precise knowledge of horses, and horse-copers of both sexes. An interested devotion to the noble animal is here shown to be the last infirmity of noble minds, for old Mrs Knox, who combined the culture of a grande dame with the appearance of a refined scarecrow, went cubhunting in a bath chair. In such a company a young sailor whose enthusiasm for the chase had been nourished by the hirelings of Malta, and whose eye for points had probably been formed on circus posters, had little chance of making a good bargain at Drumcurran horse fair:

"The fellow's asking forty-five pounds for her," said Bernard Shute to Miss Sally; "she's a nailer to gallop. I don't think it's too much."-" Her grandsire was the Mountain Hare," said the owner of the mare, hurrying up to continue her family history, "and he was the grandest horse in the four baronies. He was forty-two years of age when he died, and they waked him the same as ye'd wake a Christian. They had whisky and porther and bread-and a piper in it.”— "Thim Mountain Hare colts is no great things," interrupted Mr Shute's groom contemptuously. "I seen a colt once that was one of his stock, and if there was forty men and their wives, and they after him with sticks, he wouldn't lep a sod of turf."-"Lep, is it!" ejaculated the owner in a voice shrill with outrage. "You may lead that mare out through the counthry, and there isn't a fence in it that she wouldn't go up to it as indepindent as if she was going to her bed, and your honour's ladyship knows that dam well, Miss Knox.”"You want too much money for her, McCarthy," returned Miss Sally, with her little air of preternatural wisdom. “God pardon you, Miss Knox! Sure a lady like you knows well that forty-five pounds is no money for that mare. Fortyfive pounds!" He laughed. "It'd be as good for me to make her a present to the gentleman all out as take three farthings less for her! She's too grand entirely for a poor farmer like me, and if it wasn't for the long weak family I have, I wouldn't part with her under twice the money."-" Three fine lumps of daughters in America paying his rent for him," commented Flurry in the background. "That's the long weak family!"""

The turn of phrase in Irish conversation has never been reproduced in print with greater fidelity, and there is hardly a page in the book without some characteristic Hibernianism such as Whisky as pliable as new milk,' or the description of a horse who was a nice flippant

jumper,' or a bandmaster who was a thrifle fulsome after his luncheon,' or a sweep who 'raised tallywack and tandem all night round the house to get at the chimbleys.' The narrative reaches its climax in the chapter headed 'Lisheen Races. Second-hand.' Major Yeates and his egregious English visitor Mr Leigh Kelway, an earnest Radical publicist, having failed to reach the scene, are sheltering from the rain in a wayside public-house where they are regaled with an account of the races by Slipper, the dissipated but engaging huntsman of the local pack of hounds. The close of the meeting was a steeplechase in which Bocock's owld mare,' ridden by one Driscoll, was matched against a horse ridden by another local sportsman named Clancy, and Slipper who favoured Driscoll, and had taken up his position at a convenient spot on the course, thus describes his mode of encouraging the mare:

"Skelp her, ye big brute!' says I. 'What good's in ye that ye aren't able to skelp her?' Well, Mr Flurry, and gintlemen . . . I declare to ye when owld Bocock's mare heard thim roars she sthretched out her neck like a gandher, and when she passed me out she give a couple of grunts, and looked at me as ugly as a Christian. 'Hah!' says I, givin' her a couple o' dhraws o' th' ash plant across the butt o' the tail, the way I wouldn't blind her, 'I'll make ye grunt!' says I, 'I'll nourish ye!' I knew well she was very frightful of th' ash plant since the winter Tommeen Sullivan had her under a sidecar. But now, in place of havin' any obligations to me, ye'd be surprised if ye heard the blaspheemious expressions of that young boy that was ridin' her; and whether it was over-anxious he was, turnin' around the way I'd hear him cursin', or whether it was some slither or slide came to owld Bocock's mare, I dunno, but she was bet up agin the last obstackle but two, and before you could say 'Shnipes, she was standin' on her two ears beyon in th' other field! I declare to ye, on the vartue of me oath, she stood that way till she reconnoithered what side Driscoll would fall, an' she turned about then and rolled on him as cosy as if he was meadow grass!" Slipper stopped short; the people in the doorway groaned appreciatively; Mary Kate murmured "The Lord save us!"-"The blood was dhruv out through his nose and ears," continued Slipper, with a voice that indicated the cream of the narration, "and you'd hear his bones crackin' on the ground! You'd have pitied the poor boy."-" Good

heavens!" said Leigh Kelway sitting up very straight in his chair. "Was he hurt, Slipper?" asked Flurry casually. "Hurt is it?" echoed Slipper in high scorn; "killed on the spot!" He paused to relish the effect of the dénouement on Leigh Kelway. "Oh, divil so pleasant an afthernoon ever you seen; and indeed, Mr Flurry, it's what we were all sayin', it was a great pity your honour was not there for the likin' you had for Driscoll."

