several little sketches with explanatory remarks
written beneath them, after the manner of Du
Maurier's, or Charles Keene's humorous illustrations
in 'Punch.'

One of these, preserved long afterwards by
his mother, represented a balloon in mid-air,
and two aeronauts, who had occupied it, falling
headlong to earth, the disaster being explained
by these words: 'See the effects of trying to go
to Heaven.'

As a mere child, he was a remarkably good
actor, both in tragic and comic pieces, and was
hardly twelve years old when he began to write
verses of singular spirit for one so young. At
fourteen, he produced a long Irish poem, which
he never permitted anyone but his mother and
brother to read. To that brother, Mr. William
Le Fanu, Commissioner of Public Works,
Ireland, to whom, as the suggester of
Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Phaudrig Croohore' and
'Shamus O'Brien,' Irish ballad literature owes a
delightful debt, and whose richly humorous and
passionately pathetic powers as a raconteur of
these poems have only doubled that obligation in
the hearts of those who have been happy enough
to be his hearers--to Mr. William Le Fanu
we are indebted for the following extracts from
the first of his works, which the boy-author seems