of part of Cork and Limerick, are tall, thin, well-made. The food of the common Irish is potatoes and milk; it is said not to be sufficiently nourishing for the support of hard labor; but this opinion is very amazing in a country, many of whose poor people are as athletic in their form, as robust, and as capable of enduring labor, as any upon earth. When I see the people of a country, in spite of political oppression, with wellformed, vigorous bodies, and their cottages swarming with children; when I see their men athletic, and their women beautiful, I know not how to believe them subsisting on unwholesome food. . . . I have known the Irish reapers in Hertfordshire work as laboriously as any of our own men, and living on potatoes, which they procured from London, but drinking nothing but ale. Our own service both by sea and land, as well as that (unfortunately for us) of the principal monarchies of Europe, speaks their steady and determined courage. Every unprejudiced traveller, who visits them, will be as much pleased with their cheerfulness as obliged by their hospitality; and will find them a brave, polite, and liberal people.'

Dr. Arnold, in his "History of Rome," 44 remarks, that "there was one point in which the difference between the Celtic race in ancient and modern times has been unduly exaggerated. The Greek and Roman writers invariably describe the Gauls as a tall and light-haired race in comparison with their own countrymen; but it has been maintained, that there must be some confusion in these descriptions, between the Gauls and the Germans, inasmuch as the Celtic nations now existing are all dark-haired. This statement was sent to Niebuhr by some Englishman, and Niebuhr, taking the fact for granted on his correspondent's authority, was naturally much perplexed by it. But had he travelled ever so rapidly through Wales or Ireland, or had he cast a glance on any of those groups of Irish laborers who are constantly to be met with in summer on all the roads in England, he would have at once perceived that his perplexity had been needless. Compared with the Italians, it would be certainly true, that the Celtic nations were generally both light-haired and tall. I should not have ventured to speak so confidently, merely from my own observation; but Dr. Pritchard, who has for many years turned his attention to this question, assures me, that he is perfectly satisfied as to the truth of the fact here stated; to me it is only surprising that any one should have thought of disputing it."

According to the American, Dr. Brownson, "The race is remarkable for its manly and female beauty, and unmatched strength. This may be explained by their freedom from vice, and the purity of the women." 45 The race," says De Lasteyrie, "possesses every charm, grace, eloquence, beauty, and misfortune." Another Frenchman, Count d'Avèze, observes that "The women of Galway have oval faces, hooked noses, and blue eyes. The color of their hair is brown, and their skin is singularly white. The smallness of their hands and feet rivals that of the ladies of Andalusia. The men have handsome and strongly marked features, with bright, intelligent eyes. Their build is generally athletic

44 History of Rome," Ed. 5, Vol i. p. 531.
45 Review of Father Thébaud's "Irish Race."

and slender, and their bearing is noble. In dress they resemble the Castilians more closely than any other people I know. In the province of Connaught, in general, the men are handsome and well-made, their features are sharply cut, their look is independent and keen, their whole countenance indicates spirit and energy. Artists will find in this remote corner the purest specimens of the original race of the island. The appearance of the women is not less striking. Their large almondshaped eyes, their hooked noses, and brown hair, which falls in waves over their broad shoulders, the outlines of their features, are quite southern and even Spanish. They might be easily taken for natives of the Peninsula, if the transparent whiteness of their skin did not lead us to believe them to be daughters of the North, like the English and Scotch. To conclude, the beauty of the peasant women of Connaught is one of the greatest surprises that a traveller in Ireland will meet with."

George Petrie,46 the son of Scotch parents, expresses amazement at Pinkerton's assertion, that the wild Irish are, at this day, the veriest savages on the face of the globe. As the result of much inquiry and attentive observation, Petrie praises their primitive simplicity, ingenuous manners, singular hospitality, and honesty. He says they are brave, hardy, and industrious, enterprising, thoughtfully intelligent, innocent. "Lying and drinking form no part of their character. They never swear, have a high sense of propriety, honor, and justice. They are healthy, comely, and prepossessing, of fine intellect, and delicate sensibility."

From the men of war and letters let us turn to the men of science for more accurate information. From measurements made by Professor Forbes of Edinburgh on students at his University, and by Quetelet on Belgian students of the same class, we have the following tables:

As

According to "Chamber's Information for the People," 47 this table places the Irishman uppermost in the scale of stature. The comparison seems fair as regards the parties taken, for if there were any peculiarity in their condition as students, it must have been common to all. a comparison of national heights, therefore, the table perhaps exhibits conclusions pretty generally applicable, and we shall find it borne out by similar comparisons of weight and strength.

