thus of any man who would venture to go 141 of all human spectacles,—a bloodthirsty strife THE TIPPERARY WITCH. THERE is something much more pleasant and touching about the Irish rustic superstitions than there is about the English. Superstition makes the English boor simply brutal and pitiless, while in the Irish peasant it excites the lively credulous imagination of a child. At Sible Hedingham the other day, the Essex villagers regarded the mere suspicion that poor old Dummy was preternaturally endowed as lawful justification for all sorts of experimental torment. No sooner do English rustics suspect demoniacal agency than they deliver themselves up to mixed feelings of anger and curiosity, and set about their tortures partly in the spirit of cruel fear and partly in the spirit, of scientific investigation, partly like inquisitors, and partly like artillerymen trying with their guns the strength of a renowned fort. They want to hurt the demon, and they want also to know how much it can endure,-whether a few hours under water will have the effect And even that cry will not be heard. Mr. Davis has, we verily believe, too much of the statesman in him to rule again by pandering to the servility of the Northern democracy where he could not rule by the right of the stronger. He has found out how disgusting of sending it away, or brickbats applied to is the duty of governing, as Mr. Randolph the organism of the possessed person will afof Virginia long ago said that the South gov-fect it at all unpleasantly. A hundred and erned the North, "not by our black slaves, fifty years ago Addison described the rural but by your own white slaves," and he will English feeling towards a witch as precisely He will foil the that which it still is :-" In our return home not attempt it again. Northern democracy by refusing all terms but Sir Roger told us that old Moll White had independence, and then if General M'Clellan often been brought before him for making should, after all, be elected,-which is, we children spit pins and giving maids the nightthink, improbable, we should see the dis- mare, and that the country people would be gusting spectacle of a bloody war renewed tossing her into a pond and trying experiunder a man who has vaunted his contempt ments with her every day if it was not for him and his chaplain.' There is no such feeling for the only principle which can excuse it,who has apologized for the rebellion and its towards a gipsy, because a gipsy is supposed principle when he hoped to bribe it into sub-to work only by a traditional knowledge of mission, and will then be compelled by the natural signs which anybody might acquire utter break-down of his senseless manoeuvre if he could find the key; there is nothing to invade the rights he has justified, and mur- preternatural attributed to the gipsy, only a der the men on whom he has fawned. In wilder life and more intimate acquaintance General M'Clellan the principle of compro- with natural secrets. But the moment the mise would thus indeed culminate. Many others of his predecessors have surrendered their principles cheerfully to purchase a peace; but he would have done so only to exasperate a war,-to turn it from what has always a certain majesty--a conflict of good and evil principles-into the most miserable and evil suspicion of preternatural powers suggests itself, the English rustic becomes brutal. The belief in fairies or kindly preternatural agencies has wholly vanished from England, while the belief in demons or the black art still lingers to a considerable extent. How different the state of feeling is in Ireland the very cu rious examination of three or four "be-1 There were no fewer apparently than five witched " people before the magistrates of independent witnesses who asserted that they Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, on Thursday had seen the forms of relatives long dead reweek will sufficiently show. The witch was stored to life, always it appears in Mrs. Doone Mrs. Mary Doheny, the wife of a blind heny's presence, though she does not seem to man, who appeared at Carrick-on-Suir about have claimed any power in the matter. The fourteen months ago with a reputation for first witness was "Sub-Constable Joseph preternatural powers which she soon began Reeves," who stated that after Mrs. Doheny's to sustain and increase. The charge against appearance at Carrick-on-Suir some fourteen her was of cheating certain persons after- months ago she began to doctor his child for wards examined in court, and who evidently him with herbs. The child was afflicted were far from admitting that they had been with epileptic fits, and Mrs. Doheny's remecheated at all, out of subsidies not in money dies certainly gained it quieter sleep, he but in food, on the false pretence that they thought, than it