mained friendless and unknown. Partly perhaps this was the fault of a shy and sensitive temperament. He says himself: "I have a heart. I'd live And die for him whose worth I knew; And so he labored on; working for uncertain remuneration with diminished hope, and with (as we are suffered to perceive) the shadow of an unfortunate attachment dimming the faint sunshine that was left, until little by little his courage seems to have failed him, and in the year 1838, while only thirty-four years of age, he resolved to join the Society of Christian Brethren at Cork. It is an institution half monastic, half educational, consisting no doubt of pious and excellent persons; and fitted to do good service arnong the peasantry of Ireland. But I can not help doubting whether the companionship or the occupation were exactly that best suited to Gerald Griffin. One of the old Benedictine abbeys, where the consolations of religion were blended with the pursuits of learning, where the richly adorned chapel adjoined the richlystored library, would have done better. At Cork, his employment was to teach young children their letters; and one day a mendicant from his own county craving relief, and he moneyless, according to the rule of the order, proposing to bestow his alms in the form of a little gold seal, the only trinket he had retained, the permission to do so was refused. After this it is no surprise to find that the feverish disorders, to which he was constitutionally subject, recurred more frequently. In the year 1840, his kind brother, Dr. Griffin, was sent for to attend his sick-bed, and arrived just in time to receive his last sigh. Then came the triumphant representation of "Gisippus," the only one of his plays that he had not destroyed on entering the Christian Brethren, just to show what a dramatist had been let die. His lyric sseem to me almost unrivaled for the truth, purity and tenderness of the sentiment. This is high praise, but I subjoin a few specimens which I think will bear it out: Gilli ma chree, Sit down by me, We now are joined and ne'er shall sever, This hearth's our own, Our hearts are one, And peace is ours forever. When I was poor Your father's door Was closed against your constant lover, With care and pain I tried in vain My fortunes to recover; I said, To other lands I'll roam Where Fate may smile on me, love! I said, Farewell, my own old home! And I said farewell to thee, love! Sing Gilli ma chree, &c. I might have said, My mountain maid, Come live with me, your own true lover; I know a spot, A silent cot, Your friends can ne'er discover, Where gently flows the waveless tide By one small garden only, Where the heron waves his wings so wide, And the linnet sings so lonely. Sing Gilli ma chree, &c. I might have said, My mountain maid, A father's right was never given With tyrant force That have been blest in Heaven! But then I said, In after-years, When thoughts of home shall find her, My love may mourn with secret tears Oh, no, I said, My own dear maid, For me, though all forlorn forever That heart of thine Shall ne'er repine O'er slighted duty, never! The sally, waving o'er my head, Old times! old times! Oh, come again, ye merry times, Sweet, sunny, fresh and calm, And let me hear those Easter chimes, If I could cry away mine eyes, My tears would flow in vain; A personal feeling probably dictated the following fine stanzas ; one of Gerald Griffin's sisters having joined the Sisters of Charity in Dublin: She once was a lady of honor and wealth, She felt in her spirit the summons of grace, For her heart was on fire in the cause that she loved. Lost ever to fashion, to vanity lost, That beauty that once was the song and the toast; But gliding at dusk to the wretch's retreat. Those feet, that to music could gracefully move, |