or the land-steward looks over the proposals, and after singling
out the highest, bidder, declares him tenant, as a matter of course.
Now, perhaps, this said tenant does not possess a shilling in the
world, nor a shilling's worth. Most likely he is a new-married man,
with nothing but his wife's bed and bedding, his wedding-suit, and his
blackthorn cudgel, which we may suppose him to keep in reserve for the
bailiff. However, he commences his farm; and then follow the shiftings,
the scramblings, and the fruitless struggles to succeed, where success
is impossible. His farm is not half tilled; his crops are miserable; the
gale-day has already passed; yet, he can pay nothing until he takes it
out of the land. Perhaps he runs away--makes a moonlight flitting--and,
by the aid of his friends, succeeds in bringing the crop with him. The
landlord, or agent, declares he is a knave; forgetting that the man
had no other alternative, and that they were the greater knaves and
fools too, for encouraging him to undertake a task that was beyond his
strength.

In calamity we are anxious to derive support from the sympathy of our
friends; in our success, we are eager to communicate to them the power
of participating in our happiness. When Owen once more found himself
independent and safe, he longed to realize two plans on which he had
for some time before been seriously thinking. The first was to visit his
former neighbors, that they might at length know that Owen McCarthy's
station in the world was such as became his character. The second was,
if possible, to take a farm in his native parish, that he might close
his days among the companions of his youth, and the friends of his
maturer years. He had, also, another motive; there lay the burying-place
of the M'Carthys, in which slept the mouldering dust of his own
"golden-haired" Alley. With them--in his daughter's grave--he intended
to sleep his long sleep. Affection for the dead is the memory of the
heart. In no other graveyard could he reconcile it to himself to be
buried; to it had all his forefathers been gathered; and though
calamity had separated him from the scenes where they had passed through
existence, yet he was resolved that death should not deprive him of its
last melancholy consolation;--that of reposing with all that remained of
the "departed," who had loved him, and whom he had loved. He believed,
that to neglect this, would be to abandon a sacred duty, and felt sorrow
at