other hand, it is much more likely that they would have fled from,
and avoided a spirit which deprived them of the gratification of their
ruling and darling passion. Evil and good, we know, do not so readily
associate.

Be this, however, as it may, we have only to state, in continuation
of our narrative, that at the period of Art Maguire's most lamentable
degradation, and while his admirable but unhappy wife was stretched upon
the burning bed of fever, the far low sounds of the Temperance Movement
were heard, and the pale but pure dawn of its distant light seen
at Ballykeerin. That a singular and novel spirit accompanied it, is
certain; and that it went about touching and healing with all the power
of an angel, is a matter not of history, but of direct knowledge and
immediate recollection. Nothing, indeed, was ever witnessed in any
country similar to it. Whereever it went, joy, acclamation, ecstasy
accompanied it; together with a sense of moral liberty, of perfect
freedom from the restraint, as it were, of some familiar devil, that had
kept its victims in its damnable bondage. Those who had sunk exhausted
before the terrible Molpch of Intemperance, and given themselves over
for lost, could now perceive that there was an ally at hand, that was
able to bring them succor, and drag them back from degradation and
despair, to peace and independence, from contempt and infamy, to respect
and praise. Nor was this all. It was not merely into the heart of the
sot and drunkard that it carried a refreshing consciousness of joy and
deliverance, but into all those hearts which his criminal indulgence had
filled with heaviness and sorrow. It had, to be sure, its dark side
to some--ay, to thousands. Those who lived by the vices
--the low indulgences and the ruinous excesses--of their
fellow-creatures--trembled and became aghast at its approach. The vulgar
and dishonest publican, who sold a _bona fide_ poison under a false
name; the low tavern-keeper; the proprietor of the dram-shop; of the
night-house; and the shebeen--all were struck with terror and dismay.
Their occupation was doomed to go. No more in the dishonest avarice of
gain where they to coax and jest with the foolish tradesman, until they
confirmed him in the depraved habit, and led him on, at his own expense,
and their profit, step by step, until the naked and shivering sot, now
utterly ruined, was kicked out, like Art Maguire, to make room for those
who were to tread in his