and other article of his effects, but no trace of any name could be found; I imagine he became too feeble to write it, and did not choose to disclose it to the legal person who sealed the will.

His effects I found considerable, chiefly consisting of cash, deposited at his, banker's in his assumed name upwards of ten years previous to his death, which, with the interest, I received and applied to the several public charitable institutions named in his will. A simple marble slab in the parish church, reciting his assumed name and extensive charities, records all that is known of him; below which appears the motto, which alone reveals all that is known likewise of his great prototype :

"STAT NOMINIS UMBRA."

I made every inquiry in Port-na-Currig relative to the intimacy of any stranger with the late rector; no person could give me any information, save that one old man, the clerk of the parish, said he clearly recollected a young lad accompanying the late rector, when at school and college, down to his father's residence at Inniscarra, and spending the vacations with him, but he never knew his name. My inquiries also in Dublin, and especially in the family mentioned in the last chapter of the manuscript, were equally fruitless; no one could give me any clue to his discovery.

The subjoined tale bears on its every page the impress of that versatility which appeared in the conversation of its author, in its alternations from "grave to gay, from lively to severe," from the dark shadows of human life to the lighter and more attractive.

Of the prevailing vices which tainted the manners and conversation of that day, now happily banished, at least from the surface of society, the author, either with good taste, or influenced by a higher principle, has avoided giving any specimens; but of two other leading propensities, characteristic of them, which have not yet totally disappeared, he has given many.

The first, in the more matured members of the community, was the indulgence in that species of oral wit, called punning, which prevailed at that time to a great extent, especially among the members of the Bar-the Bench itself not having been altogether free from its sallies, ranking as it does in the lowest grade of the faculty of wit.

The other, among the more juvenile, especially of the army and university, was that species of manual wit generally known by the name of practical joking, and was supposed to have been derived from the "Cherokee," "Hellfire," "Pinkindindy," and other clubs, which in a former age infested the city.

Providence having been graciously pleased to

prolong my life to the period limited for its publication, I send it forth to the world, disclaiming alike the imputation of its merits (if any), and the responsibility of its faults, which are many; the only part taken by me, beyond the editorial, being the having prefixed to its chapters some quotations, many from recent authors, as a kind of foreshadowing of their

contents.

EDITOR.

IERNE.

CHAPTER I.

"Do you know them?

No, sir, their hats are plucked about their ears,
And half their faces buried in their cloaks.

Oh, conspiracy,

Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free? Oh, then, by day,

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
To mask thy monstrous visage ?"

Julius Cæsar.

THE evening of a dark December day in the year 1797 had closed in; there had been in the early part of it a heavy fall of snow, but a partial thaw, which had set in towards nightfall, had reduced it in all the great thoroughfares to a state of half-melted compost, which, mixed up as it was with the refuse of the ill-cleansed streets, presented an appearance as cheerless to the eye, as trudging through it was comfortless to the footsteps of those whom business or other avocations had induced to leave their firesides on that inclement evening.

A dense fog had also settled down over the