had ever had before. But were for the support of deceased relatives of after this little experiment in the healing the contributors recently restored to life-or art, in which she does not appear to have sufficiently so to need food. The scene in the been strikingly successful, she seems to have Court-house of Carrick-on-Suir was a very diverted her energies into more exciting curious one. People of all ranks thronged channels. We are told that one night at from all sides to hear the examination, and twelve o'clock, while Mrs. Doheny's medical even the most educated persons present were, attentions were being directed to the child, it is said, in parts of the evidence visibly Mrs. Reeves, the wife of the sub-constable, awestruck and confounded by the simple had a vision, when she was "in bed, but not faith and earnest testimony of more than one asleep," of her deceased father, Mr. Mullins, witness to the preternatural facts alleged. who said "he would return home to me in The witnesses called against Mrs. Doheny perfection,"-whatever that may have meant. certainly testified to the continuous stream Mrs. Doheny " had not said anything to me of subsidies with which they had supplied her for their rather uncomfortably situated relatives, who appear to have half got back from the grave, but still to be, if we may so term it, spiritual invalids living on earth, but in mysterious seclusion amongst the "good people," and preparing on a mild diet of tea and other food generally known to the medical profession as “ slops" for their more active return to life; but while they gave this evidence, they not only imputed no falsehood to Mrs. Doheny, but were even eager in their simple faith that the subsidies had actually been needed and consumed by their half-reanimated kinsmen, whom they had, they said, seen with their own eyes. There is something inexpressibly childlike about the whole story. In reading it we feel as if we were present at the birth of one of those Irish fairy legends related with so much spirit by Mr. Lover, in which humpbacks sleeping in haunted moats so please the "good people" as not only to get rid of their humps but have them transferred to the persons of their cruel enemies, or banshees flit round decaying mansions wailing forth the death-song of some one of its in mates. of my father till I told her this circumstance, but the remark appears to have been carefully laid up in Mrs. Doheny's heart, and to have suggested the important change of her "base of operations" from administering physical sedatives to the child to administering spiritual stimulants to the parents. After the hint dropped by Mrs. Reeves of her expectation, that her father would return to her "in perfection," Mrs. Doheny appears to have made statements to the effect that he had returned to life, and would soon manifest himself to his daughter and her family. About four months or more ago "Sub-Constable Joseph Reeves" was asked by Mrs. Doheny to go with her to Knockroe, where he would see his late fatherin-law. The man, accompanied by his boy Terence, a child of eight years of age, started, but on getting to Knockroe appears to have seen nothing till Mrs. Doheny came up ten minutes after him, when pointing in a particular direction she asked Reeves if he saw anything. "I replied, Yes,' for I saw my father-in-law William Mullins (who had been dead three years) about twenty yards distant from me." Asked by the magistrate whether he was frightened, Reeves replied 66 a simply, "I was not, sir; this is a rare case | me Tom Sheehan [a deceased relative of in a court of justice, and a laughable one to Reeves], who was lame, and. my own child. some people; but there have been instances They were all alive." The niece of Mrs. of the kind before." He had known his father-in-law, he said, for sixteen years, and ought" to know him. "We remained looking at him for a time; he was standing in the field with a stick in his hand; his side-face was turned toward me. There was good light at the time, about eight o'clock in the evening. I don't think William Mullins is dead now; but he was dead. I have been sending him food for the last four months since he came to life. I sent bread, butter, and tea once in each of the twentyfour hours, sometimes by the defendant and sometimes by my wife's niece. Defendant asked in my presence for the food, and as it was after I had seen William Mullins alive, I consented." Reeves further said that he had lost a son named William, who died at seven years of age in 1860. Two months ago, Mrs. Doheny told him "to go to Duggan's waste-house and I would see him." This he did, again with his son Terence, and he asserts that they both saw his late son William standing inside the window with a dead aunt (Margaret Power), who had died about seven years ago. 66 They came to the