Royal Irish Academy. It is written with much elegance, is entirely free from juvenile or national finery, and bears evident marks of those powers of discrimination which were afterwards to procure for the possessor more substantial results than academic honours. In the same year he published a Treatise of considerable length upon the manufactures of Ireland. The latter I have never seen, but I have heard an anecdote regarding it which may be mentioned as illustrative of the purity with which Irish academic justice was in those days administered. It was originally composed, like the former, as a prizeessay. The academy hesitated between it and the rival production of one of their members, a Mr. Preston, and referred the decision to a committee. The committee deputed the task to a sub-committee, and the latter to three persons, of whom Mr. Preston was one. The prize was accordingly adjudged to that gentleman's production, and Mr. Wallace revenged himself of the academy by publishing his work, and prefixing to it a detailed account of the transaction.

In concluding my notice of this able person, I have only to add, that he has, according to general report, some intention of procuring a seat in the ensuing Parliament. Should he do so, it may be safely predicted that his career there will be neither "mute" nor "inglorious." His manliness, integrity, and determination, as well as his general talents, would be soon found out in that assembly, and ensure him upon all occasions a respectful hearing. The enlightened portion of the Irish administration would find in him a strenuous supporter of no ordinary value; and the country at large (independently of the benefit of his other exertions) would have a security that no hackneyed and scandalous misrepresentations of its condition, no matter from whose lips they might come, would be allowed to pass in his presence without peremptory contradiction and rebuke.

THE FIRST TALE OF LOVE.

Aн, see where the tender tale is telling

To her downcast eye the glad tear rushes,

The deep sigh of bliss from her bosom is swelling,

And her cheek, half averted, is burning with blushes.
Nor yet does she open her heart's recesses,

Half doubting her joy, and half believing;

In secret the spot and the moment she blesses-
But her lips faintly murmur that men are deceiving.
While, looking fond triumph, her 'raptured lover
Presses the arm that on his reposes,

Reads in her mien what no tongue could discover,
And tells her her path shall be all over roses :

And brightly as swells the moonlight ocean,

When the breath of a sweet summer-night fleets over,

So heaves her fair bosom with tender emotion,

So soft on her ear fall the words of her lover.

Oh, who but has felt or fancied the pleasures
A moment of love so pure can awaken?

And what is the world, with its toils and its treasures,
That for it this flow'ret of Heaven's forsaken ?
Give the lover, with her whom he loves, at even
To rove by the stream of their own dear valley-

To the cold-hearted world be its vanities given!

Our life is too short with its spring-flowers to dally.

J.

THE ENGLISH MALADY.

Il y a plus de défauts dans l'humeur, que dans l'esprit."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

THE English language is rich in terms for expressing the various shades and nuances of intellectual and sensitive endowments and infirmities. Unlike the French, who are confined to the one poor "l'esprit," we have wit, fancy, imagination, sense, humour, fear, apprehension, and many other expressions of modality; for all of which the aforesaid "l'esprit" is for the most part compelled to do duty alone and unassisted. So likewise our mother-tongue indicates no less than three distinct modifications of that malevolence with which too frequently we regard our friends and associates; ill-temper, ill-nature, and illhumour. By an ill-tempered man, we mean one who is impatient of trifling annoyances, who is roused by petty provocations, to hasty and unmeasured language and actions, but who is generally as easily appeased; his fire being, like that of straw, as evanescent as it is sudden. Such an individual, when the corns of his irritability are not trodden upon, may be gay, cheerful and benevolent; and if the habit has not been suffered to gain head, need not be

"Quite a madman though a pasty fell."

In general, however, he is an unsafe companion; and to converse with him is to inhabit over a volcano.

An ill-natured man is one who has a perverse pleasure in the misfortunes of his fellow-creatures; one who enjoys all the vexations and disappointments of his neighbours; not because they afford materials for laughter, but because they give pain to the victims. The best natured man in the world may be amused by the perplexity of a dinerout, if caught in a beau-trap, when "figged out" for the occasion, and hurrying on at the last moment in his way to the friendly mahogany; or at a bungling pretender to the off-edge, when he comes with his sederunt upon the ice, with more force than good-will. If a plate of hot soup should empty itself on a friend's spick and span casimeers, rendering it a doubtful point whether the grease or the caloric constitute the largest part of what Jeremy Bentham would call the matter of punishment, he might indulge in a smile, or even jeer the sufferer with the customary axiom of "summum jus summa injuria;" but his laugh will be tempered with a certain share of sympathy, and a friendly apprehension of enhancing the evil by the appearance of too much gratification. With an ill-natured man, the pleasure on such occasions will be proportioned exclusively to the pain. He prefers a broken leg to a bruise; he would like the broth to scald, and the inexpressibles to be neither cleansable nor replaceable. Such a man chuckles when his friend gains a blank in the lottery, or marries a tartar, or loses a favourite horse, or sees his play damned, exclaiming, "Ah, now he will be taken down a peg;" "Now we shall see him buckle too," or the like expression of spite and triumph. Such a fellow was designed by nature to fill the office of the slave in the conqueror's car, and damp the gratification of successful merit, by reminding the general of his mortality. Times of public calamity and "pecuniary crisis" are his harvest-home. The first thing he looks to in a newspaper is the list of bankrupts; and next to that he enjoys an action for crim-con, or for

