"The moorland was wide, level, and black; black as night, if you could suppose night condensed on the surface of the earth, and that you could tread on solid darkness in the midst of day. The day itself was fast dropping into night, although it was dreary and gloomy at the best; for it was a November day. The moor, for miles around, was treeless and houseless; devoid of vegetation, except heather, which clad with its gloomy frieze coat the shivering landscape. At a distance you could discern, through the misty atmosphere, the outline of mountains apparently as bare and stonyas this wilderness, which they bounded. There were no fields, no hedgerows, no marks of the hand of man, except the nakedness itself, which was the work of man in past ages; when, period after period, he had tramped over the scene with fire and sword, and left all that could not fly before him, either ashes to be scattered by the savage winds, or stems of trees, and carcasses of men trodden into the swampy earth. As the Roman historians said of other destroyers, 'They created solitude, and called it peace.' That all this was the work of man, and not of Nature, any one spot of this huge and howling wilderness could testify, if you would only turn up its sable surface. In its bosom lay thousands of ancient oaks and pines, black as ebony; which told, by their gigantic bulk, that forests must have once existed on this spot, as rich as the scene was now bleak. Nobler things than trees lay buried there; but were, for the most part, resolved into the substance of the inky earth. The dwellings of men had left few or no traces, for they had been consumed in flames; and the hearts that had loved, and suffered, and perished beneath the hand of violence and insult, were no longer human hearts, but slime. If a man were carried blindfold to that place, and asked when his eyes were unbandaged where he was, he would say—'Ireland!'"He would want no clue to the identity of the place, but the scene before him. There is no heath like an Irish heath. There is no desolation like an Irish desolation. Where Nature herself has spread the expanse of a solitude, it is a cheerful solitude. The air flows over it lovingly: the flowers nod and dance in gladness; the soil breathes up a spirit of wild fragrance, which communicates a buoyant sensation to the heart. You feel that you tread on ground where the peace of God, and not the 'peace' of man created in the merciless hurricane of war, has sojourned: where the sun shone on creatures sporting on ground or on tree, as the Divine Goodness of the Universe meant them to sport: where the hunter disturbed alone the enjoyment of the lower animals by his own boisterous joy: where the traveller sang as he went over it, because he felt a spring of inexpressible music in his heart: where the weary wayfarer sat beneath a bush, and blessed God, though his limbs ached with travel, and his goal was far off. In God's desertsdwells gladness; in man's deserts, death. A melancholy smites you as you enter them. There is a darkness from the past that envelopes your heart, and the moans and sighs of ten-times perpetrated misery seem still to live in the very winds."One shallow and widely spread stream struggled through the moor; sometimes between masses of gray stone. Sedges and the white-headed cotton-rush whistled on its margin, and on island-like expanses that here and there rose above the surface of its middle course."I have said that there was no sign of life; but on one of those gray stones stood a heron watching for prey. He had remained straight, rigid, and motionless for hours. Probably his appetite was appeased by his day's success among the trout of that dark red-brown stream, which was coloured by the peat from which it oozed. When he did move, he sprang up at once, stretched his broad wings, and silent as the scene around him, made a circuit in the air; rising higher as he went, with slow and solemn flight. He had been startled by a sound. There was life in the desert now. Two horsemen came galloping along a highway not far distant, and the heron, continuing his grave gyrations, surveyed them as he went. Had they been travellers over a plain of India, an Austrian waste, or the pampas of South America, they could not have been grimmer of aspect, or more thoroughly children of the wild. They were Irish from head to foot."They were mounted on two spare but by no means clumsy horses. The creatures had marks of blood and breed that had been introduced by the English to the country. They could claim, if they knew it, lineage of Arabia. The one was a pure bay, the other and lesser, was black; but both were lean as death, haggard as famine. They were wet with the speed with which they had been hurried along. The soil of the damp moorland, or of the field in which, during the day, they had probably been drawing the peasant's cart, still smeared their bodies, and their manes flew as wildly and untrimmed as the sedge or the cotton-rush on the wastes through which they careered. Their riders, wielding each a heavy stick instead of a riding-whip, which they applied ever and anon to the shoulders or