A LITTLE TOUR IN IRELAND

By S. Reynolds Hole

An Oxonian

(Dean Of Rochester)

With Illustrations By JOHN LEECH

“By suffering worn and weary,
But beautiful as some fair angel yet.”

1892

TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN LEECH

A TRUE ARTIST
A TRUE FRIEND AND A TRUE GENTLEMAN
THIS BOOK
WHICH HE MADE A SUCCESS
IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR
S. REYNOLDS HOLE

PREFACE.

I have been so often and persuasively asked to republish A Little Tour in Ireland, which I wrote as “an Oxonian,” many years ago, at the request of my beloved friend and companion, John Leech, and of which only one edition has been issued, and that long since exhausted; I have been so severely upbraided for “keeping his splendid illustrations locked up in a box, and raising the price of the few copies which come into the market, to thrice the original cost;” I have been so fully certified, not only by hearsay but by my own eyes, that there is little or no perceptible change in the scenes, which he drew and I described; and my apprehension, that the style in which the book is written might be denounced as unbecoming, has been so completely expelled by the amused remonstrance of my friends, who insist that gaiety becomes an undergraduate as much as gaiters a Dean;—that I can make no further resistance, and only ask that the failings of the author may be condoned by the talent of the artist.

S. Reynolds Hole.

The Deanery,

Rochester: 1892.

CONTENTS

[ PREFACE. ]

[ CHAPTER I. PREFATORY. ]

[ CHAPTER II. TO DUBLIN. ]

[ CHAPTER III. DUBLIN. ]

[ CHAPTER IV. FROM DUBLIN TO GALWAY. ]

[ CHAPTER V. THE FAMINE. ]

[ CHAPTER VI. FROM GALWAY TO OUGHTERARDE. ]

[ CHAPTER VII. CONNAMARA. ]

[ CHAPTER VIII. CLIFDEN. ]

[ CHAPTER IX. KYLEMORE. ]

[ CHAPTER X. FROM KYLEMORE TO GALWAY. ]

[ CHAPTER XI. FROM GALLWAY TO LIMERICK ]

[ CHAPTER XII. LIMERICK ]

[ CHAPTER XIII. KILLARNEY. ]

[ CHAPTER XIV. KILLARNEY ]

[ CHAPTER XV. KILLARNEY. ]

[ CHAPTER XVI. FROM KILLARNEY TO GLENGARRIFF ]

[ CHAPTER XVII. GLENGARRIFF. ]

[ CHAPTER XVIII. GLENGARRIFF TO CORK ]

[ CHAPTER XIX. CORK ]

[ CHAPTER XX. BLARNEY ]

[ CHAPTER XXI. FROM DUBLIN HOMEWARD ]

CHAPTER I. PREFATORY.

THERE are two species of Undergraduates, the Fast and the Slow. I am now of the former persuasion. Originally, having promised my relations that I would take a Double First-Class and most of the principal prizes, I was associated with the latter brotherhood, but was soon compelled to secede, and to sue for a separation, a mensâ et thoro, their tea-table and early rising, on the plea of incompatibility of temper. One young gentleman, who described himself as being very elect indeed, candidly told me that, unless my sentiments with reference to bitter beer and tobacco underwent a material change, he could give me no hope of final happiness; and another impeccable party, with a black satin stock and the handiest legs in Oxford, felt himself solemnly constrained to mention, that he could not regard horse-exercise as at all consistent with a saving faith. I spoke of St. George (though I dared not say that I had met him at Astley's), of St. Denis, and St. Louis, of the Crusaders, and the Red Cross Knight; but he only replied that I was far gone in idolatry, and he lent me the biography of the Reverend T. P. Snorker, which, after describing that gentleman's conversion at a cock-fight, with the sweet experiences of his immaculate life, and instituting a comparison between his preaching and that of St. Paul (a trifle in favour of Snorker), finally declared him to be an angel, and bade all mankind adore, and reverence, and buy his sermons at seven-and-six. When I returned the publication, and told him that, though I had been highly entertained, I liked the Life of George Herbert better, he called me a hagiologist (a term which struck me as being all the more offensive, inasmuch as I had no idea of its meaning), 1 and murmured something about “the mark of the beast,” whereupon, I regret to confess, that I so far lost my temper as to address him with the unclassical epithet of “a young Skunk,” suggesting the expediency of his immediate presence at Jericho, and warning him, that, if he were not civil, “the beast” might leave a “mark” upon him. That very day, I wrote to the butler at home, to send up my pink and tops, and “went over to roam” in happier pastures.

1 “Egan, in addressing a jury, having exhausted every
ordinary epithet of abuse, stopt for a word, and then added,
'this naufrageous ruffian.' When afterwards asked the
meaning of the word, he confessed he did not know, but
said; 'he thought it sounded well.'”—Sketches of the Irish
Bar, vol. i. p. 83.

I find them more healthful also. I find that so far from my perception of right and wrong being destroyed, as the disciples of Snorker prophesied, by a gallop after the Heythrop hounds, and my appreciation of Thucydides being expelled by my morning pipe, I have, mentally and bodily, a better tone; and though my former condiscipuli groan when they meet me coming in from the chase, as though I were the scarlet lady herself, I still venture to appear at chapel, and will back myself to construe the funeral oration of Pericles against the ugliest of the lot.

Oh, that fox-hunting were the worst enemy to me, a student, for I might be a class man still! But I have contracted a habit desperately antagonistic to literature,—I am allways falling in love.

The moment I see a pretty face, I feel that sort of emotion which Sydney Smith used to say the late Bishop of London rejoiced to contemplate in his clergy, “a kind of drop-down-deadness.” I cannot walk out, or drive out, or ride, or row out, but I am sure to have an attack. I have had as many, indeed, as two in one day. With the daughters of Deans and Presidents, with visitors, with ladies come in from the country to shop, I am perpetually and passionately in love. I don't like it, because there is not the most remote probability of my ever exchanging six syllables with these objects of my devoted affection, not to mention that they are equally beloved by some three or four hundred rivals; but I am powerless to oppose; I can't help it. My life is an everlasting “dream of fair women:” I know it is a dream, but I cannot waken.

Others have roused me, though, and most uncomfortably. I heard a Devonshire girl, whom I met at a wedding breakfast, and with whom I thought I was progressing favourably, whispering to her neighbour, “This tipsy child is becoming a nuisance, and I really must ring for nurse,” when I was as sober as Father Mathew, and had whiskers of considerable beauty, if viewed in an advantageous light. Still more sadly and recently, another “daughter of the gods, divinely fair,” dissipated Love's young dream, and sent me forth to a foreign land to forget my sorrows, as, indeed, I immediately did.

The catastrophe, which caused our happy days in Ireland, befel as follows.

“'Twas in the prime of summer time, an evening calm and cool,” that I found myself wandering among the shrubberies of ———— Castle with a most lovely girl. A large picnic party had been enlivened by archery and aquatics, and I fancy that the glare of some new targets, and the sheen of the “shining river,” had not only dazzled my eyes, but likewise had bewildered my brain. In spite of the cooling beverages, the cobblers and the cups, I was actuated by an extraordinary liveliness. I sang songs for the company, not quite reaching the high notes, but with intense feeling, doing all in my power to indicate to the lovely girl that she was my Annie Laurie, and that for her I should consider it a pleasant gymnastic exercise to expire in a recumbent position. I made felicitous alterations in the words, such as, “hazel is her e'e” for “dark-blue;” and in the song of “Constance,” instead of “I lay it as the rose is laid on some immortal shrine,” I contrived, with immense difficulty, and by means of a terrific apoggiatura, to substitute the word stephanotis of which I had that morning given her a bouquet. But “brevis esse laboro;” we were alone, and I resolved to propose. I seized her elbow with both hands, a ridiculous position, but I was very nervous, and was about to ask the momentous question, when she said with such a tone of gentle pity as took away half the pain, “Philip, I am engaged to Lord Evelyn. Shall we go back for coffee?” I seconded the motion, but oh, what an amazing period of time we seemed to occupy in carrying our proposition out! The first idea which presented itself to my mind was suicide, but it met with an unfavourable reception; the second, to enlist immediately, and to secure the earliest coup-de-soleil possible; the third, to insult Lord Evelyn (the beast was at Christ Church, and I knew him), and subsequently to shoot him in Port-Meadow. “What right had he,” I asked myself, “to anticipate me, and win her heart? I hate these accursed aristocrats, who suck the life-blood of the people.”

This is the accursed aristocrat who sucks the life-blood of the people!

[Original Size]

At last, we rejoined the party, and found them talking the silliest rubbish conceivable, and apparently enjoying the nastiest coffee I ever remember to have drunk.

That night, and at the witching hour, when men and women tell each other everything, (in the strictest confidence), they in their dormitories, and we in our smoke-rooms, I revealed my misery to my friend Frank C————, who happened happily to be staying with me. Frank has Irish blood in his veins, and his first impulse was to have “a crack at the Viscount,” but he ultimately took a less truculent view of the case, and suggested brandy and water. From this source, and “from the cool cisterns of the midnight air,” for we were smoking our cigars out of doors, “our spirits drank repose,” and we finally resolved “to banish my regret,” and to replenish our sketch-books, by a fortnight's tour in Ireland.

CHAPTER II. TO DUBLIN.

