William Reilly was the descendant of an old and noble Irish family. His ancestors had gone through all the vicissitudes and trials, and been engaged in most of the civil broils and wars, which, in Ireland, had characterized the reign of Elizabeth. As we are not disposed to enter into a disquisition upon the history of that stormy period, unless to say that we believe in our souls both parties were equally savage and inhuman, and that there was not, literally, a toss up between them, we have only to add that Reilly's family, at least that branch of it to which he belonged, had been reduced by the ruin that resulted from the civil wars, and the confiscations peculiar to the times. His father had made a good deal of money abroad in business, but feeling that melancholy longing for his native soil, for the dark mountains and the green fields of his beloved country, he returned to it, and having taken a large farm of about a thousand acres, under a peculiar tenure, which we shall mention ere we close, he devoted himself to pasturage and agriculture. Old Reilly had been for some years dead, and his eldest son, William, was now not only the head of his immediate family, but of that great branch of it to which he belonged, although he neither claimed nor exercised the honor. In Reilly, many of those irreconcilable points of character, which scarcely ever meet in the disposition of any but an Irishman, were united. He was at once mild and impetuous; under peculiar circumstances, humble and unassuming, but in others, proud almost to a fault; a bitter foe to oppression in every sense, and to bigotry in every creed. He was highly educated, and as perfect a master of French, Spanish, and German, as he was of either English or Irish, both of which he spoke with equal fluency and purity. To his personal courage we need not make any further allusion. On many occasions it had been well tested on the Continent. He was an expert and unrivalled swordsman, and a first-rate shot, whether with the pistol or fowling-piece.