flanks of their smoking animals, were mounted ontheir bare backs, and guided them by halter instead of bridle. They were a couple of the short frieze-coated, knee-breeches and gray-stocking fellows who are as plentiful on Irish soil as potatoes. From beneath their narrow-brimmed, old, weather-beaten hats, streamed hair as unkemped as their horses' manes. The Celtic physiognomy was distinctly marked—the small and somewhat upturned nose; the black tint of skin; the eye now looking gray, now black; the freckled cheek, and sandy hair. Beard and whiskers covered half the face, and the short square-shouldered bodies were bent forward with eager impatience, as they thumped and kicked along their horses, muttering curses as they went."The heron, sailing on broad and seemingly slow vans, still kept them in view. Anon, they reached a part of the moorland where traces of human labour were visible. Black piles of peat stood on the solitary ground, ready, after a summer's cutting and drying. Presently patches of cultivation presented themselves; plots of ground raised on beds, each a few feet wide, with intervening trenches to carry off the boggy water, where potatoes had grown, and small fields where grew more stalks of ragwort than grass, inclosed by banks cast up and tipped here and there with a brier or a stone. It was the husbandry of misery and indigence. The ground had already been freshly manured by sea-weeds, but the village—where was it? Blotches of burnt ground, scorched heaps of rubbish, and fragments of blackened walls, alone were visible. Garden-plots were trodden down, and their few bushes rent up, or hung with tatters of rags. The two horsemen, as they hurried by with gloomy visages, uttered no more than a single word: 'Eviction!'"Further on, the ground heaved itself into a chaotic confusion. Stony heaps swelled up here and there, naked, black, and barren: the huge bones of the earth protruded themselves through her skin. Shattered rocks arose, sprinkled with bushes, and smoke curled up from what looked like mere heaps of rubbish, but which were in reality human habitations. Long dry grass hissed and rustled in the wind on their roofs, (which were sunk by-places, as if falling in;) and pits of reeking filth seemed placed exactly to prevent access to some of the low doors; while to others, a few stepping-stones made that access only possible. Here the two riders stopped, andhurriedly tying their steeds to an elder-bush, disappeared in one of the cabins."The heron slowly sailed on to the place of its regular roost. Let us follow it."Far different was this scene to those the bird had left. Lofty trees darkened the steep slopes of a fine river. Rich meadows lay at the feet of woods and stretched down to the stream. Herds of cattle lay on them, chewing their cuds after the plentiful grazing of the day. The white walls of a noble house peeped, in the dusk of night, through the fertile timber which stood in proud guardianship of the mansion; and broad winding walks gave evidence of a place where nature and art had combined to form a paradise. There were ample pleasure-grounds. Alas! the grounds around the cabins over which the heron had so lately flown, might be truly styled pain-grounds."Within that home was assembled a happy family. There was the father, a fine-looking man of forty. Proud you would have deemed him, as he sate for a moment abstracted in his cushioned chair; but a moment afterward, as a troop of children came bursting into the room, his manner was instantly changed into one so pleasant, so playful, and so overflowing with enjoyment, that you saw him only as an amiable, glad, domestic man. The mother, a handsome woman, was seated already at the tea-table; and, in another minute, sounds of merry voices and childish laughter were mingled with the jocose tones of the father, and the playful accents of the mother; addressed, now to one, now to another of the youthful group."In due time the merriment was hushed, and the household assembled for evening prayer. A numerous train of servants assumed their accustomed places. The father read. He had paused once or twice, and glanced with a stern and surprised expression toward the group of domestics, for he heard sounds that astonished him from one corner of the room near the door. He went on—Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of judgment, how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery, yea, happy shall he be who rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us!""There was a burst of smothered sobs from the same corner, and the master's eye flashed with a strange fire as he again darted a glance toward the offender. The lady looked equally surprised, in the same direction; then turned a meaning look on her husband—a warm flush was succeeded by a paleness in her countenance, and she cast down her eyes. The children wondered, but were still. Once more the father's sonorous voice continued—'Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.' Again the stifled sound was repeated. The brow of the master darkened again—the mother looked agitated; the children's wonder increased; the master closed the book, and the servants, with a constrained silence, retired from the room."'Whatcanbe the matter with old Dennis?' exclaimed the lady, the moment that the door had closed on the household.