away, its trunk was the residence of the Dryads and Hamadryads of our younger days, that I can never see it without a feeling (a short-lived feeling) of melancholy.

I stopped at a little inn or public house. It was not uncomfortable, and seemed perfectly clean. I was shewn to a bed-room as the parlour was full. I had no reason to doubt the truth of this information. Silence, Doctor Goldsmith says is the mother tongue of a lover. It rarely is of a drunken party. After walking twenty Irish miles a bed is no bad sofa, nor is the fatigue an indifferent opiate. Notwithstanding the merriment in my neighbourhood, I remained in peaceful slumber until my dinner was ready. It consisted of veal chops, roast mutton, and boiled beef. I had only ordered the first. The malt liquor, as is too frequently the case in Ireland, was bad-there is in truth little inducement to make it good, for few people seem disposed to drink it. Spirits and water constitute the favourite beverage at dinner, and punch after it. The punch, however, has little resemblance to what goes by that name in England. It is made with little sweet, with no acid, and is drunk very weak. Acids, so harmless to English stomachs, are very injurious to Irish ones. I should attribute the extraordinary irritability of Irish stomachs, which I have had frequent occasions to remark, to the great moisture of the climate.

With many

the

After dinner I went to the bar. I found the landlady busy in serving out whiskey. The landlord was reading a newspaper. I invited him to come and take a glass of punch with me. He refused it. "He was under promise," he said, "and could only take one glass of whiskey in the day." This voluntary penance is not uncommon. love of liquor is so strong, that they find it impossible to abstain from it, and, therefore, by a strong effort, endeavour to restrain it. They resolve either not to take any spirits at all, or to take only a certain limited quantity, and to secure the performance of this arduous resolution, they generrally bind themselves by an oath, which is never broken, though sometimes evaded, One of them, for instance, swears that he will

not drink except out of the hand of some lady or gentleman in his neighbourhood. When any merry making is going forward in which he wishes to take a share, he waits on the keeper of his conscience with a bottle of whiskey, which he puts into her or his hands, and immediately takes back again into his

own.

Various other ludicrous evasions are practised. A man in a sudden fit of repentance, swears never to drink whiskey as long as he lives-he soaks bread in it, and gets drunk-he does not, he conceives, drink, he only eats it. Another has been quarrelling at fairs and markets, and swears that he will not for a certain time drink out of his own house. He gets drunk there, quarrels with and perhaps beats, his wife or children. The next morning he is smitten with remorse, for his heart is generally as soft, as his passions are violent. He then swears neither to drink in or out of the house. He is caught here, and one would think has no loop-hole to creep out at. He finds one, however. He drinks with a foot on each side the threshold, and flatters himself he is not for

sworn.

My host is a Presbyterian, and therefore, more conscientious. He is sworn to drink but one glass in the day, which he tells me he takes as soon as he rises in the morning, and feels no more inclination for it till the same hour of the following day. He has a glass of his own which is not a small one, and he takes care, I dare say, to give himself good measure. I asked him if he had any books. "Books! I think I have indeed," said he, opening a chest where there were about half a dozen mouldy and half torn ones. "You see," said he smiling complacently, "I have all my comforts about me, for a library, a wife, and a drop of the native, I defy the county."

His liquor was good, certainly, his books were,-Boston's four-fold State, Boston's Sermons, Cloud of Witnesses, the Hind let Loose, and the Marrow of Divinity-all of which I had read in my younger days, and never wished to see or read

15.

2 Y

again. Books of which, I shall shortly say, that like all others of what is called Scotch divinity, give a God, different, I trust, from the real one, and while they represent as a stern judge the beneficent author of nature, they (to change a little the words of Hamlet,)

take off the rose

From the fair forehead of man's opening hopes

And set a blister there."

I took up a volume which lay on a chair that belonged to a lodger. It was Sir William Temple's account of the rebellion of 1641. I carried it to my room. Sir William was a great statesman, a polished gentleman, and elegant scholar. Such is the character, historians give him. We must not judge an author by his book, else I should pronounce him very undeserving of the praises so lavishly bestowed on him. Of all the accounts of the above unhappy period, his is the most partial, the most exaggerated, and the most absurd. On reflection, he was himself highly dissatisfied with the performance, and would not suffer it to pass through a second edition. But the mischief was already done. Thousands read the book who never heard of his contrition, and thousands who did hear of it, had their imaginations too much inflamed, and their judgements too much biassed, to pay any attention to it.

