merely complained fretfully, as they hurried on, that they had been left behind when the great tide had gone back again to the sea. There was, too, a narrow opening in the masses of dull red brick that shut her in, and through this she could catch a glimpse of the broad stream that stretched like a yellow causeway down to the woods of Tervoe, and she could see the rock Carrigogunnel rise precipitously out of the trees, crowned with the dark towers of O'Brien's impregnable castle. But it was no longer the river she had known. The stream was muddy and discoloured, it swelled and sank with the rising and falling of the sea outside; when the channel was filled, it was bordered by a fringe of rank, unsightly reeds, when the tide receded, long mounds of slimy mud formed a range of unsightly embankments along the course of the filthy stream. It was not the Shannon as she had known and loved it. She sat by the window and looked, not out upon that narrow vista of land and water, visible between the brick walls, but down into the narrow street alive with the bustle of warlike preparations.

Few of our readers will have felt those miseries which fall to the lot of the civilian portion of the population during the days that precede the investment of a city by a hostile army. To those who have not had it we shall not wish such an experience. An undefined fear, more intolerable than sense of present danger, is the feeling of the time. They know that the possession of their homes is soon to be disputed with them by a foe, who considers himself likely to conquer in the struggle. They know that he is at hand, though they have no distinct indications of his presence. They strain their eyes and their ears to catch a glimpse of arms or banners, or moving masses of men on the hills far away. Their own military defenders come and go with ceaseless and apparently purposeless activity; heavy guns are dragged about the streets; munition waggons rumble along after them; bodies of soldiers are marched to and fro, as if it was impossible to determine the suitable position for them; and, most ominous sign of all, litters are borne to certain points of the wall, and ranges of beds prepared in some building near at hand. The puzzled townsmen look on bewildered, and the soldiers as they pass cast contemptuous glances at them, and assume an intelligent air which says plainer than words, "It perplexes you, but we understand it all;" and then go on, leaving them to their doubts and guesses, and to the alarming rumours with which they terrify one another. At last some incident occurs which gives everyone an insight into the tactics of the prime movers in the game, and the doubt and suspense are at an end.

The invalid of the little household was at her accustomed post by the window, gazing down into the street. She had this evening sat there much longer than was her custom, for, this evening, the monotony of her only amusement was broken in upon. An unusual commotion was visible in the narrow thoroughfare, and, though night was coming on, the excitement seemed to increase every moment. The citizens had been in hourly expectation of hearing that the outposts thrown forward by the Governor on the road by which Ireton

was to advance had encountered the Parliamentarians, and it was probable the news for which they had been waiting was come. They stood in groups along the pavement, discussing the exciting intelligence. She could not hear their words. Whatever were their comments on the news of the hour, they were whispered by the speakers as if they feared to let them be heard beyond the friendly knot of gossips about them. But she could read in the faces of listeners and speakers dismay and alarm, and in their sullen looks and scowling brows the tokens of disappointment and anger. Her anxious curiosity was at its height, when a blacksmith, who was the acknowledged political adviser of a neighbouring alley, crossed the boundary of the district over which he presided, followed by an eager crowd of clients. His opinions on the great topic of the moment were of a decided and uncompromising character, and he was neither timid. nor reserved in expressing them.

66

"I told ye it would come to this," he cried, with a wave of his brawny arm. 'When did Ormonde, or a friend of Ormonde, miss an opportunity of playing the traitor ?"

66

Never, the villains; curse them," exclaimed a voice from the crowd.

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'Ay, curse them if you like, John Roche," said the smith; "and when you do, curse, too, the scoundrels who put it in their power to betray us. Fennel has sold the pass of Killaloe, but there are men in the city who would give him the command of Thomond-bridge to-morrow. If you want to be rid of traitors, begin with those within the walls."

There was a fierce murmur of assent from the crowd. The speaker had paused in his hurried walk, he found himself the head of a mob that increased at each instant, and he proceeded to deliver himself of a more formal harangue.

