ceive him as a volunteer, on board the fleet | ter his love of popularity, and stimulate him to the then lying at Portsmouth, but the admiral refused. This was only a few days previous to the battle of the 27th July, 1778, between the British fleet, under Admiral Keppel, and the French fleet, under the Comte d'Orvilliers. Mr. Rowan frankly acknowledges that when on the return of H.M. S. Victory, he visited the ward of those wounded in the action, he did not feel quite so sorry for his disappointment as when it first occurred. achievement of those feats for which he became so distinguished in his younger days. On one occasion he appeared in Paris as a Highland chieftain in proper costume, the very beau ideal of a Celtic hero. He was a good marksman, excelled in the sword exercise, and could send an arrow from a bow half as far again as any other man in France. Such accomplishments caused him to be respected by the men, while his noble Herculean figure and perfect politeness made him a favourite with the ladies. He was fond of driving a phaëton, and paddling in an Indian canoe; few could match his dexterity in rowing, or the gracefulness and variety of his rapid movements in skating— whether on the Thames, the Liffey, the Delaware, or the Elbe, he 'with balance nice, the ice.' Thirsting for adventure, as he did, and baulked so often in his attempts to be usefully active, we are surprised that Mr. Rowan did not enter the line, or take some other Hung o'er the glittering steel, and hissed along decided method to gratify his honest ambition. Possibly his being heir to a large fortune, or the wishes of his own family, stood too much in the way of his natural disposition. Be this as it may, he shewed so little inclination for a more sober and settled ex istence, that the approach of his thirtieth year found him still leading a bachelor life. He had not, however, been entirely unmindful of the necessity for a change in his condition in the year 1781, he was married at Paris to Miss Sarah Anne Dawson, a young Irish lady, "of great personal beauty," and apparently no ordinary mental endowments. Having visited London with his bride, for the purpose of registering their marriage, het returned to Paris, where, or in other parts of France, he resided for a couple of years, and at last in 1784, came to settle in Ireland. This perhaps is as fit a place as we shall be able to find, for a passage or two from Dr. Drummond's additions to the memoir; in which, while the Doctor sums up, with a succinct simplicity, the various accomplishments of his hero, the reader may trace some faint outlines of the comeliness, strength, and courage, which combined with his warmth of heart, and generous independent spirit, could hardly have failed to make Hamilton Rowan, what in fact he so speedily became, a general favourite with all classes in Ireland. 'Twas a a popularity which he never ceased to merit, and which, amid all the social and political changes that he survived to witness, it was his rare good fortune to retain undiminished to the close of a long and well-spent life. "The following instance of his prowess is well While he was a young man in worthy of record. Lincolnshire, trying a hunter, which he had purchased, the horses of a waggon took fright and ran off. At first he thought it was a baggage waggon, but discovering that it was crowded with women and children, he instantly rode between proaching. His horse was killed by the shock; but he succeeded in stopping the waggon by twisting its chains round his arm, and resisting its motion with all his strength. His arm was the approbation which such an act of generous dreadfully lacerated; but he felt compensated by self-devotion drew from her whose praise he valued most, and who was soon to become his bride." it and a precipice to which it was rapidly ap A feat of a different description is recorded by Doctor Drummond, in an earlier part of the book: "Another anecdote has been recorded of Mr. Rowan, highly characteristic of his daring and generous spirit. While he was quartered at Gosport, as Captain of Grenadiers in the Huntingdon in his clothes from Gosport to Plymouth, but Militia, some person undertook, for a bet, to swim when brought to the trial, flinched, and refused to make the attempt. Rowan, supposing that the man could not afford to lose the bet, though small, offered to take his place, and of course win or pay. The offer was accepted, and many bets were made on the occasion, as he was to swim in his full regimental dress, and across a tide that runs with great impetuosity. Accordingly he slung his fusee on his back,-for at that time Grenadier officers, as well as private soldiers, carried fusees, and like another Cassius,accou tered as he was, he plunged in " And breasted The surge most swollen that met him; his bold head 'Bove the contentious wave he kept, and oared "Mr. Rowan had a tall and commanding person, in which agility, strength, and grace were combined. His features were expressive, and strongly marked. In his younger days he was "When half way across, he lost his grenadier cap, universally regarded as handsome, and so attrac- but performed the feat, and landed on the Portstive of admiration, that the eyes of all were turned mouth side, amidst the cheers of the spectators, upon him whenever he came into public; a cir- and the congratulations of his friends and brother cumstance which must have greatly tended to fos-officers, who followed him in boats. The person who lost refused to pay, saying the condition was, to swim over fully accoutred, and that by losing friends and the people around him, "What is your opinion?' That the loser is no gentleman, answered they, and if he does not pay, we will tie him to a boat and swim him over to Gosport in tow.' 