Mr. Field,48 an eminent mechanical engineer of London, examined the relative powers of British and Irish laborers to raise weights by a He communicated his results to the Institute of Civil Engineers

crane.

46" Petrie's Life." By Dr. Stokes, p. 44.

47 Vol. i. p. 53.

48 Quoted in Sir Robert Kane's "Industrial Resources of Ireland."

in London.

He found that the utmost effort of a man, lifting at the rate of one foot per minute, ranged as follows:

The Anthropometric Committee 49 gives the stature of Irish recruits as 5 feet 8.04; the Scotch, 5 feet 8.03; English, 5 feet 7.71.

The statistics of the United States Army 50 give the average stature of those examined for admission into that army as follows: 3,476 Scots, 67.07 inches; 30,557 Irish, 66.74; 16,196 English, 66.58; 54,944 Germans, 66.54; 1,104 Welsh, 66 42; 1,302 Swiss, 66.38; 3,343 French, 66.28.

Here the Scots overtop the Irish, but perhaps this might be accounted for by the relative numbers. Again, the Scots surpass the Irish in stature in Table I. of the Anthropometrical Committee, but then the Irish were "almost entirely " immigrants, who are of the poorest class, and could not fairly represent the Irish in general or the agricultural classes at home; and "the Committee regrets that it has not been able to obtain more than one return direct from Ireland." The results, in inches, were Scots, 68.71; Irish, 67.90; English, 67.36; Welsh, 66.66; and the Irish are the lowest in weight. Only 346 Irish were measured, and, curiously enough, we find 51 the height for Connaught, 68.73; Munster, 68.52; Ulster, 68.41; Leinster, 68.21. From these returns the Committee says: "The western provinces of Ireland possess a high stature similar to the Scotch Highlands, with which they may have a common racial origin, while the lower stature of the eastern provinces is probably traceable to the comparatively recent Scotch and English immigrations. The Irish returns are, however, too few to be relied on, until they are confirmed by more extended inquiries." 52 These returns, indeed, are quite misleading, for I have been informed by Mr. French, of Trinity College, Dublin, that so good a judge as Dr. O'Donovan often declared in his hearing, that the finest and biggest men of Ireland are to be found in Wexford, and in that part of Tipperperary which is nearest to Wexford.” He meant, I think, the people of the quadrilateral formed by the towns of Wexford, Waterford, Cashel, and Kilkenny. Dr. Beddowe,53 who agrees with O'Donovan, says: "The people of North and West Wexford and in the city of Waterford and its neighborhood are tall and fair, the prevailing type in the county of Tipperary, though very often brilliantly fair, is not English. In West Cavan (Ulster) the people are fair, large-limbed, comely, and smooth featured.

"Scotch recruits are about equal to those of Leinster and Munster in stature and weight, and superior in both respects to the Irish, taken collectively, and they clearly exceed in girth of chest both English and

51"Report," p. II.

52" Report," p. 14.

53" Races of Britain," pp. 266, 238, 142, 27; and vol. iii. of "Memoirs of the Anthropological Society." "On the Bulk and Stature of the People of Great Britain,” pp. 569 et seq.

Irish, though the Welsh may equal them in this point. The Welsh recruits weigh heaviest, but their stature is considerably lower than that of the Irish. The English vary very much. Some agricultural counties yield large men, but on the whole they do not quite equal even the Welsh in stature, or the Irish in weight; and this seems to be mainly due to the low average of the recruits from the metropolis and from manufacturing districts, and to the short stature (perhaps a race character) prevailing in the south-eastern, or Saxon part of England. At Bristol, the Munster men inspected compare pretty favorably with those from the neighboring districts, to whom they are decidedly superior in girth of chest; and at Liverpool the Irish have the advantage in all three respects of the native Lancashire recruits. Dr. Beddowe continues: "Why are the people of Southern Leinster as tall or taller than the Munster men, and these latter so much taller than the Connaughters?"

