again. At length he gasped out his settled conviction that this ride would certainly cause his death, for he should inevitably take a violent chill-and to him even a nose-cold was a grievous matter. Stifling my laughter, I wrung the wet from his coat and rubbed the mud from his nankeens, administering consolation, for some time ineffectually. At length he was prevailed upon to mount again, presenting but a sorry figure; as in spite of all our rubbing, he proceeded on his way with a limp hat and brick-dust linen, a fair representative of Don Quixote after one of his untoward adventures. Oratava was reached at length, and there he was enabled to cleanse and make himself comfortable; a few glasses of Tinta somewhat smoothed his mental plumage which had been grievously ruffled, but he did not entirely recover his equanimity the whole day. Oratava presents the most charming contrast to the arid, parched aspect of the country about Santa Cruz. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the valley in which it is situated: the eye, pining for a green resting-place, has here its longing gratified by every imaginable tint of that grateful colour. Vineyards clothe the valley, whilst palms, quaint looking dragon-trees, arborescent heaths, and gigantic laurels mingled with arbutus, impart a delightful variety to the scene. After a hot and weary ride, the traveller instinctively pulls up on reaching the heights above the town, and contemplates the panorama before him as if the Happy Valley of " Rasselas" was opened to his view. His meditations, however, will probably be speedily put to flight by very matter-of-fact demands upon his purse, as the inhabitants have a strong idea of the wealth of English travellers, and a pertinacity in begging worthy of the natives of the Emerald Isle-which is saying a good deal. Oratava itself is situated in the centre of the valley; the port is on the sea-shore, where a terrific surf beats with awful grandeur. The chief attraction at Oratava is the celebrated Dragon-Tree, undoubtedly one of the most ancient trees in the world. This venerable patriarch of the vegetable kingdom is not far distant from the town, and its history is very remarkable. The species is of particularly slow growth, but it is on record that in 1402, when the island was invaded by the Bethencourts and their followers, this identical tree was so large and so old as to be an object of idolatrous worship to the aboriginal inhabitants. Thus we are carried back to a period so remote, that the imagination can scarcely compass it. No one can look upon this monument of the past without contrasting with it the life of man. Human eye had doubtless never seen the island when this tree first sprang from the earth, but a sigh involuntarily escapes the beholder when he thinks on the generations, and even races of mankind which have lived and passed away since it was a sapling, and reflects that it will probably be flourishing green and vigorous after he and generations yet unborn have lived their allotted time and mingled with the dust. It is affirmed that this object of veneration of the Guanches became by a singular chance identified with the worship of Christianity; for certain monks, who accompanied the invaders, erected an altar and celebrated mass in the cavity of its trunk. The age is supposed to be not less than four thousand years. The height of the trunk is nearly sixty-nine feet; from the summit there springs a clump of branches now propped up with poles; its circumference several feet above the root is about forty-eight feet; immediately above the root, Le Dru made it little short of seventy nine feet; the trunk is hollow, and the opening, now filled with stones, is thirteen feet in diameter. Two young shoots have sprung out of the cavity and attest the vigour of its extreme old age. Unfortunately one side of its top was broken off in the storm of the 21st July, 1819. In conclusion, a few general remarks on the salubrity of Teneriffe and its accommodation may not be unacceptable. It is infinitely cheaper: in many respects offers advantages to invalids superior to Madeira. Some friends of mine, who were staying at M. Guerin's, in the Praza Constitutional, the best hotel in Santa Cruz, informed me that their daily expenses, including wine, board, and lodging, were only a dollar a day. I, being a bird of passage, was charged somewhat higher, but very reasonably. The accommodation for invalids a few years ago, as regards boarding-houses, was but limited; it is, I understand, better now. Funchal being the only town in Madeira, visitors have neither choice nor variety; at Teneriffe they may pass the time either at Santa Cruz or Oratava, one of the loveliest spots under the sun, and both towns are more cleanly than Funchal. To persons of a social disposition, the society of Teneriffe has superior recommendations, for there the wealthier inhabitants are very friendly towards English visitors, whilst at Madeira a line of demarcation is strictly drawn between the Portuguese and British. The climate of Teneriffe is much drier and somewhat hotter than that of Madeira, but the heat is not excessive. Several invalids, suffering from affections of the mucous membranes of the lungs, and who had tried both islands, assured me that they felt easier and respired more freely at Teneriffe. With respect to provisions, the poultry and eggs are particularly fine there, and although