melancholy longing for his native soil, for the dark mountains and the
green fields of his beloved country, he returned to it, and having taken
a large farm of about a thousand acres, under a peculiar tenure, which
we shall mention ere we close, he devoted himself to pasturage and
agriculture. Old Reilly had been for some years dead, and his eldest
son, William, was now not only the head of his immediate family, but
of that great branch of it to which he belonged, although he neither
claimed nor exercised the honor. In Reilly, many of those irreconcilable
points of character, which scarcely ever meet in the disposition of any
but an Irishman, were united. He was at once mild and impetuous; under
peculiar circumstances, humble and unassuming, but in others, proud
almost to a fault; a bitter foe to oppression in every sense, and to
bigotry in every creed. He was highly educated, and as perfect a master
of French, Spanish, and German, as he was of either English or Irish,
both of which he spoke with equal fluency and purity. To his personal
courage we need not make any further allusion. On many occasions it
had been well tested on the Continent. He was an expert and unrivalled
swordsman, and a first-rate shot, whether with the pistol or
fowling-piece.

At every athletic exercise he was matchless; and one great cause of his
extraordinary popularity among the peasantry was the pleasure he took in
promoting the exercise of such manly sports among them. In his person
he combined great strength with remarkable grace and ease. The wonderful
symmetry of his form took away apparently from his size; but on looking
at and examining him closely, you felt surprised at the astonishing
fulness of his proportions and the prodigious muscular power which lay
under such deceptive elegance. As for his features, they were replete
with that manly expression which changes with, and becomes a candid
exponent of, every feeling that influences the heart. His mouth was