It would be difficult to find any language, no matter what pen might wield it, capable of portraying the love which Honora Donovan bore to her gentle, her beautiful, and her only son.  Ah! there in that last epithet, lay the charm which wrapped her soul in him, and in all that related to his welfare.  The moment she saw it was not the will of God to bless them with other offspring, her heart gathered about him with a jealous tenderness which trembled into agony at the idea of his loss.

Her love for him, then, multiplied itself into many hues, for he was in truth the prism, on which, when it fell, all the varied beauty of its colors became visible.  Her heart gave not forth the music of a single instrument, but breathed the concord of sweet sounds, as heard from the blended melody of many.  Fearfully different from this were the feelings of Fardorougha, on finding that he was to be the first and the last vouchsafed to their union.  A single regret, however, scarcely felt, touched even him, when he reflected that if Connor were to be removed from them, their hearth must become desolate.  But then came the fictitious conscience, with its nefarious calculations, to prove that, in their present circumstances, the dispensation which withheld others was a blessing to him that was given.  Even Connor himself, argued the miser, will be the gainer by it, for what would my five loaves and three fishes be among so many?  The pleasure, however, that is derived from the violation of natural affection is never either full or satisfactory.  The gratification felt by Fardorougha, upon reflecting that no further addition was to be made to their family, resembled that which a hungry man feels who dreams he is partaking of a luxurious banquet.  Avarice, it is true, like fancy, was gratified, but the enjoyment, though rich to that particular passion, left behind it a sense of unconscious remorse, which gnawed his heart with a slow and heavy pain, that operated like a smothered fire, wasting what it preys upon, in secrecy and darkness.  In plainer terms, he was not happy, but so absorbed in the ruling passion—­the pursuit of wealth—­that he felt afraid to analyze his anxiety, or to trace to its true source the cause of his own misery.

In the mean time, his boy grew up the pride and ornament of the parish, idolized by his mother, and beloved by all who knew him.  Limited and scanty was the education which his father could be prevailed upon to bestow upon him; but there was nothing that could deprive him of his natural good sense, nor of the affections which his mother’s love had drawn out and cultivated.  One thing was remarkable in him, which we mention with reluctance, as it places his father’s character in a frightful point of view; it is this, that his love for that father was such as is rarely witnessed, even in the purest and most affectionate circles of domestic life.  But let not our readers infer, either from what we have written, or from any thing we may write, that