that I might come within hail of some vessel; and be rescued. As the sun rose, the heat in the deep clefts, through which I made my way, became intense; my clothing dried rapidly, and the comfort I thus experienced, after the benumbing cold of the night, was just beginning to awaken a more cheerful feeling in my heart, when, horrible in its present sensation, and still more so in its reflective consequences, I felt the first pangs of hunger, and almost cursed the destiny which, saving me for the moment, had but preserved me to suffer the terrors of a more lingering death.

Instantly, I bethought me of making a search along the coasts of the ice island, in the hope that, amid fragments of wreck which I thought I had seen drifted into one of the deep channels which indented its sides, I might discover some articles of food. There were several deep indentations, resembling icy fiords in the coast, and these I for some time investigated, but without avail; at length I reached one which extended further than any of the others inward, and here first I found some dead fish, which remained frozen to the shore; and a little after came to a place, half embedded in ice and snow, where I saw, what I conceived to be a large fragment of wreck lying about ten paces from the waves. In a little time I had reached this object, and my delight may be conceived when I discovered it to be a small boat, whose prow protruded from the thick curtain of ice in which the greater portion of it was buried.

F

Having made a hasty meal of the fish which had been preserved perfectly pure in the frozen water, and which was but too welcome under this circumstance, I began to make search for some implement to break up the ice and free the boat, and presently found a broken spar, with which I set vigorously to work. While thus occupied, a hundred conflicting ideas passed. through my mind; I well knew that though I might possibly be able to procure sufficient food to sustain life for a few days, that inevitable destruction finally awaited me, as the ice island would gradually melt away, as it floated into the warm regions southward, whither I knew it was hurrying, in one of the great currents. Nay, I was also aware that though from the melting of the ice the bergs constantly lost their equilibrium, and toppled over, burying the portion heretofore above the sea in its depthsan event which might occur any moment. The delight with which I worked therefore to extricate the boat, which appeared to afford me a means of escape from this silent, terrible, treacherous figment of ice, may be imagined. In a little time I discovered a hatchet in the hold, and by its means so accelerated my labours that in about an hour I had moved the blocks of ice from half its extent.

When I had completed my labour so far, a new surprise awaited me, for, as I cleft through the ice which filled the interior, I ́found first a chest tightly corded underneath the seats, which, quickly opening, I found to contain a complete outfit of sea clothing-then another, smaller indeed in size, but still more welcome, in which there were several loaves and a rude case of preserved meat, and by the side two rather large bottles, one of which I quickly ascertained contained brandy, and the other water. It was

VOL. V.

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by this time afternoon, and resting a while from my work I made a hearty meal of the provisions which I had obtained in a manner so providential.

Before resuming my occupation, I again climbed one of the heights of the island and surveyed the circling sea. There was, however, no ship in sight, and my heart was somewhat heavy as I returned to the place where the boat lay, and began my work anew.

In about an hour I had completely removed the ice from its sides, when, alas! a new and terrible disappointment awaited me, as I found that the outer stern had been shattered, and that except I was fortunate enough to find some pieces of wreck, with which to repair this injury, the sudden hope I had entertained of escaping from the island, was delusive. Though much disheartened with this discovery, it was still something to be in possession of the means to sustain life for some days, I drew the boat further into the interior, as evening was, by this time, coming on, and turning it over, prepared to sleep beneath its roof that night, and again remounted the mountain of ice to survey the ocean.

Were it not for the impending horror of the situation in which I was placed, the surrounding scenery was well calculated in its beauty, silence, and vastness to inspire the mind with lofty and tranquil emotions. The sun had sunk beneath the horizon, its superb light reflected from a mass of gorgeous cloud, which hung along the west, spread over the surface of the deep azure sea toward the point whence the moon was already rising.

Around me spread the fantastic architecture of frost, pinnacles, domes, minaret, mirroring all the glories of the contending lights.; the dash of the waves sounded hoarsely, breaking along the shores, and regurgitating with hollow roar through the caverns; and far away the wind swept in lonely armony over the surface of the solitary ocean.