window and I walked up to it, there was only the glass between us. The boy Terence remarked to me when they came to the window, There's Will and his aunt.'" We may casually note here the remarkably tenacious memory of the living boy Terence, who is only eight years old. His little brother had died when he was only four years old, and his aunt when he was only one year old; but he recognizes them at once. The dead or risen boy was said to be in the same clothes in which he died. The magistrate, asking if the lad had had his clothes on when he died, his mother, who was sitting in court, cried out, "O God help us! he had, he had!" and Reeves goes on, "Yes, he died in his chair; he appeared to me to have grown since he died; he did not look very badly, though he was delicate; he had no hat on." Of the aunt he says that she did not wear a crinoline, they were not in fashion when she died,"-but we are not assured whether she died in those clothes or has dressed since. There also appears to have been a separate manifestation of some of these deceased persons to Mrs. Reeves. Mrs. Doheny, she said, brought her father "and showed him to me. She also showed Reeves, who is described as a "fine, intelligent girl," also swore positively that every night, but " after dark," she brought tea, milk, butter, bread, and other food, and gave them to her uncle, Tom Sheehan, who was always standing under the wall of the old "waste house." She swore positively that it was to her deceased uncle, Tom Sheehan, and no one else, that she delivered the James Hayes; but as he had known none of food. A fifth witness was an ex-policeman, the deceased parties in their lifetime, except by description, his evidence only proved that he had seen persons whom he believed on his friends' word to be dead people restored to life. These persons still appear to be in delicate state. very The dead Father Mulprotection of the " lins indeed seems to be hearty under the and can manage new potatoes and eggs. But good people," smokes, Mrs. Doheny said my sisters and son were too delicate to eat new potatoes and eggs, and I changed the diet next night.' Some tea was sent back as not good enough for the wards of the fairies, two months ago, and William Mullins wanted clothes but once; fresh tea of a better quality was substituted. and then he made shift with one of his daughter's chemises for a shirt. The promise held out by Mrs. Doheny appears to be that all these shadowy forms now undergoing their novitiate for a second earthly life in the deserted house near the moat of Ballydine will, after due assimilation respectively of new po- . dier men, and superior tea by the boy and tatoes, eggs, and bread and milk by the harwomen, be able to come back quite to life, and that whenever that occurs they will bring their living with them,"- -an event apparently much to be desired, as the intermediate state is rather expensive to relations who are whom it is rather hard to ask them to work still enjoying their first lease of life, and on so hard for relatives who are about to enjoy their second. However, when they quite return to life, they are to bring not only money but "land in the county of Waterford "or perhaps rather the title to it-with them, which is certainly a consolatory hope; only as the title can only have been gained by a conveyance effected in the other world, it must still be a harassing doubt to the subconstable whether earthly lawyers will recognize its validity. Indeed, we fear the wholesome efficacy of the Encumbered Estates Act would soon be neutralized if this sort of lien upon land were admitted. ... 66 The whole story shows a wonderful Irish naïvete and amiability with its marvellous credulity. The placid faith with which the sub-constable and his family accept the inter- her guns, ammunition, and coal, all supplied mediate state, and send their tributes of new potatoes, eggs, milk, butter, and tea to the unreal world, in the sanguine hope of a reversionary right to real property in Waterford in compensation for these pious labors, is quite touching in its simplicity. A whole family give dairy produce to ghosts or fairies, and hope for a farm in Waterford as their reward! Was there ever confidence in imaginary powers so profound? From The Spectator. THE CRUISE OF THE ALABAMA.