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I envy you your life in poor Ireland. My health has been bad since I saw you. I nearly lost the use of my limbs, but can now limp about on a stick.

I write you a short and hasty letter. Till this day, since I had the great pleasure of receiving your last, I have been very busy and ill enough into the bargain, and this morning I start with Mrs. Banim, to make a long-promised visit to the Rev. James Dunn (a man I wish you knew, the same whom Sheil some time ago speeched praises of) and his lady to Tunbridge Wells, but will not go till I answer your letter, and this accounts I hope for the kind of one it is. Pray write soon, and believe me, your affectionate friend,

JOHN BANIM."*

Not alone to Griffin did Banim thus express his satisfaction. Addressing Michael a few days after the date of the last to his friend, he writes:

"Another thing puts me into the best of humour-I have recovered a friend. You by this time know my doctrinethat except the loss of health, or the loss of a friend, there is nothing in the world worth fretting for. Poor Gerald Griffin. In answer to ours from the Bath Hotel before we left London, he ran down there. We were gone. Then he sent his books with a letter, I got both only lately. His note was all I could wish. I immediately answered him as I ought, recollecting all his former sufferings and inexperience. This morning I have received from him a manly, delightful letter. He tells me, among other things, that some talk of mine with him has made him, or rather re-established him, a Christian and a Roman Catholic, for I found him a sceptic. You may be sure this does my poor head good."

By the address of the letter last written to Gerald Griffin, it appears that Banim had changed his residence from Eastbourne to Seven Oaks, and he thus wrote to Michael, describing his condition. The reference here to his wife and child, his,

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May in her crown of flowers"

is characteristic; as the reader will hereafter perceive "sunshine, and a garden not overlooked," were necessary to his perfect enjoyment of the country. We have no more beautiful and manly letter in all these of Banim's now before us, than the following-which seems imbued by that charming spirit expressed by Tennyson

"All the land in flowery squares, Beneath a broad and equal.blowing wind,

See "Life of Gerald Griffin, Esq., By his Brother," p. 241.

Sinelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Drew downward: but all else of Heaven was pure
Up to the sun, and May from verge to verge,
And May with me from head to heel."

The letter is as follows:

My dear Michael,

"Seven Oaks, June 13th, 1828.

But come-my heart is lighter certainly when I wrote last, I was very ill, shattered to pieces, and the clouds lying down on the roads and fields around me. But I am now better; my spirits capital, my self-dependence (thanks to God Almighty for his gracious protection and help) little abated, several goodly patches of corn in the land, by dint of contributions to the annuals. Ellen running about in our sunny garden, and little Mary shouting to her and to the joy-bells, this beautiful summer day. In fact there is a delightful sense of existence-and of gratitude to the Giver of it, and of the humble, no the great blessings he vouchsafes with it, in all our hearts."

In a former part of the Biography we inserted a letter written to Michael Banim by John, and containing, in our opinion, the most admirable rules for the construction and composition of a perfect novel. The following letter is, if possible, more useful to the young novelist, and if read in connection with that before inserted will prove in the highest degree interesting: indeed the out-line tale here sketched is, in itself, a highly-wrought incident, and coupled with the recollections of the fireside stories told by his mother of her relatives, reminds one of the home-pictures in Robert Southey's Recollections of his Early Life.*

This letter has also a peculiar interest, as from the hints, and directions contained in it, Michael Banim was induced to write his well known tale, The Ghost Hunter and His Family:

My dear Michael,

"Seven Oaks, November 10th, 1828.

No matter from what class of life you take your future materials, seek as much as possible for the good and amiable in our national character and habits; as well as for the strong, the fierce, and I will say the ungovernable. How

Sce"The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey," Edited by his Son, The Rev. C. C. Southey. Vol I. p. 1.

very valuable, for instance, would be a simple dramatic tale, got through by old Daniel Carroll, his wife, his sous and his two daughters. Here no necessity exists to rake your memory for the great object, character. Every one of these I have mentioned, must, from your mother's description of them, live for you. Old Daniel Carroll her father, with his grotesque sun-dials, his fork pendulums-his crude system of philosophy; and his reading, during long evenings, Don Quixote and such books, although so throughly pious. Then his wife Betty, you recollect her defence when reprehended for some out of the way expression by her husband. Questioned by him where she had heard the malediction uttered by her. She paused and taxed her memory, and then afrined, she could have heard it no where, except it issued from the sinful books, he was in the habit of reading. Betty's character is richly primitive. Then there is the son Philip's wild irregular one. The younger Daniel's, petty, selfish, cunning. Alley's retaining her anxiety to be thought very devout, not hiding her candle under a bushel meanwhile then the eldest daughter, our own dear mother, such as she was in her maidenhood. Her industry, her thrift, her mildness-her mother-wit and natural good sense. Her lovers, her starling, her canniness.

