horrors carried with them salutary reminiscences! But to my own story.

Instead of fattening beeves, planting trees, clapping vagabonds "i'
th' stocks," and doing all and everything that appertaineth to a
country gentleman, and also, the queen's poor esquire, I might have,
until the downfall of Napoleon, and the reduction of the militia,
events cotemporaneous, smelt powder on the Phoenix Park on field days,
and like Hudibras, of pleasant memory, at the head of a charge of
foot, "rode forth a coloneling." In place, however, of meddling with
cold iron, I yielded to "metal more attractive," and in three months
became a Benedict, and in some dozen more a papa.

In the mean time, rebellion was bloodily put down, and on my lady's
recovery, my father, whose yearning for a return to the old roof-tree
was irresistible, prepared for our departure from the metropolis.

Curiously enough, we passed through Prosperous, exactly on the
anniversary of the day when we had so providentially effected an
invasion from certain destruction. Were aught required to elicit
gratitude for a fortunate escape, two objects, and both visible
from the inn windows, would have been sufficient. One was a mass
of blackened ruins--the scathed walls of the barrack, in which the
wretched garrison had been so barbarously done to death: the other
a human head impaled upon a spike on the gable of the building. That
blanched skull had rested on the shoulders of our traitor host, and
we, doomed to "midnight murder," were mercifully destined to witness a
repulsive, but just evidence, that Providence interposes often between
the villain and the victim.

I am certain that in my physical construction, were an analysis