[Original Size]

FORTHWITH, I put myself into active training, and got into splendid condition for doing “justice to Ireland.” I read Moore's Melodies; I played Nora Creina upon the flute, not perhaps with that rapidity which is usual outside the Peepshows, but with much more expression; I discoursed with reapers; I tried to pronounce Drogheda, till I was nearly black in the face; I drank whiskey-punch (subsequently discovered to be Hollands); I ate Irish stew (a dish never heard of in that country) and I bought the sweetest thing in portmanteaus, with drawers, trays, pockets, compartments, recesses, straps, and buckles, more than enough to drive that traveller mad, who should forget where he had placed his razors. Amid these preparations, I am ashamed to state, that I became disgracefully oblivious of my little disappointment in the shrubberies, and soon realised the Chinese maxim, more truthful than genteel,—“the dog that is idle barks at his fleas, but he that is hunting feels them not.” Indeed, to make my confession complete, and to descend the staircase of inconstancy to the lowest depth of humiliation, I must acknowledge that on the day of our departure I fell violently in love at Crewe Station, whence my heart was borne away, in the direction of Derby, by the loveliest girl, that is to say, one of the loveliest girls, that ever beautified an express train.

[Original Size]

I begin to fear that my unhappy tendencies to this kind of fierce, but fugitive attachment, have not been at all improved by communion with Mr. Thomas Moore, and I tremble to find myself listening complacently to the fickle philosophies of Marmontel,—“Quand on na pas ce que ion aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a.”

“The Rows” of Chester are very picturesque and quaint, but do not make a favourable impression upon a giant with a new hat, and, being on the upper side of six feet, I was glad to leave them for that pleasant, briny, breezy, railway, which takes one, via Conway, to Bangor, and thence,—thundering through the Britannia Tube, and just allowing a glimpse of Telfords triumph, the Bridge of the Menai, grand and graceful,—over drear Anglesea, 1 to Holyhead. And, oh, how glad we were, to find old Neptune in his mildest mood, only now and then just raising his shoulders, as some good-humoured athlete, who should say, “I'm in the jolliest frame of mind, my lads, but I could pitch the biggest of you into the middle of next week, any moment, with the most perfect ease.”

1 In the time of the Druids it was called “the Shady
Island,” and, though no longer umbrageous, the name is not
altogether inappropriate.

Pleasant it was to pace the broad, clear deck, with perfectly obedient legs, and to ask what we could have for dinner, with a real curiosity on the subject. Frank C————, not distinguished for deeds of naval daring, began, in the joy of his heart, to sing songs of an ultra-marine description, alluding to the land with severe disparagement, and stigmatising that element as “the dull, tame shore.” I must say, that when I heard him chanting,—

“Give to me the swelling breeze,
And white waves heaving high,”

I trembled to think what a change would take place in the keynote of that cheery vocalist, and what dismal misereres would ensue, should his rash petition be conceded. Happily it was not attended to, and we had but one invalid, a lady (the captain very properly put a young man in irons, for saying something about no Cyc-lades in these seas); and she, I believe, only wanted sympathy and sherry from her husband, who was evidently a recent capture, and who administered both these cordials in due proportions, first a sip and then a kiss, ever and anon, when he thought that no one was looking, taking liberal gulps for his own private refreshment.

It was very beautiful, as the day declined, to watch the vivid phosphorescence of the sea, myriads of those marine glow-worms, whose proper names I know not, but who cause this brilliant phenomenon, lighting up their tiny lamps. Then the light of “Ireland's eye” (bright and clear, though there must be a sty there), seemed to welcome us, blinking bonnily; and entering the bay of Dublin, with grateful recollections of its haddock, we were safely landed upon Kingstown quay. Forty minutes more on the rail, and we reach the city, some of our fellow-passengers having only left London that morning, and having travelled from one capital to the other in little more than twelve hours.

We had our first experience of Ireland proper when, emerging from the station at Dublin, we called for an “outside car,” and a son of Nimshi, responding in the distance, charged down upon us through a phalanx of vehicles, and reached us, I know not how, amid the acrimonious observations of his brethren. The first feeling, as we sat on the low-backed car, “travelling edgeways,” as Sir Francis Head designates this style of transit, was one of extreme insecurity, and though we laughed, and made believe that we liked it, we were glad enough to hold on by the iron-work until we arrived at Morrisson's. Our account with the charioteer was as follows:—

S. D.
To Driver..........................................16
To small boy, seated at drivers feet,
whipping the horse, and exciting him with cries of
“Yap”..............................................06
To man, for holding on our luggage, by
embracing it with extended arms....................10
Total..................................................30

In the next place, we committed the pious fraud of making a hearty supper under pretence of tea, instructing Mark the waiter, very willing and active, but with no time for works of supererogation, to brew us a large vessel of that beverage (which we never touched), as though it gave a dignity to the proceeding, and justified, by its respectable appearance, our large potations of Guinness. So we drew on to midnight, and to (Ay de mi! Won't my friend with the bandy legs denounce “this wine-bibbing book”? ) Irish whiskey. Nevertheless, of Irish whiskey this must be said, that, when tastefully arranged, it's a drink for dukes; and he who skilleth not to brew it, more Hibernico, may thank me, perhaps, for thus instructing him,—Imprimis, to take the chill off his tumbler (just as he would air his best bed for a beloved friend) by holding it for a few seconds over the hot water; secondly, to dissolve three lumps of sugar, medium size, in a small quantity of aqua calidissima; thirdly, to pour in the whiskey (Kinahans “LL.”) from one of those delightful little decanters, which would make such charming adjuncts to a doll's dinner party; fourthly, to fill up and drink. Frank suggests a soupçon of lemon; and this was the sole point upon which, throughout our tour, we were not quite unanimous!

CHAPTER III. DUBLIN.

THE next morning found us, with the indomitable pluck of Englishmen, once more upon an outside car, as doggedly determined as two old Whigs never to resign our seats. First, we drove to Merrion Square, where we had a call to make, and where, each side of the square being numbered alike, we spent a good deal of time in pulling at the wrong bells, and in unnecessarily evoking several servants, whose easy mission it was to take care of “number one.” Of this Square and of St. Stephen's Green we thought that, though as to extent and pleasant situation they were quite equal to anything in London, the houses themselves were by no means so handsome or commodious.

The University of Dublin, to us who study among the chapels and the cloisters of mediaeval Oxford, does not resemble a university at all, but is more like a series of Government offices, or any other spacious public buildings.

[Original Size]

Why do the porters wear velvet hunting caps? Frank would keep inquiring, “where the hounds met” (it was a broiling day early in August), “why they didn't have top boots?” &c., &c., &c. The museum is a very interesting one; and our cicerone in the cap pointed out the harp of Brian Boroimhe—that “Bryan the Brave,” who was so devoted to threshing the Danes and music; the enormous antlers of an Irish elk, which placed upon wheels would make a glorious outside car, the passengers sitting among the tines; eagles, and other native birds, galore; and numberless antiquities and curiosities. There were some awful instruments, which we gazed upon with intense interest, as being the most cruel shillelaghs we had ever seen, until the guide happened to mention that they were “weapons of the South-Sea Islanders.”

The Chapel of Trinity College, like some in our English Universities, is more suggestive of sleep than supplication, gloomy without being solemn, and the light dim without being religious. There was a sacrifice of two inverted hassocks upon the altar, but the idol of the place, a gigantic pulpit, indignantly turned his back on them, and I was not slow to follow his example, with a sigh for

“The good old days, when nought of rich or rare.
Of bright or beautiful, was deem'd a gift
Too liberal to Him who giveth all.”

Indeed, I felt much more impressed, and inclined to take off my hat in the Examination and Dining Halls, as I stood in the pictured presence of Irish worthies, and thought of them, and of others not there portrayed, in all their young power and promise. I thought of Archbishop Ussher, who, a boy of eighteen, contended with Jesuit, Fitz-Symonds, and was designated by his opponent as “acatholicorum doctissimus.” I thought of Swift, as well I might, having recently read, for the third time, that most touching essay on his life and genius from the master hand of Thackeray. 1 I could cry over that lecture any time; there is so much noble sympathy in it of one great genius with another—such a tender yearning not to condemn, and, all the while, such a grand, honest resolution to take side with what is right and true. I thought of Swift, “wild and witty,” in the happiest days of his unhappy life, getting his degree, “speciali gratia” (as a most particular favour), and going forth into the world to be a disappointed, miserable man—to fight against weapons which himself had welded, a hopeless, maddening fight. All must pity, as Johnson and Thackeray pity, but who can love? He put on the surplice for mere earthly views, and it was to him as the shirt of Hercules!

1 The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, three of
whom, Swift, Steele, and Goldsmith, were Irishmen.

And next (could two men differ more?) of Goldsmith. I thought of him shy and silent (for he was a dull boy, we read, and never learned the art of conversation), chaffed by his fellow-students, and saluted by them, doubtless, in the exuberance of their playful wit, as Demosthenes, Cicero, &c., &c., until he might have felt himself, like his own “Traveller”

“Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,”

had there not been the “eternal sunshine” of genius, and the manifold soft chimes of poesy, to make his heart glad. “He was chastised by his tutor, for giving a dance in his room.” (was it a prance à la Spurgeon, and for gentlemen only, or was there a brighter presence of “sweet girl-graduates with their golden hair?”) “and took the box on his ear so much to his heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property, and disappeared from college.” 1 Horace Walpole speaks of him as “an inspired idiot,” and Garrick describes him as one

“for shortness call'd Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, and talk'd like poor Poll:”

but I take leave to think that the “Deserted Village,” a tale told by this idiot, will be read when Walpole is forgotten; and I believe the author to have been as deep as Garrick.