My dear

Michael, if health permitted, I could use these people, and bring their real and unimagined qualities into play, with credit to the Irish character, all papist as it is, sweetly, primitively, and amiably.

I remember, too, an old story of our mother's, of a gaunt stone-cutter, killing a slight delicate young man in a fight, brought on by a quarrel in a church-yard about the right of interment in a certain spot; you must recollect the occurrence, as it was described to us one cold evening as we sat close together round the fire. There was a man once in affluence, who had been a tithe proctor, if I remember rightly. After having spent a long life in acts of petty tyranny, the ban fell upon his hoard, to this day supposed to be inevitable. You and I have often heard that ban pronounced " A proctor's money never can have luck"-so it fell out with this man, he became very poor, there was no sympathy for him, and he committed suicide-an act, in those days, of rare occurrence; he died too unrepentant and unshriven. No one can be got to inter the body; nor will any of those, whose 'people's bones' rest in consecrated ground,

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permit the corpse of the hardened self-murderer to rest in contact with the relics of their kindred. The coffin is laid on the public street, none will tolerate it near their dwellings, and it is cruelly dragged along the pavement from place to place, and finally brought back to the door of the house wherein the act of suicide had been committed. A compassionate young man enlists three of his associates, they take off the outcast remains and bear it to a neighbouring grave yard. It is night, and by the light of a single candle, fixed in a lump of church-yard clay, and resting on a tomb-stone, the three young men are hastily digging a receptacle for the begrimed coffin that lies near them. gaunt stone-cutter surprises them at their stealthy work. His father's remains are buried close to the spot where they are delving, and he sternly interdicts further progress. The charitable young man who had induced the others to assist him, opposes the mandate; he and the stone-cutter contend fiercely over the graves, the stone-cutter is a strong and powerful man, the other is young and slight; he is struck down by his opponent and blood gushes from his mouth; recovered a little,he assists to inter the suicide else-where. He has been hurt internally, and when he reaches home he is obliged to keep his bed; then the sequel of our mother's tale. Sarah, the proctor's daughter, had been, during the days of her father's prosperity, carefully brought up, and educated for a rank beyond that she could now pretend to in her poverty. While yet lamenting over the appalling termination of her parent's life, she was compelled to witness the cruel indignity practised towards his corpse; and her gratitude was overflowing to him who had charitably borne it away and placed it beneath the clay. She visited him in his illness, and nursed him to convalescence, she taught him to love. her, and she married him. But consumption had fastened on the young man and his days were numbered. His young wife imbibed the fatal malady from him, they wasted away together day by day, she was the first to die, and he followed her very quietly to the same grave."

Referring to this letter, Michael Banim writes to us thus:

"From the first of the hints given in this letter by my brother, the tale of The Ghost Hunter and his Family had origin-the personages, he indicates, had been more than once graphically drawn for us by our mother. They were her own immediate parents, her brothers and sister. They, as well as

herself, are faithfully depicted in the tale under the above title. The Ghost Hunter and His Family was originally written by me, framed by my brother, and published in 1833, in The Library of Romance, edited by Leitch Richie. No use was made of the second sketch. I did not like the subject. I left it in the suggester's hands, but he never wrought upon it."

In the autumn of 1828, Banim commenced to write a new series of The Tales By the O'Hara Family-the title adopted by him for the work was, The Denounced.

It was written amidst pain; and the dread of still greater suffering. He left his cottage at Seven Oaks, and removed for change of air, to Black Heath; and from his new residence, he thus, in 1829, wrote sorrowingly to Michael :

My dear Michael,

"Black Heath, April 3rd, 1829.

I have been obliged to remove hither. Seven Oaks was too far from London for business, and I longed for change of air. For the last five months scarcely three weeks' work in me, and in consequence, my tale has flagged. Had it been God's will to give me health, it would have been ready before now."

The volumes passed, as usual through Michael's hands, and appeared in July, 1829, and are not worthy the author of The Nowlans. One does not, however, wonder that the tales are below the standard of Banim's reputation, when we recollect that they were put together hurriedly; while sickness was a frequent visitant, while the working mental power was available only at frequent and desultory intervals, and while compulsive inactivity, and the inevitable heavy outlay consequent on illness, together with the constant change of residence, in search of the health, that was not to return, were at the same time causing a necessity for funds, and an incapacity to create them.

After the completion of the work, Banim's health became more feeble, and in change of air and scene lay his only hope of restoration. On the 20th of August, 1829, he wrote thus, from Black Heath, to Michael :-

"My dear Michael,

We shall be obliged to remove farther from you; Iam ordered to the French coast-to a milder climate, and where constant baths can be had at a cheap rate-these I am advised to use freely. I must shift my place when there is a necessity. Any

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