"we

"Men of Limerick," he began, waving his hat with a violence which threatened the integrity of that venerable head-dress, have borne with tyranny too long. We work, and toil, and pay money to men who have money enough already, for mismanaging our affairs. We have been sold at Killaloe; shall we let ourselves be sold again at the walls of Limerick? They are playing their game well. Wait a little longer, and starvation will stare us in the face, and we shall be glad to become slaves in order to get a mouthful of bread. Be men while you have strength left you! Down with the traitors who would sell the city!"

A cheer from the mass of human faces turned towards the impromptu orator greeted this appeal. Like most demagogues, the smith was vain as he was thoughtless, and this tribute to his powers of eloquence roused him to still greater efforts.

"Let the oppressors of the people beware," he cried, with fierce fervour, "we may, even at this hour, call them to account. We may take into our own hands the defence of our city walls. We have stout arms and willing hearts, and these are the means by which victory is won. Let me but see a hundred true men by my side and I will

The purpose of the impassioned speaker remained undeclared. There was heard a measured trampling of feet, a clang of arms and armour at the end of the thoroughfare, and a body of dust-covered soldiers were seen advancing at a quick step towards the spot where the hastily improvised meeting was assembled. At the sight of the steel head-pieces and glittering musket barrels the mob instantly dispersed. His audience scattered itself in the nearest lanes and alleys, the discomfited orator replaced his tattered hat upon his head, and hurriedly followed a party of his hearers into a dingy court close at hand.

By degrees the less timid of the dispersed mob ventured back to the alley corners to get a glimpse of the soldiers as they passed. A ragged representative of the late popular assembly was leaning against the wall of the house opposite the window where the child was sitting. He had assumed a listless, indolent attitude, and was looking at the approaching body of soldiers with a well-feigned look of idle curiosity. But as the measured tramp of feet came nearer his demeanour changed. His hypocritical listlessness gave way to unequivocal astonishment; he stared with open-eyed wonder at the detachment of soldiers, and at last gave vent to his emotions in the exclamation: "Fennel himself, by G-!"

The child's curiosity was roused. She drew aside the curtain which partially concealed her from the eyes of the passers-by. She leaned forward towards the open window. A body of heavily laden, weary musketers were trudging painfully along over the hot stones of the street. At their head rode two men, one in the uniform of an officer of the regiment, the other in civilian costume such as was worn by the wealthy gentlemen of the Pale. The officer was a stranger to her, but the features shaded by the plumed hat of the cavalier by his side she recognised with affright; they were those of her cousin, Lucas Plunkett. She would have drawn back, but at the instant the cold glitter of the restless black eyes which had frightened her so often, arrested the movement. The cavalier doffed his hat, and with a hurried expression of pleasurable surprise passed on in his place at the head of the detachment.

SIR AUBREY DE VERE'S "MARY TUDOR" AND MR.

WHE

TENNYSON'S "QUEEN MARY."

THEN King Henry the Fifth died at the age of thirty-three, and the transitory glories of his reign came to an end, his widow, Catherine, daughter of the French king, Charles the Sixth, she whom Shakspeare described as having being wooed and won by Henry in so rough and soldierly a fashion, did not remain long inconsolable for his loss. She cast her eyes on a stout Welsh knight, sprung from the house of Lancaster, Sir Owen Tudor, who must have possessed, as he assuredly transmitted in a concentrated degree, all the pride and irascibility attributed to his race. From them sprang the five Tudor sovereigns of England, who reigned during the most momentous period of modern history. Their dynasty began two years after Luther's birth. It ended with the complete triumph of Protestantism and the oppression and despair of Catholics in these islands. On whatever side our convictions and sympathies may be, the whole reign of the house of Tudor forms one of the most awful of dramas. But these great epochs of the world's history, pregnant with the temporal and eternal fate of millions, epochs in which the informing principles of human life and society are separated in deadly warfare, seem by their very greatness to transcend the poet's power and province. For our human sympathies the representation needs to be localized and concentrated. High action and high passion, pity and terror, the rushing movement of events, the thick-coming omens of fatality, and the dread catastrophe on which the curtain falls, must all spring from or have their final object in some individual heart. Our pulses may, no doubt, beat more strongly, and the chords of our affections be attuned to deeper and loftier harmonies, if the hero or heroine be something more than simply a human actor and sufferer, not merely

