ANNIE KEARY.

THERE is a poem by the American poet Lowell called "Irene," which I cannot help linking with the character of Annie Keary, the subject of this sketch. We need sometimes to be reminded that we are not required to be perpetually striving after something which we are not, but rather to come to a consciousness and to endeavour to develop that which we are.

"Hers is a spirit, deep, and crystal clear,
Calmly beneath her earnest face it lies
Free without boldness, meek without a fear,
Quicker to look than speak its sympathies:
Far down into her deep and patient eyes

I gaze, deep drinking of the infinite,
As, in the mid-watch of a clear, still night,
I look into the fathomless blue skies.

For this I love her great soul more than all,
That being bound, like us, with earthly thrall,

She walks so bright and heaven-like therein.”

Annie Keary was born on March 3rd, 1825, in the parish of Bilton, near Wetherby, in Yorkshire. Her

father had been in the army, but afterwards became a clergyman. He was a man of considerable power of mind and of intellectual tastes, an eloquent preacher and much beloved by the poor, but he laboured under the disadvantages of bad health. There was a special bond between him and the little Annie, we are told by the sister who reverently and with exquisite feeling tells her story. 'They understood each other so well, these two who represented the Irish side of the family, who both loved their books so tenderly, who thought and dreamed, who lived and met in an ideal upper region, exchanging sweet smiles and confidences there over the heads of the drudging world below. There was ever a sort of comradeship between them, and when Annie was quite a small thing, she would sit upon her father's knee for hours while he told her stories of his youth; sometimes it might be of his wild Irish home, or again of the adventures in his campaigning career, when as a soldier he had lived out all the dashing, gay, Irish part of him. 'This and this you and I did or dared together, Nannie,' he would then say, humouring a favourite childish fancy of hers that she had really been his companion in arms, the comrade of all his early life. 'Twas you and I held fast side by side through that stiff march across the common in the heat, we two stormed Badajoz together, child,' and the child as her imagination fed greedily upon such congenial food, believed more firmly in the fancy which had originated in her own small brain, and began already

to live the two lives of the dreamer, the tale-teller, taking her first lesson in novel-writing at her father's knee. 'Yes, yes,' she would dream, 'it was papa and Annie who fought under Wellington together, and now they sit by the fire in cosy winter evenings, the two old comrades, and live the campaign over again.' Or, letting her thoughts reach back to some dim, remoter period of existence, would see sweet, misty pictures of the west, hear the soft chatter of the Irish tongue, run barefooted across the bog with merry little foster-brothers and sisters, to fish in the blue mountain lough, or to feast upon sweet milk and potatoes at the foster-parents' board in the cabin where papa was nursed, and where he laughed and sported away so many careless hours-but, somehow never without Annie ; how could he ever have been anywhere without

her?'

It was to these early talks perhaps, as well as to the more recent visit to Ireland, that we owe one of the most pathetic and beautiful novels of our day, 'Castle Daly.' The sympathy and the true discriminating feeling which makes Irish life so real to us in this remarkable book, and in the charming story for children which Annie Keary named 'Father Phim,' become greatly enhanced by this hereditary link, and proof of their fidelity to nature.

The mother's tales were of the old Yorkshire home, Lilling Hall-round which a scent of faded rose-leaves seemed to cling, and many quaint pictures of character,

and amusing stories she could tell her children, so that Annie's biographer maintains that her gift of humour came even more from her mother than her father.

There were brothers and sisters, too, who brightened and developed the young life of Annie Keary, and helped to line that nest of love into which God laid down her babyhood.' It was with them the dreams of her childhood were shared, her games invented, her imagination fostered. A very amusing instance of this early imagination is given, and will find a parallel in many homes, where imaginary personages have played their part, having no existence except in the brains of the children. 'There was a story round which our thoughts were always hanging, into which we were ready to plunge at any moment, and always with new delight. A story, yes, a story that had no end, that seemed to have grown up of itself and simply out of a name. A dwarfed woman passed the house one rainy day whilst two little faces were pressed against the nursery window pane, and four bright little inquisitive eyes looked through, and 'That's Mrs. Calkill,' said Arthur to Annie. That was all, but it was the beginning of endless bliss. Who was Mrs. Calkill? Annie knew, of course; she had known all about her for ever so long, only somehow she had never thought of mentioning her, but now she and Arthur had seen her-they had both seen her by daylight in the street, and they knew what her name was. It was Arthur who knew her name, he must have known her too

then, they both knew her, there was a real Mrs. Calkill. She was a fairy, very good, very clever, very powerful. She could go about just as she pleased, anywhere, at any time; she knew what everybody was thinking about, and what all the children did. She governed her kingdom (the whole world) by means of a system of rewards and of dreadful punishments; she never allowed any one to see her in her true fairy form; now and then she passed down the street on a wet day, under a green cotton umbrella almost as big as herself, but ordinarily she flew. She very seldom passed down the street, only once in a hundred years, perhaps; certainly she never passed during the lifetime of the children after that one rainy day. So much the better, that showed that she was a fairy and not a woman; common people do the same thing over and over again, it is always something you least expect that happens about a fairy.'

This imaginary fairy, Mrs. Calkill, is introduced into the story of Blind Man's Holiday, and in the same manner we can find living transcripts of several of the scenes of Annie Keary's childhood in many of her books for children. Before Annie could remember, her father had changed his village home for a much gloomier one in the town of Hull, but home, like happiness, 'is what the mind makes it,' and Annie's surroundings seem never to have depressed her life. She had the well-spring in herself which would have made a desert blossom like the rose-she had the rare