* WE venture to hope that few Englishmen will read this authentic narrative of the cruise of the Alabama without a feeling of shame that any of their countrymen should have been found willing to cooperate in organizing or sending forth from our shores an expedition has which been so successful in preying upon the commerce of a friendly ally, and disturbing the relations between this country and the United States. Without entering into the vexed question whether any of the persons concerned in this affair were within the express words of the Foreign Enlistment Act so as to render themselves liable to its penal consequences, but looking at the trasaction as a whole, it cannot, we think, be doubted that it was precisely that which it was the object of that act to prevent, and which if the powers given by the Legislature to the Executive do not prevent, the whole act becomes a dead letter, a pretence and a sham. by English firms, and the remainder of her crew; that there Captain Semmes, who had been commissioned to the vessel before she left England, took command, went through a form of reengaging his crew, hoisted the Confederate flag, and then commenced his career of destruction; that, with the exception of the captain and two other officers, all her crew, officers and men, were Englishmen,—Captain Semmes calls them "the most reckless from the groggeries of Liverpool " (Vol. II., p. 33) and that wages were regularly paid to their families through a firm at Liverpool; that the vessel was constantly supplied with coal from England by the Agrippina; that she made a practice of luring her victim by flying the British flag; that she never once entered a Confederate port, but made constant use of British and other neutral ports, and was received with hospitality by British officers; that no attempt was ever made to send her prizes into port for condemnation according to the recognized usage of belligerents at sea, but that Captain Semmes constituted a quasi court of condemnation on his own quarter-deck without due regard for the property of neutrals, and then burnt the vessels and their cargoes. On all these points Captain Semmes' log only confirms what was matter of notoriety, and those who can read with patience this great scandal to our laws and disgrace to the shipbuilders and merchants engaged in this transaction, will find little more than a dreary and monotonous account of the burning of Captain Semmes' work adds little to what vessels throughout a lengthened cruise. That was known before. We all knew that the there was anything heroic in the action of Alabama was built expressly for the Con- Captain Semmes we entirely deny. The vesfederate Navy by Messrs. Laird and Sons, sel was built for the purpose only of destroyof Birkenhead " (Vol. I., p. 266); that it ing the commerce of the United States, and was paid for in money obtained in this coun- that a vessel could be built which should for try by means of a loan raised upon the faith a length of time out-pace any of its oppoof cotton certificates which would only be good nents at sea taking advantage of the law of in the event of success of the Confederacy; neutrality which gives twenty-four hours' that it was obviously a war vessel, and so far start to a belligerent from any neutral port, as its armament was completed in this coun- cannot be a matter of surprise to any one try fit for nothing else; that it left Liverpool acquainted with the efficiency of British steamon pretence of making a trial trip with its ship builders, and more especially of the builders and a party of ladies on board on the Messrs. Laird; it is, or ought to be, more very day on which orders were issued by the mortifying that such a vessel armed and manGovernment for its detention, and of which ned by Englishmen should have had eventuinformation had been obtained in some irreg-ally to succumb to an opponent as nearly ular and clandestine manner; that instead of returning into port she proceeded to Moel fra Bay, where she shipped her crew and sailed on an ostensible voyage to Nassau; that she made for Terceira, and met there by previous arrangement the sailing vessel Agrippina, and the steamer Bahama, bringing *Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter. From the private Journals of Commander R. Semmes, C. S. N. Two vols. London: Saunders, Otley, and Co. equal as possible in size, armament, and number of men, of which the iron-plating turns out to be nothing more than the festooning of its own iron cable about the most vulnerable portion of its hull, a device equally open to the Alabama; and that its loss was wholly due to the superior gunnery of the American sailors over those of the Ababama, notwithstanding the training which many of the lat ter had received as Naval Reserve men. Spectator, Macmillan's Magazine, North British Review, Saturday Review, Spectator, Saturday Review, Spectator, 66 66 Saturday Review, MR. JAY'S SECOND LETTER ON DAVISON'S INTRODUCTION TO THE FEDERALIST, with a vote on the unfriendly policy of France toward the United States, at the time of the Treaty of Peace. The subject of the hote on France will probably attract more attention; but the most important matter is to prevent the insidious infusion of Secession feelings and arguments into our common literature. 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