—'Oh! whatisamiss with poor old Dennis!' exclaimed the children."'Some stupid folly or other,' said the father, morosely. 'Come! away to bed, children. You can learn Dennis's troubles another time.' The children would have lingered, but again the words, 'Away with you!' in a tone which never needed repetition, were decisive: they kissed their parents and withdrew. In a few seconds the father rang the bell. 'Send Dennis Croggan here.'"The old man appeared. He was a little thin man, of not less than seventy years of age, with white hair and a dark spare countenance. He was one of those nondescript servants in a large Irish house, whose duties are curiously miscellaneous. He had, however, shown sufficient zeal and fidelity through a long life, to secure a warm nook in the servants' hall for the remainder of his days."Dennis entered with an humble and timid air, as conscious that he had deeply offended; and had to dread at least a severe rebuke. He bowed profoundly to both the master and mistress."'What is the meaning of your interruptions during the prayers, Dennis?' demanded the master abruptly. 'Has any thing happened to you?'"'No, sir.'"'Any thing amiss in your son's family?'"'No, your honour.'"The interrogator paused; a storm of passion seemed slowly gathering within him. Presently he asked in a loud tone, 'What does this mean? Was there no place to vent your nonsense in, but in this room, and at prayers?'"Dennis was silent. He cast an imploring look at the master, then at the mistress."'What is the matter, good Dennis?' asked the lady, in a kind tone. 'Compose yourself, and tell us. Something strange must have happened to you.'"Dennis trembled violently; but he advanced a couple of paces, seized the back of a chair as if to support him, and, after a vain gasp or two, declared, as intelligibly as fear would permit, that the prayer had overcome him."'Nonsense, man!' exclaimed the master, with fury in the same face, which was so lately beaming with joy on the children. 'Nonsense! Speak out without more ado, or you shall rue it.'"Dennis looked to the mistress as if he would have implored her intercession; but as she gave no sign of it, he was compelled to speak; but in a brogue that would have been unintelligible to English ears. We therefore translate it:"'I could not help thinking of the poor people at Rathbeg, when the soldiers and police cried, "Down with them! down with them, even to the ground!" and then the poor bit cabins came down all in fire and smoke, amid the howls and cries of the poor creatures."'Oh! it was a fearful sight, your honour—it was, indeed—to see the poor women hugging their babies, and the houses where they were born burning in the wind. It was dreadful to see the old bedridden man lie on the wet ground among the few bits of furniture, and groan to his gracious God above. Oh, your honour! you never saw such a sight, or—you—sure a—it would never have been done!'"Dennis seemed to let the last words out as if they were jerked from him by a sudden shock."The master, whose face had changed during this speech to a livid hue of passion, his eyes blazing with rage, was in the act of rushing on old Dennis, when he was held back by his wife,who exclaimed, 'Oswald! be calm; let us hear what Dennis has to say. Go on, Dennis, go on.'"The master stood still, breathing hard to overcome his rage. Old Dennis, as if seeing only his own thoughts, went on: 'O, bless your honour, if you had seen that poor frantic woman when the back of the cabin fell and buried her infant, where she thought she had laid it safe for a moment while she flew to part her husband and a soldier who had struck the other children with the flat of his sword, and bade them to troop off. Oh, your honour, but it was a killing sight. It was that came over me in the prayer, and I feared that we might be praying perdition on us all, when we prayed about our trespasses. If the poor creatures of Rathbeg should meet us, your honour, at Heaven's gate (I was thinking) and say—These are the heathens that would not let us have a poor hearth-stone in poor ould Ireland.—And that was all, your honour, that made me misbehave so; I was just thinking of that, and I could not help it.'"'Begone, you old fool!' exclaimed the master; and Dennis disappeared with a bow and an alertness that would have done credit to his earlier years."There was a moment's silence after his exit. The lady turned to her husband, and clasping his arm with her hands and looking into his darkened countenance with a look of tenderest anxiety, said:—"'Dearest Oswald, let me, as I have so often done, once more entreat that these dreadful evictions may cease. Surely there must be some way to avert them and to set your property right, without such violent measures.'"The stern proud man said, 'Then why, in the name of Heaven, do you not reveal some other remedy? why do you not enlighten all Ireland? why don't you instruct Government? The unhappy wretches who have been swept away by force are no people, no tenants of mine; they squatted themselves down, as a swarm of locusts fix themselves while a green blade is left; they obstruct all improvement; they will not till the ground themselves, nor will they quit it to allow me to provide more industrious and provident husbandmen to cultivate it. Land that teemswith fertility, and is shut out from hearing and bringing forth food for man, is accursed. Those who have been evicted not only rob me, but their more industrious fellows.'"'They will murder us,' said the wife, 'some day for these things. They will—'"Her words were cut short suddenly by her husband starting, and standing in a listening attitude. 