hood. It seems as if a much more artificial
self were constantly trying to speak instead of the self that is in
me--thus producing obvious incongruities."

"My Guardian Angel" relates the sufferings inflicted on his childish
mind by a certain cousin Jane--apparently one of the Molyneux clan, a
convert to the Roman Catholic church, who made the little fellow
intensely unhappy by telling him that he would burn for ever in Hell
fire if he did not believe in God.

When she left in the spring he hoped she might die. He was haunted by
fears of her vengeance during her absence, and when she returned later,
dying of consumption, he could not bear to be near to her. She left him
a bequest of books, of which he hardly appreciated the value then. It
included a full set of the "Waverley Novels," the works of Miss
Edgworth, Martin's "Milton," Pope's "Iliad and Odyssey," some quaint
translations of the "Arabian Nights," and Locke's essay on "The Human
Understanding." Curiously enough, there was not a single theological
book in the collection. His cousin Jane's literary tastes were
apparently uninfluenced by her religious views.

In 1859, Henry Molyneux was living at Linkfield Lodge, Linkfield Lane,
Redhill. The Redhill of to-day, with its acres of bricks and mortar, its
smart shops, its imposing Town Hall, and Protestant and Roman Catholic
churches, is a very different place from the straggling village that it
was in those days. The few gentlemen's houses were occupied by business
men, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway being the first in
England to run fast morning and evening trains for the convenience of
those who wanted to come and go daily to London.

Mrs. Brenane seems to have been in the habit of going over periodically
to Redhill from Ireland to stop with Molyneux and his wife. She had, at
various times, invested most of her fortune left to her by her husband
in Molyneux's business, a depot for oriental goods in Watling Street.

When Henry Molyneux became bankrupt--we see his name assigned by the
Court in the London List of Bankrupts for 1866--the house at Redhill was
given up, and he and his wife, accompanied by Mrs. Brenane, settled
permanently at Tramore, and there, apparently, when he was allowed to
leave college, Lafcadio spent his vacations. His grand-aunt by that time
had become a permanent inmate of the Molyneux establishment.

Before I had seen the Atkinson letters, I wondered how much Hearn knew
of t