That part of Limerick formerly known as Englishtown, and at present localized in city ordinances and surveying maps as King's Island, consists of a knot of antique houses crowding thick around a venerable cathedral. An ancient castle, its dismantled tower within easy bow-shot, overrun with weeds and ivy, overlooks the noble river, whose expansive sweep of waters is at this point of passage spanned by an old, but still substantial bridge. In the shadow of the cathedral and within hearing of the river, Gerald Griffin, dramatist, poet and novelist, was born on the 12th of December, 1803. His father, who had succeeded to a goodly estate, a considerable fortune and an honored name, sold the fee simple of his landed inheritance, and removed to Limerick, that his children might enjoy all the advantages of a good education, which at that period were best obtainable in large towns and great cities. He established himself in the business of a brewer; and, as in every speculative walk of life where personal energy is not well supplemented by judicious management and long experience, time alone was needed to diminish his capital by rewarding his unremitting industry with profitless returns. The natural disposition of this good man presented a medley of those attractive qualities which secure for their fortunate possessor an immediate share of the sympathetic good-will alike of the friend and the stranger. He had a kind heart and a winning manner. He could enjoy and exchange a good joke, and to the end of his life was a sterling and an uncompromising patriot. Yet his admiration for valor and virtue was circumscribed by no political limits, by no narrow-minded prejudices. An ultra-volunteer in '82, and an O'Connellite in '29, he was enthusiastic over the victory at Waterloo, and wept at the melancholy fate of Sir Samuel Romilly. Gerald's mother was a gentle and accomplished lady, whose affection for her child was tempered and regulated by the treasures of a refined and cultured mind, and by a sensitively religious disposition. When he was in his third year, Mrs. Griffin, with her family, removed to a country district, which, from local association with the escapades of lepracauns and phookas, had inherited the significative title of Fairy Lawn. The new home was romantically situated amid the umbrageous woods and pastoral meadow-lands through which the Shannon flows at its confluence with the little Ovaan River. His infancy thus cradled in a landscape rich in the diversified picturesqueness of storied ruin and historic tradition, what wonder that Gerald at a very early age should feel the inspiration of his poetic surroundings as he looked towards the winding river, the green fields, the islands mirrored in the tributary Fergus, and the solemn shade and cloistered loneliness of ruined abbeys and gray cathedrals. To the careful training of his good mother he was indebted for the exquisite taste and truthfulness with which he interpreted nature; for the nice