'Wait a moment,' he said, with a peculiar calmness, as if he had just got a fresh thought; and his lady, who did not comprehend what was the cause, but hoped that some better influence was touching him, unloosed her hands from his arm. 'Wait just a moment,' he repeated, and stepped from the room, opened the front door, and, without his hat, went out."'He is intending to cool down his anger,' thought his wife; 'he feels a longing for the freshness of the air,' But she had not caught the sound which had startled his quicker, because more excited ear; she had been too much engrossed by her own intercession with him; it was a peculiar whine from the mastiff, which was chained near the lodge-gate, that had arrested his attention. He stepped out. The black clouds which overhung the moor had broken, and the moon's light straggled between them."The tall and haughty man stood erect in the breeze and listened. Another moment-there was a shot, and he fell headlong upon the broad steps on which he stood. His wife sprang with a piercing shriek from the door and fell on his corpse. A crowd of servants gathered about them, making wild lamentations and breathing vows of vengeance. The murdered master and the wife were borne into the house."The heron soared from its lofty perch, and wheeled with terrified wings through the night air. The servants armed themselves, and, rushing furiously from the house, traversed the surrounding masses of trees; fierce dogs were let loose, and dashed frantically through the thickets: all was, however, too late. The soaring heron saw gray figures, with blackened faces, stealing away—often on their hands and knees—down the hollows of the moorlands toward the village, where the two Irish horsemen had,in the first dusk of that evening, tied their lean steeds to the old elder bush."Near the mansion no lurking assassin was to be found. Meanwhile two servants, pistol in hand, on a couple of their master's horses, scoured hill and dale. The heron, sailing solemnly on the wind above, saw them halt in a little town. They thundered with the butt-ends of their pistols on a door in the principal street; over it there was a coffin-shaped board, displaying a painted crown and the big-lettered words, 'Police Station.' The mounted servants shouted with might and main. A night-capped head issued from a chamber casement with—'What is the matter?'"'Out with you, police! out with all your strength, and lose not a moment. Mr. FitzGibbon, of Sporeen, is shot at his own door.'"The casement was hastily clapped to, and the two horsemen galloped forward up the long, broad street, now flooded with the moon's light. Heads full of terror were thrust from upper windows to inquire the cause of that rapid galloping, but ever too late. The two men held their course up a steep hill outside of the town, where stood a vast building overlooking the whole place; it was the barracks. Here the alarm was also given."In less than an hour a mounted troop of police in olive-green costume, with pistols at holster, sword by side, and carbine on the arm, were trotting briskly out of town, accompanied by the two messengers, whom they plied with eager questions. These answered, and sundry imprecations vented, the whole party increased their speed, and went on, mile after mile, by hedgerow and open moorland, talking as they went."Before they reached the house of Sporeen, and near the village where the two Irish horsemen had stopped the evening before, they halted and formed themselves into more orderly array. A narrow gully was before them on the road, hemmed in on each side by rocky steeps, here and there overhung with bushes. The commandant bade them be on their guard, for there might be danger there. He was right; for the moment they began to trot through the pass, the flash and rattle of firearms from the thickets above saluted them, followed by a wild yell. In a second,several of their number lay dead or dying in the road. The fire was returned promptly by the police, but it was at random; for, although another discharge and another howl announced that the enemy were still there, no one could be seen. The head of the police commanded his troops to make a dash through the pass; for there was no scaling the heights from this side, the assailants having warily posted themselves there, because at the foot of the eminence were stretched on either hand impassable bogs. The troop dashed forward, firing their