'Very well,' said Rowan, I care little for myself, but I do for those who staked their money on me; and had you said I lost, as no time was mentioned, I should have borrowed another cap, tied it on, and while I was wet, have swum back to Gosport.' The bets were all paid: and it may seem scarcely necessary to add, that two gold watches, which he was accustomed to carry, were, with his uniform, completely spoiled by the salt his cap he lost the bet. Mr. Rowan asked his water." Another anecdote, though somewhat apocryphal, is characteristic in many respects, and as we are in a gossiping mood, our readers shall have it. It is, like the former two, duly adorned with a poetical quotation, a species of embellishment for which the worthy editor has naturally a strong predilection. "Mr. Rowan, during his residence in France, having gone on a shooting excursion, met with many French and English strangers at a country house or chateau, and among them one with whom he had high words, which led to a conflict that might have been attended with fatal consequences. They had dressed for dinner, wearing swords, as was the fashion, and met in the saloon where the dispute originated,-probably, as usual, about some trifle the dissention of a doit' some trick not worth an egg.' Ladies being present, Rowan, ‘Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,' went out with the French gentleman on a balcony platform, where both drew, and instantly proceeded to decide their controversy by the sword. Rowan's powerful arm, with his superior skill in fencing, gave him a manifest advantage. His antagonist grew warm, and at every thrust or parry, cried out Sacré-!' with another very offensive epithet, which so enraged Rowan that he closed with him, and a l'Anglais, gave him a terrible blow of his fist, which nearly knocked him down. In the scuffle the Frenchman lost his sword, then took to flight, and actually got on the parapet, which was barely two feet wide, and twenty above the ground. Rowan pursued him on the same dangerous eminence, like Achilles after Hector, but not with the same deadly animosity; for though he might have taken summary vengeance, he contented himself with giving him a few strokes with the blade of his sword upon the head and shoulders, but doing him no serious injury. The spectators were in terror lest one or both should fall from the narrow parapet, till at last the terrified Frenchman dropped down, and probably thought himself fortunate in escaping, though at the expense of a fractured limb." With this our extracts must terminate for the present. The admirers of modern civilization have few more favourite topics, than the advantage which in these days, mind hath over muscle, in guiding the affairs of men, contrasting therewith of course, the vice versa miseries of a more barbarous state. Taken in a wide sense, as regards the welfare of the many, and the finding an audible voice for their suffering and their will, and putting that will into effect by comparatively peaceful methods, the saying is not amiss; it has as much truth in it as the finders or the venders of it, are likely to bring to any market they frequent. But as a test between man and man, in the struggle between man and man, (a struggle so fearfully increased by the crowding of modern existence, and the rivalry of communities also, and their industrial mechanism, which the steam engine hath of late years a thousand fold exasperated,)-applied in this way, as we often hear it, we take it to be little better than a piece of cant, and one of those cants too, which tickle the vanity of the age, and lead it into follies, which, perverse as it is, it might not otherwise think of. With all this talk, we doubt, if in respect of personal advancement, or individual influence, it has ever been much otherwise than it is now. above the dignity of an oyster-bed, or a As indeed in any community, rabbit-warren, seems likely to be the case. This wondrous frame of society hath spirit ruled ever; every coarsest fibre thereof, as well as the minutest nerve: 'tis only thereby, by virtue of the life breathed into and abiding in it, and throughout pervading it, that society hath ever held together, or could exist at all. There have been times, in which this would have been a truism of offensive triteness; but no feeling that it would be so now, has interposed to prevent our repeating it; we have seen too much, and to our sorrow read too much, of that beggarly vanity, peculiar to the past and present centuries, which solaces itself with the blessed belief, that the hosts of the by-gone generations were, with few exceptions, brutes, or idiots, or both. A strange pride of ancestry this, and a still stranger blindness, and ingratitude worse than all! We believe, however, that Nor, while we wish them a happy riddance men are getting weary and ashamed of it. of the like, ought we to forget that it was the unreasoning admiration for the earlier times, professed by the upholders of wrong, that forced the seekers of redress into so many errors, and dimmed to their contracted gaze the glories of their truest benefactorsthose ancestral bequeathers of rights, long struggled for, and knowledge hardly won, and virtue which knew not itself, yet was its own reward. As men learn better why they are bound to revere past ages, and what they really owe to them, they will surely learn also a truer respect for themselves; a meek