1 Thackeray.

Blessed be the art that can immortalise, as Sir Joshua has immortalised, features so sublime and beautiful, because so bright with noble power and purpose, as those of Edmund Burke. Scholar, statesman, orator, author, linguist, lawyer, earnest worshipper of nature and of art, what a mine of purest gold thy genius! and how the coin stamped with the impress of thine own true self enriches all the world! “The mind of that man,” says Dr. Johnson, “was a perennial stream; no one grudges Burke the first place,” and Sir Archibald Alison speaks of him, as “the greatest political philosopher, and most far-seeing statesman of modern times.”

What a troublous, impressive sight that must have been, when he and Fox, both of them in tears, gave up the friendship of five-and-twenty years, because they loved each other too well to cry “Peace,” where there was no peace.

Out of all the grand music he wrote and spoke, let me select one air and leave him. And are not his words on Marie Antoinette, like music, martial music, “like a glorious roll of drums,” and the sound of a trumpet to knightly hearts? “I thought,” he says, “ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look, which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.”

But no, I cannot leave him, it would not be honest to leave him, without the confession that there was a flaw in the statue, one note of this grand instrument out of tune, and that this giant had his weakness. It must be sorrowfully owned that he had low and unsound views on the subject of the pursuit of game; he said it was “a trivial object with severe sanctions;” and his most devoted admirers can never emancipate his memory from the stern and sad suspicion, that he could not have been a first-rate shot.

I thought of Grattan, who distinguished himself within these walls,—the brave unswerving patriot, whose fiery eloquence Moore terms “the very music of freedom” (music, by the way, which would very summarily be stopped in our day by Mr. Speaker Denison); of Moore himself, with his head upon his hands, “sapping” at those Latin verses, which he hated with all his heart, ever and anon disgusted to find the second syllable of some favourite dactyl long, or the first of some pet spondee short; finally (as the chroniclers tell), tearing up the performance, and sending to the Dons some English verse in lieu, for which, to their glory be it written, they gave him praise and a prize. Here, too, he commenced his translation of the Odes of Anacreon, (a labour of Love, if ever there was one); and here, doubtless, oft in the stilly night, he sang some of those touching melodies, which were so soon to “witch the world.”

Lastly, I thought (for our jockey in undress was getting rather restive) of genial, jovial Curran, of whom Dan O'Connell said, “there never was so honest an Irishman,” and of whom there is one of the most charming biographies extant in the “Curran and his Contemporaries,” by Mr. Commissioner Philips.

We could not see the very large and valuable Library, as it is closed during Vacations; and so having admired the exterior of the New Museum, and taken a general survey of the college, we made our bow to the Alma Mater of Ireland.

It must be exquisitely gratifying to a large majority of the inhabitants to contemplate King William III. riding, gilt and bronzed, upon College Green, to be kept in constant recollection of the Boyne, and of the immunities and privileges which resulted from it. Everybody knows that he was a fine horseman, but the sculptor has not given him a hunting seat; and I think we could improve him, if we had him at Oxford, by painting him in a cutaway and buckskins.

There is no fault to be found with the statues of Nelson and of Moore, the former being very effective, and the latter (though suggestive in the distance of a gentleman hailing an omnibus) being impressive and pleasing on a nearer view.

The public buildings which we saw, the Bank of Ireland (once the Houses of its Lords and Commons), the Four Courts, College of Surgeons, Post Office, Barracks, &c., are all handsome, chiefly of Grecian architecture, and interesting to those who fancy this style of sight-seeing.

We were rather disappointed with Sackville-Street. It wants length; and it wants (Heaven send it soon!) the animation of business and opulence, gay equipages, and crowded pavements.

The Phoenix Park is delightful, rus in urbe—some 1700 acres of greensward and trees. We met several regiments, returning from a review; (the carman told us there were two reviews weekly, and we, of course, said something brilliant about the Dublin Review being monthly); and were, consequently, in an admirable frame of mind to appreciate the monument, grim and granite, in honour of the Iron Duke. What men this Dublin has given to the world—Swift, Steele, Burke, Grattan, Moore, Wellington. The names of his great battles are graven on the obelisk, Waterloo being, of course, omitted. I say “of course,” because there is something so delightfully Irish in this small oversight, that it seems quite natural and appropriate; and I should as little dream of being surprised or vexed by it, as if in an Irish edition of Milton I could find no “Paradise Lost.”

In the Phoenix Park are the Constabulary Barracks, and the men were at drill as we drove by. There is no exaggeration in stating, that if a regiment could be formed from the Irish constables, it would be the finest regiment in arms See them wherever you may, they are, almost without exception, handsome, erect, heroic. Picked men, and admirably trained, they are as smart, and clean, lithe, and soldier-like, as the severest sergeant could desire. They do credit to him whose name they bear, for they are still called “Peelers” after their godfather Sir Robert, who originated the force, when Secretary for Ireland. Fifty of them had left Dublin for Kilkenny that morning, to expostulate with the bould pisantry on the impropriety of smashing some reaping-machines recently introduced among them. The Irishman is not quick to appreciate agricultural improvements. It required an Act of Parliament to prevent him from attaching the plough to the tails of his horses; he was very slow to acknowledge that the plough itself was better, when made of iron than of wood; he esteemed a bunch of thorns, with a big stone a-top, as the most efficient harrow going; and he denounced the winnowing-machine, as a wicked attempt to oppose the decree of a good Providence, which sent the wind of heaven “to clane the whate and oats.”

A short time afterwards, we were surprised to see in a letter from one of these constables to The Galway Express, that their pay, after twenty years' service, is only two shillings per diem; and low as the remuneration for labour still is in this country, one cannot help but sympathise with the complainant.

These lions, from whose manes and tails we have ventured to extract a few memorial hairs, were inspected before luncheon; immediately after that refection, we set forth per rail, and via Kingston, to Killiney. We had ample time, as we went, to contemplate the surrounding objects, which were not “rendered invisible from extreme velocity,” the nine miles occupying forty-five minutes; but we saw nothing of especial interest until we had reached the station, and began to ascend the hill. Then we exulted, eye and heart. The hill itself is worthy of a visit, the massive blocks of “its cold grey stones” contrasting admirably with the rosy heaths (I never saw ericas in greenhouse or garden with such a fresh, vivid brightness, 1) and with the glowing, golden furze. Ah, how poor and formal are statues, and terraces, and vases, and “ribbon-patterns,” and geometrical designs, and “bedding out,” when compared with nature's handiwork! And though, perhaps, never since the days of “the grand old gardener” has ornate horticulture attained so great a splendour, what true lover of flowers is really satisfied with our gorgeous modern gardens? We treat them, for the most part, as a child, with a new box of paints, his pictures—all the most glaring colours are crowded together; and the eye, dazzled and bewildered, yearns for that repose and harmony which, in nature, whether in the few flowerets of some hidden nook, or in the fiery autumnal grandeur of some mighty forest, diffuse perpetual peace.

1 This applies throughout Ireland. See “Inglis's Tour,” vol.
ii., p. 42.

There is an extraordinary structure at the top of Killiney Hill, which could only have been devised by an Irish architect. It is not a tower, nor a lighthouse, nor a summer-house: nay, the builder himself confesses he knows not what it is, in the following inscription:—“Last year being hard with the poor, the walls about these hills, and This, &c. &c., erected by John Mapas, Esq., June, 1742.”

Hard by, a young Duke of Dorset was thrown and killed, while hunting. It must have been a very Irish fox that led hound and horse into such a perilous position, and the only wonder is that any of the riders came down alive. A monumental pillar perpetuates the sorrowful history, and warns enthusiastic sportsmen from galloping over the broken ground and hidden fissures of misty mountain tops.

Apropos of mountain and of mist, we saw a sight which reminded us of Anne of Geierstein, as she appeared to Arthur Philipson, “perched upon the very summit of a pyramidical rock.” For among the works executed by the benevolent behest of Mapas, there is one, hewn in stone, a four-sided staircase, leading to an apex, intended, doubtless, for a statue. But this was wanting when we first arrived; for the design, like so many others in poor old Ireland, had never been completed, and there were no

“statues gracing,
This noble place in.”

But by the goddess Vanus, just as Frank and I were lamenting this sad omission, the loveliest—at all events one of the loveliest—girls I ever remember to have seen, tripped lightly up the steps, laughing at a dear old clerical papa, who pretended to be alarmed, but wasn't; and something, beating violently under my left brace, told me that my heart had returned from Crewe, as a traveller comes home for a day or so, to prepare himself for another tour. It stayed with me four seconds, and then 'twas hers. “Behold,” I said,

“'Car les beaux yeux Sont les deux sceptres de l'amour,'

the enthronement of the Queen of Beauty.” And the sea-breeze forsook the jealous waves to woo her; the sunlight beamed on her with golden smiles; and the very swallow, turning from his favourite fly, flew past her, twittering admiration. Rough sailors out at sea that day caught sight of this fair vision through the glass, and ceased for half an hour to swear. There she stood, as

“jocund day Stands tip-toe on the misty mountain top;”

like Byron's Mary, on the hill of Annesley, awaiting that mighty hunter, the gallant, handsome Musters, when

“on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.”

Or she might have been “The Gardener's Daughter,” when,

“Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.”

But never mind what she might have been, there she was.

“Talk about Helen,
That was a fiction, but this is reality.”