pistols as they went, but were met by such deadly discharges of firearms as threw them into confusion, killed and wounded several of their horses, and made them hastily retreat."There was nothing for it but to await the arrival of the cavalry; and it was not long before the clatter of horses' hoofs and the ringing of sabres were heard on the road. On coming up, the troop of cavalry, firing to the right and left on the hillsides, dashed forward, and, in the same instant, cleared the gully in safety, the police having kept their side of the pass. In fact, not a single shot was returned, the arrival of this strong force having warned the insurgents to decamp. The cavalry, in full charge, ascended the hills to their summits. Not a foe was to be seen, except one or two dying men, who were discovered by their groans."The moon had been for a time quenched in a dense mass of clouds, which now were blown aside by a keen and cutting wind. The heron, soaring over the desert, could now see gray-coated men flying in different directions to the shelter of the neighbouring hills. The next day he was startled from his dreamy reveries near the moorland stream, by the shouts and galloping of mingled police and soldiers, as they gave chase to a couple of haggard, bare-headed, and panting peasants. These were soon captured, and at once recognised as belonging to the evicted inhabitants of the recently deserted village."Since then years have rolled on. The heron, who had been startled from his quiet haunts by these things, was still dwelling on the lofty tree with his kindred, by the hall of Sporeen. He had reared family after family in that airy lodgment, as spring after spring came round; but no family, after that fatal time,had ever tenanted the mansion. The widow and children had fled from it so soon as Mr. FitzGibbon had been laid in the grave. The nettle and dock flourished over the scorched ruins of the village of Rathbeg; dank moss and wild grass tangled the proud drives and walks of Sporeen. All the woodland rides and pleasure-grounds lay obstructed with briers; and young trees in time grew luxuriantly where once the roller in its rounds could not crush a weed; the nimble frolics of the squirrel were now the only merry things where formerly the feet of lovely children had sprung with elastic joy."The curse of Ireland was on the place. Landlord and tenant, gentleman and peasant, each with the roots and the shoots of many virtues in their hearts, thrown into a false position by the mutual injuries of ages, had wreaked on each other the miseries sown broadcast by their ancestors. Beneath this foul spell men who would, in any other circumstances, have been the happiest and the noblest of mankind, became tyrants; and peasants, who would have glowed with grateful affection toward them, exulted in being their assassins. As the traveller rode past the decaying hall, the gloomy woods, and waste black moorlands of Sporeen, he read the riddle of Ireland's fate, and asked himself when an Œdipus would arise to solve it."A large number of the peasantry of Connemara, a rocky and romantic region, are among the most recent evictions."These hardy mountaineers, whose lives, and the lives of their fathers and great-grandfathers have been spent in reclaiming the barren hills where their hard lot has been cast, were the victims of a series of oppressions unparalleled in the annals of Irish misrule. They were thickly planted over the rocky surface of Connemara for political purposes. In the days of the 40s.freeholder, they were driven to the hustings like a flock of sheep, to register not alone one vote, but in many instances three or four votes each; and it was no uncommon thing to see those unfortunate serfs evicted from their holdings when an election had terminated—not that they refused to vote according to the wish of their landlords, but because they did not go far enough in the sin of perjury and the diabolical crime of impersonation. When they ceased to possess any political importance, they were cast away like broken tools. It was no uncommon thing, in the wilds of Connemara, to see the peasantry, after an election, coming before the Catholic Archbishop, when holding a visitation of his diocese, to proclaim openly the crime of impersonation which their landlords compelled them to commit, and implore forgiveness for such. Of this fact we have in the town of Galway more than one living witness; so that, while every thing was done, with few exceptions, to demoralize the peasantry of Connemara, and plant in their souls the germs of that slavery which is so destructive to the growth of industry, enterprise, or manly exertion—no compassion for their wants was ever evinced—no allowance for their poverty and inability to meet the rack-renting demands of their landlords was ever made."Perhaps, it requires no Œdipus to tell what will be the future of the Irish nation, if the present system of slavery is maintained by their English conquerors. If they do not cease to exist as a people, they will continue to quaff the dark waters of sorrow, and to pay a price, terrible to think of, for the mere privilege of