fresco and highly decorated, remains, or did remain a few years back, in Fishamble-street.