[Original Size]

And never shall I forget how painfully drear that pedestal seemed, when the statue, descending, took her Papa's arm (Oh, that her beloved Governor were mine also!), and was gone from our gaze, like a beautiful star.

The view from the hill of Killiney is one of the loveliest in this land of loveliness. Seated among the purple and golden flowers, you look over its rocks and trees upon the noble Bay of Dublin with its waters “bickering in the noontide blaze,” and the stately ships gliding to and fro. Below is Kingstown, opposite the old hill of Howth, and in the centre the metropolis of Ireland.

I do not think that one ever has such a happy feeling of entire contentment, as when gazing upon beautiful scenery; and there we sat, in silent admiration, and took no note of time, until the train by which we had proposed to return, awoke us from our dreamy bliss, shrieking at us in derision from below, and steaming off to Dublin. So that, some two hours later, we found our dinners and ourselves a little overdone at Morrisson's; and nothing but some very transcendental claret, and the resilient spirit of roving Englishmen, could have induced us to sally forth once more for the gardens of Porto-Bello.

Becoming acclimatised to the Outside Car, we began to enter into conversation with the drivers, and found them, like all Irishmen, quant and witty, though their humour, perhaps, does not lie so near the surface as it did before the Famine and Father Mathew.1 Our charioteer this evening was eloquently invective against a London cab which preceded us, and which he designated as “a baste of a tub.”

“Sure, gintlemen,” said he, “and I'm for th'ould style intirely—it's illigant. I tell ye what it is, yer onners,” (and he turned to us in impressive confidence, and pointed contemptuously with his whip at the offending vehicle) “I'd lep over the likes o' that with this little mare;” but we earnestly begged he wouldn't.

[Original Size]

We were so fortunate as to reach the Porto-Bello Gardens just in time for “The Siege and Capture of Delhi.” We had both of us formed most erroneous impressions on the subject, and it was a grand opportunity for ascertaining truth. If the representation was correct, and there seems no reason to mistrust it, as “no expense had been spared,” it is high time for the English people to be told that the accounts which have appeared in their newspapers (the graphic, glowing descriptions of Mr. William Russell inclusive) are wickedly and superlatively false!

1 The priest can scarcely have been a descendant of his
namesake, the General, who, to the manifest delight of an
Irish Parliament, thus spake of potheen:—“The Chancellor
on the woolsack drinks it, the Judge on the bench drinks
it, the Peer in his robes drinks it, the Beggar with his
wallet drinks it, I drink it, every man drinks it.”

The city of Delhi is constructed of painted wood, and does not exceed in dimensions a respectable modern residence. Before it, there is a pool of water. The siege commenced with a tune on the key-bugle, and with an appropriate illumination of Bengal lights, which extended over the entire scene of war, and was got up, as we supposed, at the joint expense of the combatants. Then the Anglo-Indian army, which had taken up a perilous position about four yards from the city, led off with a Roman-candle, and the rebels promptly replied with a maroon. The exasperated besiegers now went in, or rather went a long way over, with rockets,—the Sepoys, with undaunted courage, defying them with blue lights and crackers. For a time the battle was waged with extraordinary spirit, steel-filings, &c., &c.; but, finally, the “awful explosion of the Magazine,” admirably rendered by a “Jack-in-a-box,” threw the rebels into sad distress, and they came running (all six of them) from the city, trying the old dodge to give an idea of multitude, by rushing in at one door and rushing out at another. The British soldiers, conversant with this manouvre, which they had so often witnessed at Mr. Batty's Hippodrome, immediately charged into the devoted city, lit a red light, and all was over. The total silence, which immediately ensued within the walls, impressively told the annihilation of the vanquished, and the great fatigue (or, alas! it might be the abject intoxication) of the victors, reminding one forcibly of the schoolboy's description, in Latin, of the termination of a siege,—“Dein victores, urbe capta, si cut pisces bibunt, et, parvula, si ulla, itlis culpa, nullum bestiarum finem ex seipsis faciunt.”

Frank said it was Delhicious! and to this atrocity, as well as to His Excellency's absence from Dublin, I attribute the melancholy fact that the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland never called upon us.

CHAPTER IV. FROM DUBLIN TO GALWAY.

THE next morning at breakfast, a Scotch gentleman, with an amazing accent, would read the newspaper in such loud tones to his friend, that, not being monks, nor accustomed to be read to, more monastico, at our meals, we really could not enjoy our food, and were compelled to toss up which of us should recite to the other the list of Bankrupts from The Times. I lost, but had not progressed far in my distinct enunciation of the unhappy insolvents, when the Caledonian took the hint, and we ate our mackerel in peace.

Leaving Dublin by the “Midland Great Western Railway,” at 10.30, we reached Galway at 3.45. The intermediate country is, for the most part, dreary and uninteresting, at times resembling the bleaker parts of Derbyshire, and at times Chat Moss. “I am no botanist,” as the Undergraduate remarked to the Farmer, who expostulated with him for riding over his wheat; but the agriculture appeared to be feeble, and to show want of management in its twofold signification. The green crops looked well everywhere, but the corn was thin, and the pastures by no means of that emerald hue which we had expected to find. With the exceptions of peasants, cutting and stacking peat for their winter fuel, children at the doors of cottages, the railway passengers and officials, there seemed to us, coming from densely populated England, to be really “nobody about;” and the contrast between our present route and that which we had travelled, two days before, through the “Potteries,” was as marked as contrast well could be. This comparative quietude and silence prevailed wherever we went, as though we were wandering through the grounds of some country place, “the family” being abroad, and most of the servants gone out to tea. Ah, when will the family come back to live at home, to take delight in this beautiful but neglected garden, weed the walks, turn out the pig, and look after these indolent and quarrelsome servants?—indolent and quarrelsome, only because there are none to encourage industry and to maintain peace.

We passed the station of Maynooth, but did not see the “Royal College of St. Patrick,” and are therefore unable to vituperate that establishment, as otherwise it would be our duty to do.

[Original Size]

Missing this fashionable Christian exercise, I amused myself by attiring a portly, closeshaven priest—who sat opposite to me, and who had a face which would have represented anybody with the aid of a clever costumier—in all sorts of imaginary head-dresses, dowagers' turbans, Grenadiers' caps, Gampian bonnets, beadles' hats, &c., and endeavoured to fancy the feelings of his flock, if they were to see him in reality, as I in thought.

Passing through county Meath, we were again reminded of Swift, who held the rectory of Agher, with the vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan therein, and of the beautiful Hester, sacrificed to his vanity, and crying aloud, in piteous tone, “It is too late! It is too late!”

Nigh to Athlone (of which more hereafter) is the village of Auburn, formerly called Lissoy, the residence of Parson Goldsmith, and the early home of the poet. The scenes of his childhood and his youth were doubtless remembered by him, when he wrote “The Deserted Village,” and many features of resemblance may still be traced.

At Ballinasloe (everybody has heard of its great horse-fair, and how the hunters jump over the walls of the “Pound,” in height about eight feet, Irish) we entered the county of Galway, and tremblingly anticipated, after all we had heard of its wild, reckless sons, that some delirious driver would spring upon the engine, with a screech louder than its own, put on all steam, run us off the line for fun, and cause us to be challenged by our fellow-passengers, should we escape with our lives, for not appreciating the sport. But we travelled onwards, demurely and at peace; and, indeed, throughout our little tour, so far from being provoked or annoyed, we met with nothing but kindness and courtesy, and a good-humoured willingness to be pleased and to please.

The Railway Hotel at Galway is the largest that we saw in Ireland, and contains, as we had been informed, “a power o' beds.” These want sleepers sadly, and at present the tourist, as he wanders from coffee-room to dormitory, feels very much

“Like one that treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose guests are fled,” &c.,

and cheers his loneliness with the thought, that should Galway become (as all who care for Ireland must hope) the port for America, this solemn stillness shall depress no more. The inn forms one side of the principal Square, and, the neighbour buildings being comparatively small and dingy, resembles some grand lady, in all her crinoline, teaching the third class at a Sunday school. The grass-plat and garden are nicely kept, but their chief ornaments struck us as being rather incongruous, to wit, hydrangeas and cannon! The guns were pointed at our bedroom windows, and it really required some little resolution next morning to shave ourselves with placidity “at the cannons' mouth.” Having secured places for the morrow on the Car to Clifden, specially stipulating for “the Lake side” of the conveyance, we selected a shrewd-looking lad from a crowd of candidates (the Roman candidati wore white togas in the market-place, but these young gentlemen did not), and went to see the sights. We saw a great deal that was very interesting, and a great deal that was very dirty; we saw the traces of Spanish architecture, in quaint gateways and quadrangular courts, but were not “reminded of Seville,” our only association with that city being a passionate love of marmalade; we saw Lynch's castle, and its grotesque carving is very curious; we saw the house in Deadman's Lane, where lived that Fitz-Stephen, Warden of Galway, who, according to the worst authenticated tradition, assisted at the hanging of his own son; we saw warehouses sans ware; granaries, some without grain, and others with “the meal-sacks on the whitened floor;” we saw and greatly admired Queen's College; we saw chapels and nunneries, whence the Angelus bell sounded as we passed; above all, we saw the Claddagh. Going thither, our little showman told us of the big trade in wines between this place and Spain which flourished in the good times of old, and I foolishly thought to perplex him by the inquiry, “whether much business was done in the Spanish juice line?”

“And sure,” said he, “your onner must know, that was the thrade intirely. Divil a taste of anything else did they bring us, but the juist of their Spanish vines.”