existence.During the famine of 1847, the heartlessness of many Irish landlords was manifested by their utter indifference to the multitudes starving around their well-supplied mansions. At that period, the Rev. A. King, of Cork, wrote to the Southern Reporter as follows:—"The town and the surrounding country for many miles are possessed by twenty-six proprietors, whose respective yearly incomesvary from one hundred pounds, or less, to several thousands. They had all been respectfully informed of the miserable condition of the people, and solicited to give relief. Seventeen of the number had not the politeness to answer the letters of the committee, four had written to say they would not contribute, and the remaining five had given a miserable fraction of what they ought to have contributed. My first donation from a small portion of a small relief fund, received from English strangers, exceeded the aggregate contributions of six-and-twenty landed proprietors, on whose properties human beings were perishing from famine, filth, and disease, amid circumstances of wretchedness appalling to humanity and disgraceful to civilized men! I believe it my sacred duty to gibbet this atrocity in the press, and to call on benevolent persons to loathe it as a monster crime. Twenty-one owners of property, on which scores, nay hundreds, of their fellow-creatures are dying of hunger, give nothing to save their lives! Are they not virtually guilty of wholesale murder? I ask not what human law may decide upon their acts, but in the name of Christianity I arraign them as guilty of treason against the rights of humanity and the laws of God!"It is to escape the responsibility mentioned by Mr. King, as well as to avoid the payment of poor-rates, that the landlords resort to the desolating process of eviction. To show the destructive nature of the tyrannical system that has so long prevailed in Ireland, we will take an abstract of the census of 1841 and 1851.18411851Houses:Inhabited1,328,8391,047,935Uninhabited, built52,20365,159""building3,3182,113————————Total1,384,3601,115,207Families1,472,2871,207,002Persons:Males4,019,5763,176,727"Females4,155,5483,339,067————————Total8,175,1246,515,794Population in 18418,175,124"18516,515,794————Decrease1,659,330Or, at the rate of 20 per cent.Population in 18216,801,827"18317,767,401"18418,175,124"18516,515,794Or, 286,030 souls fewer than in 1821, thirty years ago."We shall impress the disastrous importance of the reduction in the number of the people on our readers, by placing before them a brief account of the previous progress of the population. There is good reason to suppose, that, prior to the middle of the last century, the people continually, though slowly, increased; but from that time something like authentic but imperfect records give the following as their numbers at successive periods:—17542,372,63417672,544,276Increase per cent.7·217772,690,556"5·717852,845,932"5·818055,359,456"84·018135,937,858"10·818216,801,829"14·618317,767,401"14·918418,175,124"5·318516,515,794Decrease20·0"Though there are some discrepancies in these figures, and probably the number assigned to 1785 is too small, and that assigned to 1805 too large, they testify uniformly to a continual increase of the people for eighty-seven years, from 1754 to 1841. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, a complete change has set in, and the population has decreased in the last ten years 20 per cent. It is 1,659,330 less than in 1841, and less by 286,033 than in 1821.
"The moorland was wide, level, and black; black as night, if you could suppose night condensed on the surface of the earth, and that you could tread on solid darkness in the midst of day. The day itself was fast dropping into night, although it was dreary and gloomy at the best; for it was a November day. The moor, for miles around, was treeless and houseless; devoid of vegetation, except heather, which clad with its gloomy frieze coat the shivering landscape. At a distance you could discern, through the misty atmosphere, the outline of mountains apparently as bare and stonyas this wilderness, which they bounded. There were no fields, no hedgerows, no marks of the hand of man, except the nakedness itself, which was the work of man in past ages; when, period after period, he had tramped over the scene with fire and sword, and left all that could not fly before him, either ashes to be scattered by the savage winds, or stems of trees, and carcasses of men trodden into the swampy earth. As the Roman historians said of other destroyers, 'They created solitude, and called it peace.' That all this was the work of man, and not of Nature, any one spot of this huge and howling wilderness could testify, if you would only turn up its sable surface. In its bosom lay thousands of ancient oaks and pines, black as ebony; which told, by their gigantic bulk, that forests must have once existed on this spot, as rich as the scene was now bleak. Nobler things than trees lay buried there; but were, for the most part, resolved into the substance of the inky earth. The dwellings of men had left few or no traces, for they had been