from the gloomiest cloud, so does mirthfulness frequently proceed from
a heart susceptible of the deepest melancholy. Many and true are the
simple tales of Irish life which could prove this. Many a fair laughing
girl who has danced in happiness, light as a mote in the sunbeam, has
been suddenly left in darkness, bowed down in youth and beauty to the
grave, and though the little circle of which she was the centre may have
been disturbed by her untimely life, yet in brief space, except to a few
yearning and stricken hearts who could not forget her who was once their
pride and hope, her Memory has passed away like a solitary bird, viewed
as it goes over us, and followed wistfully, by the eye, until by degrees
it lessens and lessens--becomes dim--then fades into a speck, and
ultimately melts into the blue distance of heaven. One such a "simple
annal," brought about by the inscrutable hand that guides the destinies
of life, we are now about to present to our readers. Were it the mere
creation of our fancy, it might receive many of those embellishments at
our hand with which we scruple not to adorn the shadowy idealities of
fiction.

It is, however, one of those distressing realities so often produced
by the indulgence of vehement passion, that we are compelled by the
melancholy severity of its truth to give the details of, not, alas, as
we could have wished them to happen, but simply as they occurred.

The village of _Ballydhas_ was situated in the bosom of as sweet a
valley as ever gladdened the eye and the heart of a man to look upon.
Contentment, peace, and prosperity, walked step by step with its happy
inhabitants. The people were marked by a pastoral simplicity of manners,
such as is still to be found in some of the remote and secluded hamlets
of Ireland. The vale was green and shelving, having its cornfields,
its pasturage, and its patches of fir, poplar, and mountain-ash