The Englishman who desires a new sensation should pay a visit to the Claddagh. When we arrived, the men were at sea; but the women, in their bright red petticoats, descending half-way down the uncovered leg, their cloaks worn like the Spanish mantilla, and of divers colours, their headkerchiefs and hoods, were grouped among the old grey ruins where the fish market is held, and formed a tableau not to be forgotten. Though their garments are torn, and patched, and discoloured, there is a graceful simple dignity about them which might teach a lesson to Parisian milliners; and to my fancy the most becoming dress in all the world is that of a peasant girl of Connamara. Compare it, reader, with our present mode, and judge. Look at the two, sculptor, and say which will you carve? Say, when “Santa Philomena” is graved in marble, shall it be with flounces and hoops?

[Original Size]

No, whatever may be the wrongs of Ireland no lover of the picturesque and beautiful would wish to see her re-dressed (so far as the ladies are concerned—the gentlemen might be improved); no one would desire to see her peasant girls in the tawdry bonnets and brass-eyed boots, which stultify the faces and cripple the feet of the daughters of our English labourers.

As to the origin of these Claddagh people, I am not sufficiently “up” in ethnology, to state with analytical exactness the details of their descent; but I should imagine them to be one-third Irish, one-third Arabian, and the other Zingaro, or Spanish gypsy. 1 I thought that I recognised in one old lady an Ojibbeway chief, who frightened me a good deal in my childhood, but she had lost the expression of ferocity, and I was, perhaps, mistaken.

The men are all fishermen (very clumsy ones, according to Miss Martineau, who talks about harpoons as if they were crochet needles, in her interesting “Letters from Ireland”); but they give up their cargoes to the women on landing, only stipulating that from the proceeds they may be supplied with a good store of drink and tobacco, and so get due compensation on the shore for their unvarying sobriety at sea.

1 Wales is also represented by members of the Jones family.
The original John may have come over with Thomas Joyce, who
was good enough to appropriate “the Joyce Country” to
himself and family, in the reign of Edward the First.

They live (some 1500 souls in all) in a village of miserable cabins, the walls of mud and stone, and for the most part windowless, the floors damp and dirty, and the roofs a mass of rotten straw and weeds. The poultry mania—(and if it is not mania to give ten guineas for a bantam, in what does insanity consist? l)—must be here at its height, for the cocks and hens roost in the parlour. But “the swells” of the Claddagh are its pigs. They really have not only a “landed expression,” as though the place belonged to them, but a supercilious gait and mien; and with an autocratic air, as though repeating to themselves the spirited verses of Mr. A. Selkirk, they go in and out, whenever and wherever they please. I saw one of them, bold as the beast who upset Giotto, 2 knock over a little child with his snout; and I have a sad impression that the juvenine was whipped for interfering with the royal progress. Frank solemnly declared that he saw one, as portrayed with his back against the lintail of his home, and smoking his evening pipe.

1 This form of delirium is by no means of modern origin.
Opvi-ôofiavta, a passionate love of rare birds, was known
among the ladies of Athens.
2 We read in Lanzi's History of Painting, that as Giottowas walking with his friends, one Sunday, in the Via del
Cocomero at Florence, he was overthrown by a pig running
between his legs. Whereupon the painter, albeit he was in
his best clothes, philosophically recognised a just
retribution, “for,” said he, “although I have earned many
thousand crowns with the bristles of these animals, I never
gave to one of them a spoonful of swill in my life!”

[Original Size]

I receive this statement cum grano salis (always appropriate to bacon), as I do Phil Purcel's, that “there was in Ireland an old breed of swine, which is now nearly extinct, except in some remote parts of the country, where they are still useful in the hunting season, if dogs happen to be scarce;” 1 and (with all deference to the lady).

1 Carleton's “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.”

Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall's, “an acquaintance of ours taught one to point, and the animal found game as correctly as a pointer. He gave tongue, too, after his own fashion, by grunting in a sonorous tone, and understood when he was to take the field as well as any dog.” 1 But, however this may be, everything in the Claddagh is done to “please the pigs:”

“Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
You see them, lords of all around, pass by;”

and Og reigneth once more in Basan. He is precious and he has his privileges. “I think” (said Phil from the hob) “that nobody has a better right to the run of the house, whedher up stairs or down stairs, than him that pays the rint” Such is the great destiny of the Irish pig. He is not associated in the prospective contemplations of his owner with low views of pork and sausages; for Paddy says, with Launcelot, “if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money,” and

“As for eating a rasher of what they take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fryed in. 1

but he represents the generous friend and benefactor, who is about to render an important service at considerable personal discomfort.

1 In their pleasant volume, “The West and Connamara.”
Goldsmith's “Letter to Lord Clare.”

It was washing-day at one of the cabins, and a great variety of wearing apparel was hung out to dry. We could not discover a single article which at all resembled anything known to us, or which a schoolboy would have accepted for any part of his Faux.

Nevertheless, one likes the people of the Claddagh; they seem to be honest, industrious, and good-tempered, and they have, at least, one great virtue—like Lady Godiva, they are “clothed on with chastity.” Sir Francis Head, who had the best means of getting information from the police, and used them with his exhaustive energy, could not hear that there had ever been an illegitimate child born in the Claddagh. They never intermarry with strangers, and “their marriages are generally preceded by an elopement” (vide the article on “Galway,” in the Encyclopodia Britannica, which one is surprised to find discoursing on such festive pleasantries), “and followed by a boisterous merry-making.”

CHAPTER V. THE FAMINE.

AS schoolboys, to whom “next half” begins to-morrow—sailors on the eve of a voyage—invalids, expecting a physician, who, they know, will prescribe an unwelcome diet—yea, even as criminals before execution,—amplify their meals, and, from their dreary expectations, educe a keener relish,—so we, awfully anticipating the cuisine of Connamara, made a mighty dinner at Galway. It was brought to us, moreover, by a dear old waiter, who evidently had a proud delight in feeding us, as though he were some affectionate sparrow, and we his callow young, taking off the covers with a triumphant air, like a conjuror sure of his trick, and pouring out our Drogheda ale, with quite as much respect and care as Ganymede could have shown for the Gods.

“Was the salmon caught this morning, waiter?”

“It was, sir. Faith, it's not two hours since that fish was walking round his estates, wid his hands in his pockets, never draming what a pretty invitashun he'd have to jine you gintlemen at dinner.”

This was followed by a small saddle of “Arran mutton, y'r onner;” and “what can mortals wish for more,” except a soupçon of cheese?

Ah, but we felt almost ashamed of being so full and comfortable, when our conversational attendant began to talk to us about the Great Famine. “That's right, good gintlemen,” he said, “niver forget, when ye've had yer males, to thank the Lord as sends them. May ye niver know what it is to crave for food, and may ye niver see what I have seen, here in the town o' Galway. I mind the time when I lived yonder” (and he pointed to Kilroy's Hotel), “and the poor craturs come crawling in from the country with their faces swollen, and grane, and yaller, along of the arbs they'd been ating. We gave them bits and scraps, good gintlemen, and did what we could (the Lord be praised!), but they was mostly too far gone out o' life to want more than the priest and pity. I've gone out of a morning, gintlemen,” (his lip quivered as he spoke), “and seen them lying dead in the square, with the green grass in their mouths.” And he turned away, (God bless his kind heart!), to hide the tears, which did him so much honour.

Can history or imagination suggest a scene more awfully impressive than that which Ireland presented in the times of the Great Famine? The sorrows of that visitation have been recorded by eloquent, earnest men; but they come home to us with a new and startling influence, when we hear of them upon Irish ground. Most vividly can we realise the wreck, when he, who hardly swam ashore and escaped, points to the scene of peril; and while the storm-clouds still drift in the far horizon, and the broken timbers float upon the seething wave, describes, with an exactness horrible to himself, that last amazement and despair.

In the beautiful land of the merry-hearted, “all joy was darkened,—the mirth of the land was gone.” In the country of song, and dance, and laughter, there was not heard, wherever that Famine came, one note of music, nor one cheerful sound,—only the gasp of dying men, and the mourners' melancholy wail. The green grass of the Emerald Isle grew over a nation's grave. The crowning plague of Egypt was transcended here, for not only in some districts, was there in every house “one dead,” but there were homes in which there was but one living—homes, in which one little child was found, calling upon father, mother, brothers, and sisters, to wake from their last, long sleep,—homes, from which the last survivor fled away, in wild alarm, from those whom living he had loved so well. Fathers were seen vainly endeavouring (such was their weakness) to dig a grave for their children, reeling and staggering with the useless spade in their hands. The poor widow, who had left her home to beg a coffin for her last, lost child, fell beneath her burden upon the road and died. 1 The mendicant had now no power to beg The drivers of the public cars went into cottages, and found all dead, or Rachel weeping for her children, and praying that die she might. By the seaside, men seeking shell-fish, fell down upon the sands, and, impotent to rise, were drowned. First they began to bury corpses, coffinless, then could not bury them at all.

1 See a most interesting article on the “Famine in the South
of Ireland,” in Fraser's Magazine, for April, 1847, p. 499.

Of indignities and mutilations, which then befell, I will not, for I cannot, speak.

Indeed, it may be asked, wherefore should we repeat at all these sad, heart-rending details? Because, the oftener they are had in painful remembrance, the less likely they are to recur in terrible reality; because—

“Never did any public misery
Rise of itself; God's plagues still grounded are
On common stains of our humanity;
And to the flame which ruineth mankind
Man gives the matter, or at least the wind; 1
1 Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke.

and because, when we know the cause and the symptoms, we can the more readily prevent and prescribe.

