merely for dramatic effect and to excite
the audience, and there being no "show
part" in it to set off a particular actor, it
will lie undisturbed on the shelf. Of the
same school was the MILLER AND HIS MEN,
with its bandits, and a funny man-servant also,
who, with his master, gets lost in a forest—yet
the whole founded on a good notion. There is
the wicked miller, Grindoff, with his procession
of millers, each carrying a sack to the mill in
the distance to Sir Henry Bishop's excellent
music,
               When the wind blo-o-ows,
               Then the mill go-o-oes;

and that mysterious quintet in the cottage, when
the travellers are going to rest, " Stay! prithee,
stay!" There were English composers then,
who have gone out with the melodramas—men
who wrote with a good distinct English style,
which has held its own to this hour. It will
be otherwise with the sham Italian, sham
German, which now obtains. The Bleeding
Nun, or Raymond and Agnes! another of
the school, as good as a chapter of Mrs.
Radcliffe. Forests and inns kept by landlords of
bad character; these were the dregs our old
melodramatists dearly loved to mix in their
caldrons. How often with bated breath and
the very sweetest sense of interest—all but
love—have we sat absorbed while this story
shifted before us! That was in the jacket days.

Following down the succession, we have
Tekeli, or the Siege of Montgatz—plenty of
fighting—the hero concealed in a cask, and yet
rather bold and noisy. Who has not a sneaking
penchant for the dashing brigand chief in the
splendid dress, velvet jacket, silver buttons, and
peaked hat, so brave, so gallant, so accomplished,
who has a joyous abandon and recklessness
that make him the darling of the innkeeper's
daughters—the brilliant Alessandro Masseroni?
There was but one brigand chief, and his name
was more like Wallachio (Wallack, he was
known by here) than Masseroni. What firings,
what groupings along the stage cliffs and sloping
hills!—what music here, also:

                    Now morn is breaking,
                    Slowly awaking!

Mark the venerable Prince Bianchi, whose son
has joined the brigands and " spotted" his own
father's house as a " crib" to be "cracked." The
royalist soldiers are very effective. This play is
well suited to " officers and gentlemen." I can
recal a night of " garrison amateur theatricals"
at a very large public theatre, with The
Brigand underlined, Major Saddletree brought
down specially to play the daring Alessandro.
He had often done the part on small mess-room
boards—bijou stages—but had never essayed his
powers in the open country, the free stage, with
money-takers at the doors. There was a great
house, the play went on excellently, excepting the
customary weakness about the knees, and
difficulties about the disposal of hands. But every
one agreed that Saddletree was excelling himself.
His " Gentle Zitella" was encored rapturously.
It drew on to the last scene where
Alessandro is reconnoitring with a view to the
pillage of his own father's house—but he did not
know of their near relationship—and finds
himself alone in his ancestral halls, or hall, rather.
The audience had not so much as the dimmest
conception that there were such near and dear
ties between the bandit and the proprietor of the
castle. Suddenly he lifts his eyes to a picture
in a richly gilt frame which we all think will
elicit a professional remark, when, instead, we
see Saddletree turn round, and hear him say
promptly: " 'Tis my mother!" The surprise
the almost startling character of this revelation
—was too much, and a roar of hearty laughter
from the whole house, sustained for many
minutes, showed how the audience were affected.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

THE BATTLE OF VINEGAR HILL.

IN April, 1798, there was scarcely a farmer's
house where pretty Irish girls, with frightened
glances at the windows, were not cutting up rolls
of innocent green ribbon into rebel cockades for
the hats of fathers, brothers, and lovers. There
was scarcely a lonely moonlit bawn, or old Danish
encampment, where wild striplings, armed with
pikes, were not practising the right and left
wheel, the rallying square, or the charge. Down
many a rough country lane, between the desolate
stone walls, cars were jolting with clattering
loads of pike-handles. On many a mountain,
from Benabola to the Scalp of Wicklow,
bonfires were heaping, and stern-faced men muttering
threats against the Protestants. In many
a roadside chapel, behind bolted doors, grim-
looking priests, with faces steeled to the work,
were messing half-naked, ragged, headstrong
pikemen who were to begin the holy work
and face the swinging yeomanry sabres twenty-
four hours after. In dismal cabins, mere holes
in the bank roofed with turf, or in hidden
places between the deep chocolate-coloured
trenches in the bogs, where the snipe whistled,
and the wild cotton, ruffled white, many a rebel
forged the pike-head, kissed the green ribbons,
adjusted his talisman against bullets, or said
his Aves in supplication to the Virgin that he
might be guarded from the yeomanry bayonets
on the morrow. The Curragh of Kildare was
dark with savage pikemen; on the Wicklow
mountains they were gathering in force;
Limerick was alight; even in Ulster and Down
there was danger; but the central crater was
Wexford, for there every third man was in
arms against the red-coats. From the mouth of
the Slaney to Enniscorthy, from Hook Head
to Dunbrody, the pikes were assembling, and
the green sashes waiting for the fiery signals.

There is no doubt that, from 1796, the fears
of a French invasion had driven the government
to dangerous and oppressive severities.
Repression, and not reform, was Lord Camden's
primary principle. The Insurrection Act gave
powers to any seven alarmed and tyrannical
magistrates to assume, after requisition, the
power of seizing, imprisoning, and sending to