and just, and temperate pride, taking the place of a weak, fretful, ignorant, pitiable vanity. it to be in this wise: not that either has gained over the other advantage which before it had not, but rather that both are debarred of much occupation, which in earlier times they had not failed to enjoy and profit by. And 'tis hard to say which class of society, the high or the low, the rich or the poor, more acutely feel this: enough that they all suffer by it. Now Pending such a hopeful consummation, And thus, to draw straight this tangled we would take the unassenting reader back thread with which we have so long detained to the earliest records, and ask him what he our readers, we must think it a pity, for finds there, or how, twixt man and man, the many reasons, that our stalwart, goodway of the world hath altered? The strong natured Hamilton Rowan was not born a and hairy Esau finds the sleek and smooth- couple of centuries earlier. The business skinned Jacob somewhat an overmatch for of " owning land," to which he was prehim; the meek Joseph changes a prison appointed, was then accompanied, if not for a palace, and is, for many years, the with more numerous duties, at least with virtual lord of Egypt. The good-natured more active occupations to beguile the hulking Ajax, the hot-headed Agamemnon, tedium of life-or in other words, duties the god-like Achilles himself, thresh and which could not be neglected with impunity; are threshed upon occasion, but it is after which it was dangerous as well as uncomall, the much experienced Nestor, the fortable to leave unperformed, and moreover, sprightly Diomede, the inventive Ulysses, which it was pleasurable enough to be conthat advance the Grecian cause, so that men's stantly fulfilling. We have in the foregoing eyes, in doubt and danger, turn to where they pages, given some account of Hamilton stand the self-reliant Hector obeys with- Rowan's early life, and have seen that with out a murmur the word of the wiser Helenus, the heartiest endeavours on his part, it was and if once or twice Polydamas puts him yet so far the life of an idler, pleasant, but out of temper, 'tis the sense of his own of little profit to himself or any one else, inferiority, that makes him unjust and pas- save that in his peregrinations he acquired, sionate. So hath it been ever, so will it no doubt, some knowledge of the world, ever be; soul and body, mind and muscle, and considerable grace of manner. now in union, again in disunion, cheering so long as landlordism shall continue to and aiding, or jostling and stifling one flourish, so long as young men are allowed another, as the whim takes them, or the fates to be heirs to large properties, with the weal decree. Mind, pluck, spunk, soul, spirit, and woe of hundreds or thousands so greatly will do much for one; Tydeus was a little depending on them, we must think it a man, and so was Napoleon: even dwarf question of some importance;-whether the and hunch-back heroes may often be met occupations and exercises of their early years with in history. On the other hand, an might not be made more directly subservient active, inventive spirit taking up its abode to their after usefulness as lords of the soil? in a tough, healthy, capacious body, is won- And it is exactly in the case of a man like derfully aided thereby. Look at Walter Hamilton Rowan, a noble, compassionate, Scott, Cobbett, O'Connell; what work they warm-hearted human being, and not an aris have done, to say nothing of all the super-tocratic icicle, that the question may be fluous trouble, which for wilfulness or pas- most pertinently put. He was, as we shall time they chose to burden themselves withal. afterwards sce, an excellent landlord, so And again, look at Cowper, Coleridge, Lamb, men of far finer endowment, how in tasks beneath their powers, or oft times no.task at all, they fretted and frittered away their existence, their weak spirits in weak bodies finding life too rough a game. So with Jew and Greek, ancient and modern, wild and tame, Malay and Yankee, hath it fared, and will; nor much as the world has changed, is this among its changes. Yet a change in respect of mind and muscle, there undoubtedly is, and we take far as his insight and information allowed him; 'twas impossible he could have been otherwise. But regularly taught his duties, and trained to practise them, what might he not have been? His high spirit and unbending rectitude resting on a basis of continued public usefulness, his activity and benevolence would have been more seldom wasted on inadequate or unworthy objects; and while his ability to serve his country, and enlarge her liberties, would have been ten-fold greater, he would, if sacrificed at all, have been so with the satisfaction of | headed, and made his followers glad with purchasing with his exile or his death, some the flesh of plundered beeves; or bid them more enduring benefit for the land he loved. dwell in peace and prosperity for miles In these times, and let the landlords look to around his sheltering stronghold, fearing no it, if they mean to remain such—to be widely insidious foe? How would the qualities and permanently useful in that high station, which made him popular with our fathers, must come not by good will alone, or well- have made him powerful then, and honoured meaning philantrophy, but by long previous of a numerous clan. Those thirty idle years training, artificial and new-fangled if they would have been the reverse of idle, and his will, but every day becoming more indis- whole life, though not so peaceful, happier pensable for their