consumed in flames; and the hearts that had loved, and suffered, and perished beneath the hand of violence and insult, were no longer human hearts, but slime. If a man were carried blindfold to that place, and asked when his eyes were unbandaged where he was, he would say—'Ireland!'"He would want no clue to the identity of the place, but the scene before him. There is no heath like an Irish heath. There is no desolation like an Irish desolation. Where Nature herself has spread the expanse of a solitude, it is a cheerful solitude. The air flows over it lovingly: the flowers nod and dance in gladness; the soil breathes up a spirit of wild fragrance, which communicates a buoyant sensation to the heart. You feel that you tread on ground where the peace of God, and not the 'peace' of man created in the merciless hurricane of war, has sojourned: where the sun shone on creatures sporting on ground or on tree, as the Divine Goodness of the Universe meant them to sport: where the hunter disturbed alone the enjoyment of the lower animals by his own boisterous joy: where the traveller sang as he went over it, because he felt a spring of inexpressible music in his heart: where the weary wayfarer sat beneath a bush, and blessed God, though his limbs ached with travel, and his goal was far off. In God's desertsdwells gladness; in man's deserts, death. A melancholy smites you as you enter them. There is a darkness from the past that envelopes your heart, and the moans and sighs of ten-times perpetrated misery seem still to live in the very winds."One shallow and widely spread stream struggled through the moor; sometimes between masses of gray stone. Sedges and the white-headed cotton-rush whistled on its margin, and on island-like expanses that here and there rose above the surface of its middle course."I have said that there was no sign of life; but on one of those gray stones stood a heron watching for prey. He had remained straight, rigid, and motionless for hours. Probably his appetite was appeased by his day's success among the trout of that dark red-brown stream, which was coloured by the peat from which it oozed. When he did move, he sprang up at once, stretched his broad wings, and silent as the scene around him, made a circuit in the air; rising higher as he went, with slow and solemn flight. He had been startled by a sound. There was life in the desert now. Two horsemen came galloping along a highway not far distant, and the heron, continuing his grave gyrations, surveyed them as he went. Had they been travellers over a plain of India, an Austrian waste, or the pampas of South America, they could not have been grimmer of aspect, or more thoroughly children of the wild. They were Irish from head to foot."They were mounted on two spare but by no means clumsy horses. The creatures had marks of blood and breed that had been introduced by the English to the country. They could claim, if they knew it, lineage of Arabia. The one was a pure bay, the other and lesser, was black; but both were lean as death, haggard as famine. They were wet with the speed with which they had been hurried along. The soil of the damp moorland, or of the field in which, during the day, they had probably been drawing the peasant's cart, still smeared their bodies, and their manes flew as wildly and untrimmed as the sedge or the cotton-rush on the wastes through which they careered. Their riders, wielding each a heavy stick instead of a riding-whip, which they applied ever and anon to the shoulders or flanks of their smoking animals, were mounted ontheir bare backs, and guided them by halter instead of bridle. They were a couple of the short frieze-coated, knee-breeches and gray-stocking fellows who are as plentiful on Irish soil as potatoes. From beneath their narrow-brimmed, old, weather-beaten hats, streamed hair as unkemped as their horses' manes. The Celtic physiognomy was distinctly marked—the small and somewhat upturned nose; the black tint of skin; the eye now looking gray, now black; the freckled cheek, and sandy hair. Beard and whiskers covered half the face, and the short square-shouldered bodies were bent forward with eager impatience, as they thumped and kicked along their horses, muttering curses as they went."The heron, sailing on broad and seemingly slow vans, still kept them in view. Anon, they reached a part of the moorland where traces of human labour were visible. Black piles of peat stood on the solitary ground, ready, after a summer's cutting and drying. Presently patches of cultivation presented themselves; plots of ground raised on beds, each a few feet wide, with intervening trenches to carry off the boggy water, where potatoes had grown, and small fields where grew more stalks of ragwort than grass, inclosed by banks cast up and tipped here and there with a brier or a stone. It was the husbandry of misery and indigence. The ground had already been freshly manured by sea-weeds, but the village—where was it? Blotches of burnt ground, scorched heaps of rubbish, and fragments of blackened walls, alone were visible. Garden-plots were trodden down, and their few bushes rent up, or hung with