Everyone knows, of course, the origin of the Irish Famine.

“The blight which fell upon the potato produced a deadly famine, because the people had cultivated it so exclusively, that when it failed, millions became as utterly destitute, as if the island were incapable of producing any other species of sustenance.” 2

2 Report of Census Commissioners for Ireland.

They, “who are habitually and entirely fed on potatoes, live upon the extreme verge of human subsistence, and when they are deprived of their accustomed food, there is nothing cheaper to which they can resort. They have already reached the lowest point in the descending scale, and here is nothing beyond but starvation or beggary.” 1

The remedy is just as clear,—to induce the peasantry of Ireland no longer to depend upon an article of food, which is difficult to procure, cumbrous to convey, possesses so little nourishment that it must be consumed in large quantities, 2 creates a strange, unhealthy distaste for other food, 3 is subject to so many diseases from humidity and frost, and which has wrought such grievous desolation through the length and breadth of the land. 4

1 Edinburgh Review, No. 175, p. 233.
2 The evidence taken before the Poor Law Commissioners,
previously to the establishment of the New Poor Law in
Ireland, proves that “ten pounds, twelve pounds, and even
fourteen pounds of potatoes are usually consumed by an Irish
peasant each day.”—Letters on the Condition of the People
of Ireland, by J. Campbell Forster, Esq., the Times'
Commissioner.
3 “When this famine was at the worst in Connamara, the sea
off the coast there teemed with turbot, to such an extent
that the laziest of fishermen could not help catching them
in thousands; but the common people would not touch them.”—
Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxi., p. 435.
4 Cobbett called the potato, that “root of poverty.”

How that remedy is to be applied, let legislators and landlords tell; meanwhile, my friend, and I, having sorrowfully sipped our pint of sherry, shall essay to cheer ourselves with a mild cigar, and a farewell walk to the Claddagh.

The shades of eve were falling fast, as we set forth, and we were just in time to see the last haul of the nets, and the silver salmon lying on the bank. Then we revived our spirits by a little conversation with young Claddagh, (merry and mischievous urchins), and by a distribution of copper, every halfpenny of which raised such a tumulus of rags as would have kept a paper mill at work for weeks. Then—

“the sun set,
And all the land was dark.”

CHAPTER VI. FROM GALWAY TO OUGHTERARDE.

[Original Size]

WE left Galway for Clifden at 9.30 next morning. The public conveyance is a large-paper edition of the outside car, with an elevated seat for the driver. There is one place to be avoided on some of these vehicles, that nearest to the horses on the off-side, on account of the iron bar of the drag, which operates from time to time very disagreeably on the back and shoulders of the contiguous traveller. The scenery gradually increases in interest. First we have trees, farms, houses, and the quiet aspect of country life; then, we have delightful views at intervals, of Lough Corrib and its islands, and the landscape becomes diversified, less under culture, and more wild in consequence; and, lastly, the sublime and solemn beauty of the mountains and lakes of Connamara.

Some of the residences amused us greatly. You see a large lodge by the wayside, and look out, in the distance, for some princely castle, or baronial hall, at any rate; but there is no need for any such optical exertion, the mansion being close to you, eighty yards perhaps from the entrance, and only a size larger, (a small size larger, as they say at the glove-shops), than the lodge itself.

[Original Size]

Some of the gateways, too, would have been very imposing, if most of their principal ornaments had not been mutilated or missing. Our favourite among the more perfect specimens, was adorned with a stone pine-apple on one pillar, and a Swede turnip or pumpkin on the other; and had a rich effect. Most of the field-gates have massive pillars of stone, and would render the inclosures most secure, if there were not, now and then, easy apertures through the turf-dykes, which form the fence hard by, suggesting the idea of a front door barred and locked against thieves, with one of the hall-windows wide open!

[Original Size]

As to the people, there is little difference, so far as appearance is concerned, between Paddy in England and Paddy at home; the same flaccidity of hat; the same amplitude of shirt-collar, which would cut his ears off if it were severely starched; the same dress coat of frieze; drab breeches (aisy at the knees), grey-stockings, and brogues. The same in aspect, but in action how different! In England, he will rise with the sun, reap under its burning heat until it sets, and dance in the barn at midnight. In Ireland, he seems to be always either going to his work, or looking at his work, or resting from his work, or coming away from his work, in brief, to be doing nothing, cordially assisted by his friends and neighbours. The potatoes will prevent his famishing from hunger, if the season be propitious; the peat-stack will keep him from perishing by cold; and His Royal Highness, the Pig, will pay the landlord his rent.

The women are, for the most part, good-looking, erect, and graceful movers (for there are no corns in Connaught); and, from the bright colours of their costume, their red petticoats and blue cloaks, are ever a pleasant refreshment to the eye, and picturesque addition to the scene. They are uniformly and painfully shy. Francis, and I, are both of us what may be termed remarkably handsome men, but they wouldn't look at us; and I shall never forget the agony of a young housemaid, who, assisting the waiter one morning with a tub of water to my room, caught sight of my dressing-gown through the open door, and instantly, though the garment is of a pleasing pattern, and descends quite to the ground, rushed off, like Dorothea from Cardenio and his companions, and, I verily believe, is running now.

As regards children,—there are crosses in Ireland, which are saluted by wives, who would be mothers also; and these crosses, or something equally efficacious, appear to be universally embraced. Every cottage sent forth a running accompaniment (allegro) to the car, healthful, cheery children, and would be beautiful, in spite of their wretched homes, and meagre diet, and rags, if their mothers could be induced to recognise the utility of soap and a comb. Their raiment is very scant and curious. Ould Larry's coat, with the tails cut off, makes young Larry “an entire juvenile suit,” and the inexpressibles of Phelim père form a noble panoply for Phelim fils, with his little arms thrust through the pocket-holes. These tatterdemalions beg as they run by the car, but seem indifferent as to the result, enjoying their “constitutional,” and parting from us with a pleasant smile whether we gave to them or not. Some of a literary turn of mind asked rather urgently for “penny buy book,” but the imposition was a little too patent, so very far from a bookseller's shop, and we recommended them to quench their thirst for knowledge in the only volumes to be perused (and that gratuitously) in the neighbourhood, the “books in the running brooks.”

A few professional beggars come round, when there is a change of horses (excellent horses they are), but are neither so frequent nor so importunate, as we had been led to expect. One old lady had evidently got the last new thing in begging, a letter to her “poor darlint boy as was gone to Merrikey, and would ye bestow a thrifle, good gintlemen, to pay the bit o' postage, God bless yer bewtifle young faces.” Of course, we would, every mother's son of us. What an affectionate, exemplary parent! When we returned, a few days afterwards, she was again in correspondence with her beloved son, far away from her yearning tenderness, beyond the broad Atlantic; and, indeed, I have reason to believe from information which I gathered from the driver and our fellow-passengers, that this disconsolate mother writes to her exile child every day, except Sundays.

[Original Size]

The miserable huts of the peasantry, seen by the feeble light which comes through the doorway and smoke-hole (to talk about chimneys would be an insult to architecture) give one the idea, not so much that the pigs have got into the parlour, but that the family have migrated to the sty. An unpaved clay floor below, a roof of straw and weeds, dank, soaked, and rotting, overhead, a miserable bed in the corner, an iron pot over a peat fire, are the principal items of the property. Before the door is a sink, black and filthy, for the refuse. And yet the inmates look hale and happy beyond what one would hope to see, and the thought at once suggests itself, how much might be accomplished by such a people, awaking to assert its dignity, and to discharge its duty. Here and there are roofless cottages, gravestones, on which is written, as on Albert Dürer's, “Emigravit” he has gone to seek over the wide seas the comforts which here he could not, or would not, win; or he has gone “to the land, which is very far off,” to hunger and thirst no more,—

“There fell upon the house a sudden gloom,
A shadow on those features fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.”

It is sad indeed to see these monuments, “where memory” (as an Irish poet 1 sings) “sits by the altar she has raised to woe,” monuments of suffering and dearth, amid scenes of surpassing beauty, and fields which might stand thick with corn, but where, from the shameful indolence of His creatures,

“In vain ,with lavish kindness, the gifts of God are strewn.”
1 Curran.

There is no town between Galway and Clifden, unless we compliment with that title the large village of Oughterarde, pleasantly situated hard by Lough Corrib, with its picturesque bridge, marvellously transparent stream, handsome constables, and (comparatively speaking) magnificent church. The Roman Catholic churches are, for the most part, so very plain and poor, having little but the Cross, and a melancholy imitation of Gothic mullions in wood, to denote their consecration, that the building of Oughterarde has quite an imposing effect, and we went up the hill to see it. The leisure and liberty allowed to passengers by car are amusingly refreshing in these days of steam; and I thought, as we sauntered towards Sainte Terre, how astonished the guard of an express train would be, to behold his fellow-travellers quietly strolling off to inspect the cathedral, at Peterborough, York, or Lincoln.

We found little to admire, as to architecture without, or ornament within; but a priest, who went with us from the car, said it was “beautiful,” and looked as if to him it was so indeed, as he knelt with others reverently praying there. I thought of our grand old churches at home, locked and barred, most of them, except for a few hours on Sunday (as though the soul should be treated, like a boa-constrictor, with six days sleep, and then a rabbit); and I envied that poor pilgrim through a prayerless world his privilege and opportunity.