Soon, however, as the night fell, the chill pressure of the icy spectral island thrilled the blood, as the air caused by its movement came breathing keenly over its peaks and valleys, and I was just about to return to the land, when, straining my eyes toward a large star near the south, I thought I saw a speck, like a sail, hovering on the sea-line. Clouds soon veiled it from sight; and, wearied with excitement and the work of the day, I once more sought the place where I had so arranged the boat as to serve as a shelter against the chill wind while I slept.

When, however, I attempted to compose myself to slumber, the sense of the awful position in which I was placed on this island of ice, which might, at any moment, topple over, plunging me, unconscious of my doom, fathoms below the surface-the dread of another death-struggle in the dark, solitary waters-these and such like terrible imaginations, for many hours banished rest; the while I lay listening to the break of the surge, the showery fall of the rivulets along its sides, and the icy creaking of the unstaple mass around, as it swayed to and fro, melting away each moment, upon the ocean. Never, oh! never will the terrors of that awesome night. vanish from my mind; of that night, in which I found myself alone, pow. erless, inseparably united to the presence of death, floating through the

immense desolate sea, uncertain each moment that passed whether the next might not herald the thunder roar of the bursting berg, and the termination of existence. Awful, awful was that night, when the moon, associated with familiar scenes of life, gazing with immutable, passionless brow from cold infinity, on the solitary soul, fated, perhaps, to perish like a bubble, suddenly swallowed by the dark, lonely death of the deeps. Nevertheless, physical and mental exhaustion finally prevailed, and I sunk into an uneasy slumber broken ever and anon by startling dreams, which vaguely imaged and sustained the terrors of the place and time.

I had, possibly, slept a couple of hours, when I was suddenly awakened by a sound like that of an earthquake. I sprang to my feet, and gazed confusedly around. The berg was swaying violently to and fro, and though a deep calm reigned on the night, the sea was rolling tumultuously around. The next moment, glancing to the left of the cleft, where a great ice steep had risen, I found it had fallen into the ocean, and was floating at some distance in the wake of the island. This event, so confirmatory of my apprehensions as to the transitory nature of this fragment of winter on which I floated, rendered sleep henceforth that night impossible, and I passed the remaining hours, awaiting dawn, and straining my eyes around in search of some vessel.

As the sun rose and the day advanced, the heat of the orb appeared to have become strangely intensified; it seemed to concentrate its pitiless flame on the fragile architecture of the berg, from whose peaks, pinnacles, and elevations a thousand streams rushed and roared, bearing with them each instant some fragment, small or large, of its mass. A thick haze, rising from the evaporation of its substance, veiled the greater part of it from view, through which, ever and anon, I heard the crushing sound and fall of its huge disintegrated masses, some tumbling into the central space, some along its sides into the waves, and I saw that at the rate of demolition proceeding, a few days would destine its supermarine portion to destruction, at the same time that there was the ever impending chance of its sudden explosion.

That day several sails hove remotely in sight, and from the highest summit of the berg I constantly signalled them, but without avail, the thick haze in which the floating monster was enveloped possibly rendering so small an object as the human figure, at such a distance, invisible. Then succeeded a second night, with its hopelessness intensified; already I began to abandon all prospect of rescue, and to become half stupified by this exhausting pressure of anxiety and apprehension; but, overwhelming as were the sensations from which I had already suffered, I was destined, as the succeeding days proved, to experience an aggregation of agony, as yet unfelt and unimagined.

I had still sufficient food, if economised, to last for a couple of days; but, on the third, the flask of water which I had found in the boat was nearly exhausted; and while the waisting process of the intense cold of the nights exaggerated the sensations of hunger, the burning heat of the day already produced the much more terrible agonies of thirst. It was

on the fourth day, when the last drop of water had vanished, that a new and far more fearful species of death than that from which I had escaped began to loom before me in all its horrible, inexorable reality-one which, except at intervals, half blinded me to the rapid diminution of the berg, which was now hardly a third of its original size.