"Let us see what can be made of the popular solution of the matter the theory that the Connaughters had degenerated under the influence of semi-starvation, until their kinsmen across the Shannon would no longer acknowledge the connection. This view was brought forward years ago by a writer in the Dublin University Magazine, and so forcible and graphic was the picture he drew of the dwarfish, potbellied, abortively-featured, prognathous "spectres of a people once able-bodied and comely, that haunted Sligo and Mayo," that it has been quoted by every monogenist writer at home and abroad ever since.. The passage is entirely a libel on the natives of Eastern Sligo; but as I never visited Mayo, I am not prepared to deny that it may be more applicable there. It does not apply to Connemara, where the people, though small, are well-built and well-favored; nor to Joyce's and O'Flaherty's County, near Galway, where they are notoriously tall. The military returns show that the Mayo people have the Irish colortype in a high degree; the people of Irishmurry (Sligo) are a decidedly fair race and not uncomely.'

Dr. Beddowe shows here more anthropological prudence and caution than Dr. Hall 54 and M. de Quatrefages,55 who innocently propagated this "libel" of the Dublin University Magazine. 56 It is, indeed, "entirely a libel," not only "on the natives of Eastern Sligo," but of all Sligo and Mayo and Leitrim, and the Barony of the Fews; for it is of the poor laborers of these very counties that Dr. Pritchard and Dr. Arnold said, that they are "generally both light-haired and tall." 57 I have accumulated overwhelming evidence of this, and of their fine size and symmetry, from the published books, or private letters to myself of military, literary, and scientific men, such as Colonels Cooper, Raleigh-Chichester, Wood-Martin, and Blake, who commands the North Mayo Battalion; • Major Leech, of Irish Rifle Team celebrity; Mr. Wakeman, our great archæologist and artist; Dr. Sullivan, President of the Queen's College,

66

54 His edition of Pickering: Introduction.

55" In Revue des Cours Scientifiques en France et à l'Etranger," and in pp. 227-8 of 'Unité de l'Espèce Humaine," Ed. 1861.

56 No. xliii.

57 See the passage in full, supra, from "Arnold's Rome," vol. i. p. 531.

Cork; of the Marquis of Sligo, the Earl of Granard, and many others. I may produce their testimony at another time in refutation of the statements made in the Dublin University Magazine, in which, according to Dr. Karl Vogt,58 "party spirit speaks, painting the Irish in as gloomy colors as possible, and probably assuming a few broken-down beggars to be a type of the whole race.'

Though this subject has been started by Dr. Beddowe, I will not pursue it further at present, and I conclude by saying with Barnaby Rich, “the Irish appear to every man's eye to be of good proportion, of comely stature, and of able body," and with Sir John Davis, "their bodies are endued with extraordinary abilities of nature." In presence of the distinguished array of unimpeachable evidence produced in this paper, I fancy. fair-minded Englishmen must think and feel, that the ideas about Irishmen, current in Great Britain, are not correct, and that the savage representations of the "Comic Journals" constitute a libel on Ireland, a scandal to the Empire, and a conspiracy against the truth.

EDMUND HOGAN, S. J., in The Month.

The Old Queen: Her Antecedents.

WE quote the appended facts and reflections from the New York Herald: Born May 24, 1819, Victoria succeeded to the throne June 20, 1837. Hence on June 20, 1887, she completes the fiftieth year of her reign. Six lives, or more, stood between her and the throne at the time of her birth. Six attempts, or more, have been made to kill her since her accession. Yet she still lives, and bids fair to live, to finish her jubilee; pretty surely to surpass the fifty years' dominion of Edward III.; perhaps to reign as long as the fifty-six years of Henry III., and possibly to equal the phenomenal fifty-nine years of George III. If other people had their way, Queen Victoria would have been known as Queen Alexandrina. For that was her first name, and she was called "Drina" as a child before she was called "Vicky. But she liked Victoria best,-it was the name of her mother,—and Victoria she was crowned. The granddaughter of George III. (being daughter of his fourth son, Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent), she is a descendant of that George II. who was so cordially hated, not only by the English social world, but by his own family.

"Not one magnanimous or humane action is recorded of him,' says Macaulay. "He inherited," observes another critic, the paternal disgust for all 'boets and bainters."" He loathed his own eldest son as his father had loathed him, and Caroline of Auspach, his wife, shared the unnatural yet partly excusable feeling. She called him (to Lord Hervey) "the greatest ass and the greatest liar and the greatest canaille and the greatest beast in the whole world," and made no bones of wishing openly for his death. The wish was granted. The wish was granted. He died of drink

58 Lectures on Man." Lecture xv. pp. 427-9.