CHAPTER VII. CONNAMARA.

OUGHTERARDE is termed the entrance to Connamara, but the boundaries seem somewhat undefined, like the sensations induced by the wildly beautiful scenery,

“The vague emotion of delight
While climbing up some Alpine height.”

Measured and mapped Connamara may be, but painted or described it never can. Those sublime landscapes of mountain, moor, and mere, are photographed on the memory for ever, but cannot be reproduced on canvas; and a great master of art, a Michael Angelo (Tilmarsh) throws down his brush, with the wise confession, “all that we can do is to cry, Beautiful!” Who shall take it up, and paint? Not mine, a prentice hand, to daub a caricature (about as like the original, as a pastile to Vesuvius, or a “cinder-tip” to the Himalayas) of those glorious Irish Alps, of the Maum-Turk mountains, or of Bina Beola, rising, in solemn majesty, amid a sea of golden and roseate flowers. It requires a confidence which I do not feel, to attempt the Hallelujah Chorus on my penny trumpet, or, where Phidias distrusts his chisel, to commence a Colossus with my knife and fork. But I shall never forget our silent happiness, a happiness like childhood's, so complete and pure, as, mile after mile, we watched the sunlight and the shadows, sweeping over hill, and lake, and plain, (so swiftly that every minute the whole view seemed to change), and saw the snow-white goats among the purple heath, and the kine, jet-black and glowing red, knee-deep in the silver waters.

But there are minds no scenery can delight or awe. I remember, how, travelling by rail, one glorious morning in December, the trees all hoar with frost, and glittering against a sky blue as the turquoise, I met a Cockney gent, who condescendingly surveyed the scene, and said that “it reminded him of Storr and Mortimers! The water was very like those plate-glass things, which were used to set off the silver, and the trees a good deal resembled the candelabra clustered above.” And he smiled as one who was pleased to approve the article which Nature humbly submitted to his inspection, and seemed, out of his overflowing goodness, to pat Creation's head. And now, seated upon the box, a “party” from Sheffield insulted that pure delicious atmosphere with very villainous “shag,” and talked as flippantly and without restraint, as though he were in the Chair at “The Cutler's Arms,” presiding over a Free-and-Easy. No sooner did he ascertain from the driver that the grand Highlands before us were known as “The Twelve Pins” than he desired the company to inform him, “what degree of relationship existed between them and the Needles off the Isle of Wight?” a genealogical problem, which would have been received with a due and dignified silence, but for his own unrestrained applause and laughter. Then he favoured us with an enigma, “Why have them pins no pints? Because they're principally composed of quartz!” His geology he had got from a guidebook, out of which he treated us to various extracts, appending commentaries of his own. “Miss Martineau says the hair 'ere” (of course he transplanted every h) “is very like breathing cream. Wonder whether the old gal meant cream of the valley, or milk-punch—ha! ha! ha!”

From this subject he passed very naturally to mountain dew, and the illegal manufacture of whiskey, shouting at the top of his voice, “I cannot help loving thee, Still;” and then singing, “Still, I love thee, Still, I love thee,”—“Fare thee well, and if for ever, Still, for ever fare thee well” (the music by Mr. Joseph Miller), until, happily for us, his pipe went out, and playfully wondering “how he should obtain a light, when all around was matchless,” he collapsed into a state of quiet suction, like a gold fish in a vase.

Incidents, in a country unreclaimed and almost uninhabited, must necessarily be small and infrequent, like the currants on an Irish cake. We had a change of horses at the Half-way House (half-way between Oughterarde and Ballinahinch), and this rapid flight of horsemanship was performed something under the half-hour. I took advantage of the interval to recline on the green sward hard by, and commenced, in dreamy enjoyment, a silent oration to the scenes around. “O Connamara,” I began, “non amarat sed amcena! let me hear and heed thy sermons in stones, though thine own sons be deaf to them.”

Alas! for the sad contrast, where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile! 1 Why should not fields of golden corn, and orchards heavy with fruit, bring plenty from thy fertile plains? Why should rank weeds, rag-wort, and loose strife, (evil signs and sounds!) usurp thy untilled soil, a 'soyle most fertile,' as old Spenser saith, 'fit to yielde all kinde of fruit that shall be committed thereunto?'” And the answer which I heard, “awaking with a start” from my reverie, was a surly grunt close to my ear, and a loud laugh from Frank, who thus perpetuated the tableau vivant:

1 Lord Chesterfield spoke of Ireland as “that country for
which God has done so much, and man so little.”

[Original Size]

We lunched at “The Recess,” a pleasant little inn (with a cheerful landlady and civil waitress), but somewhat damp withal; for Ireland is “the Niobe of nations,” 1 and, as the beautiful bride of the Atlantic, ofttimes weeps in her western home, when her husband is at low water, or subject to lunar influence. But there is no time for metaphor or meteorology, the cutler having already scooped the interior from the heads of both the lobsters, and it being quite necessary to propose some saving clause to this sweeping Act of shellfishness. “I am no gastronomer,” as the old lady observed, when they asked her to go out and see the comet, but I do acknowledge, in unison with the majority of my fellowmen, the powerful fascinations of lobster; and I shall not shrink from the confession, that our feelings, as we witnessed this gross monopoly, were hot and acid as the pepper and the vinegar, which was almost all he left us.

1 “If,” writes Mr. Young, in his Tour in Ireland, “as much
rain fell upon the clays of England as upon the rocks of the
sister country, they could not be cultivated.” I should
doubt this, taking into account our modern improvements as to
drainage; but, at all events, it is evident that “the
humidity of the climate renders Ireland decidedly better
fitted for a grazing than for an agricultural country.”—
See M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire,
ed. 2, vol. ii., p. 367.

At the same time, it may be said, in mitigation of his ill-taste and our ill-temper, that the love of the lobster has ere now troubled the equanimity of greater and better men; and I have seen a noble Duke scowl malignantly at an unconscious Earl, whose plate preceded his own. But all ended well, for our greedy knife-grinder having finished his lobster, two bottles of Guinness, one ditto Bass, and a go of whiskey “for luck,” had scarcely ascended the box, and favoured us with that assurance of plethory, which the Chinese expect as a compliment from all well-bred (and well-fed) guests, than his head began slowly to fall and rise, like a large float, lazily influenced by some undecided fish; and he only intruded himself upon our silent admiration of that magnificent scenery with occasional imitations of swine asleep.

There was a time when the Martins ruled in Connamara, and Ballinahinch, which we now pass, was the palace of Richardus Rex; when Lord Lieutenants were told plainly, that the excellent claret they were drinking had done its duty, without discharging it; and gaugers, bailiffs, writ-servers, and the like, were as rare upon the mountains as the Irish elk. The estate extended to Oughterarde, some six and twenty miles away, and “Martins Gate-house” is shown there still; but extravagance and neglect brought all to the hammer at last, and the very name of Martin will soon only survive, in its association with the humane Act for the prevention of cruelty to animals, which was originated by the Lord of Ballinahinch. The Law Life Insurance Company are now the owners of this property, and are making, we were informed, very great improvements. There can scarcely be an estate more capable thereof. The immense extent of bog-land presents an excellent “fall” for the drainer; and a large quantity of it, lying upon limestone, would grow any amount of pasture or of cereal produce. (The monosyllable corn would be equally expressive, but it looks “mean and poky,” as Martha Penny said of the Protestant religion, when compared with “cereal produce”) Then there is abundance of manure close by, in the sea-weed and coral-sand; and under the soil lie rich veins of marble, rose-colour, and yellow, and, white, and green; and of which you may purchase specimens from the little merchants who come round the car. But where, it may well be asked, are the hands to ply the mattock and pick? For famine, and ejection, and the Exodus, have swept away the working men; and though it is evident, from the number of children, that great efforts are being made to repopulate the country, there seems to be no staff on the spot for any large undertakings. 1 But men are to be found when they are wanted by master-minds; and the Irish and English labourers, instead of deserting for America and Australia a land so full of promise, 2 would readily be induced, by leaders of energy and capital, to appropriate advantages nearer home. The sale of encumbered estates (one of the cleverest, cleanest cuts, that surgeon ever made, to save his patient from mortification) amply justifies the healthful hope that English and Scotch farmers 3 will soon be numerous upon Irish soil, not to become, like the Norman visitors of yore, “ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores,” but to inoculate Paddy with their own activity and earnestness, and to persuade him, just for once and by way of a change, to work in his own land, as he can and will in any other.

1 According to the Report of the Registrar-General, the
population has decreased to the number of half a million
since the Census of 1851.
2 See Letters from The Times' Commissioner, ed. 2, p. 271,
and The Saxon in Ireland, chapter x.
3 “Why are there so many more Scotch than English? It
appears that there are 756 'Britishers' agriculturally
settled in Ireland, and of these 660 are natives of
Scotland.”—Agricultural and Social State of Ireland in
1858, by Thomas Miller.