slander, an elopement, or in general any exposure of character. He is the first to rip up an old story of failure or disgrace, against his equals who have risen in the world; to "remember the time" when my Lord Mayor's note would not discount for twenty pounds; when Sir Somebody Something wore a livery; or to recal the fact that old Mrs. Graveairs made a slip when she was sixteen, and was stopped by her husband at Dartford, on her way to the Continent, with Captain Lovemore.

Very different from these personages is the ill-humoured man. Such a man may be just, generous, and upon great occasions compassionate and friendly; but in his ordinary intercourse with society he overflows with an unceasing stream of bitterness. All his remarks are severe, harsh, and annoying; and in the moments of his relaxation, in the hour of social enjoyment, he is morose, snappish, and insolent.

The ill-humoured man differs from the ill-natured in this, that he does not rejoice in misfortunes, but takes pleasure only in seeing his friends uncomfortable; and he has no delight even in this measure of annoyance, if he himself is not the author of it. Again, he differs from the ill-tempered man, because the latter must have some one to be angry with; whereas the ill-humoured man is at odds with himself: the ill-tempered man must have an external occasion for excitement, the ill-humoured goes out of himself to seek for the food of his humour. This last modification of disposition is decidedly English; and whether it be attributable to "les brouillards d'Angleterre ;" to the beef and puddingising; the anxious money-getting, or other causes peculiar to England and Englishmen, it is rarely to be met with on the Continent, in the same intensity in which it prevails at home. Individuals, indeed, of all nations may be subject to occasional fits of spleen and discontent; but it is among Englishmen exclusively that we find ill-humour an état, a manière d'être, which clings to a man at all periods of life; and is neither mitigated by the successes of love, of vanity, or of ambition, nor requires to be awakened by disappointment and vexation. Ill-humour is a strictly constitutional disease; and as its occasional paroxysms are rarely brought on by the more serious evils of existence, but are excited by a perverse accumulation of petty annoyances, so the disposition itself does not appear to depend upon any notable deviation from health, but to arise from some obscure hitch or embarrassment in the more intimate movements of the frame, which, without tending to sickness or dissolution, is destructive of that diffusive animal pleasure, which, in happier constitutions, is derived from the mere sentiment of existence. It should seem as if, in persons thus constituted, the capillary systems were so many fountains of irritation, from which flow in upon the sensorium an accumulated torrent of inappreciable impressions, which do not engender pain, but yet fret the disposition, "like a gummed velvet," and throw the mind upon the external world, in search of those causes of uneasiness which are in reality internal. "The humours of the body," says a moral writer, "imperceptibly influence the will, so that they enter, for a large part, into all our actions, without our being aware of it; and thus it is that the ill-humoured man punishes, in his friends, the outrages of some peccant lymph circulating in his own veins; and revenges himself nobly on society for the offences of his liver or pancreas. Accordingly, it happens that a severe fit of illness

will much abate this congenital disease of the mind, by changing the habitual current of the humours. In the same manner, a fire, the death of a friend, or a heavy pecuniary loss, will render an ill-hunioured man, for a short time, much more civilized and amenable in society; and he will not lose this temporary good feeling till time and circumstance shall have restored him to his ordinary good spirits. This peculiarity of disposition is a great defect in the national character, not only as it occasions much unhappiness to the bye-standers, but as it bespeaks much uneasiness in the subject, for it never could exist where life was attended with pleasure. The happy are ever pleased with the happiness of others. Ill-humour vests itself in a thousand ways, which contribute to impress upon foreigners the notion of English morosity, and reconcile them to their native despotisms, by a reflection on the effects of an English climate.