From the most authentic and unprejudiced accounts, it does not appear that the number of English (as they were called) massacred, amounted to twelve thousand, instead of one hundred and fifty thousand, which Sir William swells it to. Nor was any considerable portion of those English, in any other sense than the Irish Protestants of the present day are English. They were the descendants of Englishmen, settled in those lands, of which the unfortunate natives were (often perhaps very unjustly) dispossessed Of the state of wretchedness to which some of the principal Irish families were reduced, some idea may be formed from the following:

"The Duchess of Buckingham, being then, after her first

widowhood, married to the Earl of Antrim, had raised one thousand men, among her lord's yeomanry, in aid of King Charles the First. The deputy, Lord Wentworth, had directed her Grace to have these recruits marched by the route of Newtown Limavady. In passing through the village, curiosity induced her Grace to visit the wife of O'Cahan, its chieftain, whose castle had been demolished, and himself banished. In the midst of this half-ruined edifice, was kindled a fire of branches. The window casements were stuffed with straw, to keep off the rigours of the season. Thus lodged the aged wife of O'Cahan-she was found by her noble visitant, sitting on her bent hams in the smoke, wrapt in a blanket.”

Mr. O'Connell now gives us a few observations on the state of Ireland, on which he says, they will, probably, not be very acceptable to any party. That, as far as I am myself concerned, is a matter of small consequence. Yet, whether it is the suggestion of reason, or the foreboding of melancholy, as the impression on my mind of impending calamity is at times very strong, I own I should wish to communicate to the breasts of others, a part of what presses on my own; otherwise, it might be better for me not to be credited. Men seldom love those who tell them unwelcome truths. It was the misfortune of Cassandra always to do so; it was perhaps, her blessing that she was never believed.

Were Ireland a small island in a remote ocean, I think no Englishman, (I am sure no humane Englishman,) could contemplate her without emotion, or to be indifferent about the changes she is likely to undergo, before she ascends to that natural level to which she is tending, and which society, like water, whether slowly or quickly, whether roughly or smoothly, is always sure of finding. But Ireland is not a small island in a remote ocean; she is an essential part of the British empire; she is within a few hours sail of England, they are grappled together, and must undergo one fate, "equal joy, or equal woe."

On the importance of Ireland to England, it is unnecessary to dwell. England does not produce food enough for the con

sumption of her inhabitants she could neither victual her army or navy, without the assistance of Ireland; she could not even have so large an army or navy to eat those victuals, without her assistance; with the progress of commerce and luxury, she has become effeminate; it is never the virtuous part of manufacturers, but the vicious, the idle and unemployed, that enlist in England. It is in Ireland, therefore, that she must look for her army. The population is immense, ill fed, and ill clad; an Englishman in the army leads a life of hardship and want; an Irishman, a life of luxury and ease; his early habits enable him to live upon little, and the hardihood of his frame bears fatigue, that would kill many Englishmen; he passes whole days without nourishment, apparently regardless of heat, or cold, or hunger, or thirst. It is asserted, that one third of the army and navy are Irishmen. I have no means of ascertaining the truth or falsity of this; but of this I am certain, did the Catholic gentry and clergy exert themselves among the people, there would be ten soldiers or sailors for one who goes at present; were the feelings of national or religious interest embodied with those, (whatever they may be,) which now operate, how powerful would be the effect, and how easily could the coarse, but energetic eloquence of the Irish clergy, raise up an army (like the fabled men of Cadmus of old,) in the course of a single night.

Ireland lies alongside Great Britain, for an immense extent of coast; they are insulated from all the rest of Europe; there is a reciprocal dependence, for a secure and undisturbed navigation, in a great part of the circumference of both were Ireland sunk in the bottom of the sea, England would not be so powerful a nation; were she in possession of an enemy, England would feel the consequences.

In the country where I write this, and probably at no very distant period of time, there may be a most awful struggle. What the event may be it were useless to conjecture-what may be the present feelings of one of the great bodies into which Ireland is divided, it seems better worth while to enquire. As far as my observations extend, the Catholics retain