But perhaps the melancholy spirit which breathes through the Irish music and poetry, may be attributed to another cause; a cause which operated anterior and subsequent to the invasion of the English: we mean the remarkable susceptibility of the Irish to the passion of love; a passion which the munificent establishment of the bards left them at liberty freely to indulge. While the mind is enduring the torments of fear, despair or hope, its effusions cannot be gay. The greater number of the productions of those amorous poets, Tibullus, Catullus, Petrarch and Hammond, are elegiac. The subject of their songs is always love, and they seem to understand poetry to be designed for no other purpose than to stir up that passion in the mind. SPORTING INTELLIGENCE. COLONEL THORNTON'S DEPARTURE FROM YORKSHIRE. Every true sportsman of this county must regret to hear that what has been for sometime rumoured has at last taken place. Colonel Thornton has been induced to part with Falconer's-hall, and if the report is true, we have to congratulate him in having selected the most enviable and princely domain in England, a residence unparalleled in its situation, either for a man of fashion, a _bon vivant_, or a sportsman. After having given the very best sport in hawking, coursing and hunting, at Scarborough, Falconer's-hall, and to the Saltergate Club, the colonel, a few days since, proceeded through York, in his way to Spy Park, in Wiltshire, followed by a cavalcade, (such as attracted the attention of the whole of this place) in the following order: