'Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct or separate features in its frantic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the gentry for miles around, who had congregated in that town, as a centre of security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly retreat, but to instant flight. At one end of the street were seen the rebel pikes and bayonets, and fierce faces already gleaming through the smoke; at the other end, volumes of fire, surging and billowing from the thatched roofs and blazing rafters, beginning to block up the avenues of escape. Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what is worst and what is best in human nature. Then was to be seen the very delirium of fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice; private and ignoble hatred of ancient origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs, and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper and means; volleying pursuit; the very frenzy of agitation under every mode of excitement; and here and there, towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love, victorious and supreme over all lower passions.' * * * * * There is a species of narrative in the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' of a somewhat different cast from that which we have been contemplating, less grand and passionate, perhaps, but more tender and exquisite--overspread with a quieter and mellower humor. We refer to the account of his brother William. He was a youth of the stormiest nature, a genuine cloud-compeller, forever raising storms and whirlwinds merely for the pleasure of directing them; 'haughty he was, aspiring, immeasurably active; fertile in resources as Robinson Crusoe; but also full of quarrel as it is possible to imagine; and in default of any other opponent, he would have fastened a quarrel upon his own shadow for presuming to run before him when going westward in the morning; whereas, in all reason, a shadow, like a dutiful child, ought to keep deferentially in the rear of that majestic substance which is the author of its existence.' He hated books, except those which he chanced to write himself; he was especially great on the subject of necromancy; was even the author of a profound work, entitled 'How to Raise a Ghost, and when You have Got Him Down, how to Keep Him Down.' 'To which work, he assured us, that some most learned and enormous man, whose name was a foot and a half long, had promised him an appendix, which appendix treated of the Red Sea and Solomon's signet ring, with forms of _mittimus_ for ghosts that might be refractory, and probably a riot act for any _emeute_ among ghosts;' for he often gravely affirmed that a confederation, 'a solemn league and conspiracy, might take place among