An ill-humoured man in the bosom of his family sits like a spider in the centre of its web, in watchful and unceasing malice against all around him. No sooner does a burst of cheerfulness explode in his presence, than he hastens to repress it by a sarcasm or a rebuke. He studies the weaknesses of his friends in order to play upon them with more effect; and as the hackney coachman "makes a raw" on his horse's shoulder to flog his callous hide to better purpose, so the illnatured man delights to awaken an outraged feeling, to notice an imperfection, to shock a prejudice, and, in one word, to say to every individual the most unpleasant and vexatious things that recur to his recollection. The great pretext for this cantankerous indulgence is, that the party loves to speak his mind. He, forsooth, is a plain downright man, who always utters what he thinks; and he is too good an Englishman to make cringes and congées like a foreigner. For my own part, I hate most cordially these truth-tellers, and would almost as soon live with the father of lies himself, (provided I might choose the venue of the habitation,) as associate with these very candid and very impertinent companions, who, after all, differ from their continental neighbours less, perhaps, in the love of speaking their thoughts, than in not thinking kindly on any subject. The worst of it is that these "cross gentlemen" (to use the designation by which an Irish waiter distinguished a certain unpleasable traveller, with whose name he was not acquainted,) have now and then so many compensating good qualities, so much friendship, so much generosity, that you cannot for the world bring yourself to a dead cut. Sir Simon Verjuice is a man of this description, whose highly respectable life of industry and integrity, whose family affection and active friendship conspire to licence to the uttermost his indulgence in the angelical privilege of annoyance. He will tell a woman in a large circle that she is painted-that her wig is awry-or that her jewellery is mock. He will make a fond mother miserable by calling her husband's attention to her mismanagement of her favourite boy; tell a scandalous anecdote of Burdett or Waithman to teaze a radical acquaintance, or abuse sectarianism to a dissenter. He has all sorts of predicted misfortune at the service of his acquaintance; and when he, half jeeringly, half earnestly, tells a neighbour that he will live to be hanged, takes little pains to conceal a private opinion that the party richly deserves it. If there is a spot on your daughter's cheek, he will blurt out that it is the evil; or if your

wife coughs, will abruptly warn you that she is far gone in a consumption. All proffered civilities he rejects disgraciously, flinging the good-natured and the polite back upon themselves, by the coldness or the rudeness of his refusal. If you offer him a place in your carriage, he tells you he can walk. If you propose to him some delicacy of the table," he is no epicure." If you yield him the arm chair, or a place next the fire," he is not so old." Thus he gives you ground for believing that your motive is suspected, when he is only annoyed at being ousted for awhile of his right to be surly. So, on the other hand, his first word to every request is "No!" and though he seldom fails to oblige when it is in his power, he as seldom grants a favour, till he has quoted every reason he is aware of, why he should refuse you. Remonstrate with him on his rudeness of speech, and tell him that he has hurt such a man's feelings, his constant answer is, "What do I care?Why is he such a fool as to mind it? Is it not the truth ?--and, If he is ashamed to hear the truth, why does he not change his conduct?"

After all, however, Verjuice is a much more tolerable companion than his sister; first, because she is a woman, and dare be more savage; and next, because she is an old maid, and adds some grains of ill-nature to her inborn ill-humour; but most of all, because she has seen less of the world, is more full of herself, and is less essentially indulgent to the infirmities of others. He taunts you with a weakness or an absurdity, because it suits his humour to do so; she, for the same reason, and because she thinks unnecessarily ill of you on account of that weakness. With as much bile, she has more genuine malignity. Miss Verjuice entertains a thousand little jealousies of the neglect of friends. Herself the centre of her own circle, she can ill brook the eccentric movements of those who are occasionally influenced by other attractions, and dare to omit her in a dinner-party, or to withhold the customary visit. These feelings are but too common among those who have not l'usage du monde, but pride leads most people to keep such weaknesses to themselves. Miss V., on the contrary, never lets slip an opportunity of" telling her friends a piece of her mind;" she is constantly asserting herself, and reproaching her visitors with their arrears of civility. To her servants, or of them, she never speaks but to find fault, and her servants are her favourite topic for the amusements of her guests. She is the scourge of her poor neighbours, abusing the men for idleness, the wives for sluttishness, and the children for their dirty faces. Her own nephews and nieces she keeps in incessant hot-water, by reminding them, apropos to nothing, of their old offences; and reading them improviso lessons before company. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Fizackerly? That's my niece, ma'am, Miss Clementina Verjuice, a good girl, if she would but hold up her head. I take pretty good care that little girls shall be good where I am; I don't think they will break my windows with their ball a second time: and that young gentleman is her brother Harry. Come here, sir: why don't you comb your hair? He chose to spoil his best trowsers, by falling in the mud, and tearing the knees; so he must be content to go on in his old ones; that's the way to make children attentive." All the while poor Mrs. Fizackerly sits bored to death; either by no means interested in the qualities of Miss Clementina and Master Harry, or if she be a foolish mother herself, applying to her own conduct all the inuendoes against