might be deemed worthy of admission into the
company of the illustrious dead? If this were
done, and the other portraits arranged with more
attention to chronology than is at present
observed, the interest attaching to the collection
would be greatly increased.

IRISH STEW.

PLATE I.

I AM not, so to say, a very old woman, yet here
am I, the last of a good old stock, alone among
strangers. I am not a very old woman, yet
when my tongue runs on the things I remember,
I can plainly see that I am mentally set down as
an old woman by my hearers. It is true that my
principal recollections have to do with scenes and
actors now passed away: so much so, that to my
very self I seem to belong to the past, not to
the present. Ah! those good old times when I
was young! The world was a different world
from what it is to-day; and the people that were
in it were a distinct race from the cold-hearted
calculating degenerate generation occupying it
at present. How they can be at all related to
the grand old people I knew long ago, is what
puzzles me.

The other evening I was tempted to go and
witness the performance of the Colleen Bawn,
here in our little temporary theatre, by a
company of strolling actors, who had managed to
enlist a couple of our Dublin stars among them.
I was sorry for having gone. The English girl
who played poor Eily O'Connor's part couldn't
get her tongue round "the Irish words;" she
called Colleen "Cooleen." She wasn't a
Colleen Bawn either, for that matter, but a real
Colleen Dhuv, brown-skinned, raven-locked, and
black-eyed. Danny Mann was right good,
though. But the real Danny Mann—Sullivan
was his name—was no more a hunchback than
I am. He went to Tralee, where he changed
his name, set up a little shop, and was doing
well. Yet he wasn't to escape, any more than
his master: he was hanged in Limerick, though
not for years after the murder of poor Eily.

I read part of The Collegians, but didn't care
to finish it. Every one talks of its power and
pathos, but what is it to the real story. It is
nothing to that—nothing! All the world knows
now that Scanlan (Hardress Cregan) was hanged
in Limerick for his fearful deed, and in the book
doesn't he get off? The cruel black-hearted
rascal! But sure, as the old people in Limerick
used to say, he came of a bad breed, and the
curse was on them! The mother, Mrs. Scanlan,
was a hard unnatural woman. She had one
other child, a daughter, who got married to a
young army-surgeon, and much as she doted on
the son, Mrs. Scanlan hated the poor daughter
—her own child. I could tell a queer story about
that, but just now I want to speak of the brother.
We all know how that mother's darling turned
out. With all his terrible villany—and to my
mind this makes it the more revolting—he was, to
the last, one of the gayest, most rollicking, amusing
fellows that ever lived. Often and often I
had to laugh till I cried, listening to Miss Jackson
telling about him and his wild harum-scarum
pranks in jail. Miss Jackson knew him and all
his doings there, for her father was governor of
the jail where he was confined. Scanlan led a
gay life in his prison. There wasn't much discipline
in those times, I suppose, but at all events
every one was sure he would get off, for he had
such connexions and such interest, and all working
Heaven and earth, as the saying is, for him.
(Not that Heaven was very likely to interpose
in his behalf!) There was a sister of his
mother's married to a Mr. Smith, a man who
had amassed an immense fortune, and at the
very time the good nephew was hanged, "Follow
my Honour," as he was called, was high sheriff
for the county Limerick. As I was saying,
Scanlan had fine times in his prison. Nothing
but roystering and fun from morning till night,
and often from night till morning. He was taken
up one assizes, and had to wait for his trial
until the next came round. And, among others
of his gay doings during that jovial time, he was
within one pip of hanging the hangman! This
is perfectly true. I had it, word for word, from
Miss Jackson's own lips.

Scanlan never believed they would hang him.
He ran up the very ladder, laughing and flinging
up his cap like a schoolboy—sure of a reprieve
to the last! Only for Lord Monteagle he would
have got off, not a doubt of it. I often heard
that when her little spencer, poor Eily O'Connor's,
was handed up on the trial (some of her
clothes had been found, and were given in
evidence), a little yellow silk spencer that you'd
think would only fit a child, the sensation in
court was terrible. But nothing could move or
touch him. Careless and gay he was to the end!
It is a positive fact, witnessed and attested by
thousands, that when Scanlan was on his way to
the gallows, the horses under the car in which
he was, refused to draw it over Thomond Bridge.
Here they stood stock-still, and when urged to
proceed, plunged, reared, and resisted all efforts
to coax or compel them onwards. At last the
wretched young man had to get down and walk
over—whereupon the animals moved on of their
own accord, with every sign of relief and ease.

PLATE II.

I find it not possible to give the exact date of
this story. As near as I can come to it, it was
about the year 1761. My father's grandmother,
with whom he lived at the time, was just twelve
years old, at the siege of Limerick, and when
she died, not long after, she was over eighty,
and he a boy of thirteen. Putting this and that
together, I cannot be very far out in my reckoning,
when I assume 1761 to be the date of the
story.

In the old town are many fine houses, built
when it was thought that Limerick would stretch
out by Lord Clare's, instead of going as it did.
There is Back Clare-street, built of handsome
private houses, which were afterwards let and
sub-let cheap to lodgers, many of the lower class
of tradespeople. It was in one of these houses