a perfect spell--a sweet murmur, to which the _lenis susurrus_ of the
Hybla bees is, with all their honey, jarring discord. How tame is
"My sweet darling," its literal translation, compared to its soft and
lulling intonations. There is a dissolving, entrancing, beguiling,
deluding, flattering, insinuating, coaxing, winning, inveigling,
roguish, palavering, come-overing, comedhering, consenting, blarneying,
killing, willing, charm in it, worth all the philters that ever the
gross knavery of a withered alchemist imposed upon the credulity of
those who inhabit the other nations of the earth--for we don't read that
these shrivelled philter-mongers ever prospered in Ireland.

No, no--let Paddy alone. If he hates intensely and effectually, he loves
intensely, comprehensively, and gallantly. To love with power is a proof
of a large soul, and to hate well is, according to the great moralist,
a thing in itself to be loved. Ireland is, therefore, through all its
sects, parties, and religions, an amicable nation. Their affections are,
indeed, so vivid, that they scruple not sometimes to kill each other
with kindness: but we hope that the march of love and friendship will
not only keep pace with, but outstrip, the march of intellect.

*****

Peter Cornell was for many years of his life a pattern and proverb
for industry and sobriety. He first began the world as keeper of a
shebeen-house at the cross-roads, about four miles from the town of
Ballypoteen. He was decidedly an honest man to his neighbors, but a
knave to excisemen, whom he hated by a kind of instinct that he had,
which prompted him, in order to satisfy his conscience, to render
them every practicable injury within the compass of his ingenuity.
Shebeen-house keepers and excisemen have been, time out of mind,