Leigh Kelway, it may be noted, is the lineal descendant of Mr Prettyman, the pragmatic English under-secretary in Charles O'Malley' who, having observed that he had never seen an Irish wake, was horrified by the prompt offer of his Galway host, a notorious practical joker, to provide a corpse on the spot. But this is only one of the instances of parallelism in which the later writers, though showing far greater restraint and fidelity to type, have illustrated the continuance of temperamental qualities, which Lever and his forerunner Maxwell-the author of 'Wild Sports of the West' - portrayed in a more extravagant form. On the other hand, it would be impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that between Lever's thrasonical narrator-heroes and Major Yeates, R.M., whose fondness for sport is allied to a thorough consciousness of his own infirmities as a sportsman. There is no heroic figure in 'Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,' but the characters are all lifelike, and at least half a dozen'Flurry' Knox, his cousin Sally and his old grandmother Mrs Knox of Aussolas, Slipper, Mrs Cadogan and the incomparable Maria-form as integral a part of our circle of acquaintance as if we had known them in real life. The Real Charlotte' is a greater achievement, but the R.M. is a surer passport to immortality.

The further instalment of Experiences' published a few years later did not escape the common lot of sequels. They were brilliantly written; but one was more conscious of the excellence of the manner than in any of their predecessors. The two volumes of short stories and sketches, published in 1903 and 1906 under the titles of All on the Irish Shore' and 'Some Irish Yesterdays' respectively, show some new and engaging aspects of the genius of the collaborators. There is a chapter called 'Children of the Captivity' in which the would-be English humorist's conception of Irish humour is dealt with faithfully-as it

deserves to be. The essay is also remarkable for the passage in which are set down once and for all the true canons for the treatment of dialect. Pronunciation and spelling, as the authors point out, are after all of small account in its presentment:

The vitalising power is in the rhythm of the sentence, the turn of phrase, the knowledge of idiom, and of, beyond all, the attitude of mind. . . . The shortcoming is, of course, trivial to those who do not suffer because of it, but want of perception of word and phrase and turn of thought means more than mere artistic failure, it means want of knowledge of the wayward and shrewd and sensitive minds that are at the back of the dialect. The very wind that blows softly over brown acres of bog carries perfumes and sounds that England does not know: the women digging the potato-land are talking of things that England does not understand. The question that remains is whether England will ever understand.'

The hunting sketches in these volumes include the wonderful 'Patrick Day's Hunt,' which is a masterpiece in the high bravura of the brogue. Another is noticeable for a passage on the affection inspired by horses. When Johnny Connolly heard that his mistress was driven to sell the filly he had trained and nursed so carefully, he did not disguise his disappointment:

"Well, indeed, that's too bad, miss," said Johnny comprehendingly. "There was a mare I had one time, and I sold her before I went to America. God knows, afther she went from me, whenever I'd look at her winkers hanging on the wall I'd have to cry. I never seen a sight of her till three years afther that, afther I coming home. I was coming out o' the fair at Enniscar, an' I was talking to a man an' we coming down Dangan Hill, and what was in it but herself coming up in a cart! An' I didn't look at her, good nor bad, nor know her, but sorra bit but she knew me talking, an' she turned in to me with the cart. 'Ho, ho, ho!' says she, and she stuck her nose into me like she'd be kissing me. Be dam, but I had to cry. An' the world wouldn't stir her out o' that till I'd lead her on meself. As for cow nor dog nor any other thing, there's nothing would rise your heart like a horse!"'

And if horses are irresistible, so are Centaurs. That is the moral to be drawn from Dan Russel the Fox,' the latest work from the pens of Miss Somerville and Miss

Martin, in which the rival claims of culture and foxhunting are subjected to a masterly analysis.

The joint authors of the 'R.M.' have paid forfeit for their popularity by being expected to repeat their first resounding success. Happily the pressure of popular demand has not impaired the artistic excellence of their work, though we cannot help thinking that if they had been left to themselves they might have given us at least one other novel on the lines of The Real Charlotte.' Their later work, again, has been subjected to the ordeal, we do not say of conscious imitation, but of comparison with books which would probably have never been written, or would have been written on another plan, but for the success of the 'R.M.' To regard this rivalry as serious would be, in the opinion of the present writer, an abnegation of the critical faculty.

The only formidable competitor Miss Martin and Miss Somerville have encountered is the genial writer who chooses to veil his identity under the freakish pseudonym of George A. Birmingham.' Canon Hannay-for there can be no longer any breach of literary etiquette in alluding to him by his real name-had already made his mark as a serious or semi - serious observer of the conflicting tendencies, social and political, of the Ireland of to-day before he diverged into the paths of fantastic and frivolous comedy. The Seething Pot,' 'Hyacinth,' and 'Benedict Kavanagh' are extremely suggestive and dispassionate studies of various aspects of the Irish temperament, but they do not come within the scope of the present survey. It is enough for our present purpose to note the consequences of a request addressed to Canon Hannay by two young ladies somewhere about the year 1907 that he would 'write a story about treasure buried on an island.' The fact is recorded in the dedication of Spanish Gold,' his response to the appeal, and the first of that series of jocund extravaganzas which have earned for him the gratitude of all who regard amusement as the prime object of fiction.

The contrast between his methods and those of the joint authors discussed above is apparent at every turn. He maintains the impartiality which marked his serious novels in his treatment of all classes of the community, but it is the impartiality not of a detached and self