Having made these few necessary observations, I now beg to introduce to my readers the extraordinary narrative already spoken of--a narrative whose force and graphic power will serve only to bring shame upon the feeble superstructure which I have endeavored to erect upon it. It is termed-- THE MURDER OF THE BOLANDS. In the year 1808, there lived near Croom, in the county of Limerick, a farmer named Michael Boland. He was an intelligent and prosperous man, and the owner of many hundred acres of the best land in that fine county. He had two sons and two daughters, all grown up to manhood and womanhood, in this year, and the parish chapel never saw, in their time, a finer family for stature, symmetry, and comeliness, attend its mass than Michael Boland, his wife, and children. With the growth of his family, his ambition and desire of increased wealthiness grew; and, by the agency of some hundred pounds, he became the tithe-proctor, or rector of several patches of tithes throughout the county. At first he was successful in this speculation, and with his increased profits, himself and his children assumed a higher and more important tone and bearing in society. In fact, his sons and daughters passed as ladies and gentlemen, not only in external appearance, but in elegance of manners and cultivation of mind; for he spared no expense on their education, as well in his original as in his subsequent condition of life; besides that at this period, and for a long time previous, the County of Limerick was the great school-house, not only of Munster, but of all Ireland--vide Carleton's “Poor Scholar.” The sudden departure of the Bolands from the intercourse and intimate acquaintance of their former companions and neighbors, as well as the long brooding hatred and opposition of the people to the payment of tithes, soon gave rise to loud murmurs and sarcastic retrospective observations against them; and people far and near took every occasion to offend and insult them--both men and women---wherever and whenever an opportunity of doing so, in a galling manner, offered. Often were the Misses Boland asked, when mounted on their side-saddles, did they remember when their mother used to be driving her cart-load of tankards of sour milk to the market of Limerick, and sitting there for days retailing it at a penny a gallon, &c.; and as often were the young brothers asked when bursting over an old neighbor's fence, in scarlet and buckskin, if they remembered when their father and mother bore an active hand and shoulder to the carving out and spreading of the manure to the fields, &c.