te of somnolency, not during the "death of each
day's life; no, it is clear, to escape such a consummation she must be
wide awake." The poet sees this, and with the energy of a master-mind, he
brings the invisible chimera of her entranced imagination into effective
operation. Argument with a man who denies first premises, and we submit
the assertion that vitality is no exception to the treatment of the dead,
amounts to that. We say, argument with such a man is worse than nothing;
it would be fallacious as the Eolian experiment of whistling the most
inspiriting jigs to an inanimate, and consequently unmusical, milestone,
opposing a transatlantic thunder-storm with "a more paper than powder"
"penny cracker," or setting an owl to outstare the meridian sun.

The poet knew and felt this, and therefore he ends the delusion and
controversy by an overt act:--

"The ghost then seized her all so grim,
All for to go along with him;
'Come, come,' said he, 'e'er morning beam.'"

To which she replies with the following determined announcement:--

"'I von't!' said she, and scream'd a scream,
Then she voke, and found she'd dream'd a dream!"

These are the last words we have left to descant upon: they are such as
should be the last; and, like _Joseph Surface_, "moral to the end." The
glowing passions the fervent hopes, the anticipated future, of the loving
pair, all, all are frustrated! The great lesson of life imbues the
elaborate production; the thinking reader, led by its sublimity to a train
of deep reflection, sees at once the uncertainty of earthly projects, and
sighing owns the wholesome, though still painful truth, that the brightest
sun is ever the first cause of the darkest shadow; and from childhood
upwards, the blissful visions of our gayest fancy--forced by the cry of
stern reality--call back the mental wanderer from imaginary bliss, to be
again the worldly drudge; and, thus awakened to his real state, confess,
like our sad heroine, Molly Brown, he too, has _dreamt a dream_.

FUSBOS.

* * * * *

FATHER O'FLYNN AND HIS CONGREGATION.

Father Francis O'Flynn, or, as he was generally called by his
parishioners, "Father Frank," was the choicest specimen you could desire
of a jolly, quiet-going, ease-loving, Irish country priest of the old
school. His parish lay near a small town in the eastern part of the
county Cork, and for forty-five years he lived amongst his flock,
pe