very existence; an educa- far perhaps, and certainly not less useful. tion, we mean, comprehensively and steadily directed to the one great end of making them know their duties, and acquire the habit of practising them. All this, though imperfectly, would have come about more easily three centuries ago. Had Hamilton Rowan lived then, his noble faculties would have found fitter employment, and made him a man of note, in a fashion pleasanter for himself, and just as good for the world. As a chieftain on the Scottish borders, or on the banks of the Rhine, or the Blackwater, or in his own castle of Killyleagh, had the O'Neils been dispossessed so early, what glorious occupation might he not have found for himself? How many a foray would he not have But this is now almost an idle speculation: to each man is his time allotted, and be his portion good or evil, he and his fellows must make the best of it. Our Hamilton Rowan was born in the eighteenth century and not in the fifteenth; what he was, rather than what he might have been, it becomes us to consider and enquire: and as we have now presented to our readers, a brief sketch of his early life, so we purpose in a succeeding paper to follow his course, though the perils of imprisonment and exile, till we see him once more restored to our land, one of the few among many thousands who have left it, because they loved it; yet dared return to die in it. Ask me not-for why should sorrow It but strikes the chord of sadness.- Scenes like this, and forms as dear. On each passing breath seem flitting Long lost friends seem by me sitting As when in their pride of bloom. There's a gloomy spell hath bound me; F. D STORIES OF THE PYRENEES. No. IV. THE PRISONERS ON PAROLE. PART IV.* "We were soon obliged to abate this rate of speed; the way-I had not been, as I told you, in a state to mind that, or scarcely any other circumstance of our march of yesternight, grew every moment more difficult and uncertain; at one time our horses found footing on a bed of irregular stone and gravel; at another, with much effort, in a deep slippery pool of mire. The incessant rain of the preceding weeks had, in the mountain gorges we were passing through, here, at the upper part of a declivity, over which its accumulated torrents had swept,-laid bare the rocky underground, and there, further on in the descent, driven down detached masses of earth and sand, quickly formed below into the slimy consistence of a morass. Once or twice, as we advanced, while gazing, with the quickened view that imminence of personal peril gives, up the pine heights that crowned, right and left, the sides of these passes, (exactly, as parts of the valley we rode through this evening, are topped,) I fancied, indistinctly, and without attaching much importance to the matter, I could descry a sort of movement there, that to my hoping,-one catches, you know, at a straw in dilemmas like ours,-struck me as being like that of men and arms. No one seemed to observe this incident, whether real or not, but myself; and, supposing the former case, what could it avail to me or my unfortunate companion? It might be a manœuvre of the republicans, not of our friends; it might be a fond deception of my excited brain; it might be,—but what use repeating the surmises, that at the moment when first I caught, or imagined I caught a glimpse of what seemed,-that seeming started me at once into a kind of instinctive hope. I have already said, that then, in my days of primy youth, I was well prone to be a hoper in the worst of haps; by and by we shall be able to guess whether, in the present instance, I was right or wrong in still, on the turn of a fan cied straw, indulging in the folly of hope, the most outright one, 'twould appear to common sense, that could be yielded to in our actual position. "An hour or two, it might be, passed; we had progressed during the time but a small distance from our starting place; and, according as we continued to toil on, the road still presented new difficulties, now winding through a precipitous glen, darkened by overhanging masses of wood, and traversed at bottom by a turbid stream, that, rushing, full swoln by many channels, from the heights foaming, bubbling, and splashing, washed the edge of the path; it would have been impossible in many spots to get forward two abreast. "On approaching the issue of the pass, widening towards the more open and level country, sounds well known to my ears, indistinct at first, but soon remarked and listened to more attentively by every one of the detachment, particularly its prompt commander, were heard announcing more clearly at each step, that a sharp contest had again begun in the plain below, the theatre of the one we yesterday had been present in, and become victims of. Compact heavy vollies of musketry, answering one another at intervals, were intermingled with occasional irregular more prolonged discharges. We could quickly hear, or imagine we heard shouts, cries, and clashings,-the rolling of drums, or a trum. pet call. To do more, to see what the case night be, was, as yet, impossible; plunged as we were, in the valley's depths, which still encompassed us, and only abruptly terminated at the entrance, and disclosed in sudden wide-stretched view, the low expanse of plain I have had occasion so often to mention. "Instantly ordering to halt, the lieutenant dashed forward with a few troopers, for the purpose, we concluded, of course, of reconnoitering,-not forgetting, first, to make us take place in the midst of the remaining For the preceding parts sec vol. ii. pp. 234, 363, 435. |