What a paradox is love!—­the most selfish and yet the most disinterested of the passions; the gentlest and yet the most terrible of impulses that can agitate the human bosom; the most ennobling and the most humble; the most enduring and the most transient; slow as the most subtle venom to its work, yet impetuous in its career as the tornado or the whirlwind; sportive as the smile of infancy, and appalling as the maniac’s shriek, or the laugh of his tormentor.  ’Tis a joy nursed in the warm glow of hope; but who shall reveal the depths of its despair?  ’Twas given to man as his best boon—­his most precious gift; but his own hands polluted the shrine—­marred the beauteous and holy deposit.  The loveliest image was then smitten with deformity, and that passion, the highest and noblest that could animate his bosom, became the bane of his happiness, the destroyer of his peace, and the source whence every attribute of woe hath sprung to afflict and darken the frail hopes of humanity.  This may be the dark side of the picture; but unless the breath of heaven sanctify even the purest affections of our nature, they are a withering blast, blighting its fairest verdure—­a torment and a curse!

The following narrative, floating but indistinctly on the author’s memory, and in all probability attached to other names in localities widely apart, is yet, he believes, true as to the more important particulars.  The site of a few cottages in a romantic dell in the neighbourhood of Rochdale is still associated with the memory of the unfortunate Earl of Tyrone.  It is yet called “Tyrone’s Bed.”  In history, this noble chief is depicted in colours the most hideous and detestable; but if the lion had been the painter, we should have had to contemplate a different portrait.  By his countrymen he was held in the most profound reverence and respect.  Beloved by all, he was hailed as the expected deliverer of his native land from wrong and oppression.  The most bigoted of his persecutors cannot deny that oppression, the most foul and inhuman, did exist; and the men who took up arms for the rescue of their brethren may be pitied, if not pardoned, for their noble, elevated, and enduring spirit.  Let us not be misunderstood as the advocates of rebellion; but surely there are occasions when the galling yoke of oppression may be too heavy to sustain—­when the crushed reptile may, writhing, turn against him who tramples on it.  Let us not do this wrong, even to our enemies, by refusing to admire in them the disinterestedness and magnanimity which in others would have insured our admiration and applause.