the mutton (like that of Madeira) is not legitimate, but from goats, owing to the absence of pasture precluding the grazing of sheep, and the beef lean from the same cause, the meat is, on the whole, very fair. It may save some trouble to state that sovereigns are not current at Teneriffe, and when there I lost three shillings on each; but Spanish doubloons, or better still, half doubloons, and pillar dollars are the most convenient coin, and current at their full value. They are to be obtained at most of the gold refiners and money-dealers in London. THE BACCHANTE SUEGLIATA OF BERTOLINI. Sculptured for His Grace the Duke of Devonshire. PAN's reedy matins pipe-she stirs she wakes; In softest languishments,-she smiles, and now J. C. J. W. INCONVENIENCES OF A "SUSPICION OF DEBT." BY W. H. MAXWELL, ESQ. AUTHOR OF "STORIES OF WATERLOO," ETC. IN Ireland, some thirty years ago, an attorney was considered, as Jack Falstaff would term it, a person past praying for. His vocation was reputed to be unholy-the peasant apologised if he named his calling-and were the clodhopper a good Catholic, he would manipulate the cross, and entreat pardon for indiscreetly alluding to a profession, abhorred equally by gods and men. There were, among antiquated practitioners, some alas! though "few and far between," upon whom the mantle of probity had descended-and who, considering the unrelenting nature of their calling, were blessed with a fair proportion of the bowels of compassion. One we knew-Poor Billy Davis— a man greatly addicted to hospitality and long stories. Regarding the inconveniences attendant upon what the Irish call suspicion of debt," Poor Billy could not in his own person plead a non ignarus. He never treated a bill of costs, but all contained in its eternal folios, ay, had their name been legion, would have been anticipated for weeks before. Nine months out of twelve, Billy declined greetings in the market-place; and although Sunday is held to be a day of rest, with him it was always one of locomotion-hinges upon his hall-door that held anti-revolving principles for six days, underwent a sabbatical change upon the seventh-and the county townonly two miles' distance from his mansion, was gladdened by the light of his countenance. Although appertaining to a trade the reverse of that of arms, in Billy's domicile watch and ward were duly and truly kept. In the country he was safe from all attempts against the liberty of the subject-his gardener was deaf and dumb-a man who never propounded a question in his life, or attended to verbal communications-he conversed by telegraphic manipulation—that could be effected through the hall window as well as in the open air-and should the intrusionist attempt an outrage upon the glass, why, had not the Deaf-un a stout arm and trusty pitchfork? And hence, Billy's rural retirement was absolutely safe. But law is like love-its course runs unevenly and legal, like lethal struggles, when carried to the knife, must be decided with ample stage and no favour, before certain ermined umpires, who are always to be found at home in a place of evil reputation called the "Four Courts," a cluster of buildings, on whose very threshold the foot of an Irish gentleman involuntarily trembles. The Tusculan retreat of Horace was not more secure when it pleased the poet to seek country air than Billy's rus in urbe, it being situated in that favoured corner of the earth called Connaught. In the great metropolis, his town residence was also tabooed against the progeny of Doe and Roe-there, too, he might consider himself safe from Philistines, and all that counselled, comforted, aided, and abetted similar malefactors. In the transit, however, between these Goshen-like abiding places lay the peril. Dick Martin effected his incoming and outgoings to his own realm, generally, in a hearse, but mutes, mourning coaches, and disconsolate relatives must be hired, and these were heavy charges to defray. Billy masked his operations more cheaply and quietly by substituting for a coffin a cart of hay-a funnel, cunningly constructed in the top, gave the occupant a sufficiency of light and air-and, if the movement were but judiciously executed, in two hours he, Billy, crossed the boundary of the bailiwick, and might shake hands with a sheriff's officer should he meet with one on this neutral ground. The town residence of Billy Davis was a quiet dwelling in a private locality called Poolbeg Street. As to the exterior of the house, possibly it would have been somewhat improved by a coat of paint and general renovation. There was nothing of wasteful extravagance within that could attract a passer's eye-no profusely-figured moreen, no elaborated brocade fixed the charge of wanton expenditure upon the resident community; the system observed was decidedly utilitarian-and yet, in garnishing the different chambers, individual taste had been evidently consulted-the windows of floor one were blinded with a blanket and military cloak-floor two secured its privacy by the united agencies of a hearth-rug and a horse-cloth-the sky parlour, from its superior altitude, domineered the street-and hence, the secrets of that classic division of the edifice, molles ubi reddunt ova columbæ, as Juvenal, an old pigeon-fancier, calls it could only be explored by a sweep. Still the occupying tenant shrank from vulgar gaze-a dressing-robe, when not otherwise employed, protected one window, while the fractional portion of a table-cloth stretched across the other, secured the sanctity of the chamber. We have been minutely descriptive of No.