It was on the fifth day, as the now awful sun rose over the waste of the sailless sea, that, burning with thirst, parched and racked with pain, I prayed for death as a relief from my sufferings; which, strange to say, the immense prospect of the surrounding ocean intensified by a sort of cruel contrast. For a time I resisted the temptations of quenching the burning fire which raged in my frame, with the sea water; but the knowledge that it would but increase my pains soon became powerless to arrest my purpose; I felt myself irresistibly impelled, and approaching a cleft in the berg, containing a well of sea water, took a long draught. In a few hours my sufferings were greater than ever, and continued increasing throughout the night during which they banished sleep. Then came the sixth day, the last I recognised, for by this time physical and mental torture had produced the first symptoms of madness. At times I sat in a stupor, blankly gazing from some icy promontory across the sea; sometimes I laughed and sang, leaping from cleft to cleft until exhausted; then, in a temporary moment of consciousness and pain, burning with inextinguishable thirst, I cursed the sun, to whose heat I attributed the agonies I endured. Two demons, each rivalling the other in fury, seemed racking my frame; the berg, all the terrors of my surroundment disappeared-I was alone with hunger and thirst-I was no longer human-I felt nothing but the rage of a wild beast—I had become blind-I lost the sense of my personality I turned against myself, and fastening my teeth in my arm, eat and drank of my body and blood,—and so doing became insensible.

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THE IRISH HIERARCHY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER IX.

AT the commencement of these papers we stated that the secret instructions given to Rinuccini, when about to set out for Ireland, charged him to select as his special and most confidential advisers, Malachy, archbishop of Tuam, and Heber, bishop of Clogher, whose zeal, clearsightedness, and ability in the management of public business, had won them high repute at the court of Rome. Of the former of these prelates we have already spoken, with as much minuteness as his shortlived career and tragic fate seemed to justify, and we will now address ourselves to the biography of the latter, whose fidelity to the cause of religion and country has made his name famous in popular ballads, as well

as in those graver pages, where friend and foe have represented him as a grand historic figure.

Heber, or Emeric, son of Turlough MacMahon and Eva O'Neill, was born at Monaghan, in 1600, a year memorable for the arrival in Ireland of the lord deputy Mounjoy, whose acknowledged ability as a statesman and general was destined to crush the Spaniards at Kinsale, and subjugate the entire island to English rule. Heber's father had fought on the side of the northern chieftains, from the beginning of the war which the latter waged against queen Elizabeth, and on every field from Clontibret to the great victory of the Blackwater, he acted the part of a brave soldier, proving himself on all occasions the worthy representative of an ancient race, always renowned for valorous achievements. The child, Heber, was only seven years old when his kinsman, James Colla MacMahon, was obliged to join the Earls in their flight from lough Swilley; and in the course of a few years afterwards, his father was reduced to comparative poverty by the bill of attainder, which proscribed the fugitives and their adherents, and confiscated the best part of Ulster to the crown. Obliged to seek shelter

with the survivors of O'Neill's and O'Donnell's clansmen in the then almost inaccessible wilds of Donegal, Turlough, with his wife, Eva, and their only child, fixed his residence in the vicinity of Killybegs, and there lived as best he could, hoping that he would sooner or later be restored to some fragment of those grand domains which were so cruelly and unjustly wrested from him and his. News, however, reached Ireland, towards the close of 1608, that James MacMahon and his companion in misfortune, lord Maguire, had died immediately after their arrival at Genoa,* of fever, contracted at Ostia; and the executive, acting on this welcome intelligence, confirmed the grant of Turlough's patrimony to the new occupier, and thus annulled all the claims of the rightful owner. At that period Turlough was too old to take service in the Spanish armies; and as he was suffering from wounds received on the disastrous day of Kinsale, he resolved to remain at home, and devote the remainder of his days to initiat ing young Heber-his sole hope-in the rudiments of the military profession, till the lad would be fit to sail for Flanders, and there enlist into the Irish regiment, which was then commanded by the eldest son of the banished earl of Tyrone. Heber, indeed, did inherit the chivalrous in stincts of his father, but his mother, it would appear, had no ambition to see him trailing halberd or lance, and she consequently resolved that his hopes and aspirations should take an opposite direction, and yearn for the still higher honour of serving in the weakened ranks of the Church, then truly militant, in Ireland. Heber seconded his mother's wishes, and laid aside sword and target for book and pen; and that nothing might be wanting to forward his education, she called into her humble homestead a Franciscan friar of Donegal, who, in return for the bread and shelter afforded

* In the Irish Tract, entitled "The Flight of the Earls," it is stated that there was an interval of only six hours between the deaths of those illustrious exiles, who were buried in the habit of St. Francis, in the church of that name, at Genoa.