at I have left behind.

Le Fanu's literary life may be divided into three distinct periods.
During the first of these, and till his thirtieth year, he was an Irish
ballad, song, and story writer, his first published story being the
'Adventures of Sir Robert Ardagh,' which appeared in the 'Dublin
University Magazine' of 1838.

In 1844 he was united to Miss Susan Bennett, the beautiful daughter of
the late George Bennett, Q.C. From this time until her decease, in 1858,
he devoted his energies almost entirely to press work, making, however,
his first essays in novel writing during that period. The 'Cock and
Anchor,' a chronicle of old Dublin city, his first and, in the opinion
of competent critics, one of the best of his novels, seeing the light
about the year 1850. This work, it is to be feared, is out of print,
though there is now a cheap edition of 'Torlogh O'Brien,' its immediate
successor. The comparative want of success of these novels seems to have
deterred Le Fanu from using his pen, except as a press writer, until
1863, when the 'House by the Churchyard' was published, and was soon
followed by 'Uncle Silas' and his five other well-known novels.

We have considered Le Fanu as a ballad writer and poet. As a press
writer he is still most honourably remembered for his learning and
brilliancy, and the power and point of his sarcasm, which long made the
'Dublin Evening Mail' one of the most formidable of Irish press critics;
but let us now pass to the consideration of him in the capacity of a
novelist, and in particular as the author of 'Uncle Silas.'

There are evidences in 'Shamus O'Brien,' and even in 'Phaudrig
Croohore,' of a power over the mysterious, the grotesque, and the
horrible, which so singularly distinguish him as a writer of prose
fiction.

'Uncle Silas,' the fairest as well as most familiar instance of this
enthralling spell over his readers, is too well known a story to tell
in detail. But how intensely and painfully distinct is the opening
description of the silent, inflexible Austin Ruthyn of Knowl, and
his shy, sweet daughter Maude, the one so resolutely confident in his
brother's honour, the other so romantically and yet anxiously
interested in her uncle--the sudden arrival of Dr. Bryerly, the strange
Swedenborgian, followed by the equally unexpected apparition of Madame
de la Rougiere, Austin Ruthyn's painful death, and the reading of his
strange will consigning poor Maude to the protection o