HAVING given to my late cousin, Father Blackthorn M'Flail, a very solemn pledge upon his death-bed that I would write his autobiography at full length, I now, in accordance with his earnest wishes, undertake that melancholy task, feeling too sensible at the same time of my own incapacity to perform it in a manner worthy of the subject. For this reason I trust that such errors and imperfections as the goodnatured reader may discover either in my late friend's life, or in my manner of relating it, he will, from a feeling of kindly sympathy, look upon with a lenient eye. Whatever hard-hearted critics may insinuate about the odium theologicum, and the implacable spirit attributed to priests of all creeds, I say that the man who with his own hand forgave the sins and transgressions of so many, surely deserves an ample share of that virtue which he practised towards others. This is all I demand, and I trust it will be conceded to the slight aberrations of one whose good qualities so far predominated over his failings.

Of my last interview with him I feel it necessary to say a few words, by way of justifying myself for the important undertaking which I am about to commence. He had written to me on the morning before his death, to request that I would call upon him forthwith; adding, with that love of humour which, as in the case of Cervantes, death itself could not suppress

If you do not make haste, it is very possible you may find me from

home."

I myself, however, had heard that the hydrophobia, with which for the greater part of his brief but fertile career he had been afflicted, suddenly left him; and I consequently knew that his last glass was run. But indeed he himself felt as conscious of this as I did; for on seeing me he exclaimed,

with a lengthened face and a solemn shake of the head,

Ah, Father Phedlim, it's all over with me: I find I can drink water at last."

As he spoke I saw a mortified twist in his nose, and an abatement of colour which I had never noticed before. My eyes filled; but on perceiving my emotion, he said again, in his own inimitable way,

"I see, Father Phedlim, that you are resolved our last meeting shan't be a dhry one. Don't be so copious, man alive, now, at all events. Is this by way of treat, because you have heard that I can bear water? Come, come; you know I never liked it soft, except when the whiskey and sugar were convenient to it. I did not send for you here to get pathetic, but to talk upon business."

I could perceive, notwithstanding this effort, that his countenance was troubled, and I accordingly assumed an appearance of firmness which was foreign to me. Knowing the value of the companion I was about to lose, and that my excellent friend, then grappling with the last attack of a formidable dropsy, never felt so happy as when, in the thirst of an honest heart, he sat with the decanter before him, surrounded by his choice companions.

There is one thing, my dear Phedlim," he proceeded, that puzzles me; and it is this-why a man who never drank a naggin of aqua pura in all his life should come to die of a dropsy."

I felt that the anomaly he mentioned was striking enough, and replied that it might proceed in his case from some idiosyncrasy of constitution.

"Ay, ay," said he; "may be so: it's an idiosyncrasy that has moistened my clay, any how; but you know that I never had an idiosyncrasy for wather, at all evints: so that it is the more unaccountable. But I suppose it's not unnatural either that a man who is

fond of the drop should in time become dropsical. This, however, cannot be helped now: I have other things to speak of. In the first place, I lay it upon you as the last injunction of a dying clargy to write my Orthobiography, and continue my life after I am dead. I have taken an active part, as you, Phedlim, know, in forwarding the interests of the only true church; and I do not, consequently, wish to have my memory forgotten. Father M'Flail was never created, I should hope, to be a nonentity. You will find the materials for my life in the black garde du eine, and I have no doubt but you will make an efficient use of them. With respect to my property, do not be angry if I have forgotten to name you as one of my executors. I know your zeal for the church, and consequently had a reason for my want of mimory. You will not quarrel with me for this after I depart. From similar logic I have declined to constitute you guardian to my poor nephew, who, indeed, will miss his uncle when I am gone. There are many things to console those whom I lave behind me. Heresy is in the last gasp: the parsons may whistle the Deprowhinges over their tithes. Our party is predominant; Orangeism is in the dust, and we live under the benign government of our warm friend the Earl of Mulligrub, one of the most Viceregal governors that ever our unhappy country seen. These are my last words, my dear Phedlim; and I hope you will faithfully report them, so that they may rache his comely ears. Let him obay Dan, as he has done, and allow us the clargy of the people -to keep dictating to him, as heretofore; let him also keep neuthral on the Tory side, and support us firmly as at present: I say, let him do this, my dear Phedlim, and he will be a Ninth Beatitude to the Irish people-a ninth beatitude, sorra thing less-God pardon me for being profane, but sure, if I am, it's in a sacred cause, at all evints."

He now seemed considerably exhausted, and was silent, rather from inability to speak than disinclination. After a few minutes, however, he looked wistfully towards a small decanter, and, with a revival of animation for which I was hardly prepared, said,

Phedlim, what's that in that atomy of a decanther?"

I examined, and finding it was water, told him so.

His eye drooped again, and he

twisted his nose with a slow and doleful motion towards one side of his face, and his mouth towards the other, after which he groaned, but did not speak for nearly a minute.

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Ah," said he, at length, "I might have known by the size that it contained nothing else. That decanther, Phedlim, is a fresh importation; it is none of mine."

I now ventured to remind him of matters that I considered to be just then important to his condition; among other things, I told him that I was ready to hear his confession, and give him absolution of his sins.

It would indeed be impossible to describe the flash of humour which for a moment lit up his features as he looked at me.

