heath was another groom in crimson livery, waiting with a second hack. But we marvel when we think of his establishment, and remember him with thirty-eight racehorses in training, seventeen coach horses, twelve hunters, four chargers at Brighton, and not a few hacks. By his racing speculations he was a winner; his judgment pulled him through; but when we heard that he would play to the extent of £40,000 at a sitting (mad fatality!), we were not surprised that the domain of Blythe Hall passed into other hands, and that the once accomplished owner found a premature grave, like the poor Marquis of Hastings, all his horses being sold at an enormous sacrifice." One of our great novelists says:-' "Even in our day, notwithstanding the march of intellect and the rapid strides of imagination, a man, in order to distinguish himself in this moneygetting artificial world, should possess a million, birth, or genius." Let us hope that the English Turf may reach the acme of prosperity. We should be sorry to witness its decline; but fall it must unless a tighter hand be held upon the whole system of overreaching, as the dead sets against young turfites are now tremendous, and of Machiavelian desperation; so much so that they awe the opulent and honest minded, and make the adventurer and the blackleg industrious for no useful purpose. WHIZ. VOL. VII., N.S. 1871. Y CARRIG O' GUNNELL. HEY called thee of old, Carrig o' Gunnell, The boast of O'Brien, The fear of his foemen, When we brooked not the Briton in our fastnesses free, When Thomond the Brave feasted Bourke and O'Donnell, Or leaped like a lion On the Sassenach bowmen, Spite of all that the Witan said over the sea. Thy pride is broken, Carrig o' Gunnell. By the banks of the Shannon, Chieftain and vassal, Lie mould'ring neglected thy ruins around; Yet thou still lookest down on thy foe Castle Connell, The hall of his wassail, Unroofed, unprotected, his moat a dry mound. But still runs the story, Carrig o' Gunnell, By thy witch thou art haunted: Still her green taper glances O'er a heap of hid treasure weird-winking by night ; E'en by day not undaunted, Dreamers delve, full of fancies; But none dare her displeasure, none dig by her light. Who rest on thy ramparts, Carrig o' Gunnell, As the daylight is flitting? A son of the Saxon To a daughter of Erin pleads his passion with sighs. In the breach where their fathers fought, Carrig o' Gunnell, Side by side they are sitting, While like flowerets the flax on From her lover, half fearing, shrink her sunny blue eyes. Thou hast loved the fair vision, Carrig o' Gunnell, As a child, as a woman, When she hid from thy sister In thy nooks, climbed thy towers, or feasted with thee. But see! to the wooer, Carrig o' Gunnell, The witch gives her omen, Maid, thou canst not resist her! Youth, the treasure is yours; bear thy bride o'er the sea. SHIEL DHUV. THE COMIC WRITERS OF ON THE ENGLAND. BY CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE. V.-ADDISON AND STEELE. E are to treat of two time-honoured names; the patriarchs of periodical fancy literature; the Beaumont and Fletcher of the essayists; the Pylades and Orestes of Button's Coffee-house, and of the Wits' Club-men to whom their posterity have perhaps been more indebted than to any other public instructors of their age, principally from the correctness and refinement of their opinions in all questions of social morality and good taste; and not less from the bland and sprightly tone (courtly, yet not servile; bantering, yet not offensive) with which they denounced the errors and follies of the circles, or laughed down the vagaries of fantastical politicians. The general tone of writing in the Tatler and Spectator has, I believe, communicated to after periodical essayists, both fanciful and didactic as well as political, an unconscious tone of good breeding that we may seek in vain among the party writers of previous ages. In those two collections of essays we doubtless miss the ruthless satire, the flaying sarcasm, and the uncompromising onslaught of the party men during the periods of the Commonwealth and the Restoration. The cause had ceased, and the excitement in consequence was considerably allayed. The political skirmishing, therefore, had assumed somewhat of the courtliness of the Chevaliers at the battle of Fontenay, who, taking off their hats to their English opponents, requested the honour of receiving the first fire an action which, if it be an arabesque sort of gallantry, is infinitely finer in spirit and feeling than the ferocious holocausts of Cromwell in his Irish campaign, or of the modern Russian fiend, Suwarrow, at Warsaw. The medicine, perhaps, in this case was suited to the disease; but what ill regimen induced that disease? However, we may place to the credit of these two Whig writers (Addison and Steele) the employment of their political weapons fairly and without rancour; that their wit was exquisite in polish, and never used against virtue and good order, that their satire was without malice, and their humour wholly untainted with coarseness and vulgarity. Having introduced the two men conjoinedly, I proceed to treat of them distinctly with regard to their characters, social as well as intellectual; and if, in the course of the ensuing remarks, I appear to detract from the general and rough estimate just made of their pretensions to literary and moral eminence, the act proceeds from an honest motive, and in the full consciousness of the benefits they have conferred upon their species. While revering the genius, the defects in the mortals are canvassed. And first of Addison. In the constabulary reports of our learned Dogberry, his judgment in the case of Hugh Oatcake and George Seacoal will be found recorded, that "A good name is a good thing, but that writing and reading come by natur." If in the case of Addison this "good name" did not supersede his "writing and reading," it steadily kept pace with them; and it may be asserted that it has been of more value to him than to almost any writer in the whole range of English literature; and in various points of his career he was in other respects most fortunate among the brotherhood of authors. He started in life by courting the Hon. Charles Montague, afterwards Lord Halifax, coupling his name as a poet with Cowley and Dryden. So some other devotees compared Lord Byron to Shakespeare. Addison then wrote a Latin poem upon the peace of Ryswick; and for this incalculable service rendered to his country he was rewarded by his patron and Lord Somers with a pension from the public purse of £300 a year to enable him to travel. From Italy he addressed to Lord Halifax his famous epistle, the most esteemed of his poetical compositions; and upon his return to England he dedicated his travels to Lord Somers. This course was prudent, and worldly prudence was Addison's forte; moreover, it was grateful, and both actions procured him the reward his forethought merited. The battle of Blenheim shortly followed, when Lord Halifax again befriended him by recommending to the Prime Minister, Godolphin, that Mr. Addison should celebrate in verse the glories of that event. When the poet had proceeded as far as the famous simile of the presiding angel, who "rides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm" (the strongest lines, by the way, he ever wrote), he prudently submitted the unfinished composition to the Lord Treasurer for his approval, and the result was his immediate appointment to the Commissionership of the Court of Appeals-the qualification for a commissionership being, it should seem, to write a poem about a battle. In this office the great John Locke was his predecessor. In two |