POLSON'S FORTUNE-TELLERS' INTRIGUE. HITHERTO Irish fictions have generally been devoted

to depicting the virtues and wrongs of the peasantry with the tyranny and vices of their oppressors. The feelings that prompted this view of Irish society have latterly taken a different turn in the mind of the British public; but Mr. Poison is the first novelist who has turned the change to account by painting the Irish, we do not say with philosophic truth, but as they have latterly shown themselves. The avowed object, indeed, of The Fortune- tellers' Intrigue, is to exhibit "life in Ireland before the Union"; but the author is rather drawing from the present time. "Agrarian outrage," in its slender motives, matter-of-course proceedings, and coldblooded atrocity, might be similar then to the outrages now ; but the priest's un- scrupulous charges against the authorities, and his insinuations of the in- nocence of criminals about to suffer, when he must have known their

altogether smack of present Ireland. If there is truth in report or record, the Irish priests of the old school had traits of the scholar and the gentleman, derived from their foreign education ; they are also said to have been loyal. At least, in the palmy Protestant days anterior to the Union, no Popish priest would have dared to make a public speech like that of Mr. Flimsy touching the conduct and character of "his Ex- cellency" in refusing a pardon to the criminals. If the Attorney-General had overlooked him, he would not have escaped the Orangemen of his district.

"The fortune-tellers' intrigue" of this novel is merely a secondary means of setting the action in motion. The stor51 is truly a tale of agra-

rian outrage, such as may probably be paralleled in every Part of the South of Ireland. There is an agent who seems to be hated because he is a Protestant and does his duty after English notions of business. There are a get of idle, discontented peasantry, ascribing their misery to anything but their own laziness or misconduct, and ripe for any crime against their fancied oppressors, since their moral sense is so deadened that they scarcely look upon murder as a crime or even an offence. Into this society are thrown a peasant's family ; of whom the principal per- sons are Paddy Donnelly, his wife Peggy, and their daughter Kate. Paddy makes enemies by hard working, which causes some idlers to be dismissed ; his daughter by attracting suitors. Disposition, however, as much as temptation, is the cause of Paddy's fall. His daughter Kate is attached to a young blacksmith, but Paddy refuses his consent till De- nis Kelly shall get a farm. A chance occurs, by the agent's having ejected one Branigan for laziness and non-payment of rent. Paddy and Denis start to apply for the farm ; but find a Protestant has been before them, recommended by the clergyman: whereupon they follow and mur- der the new tenant.

"Deeply prejudiced against the agent and the Reverend Mr. Pies, they = their way down the avenue, venting expressions of the most revengeful c at intervals against the reverend gentleman in particular; his inhumanity and bigotry, forsooth, being the principal topics of conversation on the way. One compared him to a savage, in whose breast the 'milk of human kindness' had never been; the other, to a bigoted heretic who deserved the worst of treatment; and more than once was the mind of Paddy engaged in concocting a plan to rid the neighbourhood of such a noxious creature, whose very breath, as they imagined,

was unhealthful to all around. • "Knowing that the successful applicant had but a short time before left the residence of the agent, and jealous of his good luck, as well as from an inveterate hatred of his creed, they proceeded quickly along, conspiring as they travelled how they should best execute that resentment which a sense of his good fortune alone inspired.

"Coming into view of him on the road, the conversation for some time was as follows. 'it's a bad thing to meditate a murdher, Paddy, but I'm blissed if I can help thinkin' that it would be a good job to put the heretic from ever forestallin' us in a bargain again.'

"'I wouldn't like to have the name of a murdherer; answered Paddy; but onct a fellow's passion's Hz, why he often does things that be regrets afther. I often think it's a sin to put a body in sich a passion; an' I'm of the opinion that a man shouldn't be accountable for his acts while in that state, bekase he doesn't take time to raison.'

"'The murdher of a heretic at any time can't be a very great sin,' observed Denis. In throth, although the laws don't sanction it in any shape or form, still I'm of the notion that it's more an act o' charity we'd be performin' to all Christenable.people than anything else. Step out, at all evints, till we overtake

"By this time they had approached within a few yards' distance of Hicks, whom they had already marked as their victim. Ere they advanced many paces the object of their pursuit turned round, addressing them in a very kind manner; which their canning induced them to reply to in an apparently similar spirit; their murderous purpose being (owing to the paucity of their number) to fall upon him unawares, and at a moment when the probability of his making any de- fence would be the most unlikely. -

"'I suppose,' said Paddy, addressing him first, you've h'ard of the way the agint thrated one of our neighbours, Lanty Branigan by name ? '

" Yis,' replied Hicks, I've h'ard aomethin' about it. Maybe, howsomiver, that the agint wasn't altogether to blame in what he did.' " Throth, maybe so,' observed Denis, ironically. "'Why, he thought he was too lazy to work, an' that that was the principal illness that ailed him,' observed Hicks. "An' I s'pose you'd be aisily coaxed to believe the same thing,' remarked Denis.

"'Why, I hadn't as good a right to know as Miether Partial,' replied Hicks; but from all the little acquaintance I have of him, I'd be likely to blieve he'd do nothin' to injure any man.' "'You have had some dalin's with him, thin, it seems,' observed Paddy. "'If I hadn't I wouldn't spake with sich confidince: "'An' do you mane to say that any man who could find in his heart to throbs a poor crature as he thrated Lanty has the feelin's of a Christen?' asked Denis.

It was bard enough, but the man wouldn't do it without cause. As long as Lanty paid his rint honistly he wasn't put out; but whin he fell two years behind it was time to do something.' "'You lie! he didn't owe two years,' exclaimed Denis, angrily; and scarcely had he finished the sentence, than, falling a little behind, he made the ragged stick rebound from the occipital region of his head with a sound which could easily have been heard at the distance of a hundred yards. Stunned with the blow, the poor fellow staggered forward for a few paces' the blood flowing profusely from the incisions, and fell insensible on the ground. While prostrate he was jumped upon by Paddy in a paroxysm of rage, who belaboured him in a savage manner with the stick he had received in exchange from Kelly; the latter of whom, lifting a large stone, let it fall upon his head, causing his brains to protrude from his ear; in which state they left him, considering his death inevitable in a very short time. In the course of an hour after he was discovered in the awful situation in which they had left him, weak and senseless, his clothes being completely saturated with blood, and a small pool of clotted gore not many feet from his head."

It will be seen from this extract that Mr. Poison understands Irish character, and can exhibit it dramatically as far as the cast of sentiment and mode of expression are concerned. But he cannot rise to the pitch of passion. He is not false, or even flat, but literal : he is less like a creator than a reporter ; he does not appear to be moved himself, and consequently does not move others. There is a sort of truth throughout,

but it is the truth of a short-hand-writer or policeman, not of an artist.

Connected with this deficiency is another of a similar kind. There is a want of largeness in the story and of interest in the persons. The whole, if not absolutely low, is common. Discussions about Mr. Partial and his management of the estate, with half-hatched conspiracies to mur- der, form a good portion of the book ; another consists of the sordid affairs of the peasantry, unrelieved by any touch of sentiment or noble. ness. The reader has just seen Mister Denis Kelly, the lover; Kate Don- nelly and her mother Peggy, from their family affection and pious feeling, are more interesting; but when Mrs. Donnelly is found, at the close, in- sensible to the guilt of her husband, imprecating vengeance on his pro- secutors, and only moved by his loss, while Kate herself; is at leisure to exchange sarcasms with a whilom rival, indifference takes the place of

sympathy.