the confusion and mismanagement apparent
on my honourable friend's property, arises
from his persisting in employing people who
are in no respect capable of performing their
work. Not only does he insist on engaging
all grades and shades of idle incompetent
cousins and nephews, but he shifts his people
about from one employment of which they
are masters to another they know nothing
about in the most absurd and prejudicial
manner. For instance, after keeping one of
his people at ploughing for several years, he
will suddenly transfer him to the dairy.
Grooms are transmogrified into hedgers and
ditchers, and gardeners are, without any sort
of notice, placed upon the coach-box. The
only justification he can offer for these strange
and ruinous proceedings is that which was used
by the great educational reformer, Dr.
O'Toole:—"It is a part of his system."

Truth compels me to add a few features of
his system which are extremely ugly.

At various periods in his career, Honourable
John possessed himself of large tracts of land
belonging to native proprietors, on various
conditions, and under different pretexts.
Sometimes he represented that he could
manage the crops very much better than they
could, although they had been accustomed
to faming from their youth; which his
people had not.  At other times, he persuaded
them that it would be immensely advantageous
to them to allow him to manage
their large establishments, placing his own
inspectors and stewards over them, and giving
to them (the tenants) all the emoluments,
without any of the risk and trouble of farming.
To this, many have consented; some not
daring to offend him by refusal; others, believing
that the arrangement would save them
a world of trouble: at any rate, they relied
upon the continued good faith of Honourable
John, and believed that so far as income
as concerned, themselves and their descendants
need be under no sort of apprehension.
For many years these stipulations were duly
performed; though I regret to say, my
friend, in taking possession of the lands assigned
to him for farming purposes, seized a
great quantity of personal properly not included
in the bargain, and resolutely refused
to give it up. Letter after letter was written
to him on the subject of these robberies; but
he invariably had the meanness to shuffle
out of any reply, by referring the complaints,
first to one steward and then to another, and
finally, by not vouchsafing any answer.

This is not the worst part of the affair.
Many of the original parties to the land
arrangements having died off, their children
and families have been reduced to half the
former stipulated allowance agreed to be paid
to them by the original contract, and some
of them to much less; so that, being in great
poverty, they feel themselves degraded in the
eyes of their followers.

So bad has my friend's conduct become,
that his former admirers and supporters
have been seriously thinking of taking all
power of doing mischief out of his hands,
and leaving him in the quiet possession of
his guaranteed dividend. Failing rents, increasing
debts, incompetent and corrupt servants,
ill-led and badly-housed tenants, roads
and bridges out of repair, land imperfectly
manured and drained, broken engagements
with dependants, and an obstinate perseverance
in wrong-doing, have roused the
public; and Government has at length determined
to check his career by seeing
thoroughly into his future conduct. To cure
what is past would be impossible; but I sincerely
hope that the new partners Honourable
John is now forced to take in, will give him
a better title to that designation than he can
just now show.

MARIE'S FEVER.

PRAYERS to the Holy Virgin, wax candles
to Saint Joseph, rosaries and litanies for the
poor little heretic, sick unto death! All the
Quartier Saint Honoré was interested in the
young English girl lying there so ill and
lonely, without a friend, with no known
finances, without a home in the world, and,
as those Catholic hearts believed, without
a home in the house of Heaven— Protestant
heretic that she was! There was something,
too, in the fever itself, that touched the French
heart keenly. For, a certain romantic interest
was connected with it which gave it just that
amount of dramatic character, without which
facts are dull and fevers tame in some
countries.

Marie and her younger sister Emilie were
orphans. Their mother had died when
Emilie was a mere baby, and their father
was taken off by cholera about two years
before. They had not a relation in France.
Mr. Maconnell had emigrated, on account
of an unlucky bankruptcy, just after Emilie
was born; and all intercourse with England
had gradually ceased, although there were
relatives there, rich and childless: especially
an old uncle—Mr. Maconnell's elder brother
—who had no one but a parrot and a housekeeper
to leave his money to. However, for
any good they did the orphans, all these relatives
might have been buried in Brian O'Lin's
cave, with his sheepskins and his turnips. Old
Hugh Maconnell, especially, would have been
as useful to his generation if lost among the
"good people " as he was now, buried in his
avarice and his wealth, with his screaming
gray parrot, and his housekeeper, with cherry
ribbons in her cap.

They were quite alone in France, these
two girls of nineteen and twenty-one, with
no one to protect, to guide, or to aid them;
cast rudderless on the rough waves of the
world, for storms to wreck and winds to
perish. And, at the time of Marie's fever,
they were even separated from each other;