The Saxon says that the Celt (how one despises those malicious nicknames, stereotyping hate, and perpetuating a lie, as if there were a true Celt or Saxon extant!) that the Celt will shoot him; and, perhaps, he may if nothing is done to conciliate, but everything to offend his prejudices. Those prejudices are the growth of ages, and will not vanish before slang and compulsion, but only before goodness, teaching by example a better and a happier way. If I wish to propitiate a high-spirited unbroken steed, not warranted free from vice, and can do so by checking him sharply with the curb, and by sticking in both spurs, without ruining the horse, and finding myself in a position to take an uninterrupted view of the firmament, Mr. Rarey and reason plead in vain. John Bull is a magnificent fellow, but his mere repetition of “curse the Pope” will do no more to evangelise mankind than Grip the Raven's “I'm a Protestant kettle;” nor can we specify any signal blessings as likely to accrue to the human race, when “Sawney, with his Calvinistic creed in the one hand, and allaying irritation with the other,” denounces smiling on Sunday as a deadly sin, or goes

“Bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke,
At crippled Papistry to butt and poke,
Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull
Hunts an old woman in a scarlet cloak.”

Were I desirous to impress upon the people of Connaught the advantages of protecting their feet with leather, I should scarcely proceed to demonstrate my proposition by kicking them with hobnailed boots; and although bread as an article of food is vastly superior to potatoes, few men would essay to enforce this argument by pelting the peasantry with quartern loaves.

The Saxon says that the Celt will shoot him; and nothing can be more vile and despicable than those cowardly murders which disgrace Ireland. But we must not forget, in our righteous horror, that our own capital convictions are thrice as numerous, according to population, as those in the sister-country; and, though this does not denote the exact proportion of crime, because conviction in Ireland is far more difficult than with us, it may still suggest a wholesome restraint, when we are minded to sit in judgment upon others.

CHAPTER VIII. CLIFDEN.

WE arrived at Carrs Hotel, in Clifden, between 5 and 6 p.m., and strolled down the main street before dinner. The whitewashed houses are much less miserable than the cottages we had seen in the country, but we can give no more than negative praise, the general aspect of the town being dreary enough. There are happy associations, nevertheless, connected with it, for the whole place arose from a benevolent attempt of Mr. D'Arcy, once the owner of Clifden Castle, to improve the condition and evoke the energies of his neighbours; and though the estate has passed into other hands, a D'Arcy still maintains, as pastor of the people, an honoured name for charity and zeal. After dinner we had a most delightful ramble on the cliffs, which overlook the bay; for Clifden is built at the centre of one of those numerous indentations in the land,

“Where weary waves retire to gleam at rest,”

and which give the name Connamara, i.e., “the bays of the sea.” It was one of those evenings, sunlit and serene, which whisper gratitude and peace. There seemed to be a glad smile on land and sea, as the golden light fell in soft splendour on the purple hills, and the pleasant breeze awoke upon the waters [Greek passage] 1

1 Thus prettily transferred by the Irish poet, Moore:—
“Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon,
While it breaks into dimples, and laughs in the sun.”

(Yes, good critic, I know it is only a school-boy's quotation, but it is too beautiful to be ever quite used-up, and is at all events, excusable in an undergraduate, “taking up,” among other books for his Degree, the sublime tragedy of Prometheus Bound.) There was no sound except the curlew's note, when suddenly we heard, far down from the sea below us, the loud splash of water, and voices singing, amid merry laughter, strange songs in an unknown tongue.

[Original Size]

Gracious Heavens, what were we to see! We were on Irish ground; the stillness and the solitude, so wildly broken, encouraged all our superstitious fancies; and everything we had read or heard of Bogies, Banshees, Kelpies, and Co., came back to our astonised souls. Were we, really, to witness something supernatural at last, something, which, when we got home, should make the teeth of our neighbours chatter, and cause the hair to stand up on our relations' heads?

Perhaps, we were to contemplate the merman bold, playing—

“With the mermaids, in and out of the rocks,
Dressing their hair with the white sea-flower,
And holding them back by their flowing locks.”

With beating hearts and bated breath, we crawled to the edge of the precipice, and there saw, to our intense delight, four of the jolliest constables in the world, swimming, diving, floating, spluttering, shouting, and singing, until one longed to run back a few yards, plunge in, like Cassius, without undressing, and join in their jolly gymnastics. Really, they are glorious fellows! Were I to undertake any distant or dangerous expedition (and indeed, Frank and I have been so much gratified by our sailor-like deportment, between Holyhead and Kingstown, that we think seriously of going round the world in a yacht), I should vastly like to take half a dozen of them with me; and I should not be the first who had so thought and acted.

Walking on, we came in sight of Clifden Castle, a good-looking modern residence, lying low in the valley, and well screened by timber from the rough sea-wind. Here the view is beautiful exceedingly, and we sat among the heather, and gazed upon it,

“till the sun
Grew broader toward his death, and fell; and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.”

Then we returned to the hotel, and there found our friend the cutler considerably advanced in liquor, making a most disconnected oration to a select audience, in which, among many other statements unhappily forgotten, he informed us:—“That he was hopen to show pigeons, either Turbits, Pouters, or Short-faced Mottles, against any man in Hengland, bar two; that Ireland was nothing but a big bog, and he should rather expect as ow no party, as wasn't a snipe, would ever come there twice; that he would play hany gent, as was agreeable so to do, either at quoits or skittles, for the valley of a new 'at;” (being rather a dab with the discus, I was about to accept his challenge, when the darkness of the night and absence of the implements struck me as being “staggerers” not to be surmounted, and therefore I held my peace); “that, has no party seem'd hup to nothing, he should beg to propose 'ealth and prosperity to the firm of Messrs. Strop and Blades (I'm Blades); and should conclude by hexpressing his ope, that the cock-eyed gent in the corner would henliven the meeting with a comic song.” The proprietor of the insurbordinate eye having very briefly expressed himself to the effect, that he would see the company consigned to perdition, rather than indulge it with mirthful music, Mr. Blades commenced a concert on his own account; and we ventured to go to bed, in spite of the singer's solemn warning that any person retiring, in a state of sobriety, to his couch, would “fall as the leaves do, fall as the leaves do, fall as the leaves do, that die in October.”

Nemesis was the daughter of Nox; and poor Blades looked miserably ill, when he came down next morning to breakfast—no, not to break fast, but only to wish he could. At daybreak, we had heard sounds of soda-water, but Schweppe had striven in vain. The fact is, that whiskey, like love, can “brook no rival near its throne,” and Kinahan, and Bass, and Guinness were at war all over Blades. We scarcely knew him again, as he sat in rueful contemplation of an egg, which he had accepted, hoping against hope, but had now no strength to crack:—

“For his heart was hot and restless,
And his life was full of care;
And the burden laid upon him
Seemed greater than he could bear.”

Had he been Tyndarus, and the egg before him one of Leda's, he could not have looked at it with a more fixed and mystified expression; or he might have been reflecting sorrowfully upon that fatal goose egg, which, long before the Norman Conquest, had wrought such woes on Ireland. I will venture, at all events, to repeat the legend. Domhnall, the king, having invited Congal, his foster-son, together with the principal swells of his court, to a grand banquet (though he had been warned by Maelcobba, a celebrated monk and fortune-teller, to do nothing of the kind), sent out his purveyors to procure a supply of delicacies in general, and of goose eggs in particular. Now there lived, in the county of Meath, a Bishop Ere of Slaine, who spent his days in the river Boyne, immersed up to his arm-pits, and reading his psalter, which lay upon the bank. Whether he entertained hopes of being translated to the see of Bath and Wells, and was under a course of preparatory training, or whether he had a prescient belief in the water-cure, or whatever his motives may have been, thus he passed his mornings (to the immense edification of his diocese, and with nothing on but his mitre), and then went home to dine. One evening he had hurried to his hermitage, a little ruffled in temper, having been very disrespectfully accosted during the day by some boatmen, who had hit him in the eye with a decayed pear, but consoling himself with the prospect of his favourite dinner, namely, “a goose egg and a half, and three sprigs of watercresses,” when he was dismayed to find his establishment (which consisted of an elderly charwoman) in tears, and to hear that the king's purveyors had been, and poached his eggs for him. Then (the chroniclers proceed to tell) the Bishop he “cussed, and eke swore hee, verrye bewtifulle.” He excommunicated the auxiliary gander and put the goose under a perpetual pip, “bekase,” said he, “if they'd niver layed them, and she (the charwoman) had only popped them under the bedclothes, he'd bet six to four they'd niver been found.” But he was grandest of all, when he cursed the eggs, shell, white, and yolk, solemnly imploring complete and speedy suffocation upon any party who should stick a spoon in them. And his anathemas, we read, were so far fruitful, that on the night of the King's banquet, Congal's goose egg changed, as he was gloating over it, into a common hen egg, whereupon he was so greatly exasperated, that he felt himself under the necessity of slashing at his neighbours indiscriminately with a drawn sword; a general battle ensued; and “Ireland was not for one night thenceforward in the enjoyment of peace or tranquillity.” 1

1 From The Banquet of Dun na-gedh, and the Battle of Magh
Rath. Translated from the original Irish by John O'Donovan.
Printed for the Irish Archaeological Society.

Blades, I say, might have been meditating mournfully on this accursed egg, but, whether or no, there he sat; and Melancholy marked him for her own. Quantum mutatus! The remains of a fire balloon, soaked and rusting in some long damp grass, not less resemble the gaudy globe, which went up yesternight; and never can I obliviate the agony of his expression, as the waiter presented a large dish of bacon in close proximity to his nose.

“A moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced,
And then,” with a groan, which won all our sympathy, “abiit,
excessif, evasit, erupi, Anglicé, poor Blades, he bolted!

We also, having contributed to Mr. Carr's Album autographs, which will, no doubt, be ultimately sold at sixty guineas a-piece, (say pounds, if you take the pair) proceeded by the car to Kylemore.