-, Poolbeg Street, and a hurried sketch of the occupying tenants, of course, must follow, as would be naturally expected by the reader, who already must be interested in this pleasant narrative. We will decline a minute inventory of household conveniences-enter into no chamber statistics-cut culinary particulars, root and branch-and merely premising, that the underground department was safe as iron stanchions could make itthat the lower windows, next in order, were bricked-up to avoid taxation and espionage, we will unceremoniously drop from the first floor down the chimney, as it is called in Hibernian parlance, to that erroneously reckoned first by the slow-coach portion of the body politic, who decline short cuts, and hence, attain it by the staircase. The pleasant domicile we are about to describe was held in a sort of triplicate co-partnership, and the Cerberean community—as Mother Malaprop classically remarked of Captain Absolute in the play-represented "three gentlemen in one." Like constitutional rights, each possessed immunities and privileges separate and intact, which, notwithstanding, were virtually incorporated with the other. Major Anthony O'Callaghan was domiciled next the slates. He had served long and honourably with the Imperialists, but having made a vacancy in a regiment of Croatian hussars by placing a captain of the same hors de combat, for expressing infidelity in the snake-destroying miracles imputed to Saint Patrick, Major O'Callaghan received a brief notice to quit, and departed for his native isle with two medals, halfa-dozen wounds, and a retiring-pension unworthy of a recruitingsergeant. No wonder, then, that honest Anthony was sorely puzzled "to make tongue and buckle meet." What could he do, or any other gentleman do, when thus circumstanced, but instruct tradesmen in book-keeping? He did so at a trifling cost, but still it was quite sufficient to seal him hermetically in his sky-parlour as a reel is in a bottle, or an alligator entombed after death in the shop-window of a country chemist. Anthony, as fame reported, was a man of prompt action and few words. On the tool, and not the tongue, he reposed his reliance. His propensities were known to be pugnacious. The recording imp of the shoulder-tapping confederacy had long since booked him a dangerous man; and hence ungrateful tradesmen and the legal executive had as yet hesitated to resort, from personal fear, to active operations. The sap was held safer than the storm-a blockade was substituted for an assault; for Anthony's fortalice, by all accounts, would have been vigorously defended. "Hope deferred" holds as good in law as love; and it was whispered that some desperate proceeding concocted in an attorney's office, had been seconded in Banco Regis, and hostilities, therefore, might be hourly expected. As all mariners look out for squalls to be prepared against the coming emergency, Anthony, with prudential foresight, took time by the forelock, and added three slugs to the customary contents of his bell-muzzled blunderbuss. Captain Maguire, the next resident gentleman, if you looked into Poolbeg Street from a balloon, bivouacked below the ex-major. His, the captain's, mortal career had been active, and it was lamentable that a bustling ornament to society like himself should be so soon obliged to hide his candle beneath a bushel. No man had more multifarious claims upon his country. He was a patriot in ninety-eight, and an exile for ten years afterwards. As he kept neither a diary nor banker's-book, the tenor-not "noiseless"-and avocations of his earlier life must be summarily noticed. He was what they term in the Green Isle an "at-all-in-the-ring" sort of personage,—an industrious denizen of the state,-up to all and every honourable exertion, from manslaughter to the manipulation of a marked card. He had done business on the coast of Africa with much success, and commanded a vessel that he called a privateer, and others swore desperately was a pirate. He had afterwards preached charity-sermons at a fashionable conventicle, as he averred for the support of negro missionaries,—and according to others, for the benefit of himself. From certain malignant rumours he had seceded from his spiritual charge, retiring from his labours with a dozen or two silver spoons and also the fair helpmate of his coadjutor. He next entered into mercantile relations with Flushing. There, again, his path to fortune was malignantly crossed; for it was roundly asserted by secret enemies that he carried military munitions from Holland for the disaffected; but others charitably restricted his importations to contraband tobacco. The mad-dog cry was loudly raised; and because he attached a codicil and signature to a dead man's will and testament, which rewarded his own virtues and good service with a behest of a thousand pounds, the next of kin to the supposed devisor swore that he was little better than a forger, and the going judge weakly coincided in the same opinion. Persecuted like an early martyr, Captain Maguire yielded reluctantly to the storm. A light dietary, with a view of the Dublin Haymarket from the Newgate side, held out for him no pleasure in prospective; and although Poolbeg Street, in the nomenclature of an auctioneer, would not have been ac |