"A slave

To such poor passions as the maid that milks,
And does the meanest chares,"

but the embodiment and voice of some great principle-religion, or patriotism, or freedom-all the more if the principle should touch ourselves nearly and keenly. But still the essence of the human drama must, as we said, be human joy or pain. It is this which renders the dramatic treatment of historical subjects so extremely difficult. The historian, and he who loves the study of history, may trace with the deepest interest the linking of event to event and the evolution of mighty results from insignificant germs; but the movement is too slow for the peremptory requirements of the artificial stage. The angels may weep over the spiritual ruin of unborn generations, but our human tears are only drawn forth by human and earthly pangs, and those pangs, displayed in such height and majesty as befits the tragedian's swelling scene.

So considered, few themes, we must own, would appear to us at first sight less promising for the drama than the story of the reign of Mary Tudor. In Shakspeare's King Henry the Eighth, whether it be

all his own, or, as is now believed, partly his and partly Fletcher's, the interest is almost wholly concentrated upon one truly great character, the pure and high-minded Catherine of Arragon, his persecuted queen. Dr. Johnson deemed her the finest of Shakspeare's female portraitures; and of the play itself he says that "the genius of Shakspeare comes in and goes out with Catherine." If there be any secondary object of interest, it is Cardinal Wolsey in his fall. But Henry himself, with apparently every disposition to make much of him, is in the play a singularly mean figure, pompous, boastful, hypocritical, and licentious, without even that Satanic greatness which Shakspeare, when he pleased, knew how to paint so well. The play should have borne on its front the name of his true heroine.

But in Catherine's daughter Mary, the third of the Tudor princes, what is there that the drama could claim for its own? Her set gray life and melancholy end would seem, according to common history, to derive their only colouring from the lurid glare of the fires of persecution. That she came to the throne when past middle age, after a life of exclusion and trial; that she repressed two insurrections against her, showing in time of danger all the high spirit of her race; that she put to death her rival, the gentle and accomplished Lady Jane Gray; that she married the heir of the crown of Spain-a match odious to her subjects; that she was devoted to her husband, and was slighted and neglected by him; that she restored the ancient faith; that she or her advisers revived the ancient persecuting laws against heretics, and brought hundreds, including Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer, to the stake; that a pervading melancholy preyed upon her; that she lost the city which had been for centuries England's outpost and gate of entrance upon the continent, and died, as she said, "with Calais written on her heart:" such in brief summary is the popular view of the reign of Mary Tudor.

Yet such is the theme which two poets of a high order, the late Sir Aubrey de Vere, and the laureate, Alfred Tennyson, have chosen to mould into dramatic form. Sir Aubrey de Vere, who died in 1846, at the age of 58, is a writer with whose name we fear the present generation of Irishmen would be entirely unacquainted if it were not for the fame of his more distinguished son. The play of "Mary Tudor" was written in the last year of his life, and was not published till after his death. It attracted little attention at the time-a time of political tempests, loud enough to drown the voice of the muses. But now, after thirty years, an interval during which "many circumstances had directed attention to the momentous period which the work illustrates, a period of transition from the England of early to that of modern times," and especially when Mr. Tennyson had chosen the same subject for a work heralded by all the expectation and received with all the applause which the Laureate's fame commands, it is not wonderful that Mr. de Vere should have thought of reproducing his father's drama. A strong and natural filial piety of course had its influence in dictating this step. Mr. de Vere has prefixed a memoir of his father, written with no less grace and critical taste than just admiration and warmth of affection. But this volume makes him even