which established his reputation as one of the first humorists
of his day. The story is the most popular of all Lever's
works, and in many respects the most characteristic. The
narrative is told with great vigour, and the delineation of
character is at once subtle and life-like. Lever died on June
1, 1872.


_I.--O'Malley of O'Malley Castle_


It was in O'Malley Castle, a very ruinous pile of incongruous masonry
that stood in a wild and dreary part of Galway, that I passed my infancy
and youth. When a mere child I was left an orphan to the care of my
worthy uncle. My father, whose extravagance had well sustained the
family reputation, had squandered a large and handsome property in
contesting elections for his native county, and in keeping up that
system of unlimited hospitality for which Ireland in general, and Galway
more especially, was renowned. The result was, as might be expected,
ruin and beggary. When he died the only legacy he left to his brother
was a boy of four years of age, entreating him, with his last breath,
"Be anything you like to him, Godfrey, but a father--or, at least, such
a one as I have proved."

Godfrey O'Malley sometime previous had lost his wife, and when this new
trust was committed to him he resolved never to re-marry, but to rear me
as his own child.

From my earliest years his whole anxiety was to fit me for the part of a
country gentleman, as he regarded that character--_viz._, I rode boldly