"You," said he, "a fifteen tumbler man-you absolve my sins! Ah, Phedlim, my darling boy, don't I know you too well for that? No, no: like many a zealous brother of the robes, I'm thinking less of the rites of our church than of her wrongs."

For some minutes afterwards he appeared slightly unsettled; but it was evident from such odd words as escaped him, that his mind was fixed upon the prospects of ultimate ascendancy for our church, on which, in common with us all, his worthy heart had always been fixed.

"Earl Mulligrub!" he murmured— "the Ninth Beatitude! yes, yes; they may whistle the Deprowhinges over their tithes, any how: only let him be

obadient."

I regretted deeply to find his heart so much set upon the concerns of this transitory life, and once more made him an offer of my spiritual assistance.

To this he made no reply, but turned his eye upon me with a leer so comical that it reminded me of the days, or rather of the nights, when he shone out in the fulness of his own peculiar humour.

I saw, however, that his physical powers were fast failing him, for as he attempted to twist his nose and mouth in opposite directions, as was his habit when he said a good thing, the transposition from their natural places was only partially effected. He then moved his head, without changing a muscle of his countenance, and intimated that he wished me to come near him, which I did; and although his voice was weak, yet his words were distinctly intelligible

the Mac, which I am rather inclined to think the rhyming ploughman left out himself, merely euphoni gratia, as we used to say at school when scanning the works of Prosodius. Whatever might have been the change from the Padereen Partha to the Westminster Confession-and faith, a hard crust to chew is that last-I feel satisfied that some branch of our family retained, in spite of the severe spirit of Scotch morality, a fair portion of the potato. A holy fair in Scotland and an Irish Station at home are concatenated by a pretty considerable resemblance; and of course the former is the very place in the North where the descendants of our Irish MFuns would certainly be present.

The collateral branches of our families are the M'Fuds, the M'Scuts, and the McFlummerys, who were all united either by blood, marriage, or what the Irish call cleaveenship—that is, a kind of connection not immediately either the one or the other, but founded on an approximate identity of feeling, that prompts a person to lean towards the matrimonial relatives of such families as those who are his connexions by blood may happen to be married into.

Bosthoon M'Flail, the father of young Blackthorn, was the son of ould Kippeen M'Flail, nephew to the celebrated Shilleby M'Flail, said to have been the founder of a secret society in Ireland, called, in the first instance, the Ballyboulteen Threshers, but afterwards known simply by the name of the Threshers. The M'Flails were a logical and disputatious faction; and though they practised their logic only with the right hand, always excepting young Blackthorn's uncle, Kitthogue M-Flail, who was left-handed, yet few either of individuals or factions, had any relish to argue with them at all, in consequence of their appealing too directly to the sate of intellect.

Bosthoon M'Flail's marriage with my aunt, Molshy M'Fun, was too good a thing to be passed over in silence by the unworthy biographer of their reverend descendant. Molshy was celebrated as a bouncing flaghoolagh beauty, of a powerful frame, and comely mas. culine features, that hot Bosthoon's taste to a hair.

Of course the worthy man had seen my aunt Molshy before-hand, or he could not have entertained such a patriotic attachment towards her. Of this attachment, however, she was ut

terly ignorant, inasmuch as Bosthoon had never opened his lips to her in his life upon that or any other subject. Nor was this surprising; for, to tell the truth, there was more than a cock'sstride of difference in their respective situations. Bosthoon, for instance, had scarcely a second shirt to his back, whilst my aunt Molshy had a handsome fortune of two hundred pounds, three beds, four cows, and a lucky caul, in which every female of her blood, in a direct line, for the last three generations, had been married. Bosthoon, however, at once resolved, that what he wanted in point of wealth, should be made up in policy. He was a tall, powerful, indolent fellow-in fact, an admirable exemplification of the vis inertia, with a fair complexion, and white brows, sheepish in his manners, and without a word to throw at a dog, except when a purpose was to be gained, and then let Bosthoon alone. Bosthoon, however, having cast his eye on my aunt Molshy, turned over in his mind the best method of securing her to himself. The result of his meditations no one knew (for Bosthoon always was his own confidant,) until the ninth morning after he had begun to meditate, when he waited about eight of the clock, A. M. on the parish priest-not his confessor-for the curate, as being a more fugitive personage, and less a fixture in the parish than the other, is usually honoured with the penitence of such as are of worthy Bosthoon's kidney.

Accordingly, about the hour aforesaid, a timid-no, not timid neither, for the rap was a sturdy one--but a strong, ungainly, knavish, and sinister kind of a knock, came to Father M'Flewsther's door, which was immediately opened by the housekeeper. A tall, straggleboned customer stood before her, dressed in a long-bodied, skirtless frize jacket, with a packet under each arm. Bosthoon, whose hands had been stuck in the pockets, so as to run them out to collision on the front of his body, now took one hand out, and scratching his foretop under his hat, asked

"Is Father M'Flewsther at home ?" at the same time stretching out a huge foot, cased in as huge a brogue, on which he bent his eye with an awkward stare, as if he was afraid to look the housekeeper in the face, or as if the gigantic dimensions of the foot had never struck him before.

"He is at hom," said the housekeeper.