In the village graveyard of Hanwell (ad viii. ab urbe lapidem) sleeps the original of yonder sketch, and the rude forefathers of the Saxor. hamlet have consented to receive among them the clay of a Milesian scholar. That "original" was no stranger to us. Some time back we had our misgivings that the oil in his flickering lamp of life would soon dry up; still, we were not prepared to hear of his light being thus abruptly extinguished. "One morn we missed him" from the accustomed table at the library of the British Museum, where the page of antiquity awaited his perusal ; "another came-nor yet" was he to be seen behind the pile of "Asiatic Researches," poring over his favourite Herodotus, or deep in the Zendavesta. The next brought tidings of his death. 66 "Au banquet de la vie, infortuné convive, Je meurs, et sur la tombe où, jeune encor, j'arrive His book on "the Round Towers" has thrown more light on the early history of Ireland, and on the freemasonry of these gigantic puzzles, than will ever shine from the cracked pitchers of the "Royal Irish Academy," or the farthing candle of Tommy Moore. And it was quite natural that he should have received from them, during his lifetime, such tokens of malignant hostility as might sufficiently "tell how they hated his beams." The "Royal Irish" twaddlers must surely feel some compunction now, when they look back on their paltry transactions in the matter of the "prize-essay;" and though we do not expect much from "Tom Brown the younger," or "Tom Little," the author of sundry Tomfudgeries and Tomfooleries, still it would not surprise us if he now felt the necessity of atoning for his individual misconduct by doing appropriate penance in a white sheet, or a "blue and yellow" blanket, when next he walks abroad in that rickety gocart of drivelling dotage, the "Edinburgh Review." While Cicero was quæstor in Sicily, he discovered in the suburbs of Syracuse the neglected grave of Archimedes, from the circumstance of a symbolical cylinder indicating the pursuits and favourite theories of the illustrious dead. Great was his joy at the recognition. No emblem will mark the sequestered spot where lies the Edipus of the Round Tower riddle-no hieroglyphic, "Save daisies on the mould, Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate, But ye who wish for monuments to his memory, go to his native land, and there-circumspicite!-Glendalough, Devenish, Clondalkin, Inniscattery, rear their architectural cylinders; and each, through those mystic apertures that face the cardinal points, proclaims to the four winds of heaven, trumpet-tongued, the name of him who solved the passing heedlessly over "its chords, and that the music was by no means his own. A simple hint was sometimes enough to set his muse at work; and he not only was, to my knowledge, an adept in translating accurately, but he could also string together any number of lines in any given measure, in imitation of a song or ode which casually came in his way. This is not such arrant robbery as what I have previously stigmatised; but it is a sort of quasi-pilfering, a kind of petty larceny, not to be encouraged. There is, for instance, his "National Melody," or jingle, called, in the early edition of his poems, "Those Evening Bells," a " Petersburg air;" of which Î could unfold the natural history. It is this:-In one of his frequent visits to Watergrasshill, Tommy and I spent the evening in talking of our continental travels, and more particularly of Paris and its mirabilia; of which he seemed quite enamoured. The view from the tower of the central church, Nôtre Dame, greatly struck his fancy; and I drew the conversation to the subject of the simultaneous ringing of all the bells in all the steeples of that vast metropolis on some feast-day, or public rejoicing. The effect, he agreed with me, is most enchanting, and the harmony most surprising. At that time Victor Hugo had not written his glorious romance, the Hunchback Quasimodo; and, consequently, I could not have read his beautiful description: "In an ordinary way, the noise issuing from Paris in the day-time is the talking of the city; at night, it is the breathing of the city; in this case, it is the singing of the city. Lend your ear to this opera of steeples. Diffuse over the whole the buzzing of half a million of human beings, the eternal murmur of the river, the infinite piping of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests, placed like immense organs on the four hills of the horizon; soften down as with a demi-tint all that is too shrill and too harsh in the central mass of sound,-and say if you know anything in the world more rich, more gladdening, more dazzling, than that tumult of bells-than that furnace of music-than those ten thousand brazen tones, breathed all at once from flutes of stone three hundred feet high-than