t, and
slow of speech, to hazard that particular method, lest he should find
himself the worse of his experiment. My counsel is for the young, the
tolerably good-looking, for murmuring orators of the silver-tongue
family, and romantic athletes with coaxing ways.

Worthy Father Roach constituted himself internuncio between Mahony, whom
we remember first in his pride of place doing the honours of that feast
of Mars in which his 'friend' Nutter was to have carved up the great
O'Flaherty on the Fifteen Acres, and next, _quantum, mutatus ab illo_! a
helpless but manly captive in the hands of the Dublin bailiffs, and that
very Mrs. Elizabeth Woolly, relict and sole executrix of the late
Timotheus Woolly, of High-street, tailor, &c., &c., who was the cruel
cause of his incarceration.

Good Father Roach, though a paragon of celibacy, was of a gallant
temperament, and a wheedling tongue, and unfolded before the offended
eye of the insulted and vindictive executrix so interesting a picture of
'his noble young friend, the victim of circumstance, breaking his manly
heart over his follies and misfortunes;' and looking upon her, Mrs.
Woolly, afar off, with an eye full of melancholy and awe, tempered with,
mayhap, somewhat of romantic gallantry, like Sir Walter Raleigh from the
Tower window on Queen Elizabeth, that he at length persuaded the
tremendous 'relict' to visit her captive in his dungeon. This she did,
in a severe mood, with her attorney, and good Father Roach; and though
Mahony's statement was declamatory rather than precise, and dealt more
with his feelings than his resources, and was carried on more in the way
of an appeal to the 'leedy' than as an exposition to the man of law,
leaving matters at the end in certainly no clearer state than before he
began, yet the executrix consented to see the imprisoned youth once
more, this time dispensing with her attorney's attendance, and content
with the protection of the priest, and even upon that, on some
subsequent visits, she did not insist.

And so the affair, like one of those medleys of our Irish melodies
arranged by poor M. Jullien, starting with a martial air, breathing turf
and thunder, fire and sword, went off imperceptibly into a pathetic and
amorous strain. Father Roach, still officiating as internuncio, found
the dowager less and less impracticable, and at length a treaty was
happily concluded. The captive came forth to wear thenceforward those
lighter chains only, w