that city which is but one orchestra-than that symphony, rushing and roaring like a tempest." All these matters, we agreed, were very fine; but there is nothing, after all, like the associations which early intancy attaches to the well-known and long-remembered chimes of our own parish-steeple: and no magic can equal the effect on our ear when returning after long absence in foreign, and perhaps happier countries. As we perfectly coincided in the truth of this observation, I added, that long ago, while at Rome, I had thrown my ideas into the shape of a song, which I would sing him to the tune of the "Groves." *The spire of Shandon, built on the ruins of old Shandon Castle (for which see the plates in “Pacata Hybernia”), is a prominent object, from whatever side the traveller approaches our beautiful city. vault at its foot sleep some generations of the writer's kith and kin. In a O! the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on Of the river Lee. There's a bell in Moscow, The Turkman gets, And loud in air Calls men to prayer From the tapering summi Shortly afterwards, Moore published his "Evening Bells, a Petersburg air.” But any one can see that he only rings a few changes on my Roman ballad, cunningly shifting the scene as far north as he could, to avoid detection. He deserves richly to be sent on a hurdle to Siberia. 1 I do not feel so much hurt at this nefarious "belle's stratagem" regarding me, as at his wickedness towards the man of the round towers; and to this matter I turn in conclusion. "O blame not the bard!" some folks will no doubt exclaim, and perhaps think that I have been over-severe on Tommy, in my vindication of O'B.; I can only say, that if the poet of all circles and the idol of his own, as soon as this posthumous rebuke shall meet his eye, begins to repent him of his wicked attack on my young friend, and, turning him from his evil ways, betakes him to his proper trade of balladmaking, then shall he experience the comfort of living at peace with all mankind, and old Prout's blessing shall fall as a precious ointment on his head. In that contingency if (as I understand it to be his intention) he should happen to publish a fresh number of his "Melodies," may it be eminently successful; and may Power of the Strand, by some more sterling sounds than the echoes of fame, be convinced of the power of song For it is not the magic of streamlet or hill: O no! it is something that sounds in the "till!” My humble patronage, it is true, cannot do much for him in fashionable circles; for I never mixed much in the beau monde (at least in Ireland) during my life-time, and can be of no service of course when I'm dead; nor will his "Melodies," I fear, though well adapted to mortal piano-fortes, answer the purposes of that celestial choir in which I shall then be an obscure but cheerful vocalist. But as I have touched on this grave topic of mortality, let Moore recollect that his course here below, however harmonious in the abstract, must have a finale; and at his last hour let him not treasure up for himself the unpleasant retrospect of young genius nipped in the bud by the frost of his criticism, or glad enthusiasm's early promise damped by inconsiderate sneers. O'Brien's book can, and will, no doubt, afford much matter for witticism and merriment to the superficial, the unthinking, and the profane; but to the eye of candour it ought to have presented a page richly fraught with wondrous research -redolent with all the perfumes of Hindostan; its leaves, if they failed to convince, should, like those of the mysterious lotus, have inculcated silence; and if the finger of meditation did not rest on every line, and pause on every period, the volume, at least, should not be indicated to the vulgar by the finger of scorn. Even granting that there were in the book some errors of fancy, of judgment, or of style, which of us is without reproach in our juvenile productions? and though I myself am old, I am the more inclined to forgive the inaccuracies of youth. Again, when all is dark, who would object to a ray of light, merely because of the faulty or flickering medium by which it is transmitted? And if these round towers have been hitherto a dark puzzle and a mystery, must we scare away O'Brien because he approaches with a rude and unpolished but serviceable lantern? No; forbid it, Diogenes: and though Tommy may attempt to put his extinguisher on the towers and their historian, there is enough of good sense in the British public to make common cause with O'Brien the enlightener. Moore should recollect, that knowledge conveyed in any shape will ever find a welcome among us; and that, as he himself beautifully observes in his "Loves of the Angels"— "Sunshine broken in the rill, Though turned aside, is sunshine still." For my own part, I protest to Heaven, that were I, while M |