tatters of rags. The two horsemen, as they hurried by with gloomy visages, uttered no more than a single word: 'Eviction!'"Further on, the ground heaved itself into a chaotic confusion. Stony heaps swelled up here and there, naked, black, and barren: the huge bones of the earth protruded themselves through her skin. Shattered rocks arose, sprinkled with bushes, and smoke curled up from what looked like mere heaps of rubbish, but which were in reality human habitations. Long dry grass hissed and rustled in the wind on their roofs, (which were sunk by-places, as if falling in;) and pits of reeking filth seemed placed exactly to prevent access to some of the low doors; while to others, a few stepping-stones made that access only possible. Here the two riders stopped, andhurriedly tying their steeds to an elder-bush, disappeared in one of the cabins."The heron slowly sailed on to the place of its regular roost. Let us follow it."Far different was this scene to those the bird had left. Lofty trees darkened the steep slopes of a fine river. Rich meadows lay at the feet of woods and stretched down to the stream. Herds of cattle lay on them, chewing their cuds after the plentiful grazing of the day. The white walls of a noble house peeped, in the dusk of night, through the fertile timber which stood in proud guardianship of the mansion; and broad winding walks gave evidence of a place where nature and art had combined to form a paradise. There were ample pleasure-grounds. Alas! the grounds around the cabins over which the heron had so lately flown, might be truly styled pain-grounds."Within that home was assembled a happy family. There was the father, a fine-looking man of forty. Proud you would have deemed him, as he sate for a moment abstracted in his cushioned chair; but a moment afterward, as a troop of children came bursting into the room, his manner was instantly changed into one so pleasant, so playful, and so overflowing with enjoyment, that you saw him only as an amiable, glad, domestic man. The mother, a handsome woman, was seated already at the tea-table; and, in another minute, sounds of merry voices and childish laughter were mingled with the jocose tones of the father, and the playful accents of the mother; addressed, now to one, now to another of the youthful group."In due time the merriment was hushed, and the household assembled for evening prayer. A numerous train of servants assumed their accustomed places. The father read. He had paused once or twice, and glanced with a stern and surprised expression toward the group of domestics, for he heard sounds that astonished him from one corner of the room near the door. He went on—Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of judgment, how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery, yea, happy shall he be who rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us!"
"The moorland was wide, level, and black; black as night, if you could suppose night condensed on the surface of the earth, and that you could tread on solid darkness in the midst of day. The day itself was fast dropping into night, although it was dreary and gloomy at the best; for it was a November day. The moor, for miles around, was treeless and houseless; devoid of vegetation, except heather, which clad with its gloomy frieze coat the shivering landscape. At a distance you could discern, through the misty atmosphere, the outline of mountains apparently as bare and stonyas this wilderness, which they bounded. There were no fields, no hedgerows, no marks of the hand of man, except the nakedness itself, which was the work of man in past ages; when, period after period, he had tramped over the scene with fire and sword, and left all that could not fly before him, either ashes to be scattered by the savage winds, or stems of trees, and carcasses of men trodden into the swampy earth. As the Roman historians said of other destroyers, 'They created solitude, and called it peace.' That all this was the work of man, and not of Nature, any one spot of this huge and howling wilderness could testify, if you would only turn up its sable surface. In its bosom lay thousands of ancient oaks and pines, black as ebony; which told, by their gigantic bulk, that forests must have once existed on this spot, as rich as the scene was now bleak. Nobler things than trees lay buried there; but were, for the most part, resolved into the substance of the inky earth. The dwellings of men had left few or no traces, for they had been consumed in flames; and the hearts that had loved, and suffered, and perished beneath the hand of violence and insult, were no longer human hearts, but slime. If a man were carried blindfold to that place, and asked when his eyes were unbandaged where he was, he would say—'Ireland!'
"He would want no clue to the identity of the place, but the scene before him. There is no heath like an Irish heath. There is no desolation like an Irish desolation. Where Nature herself has spread the expanse of a solitude, it is a cheerful solitude. The air flows over it lovingly: the flowers nod and dance in gladness; the soil breathes up a spirit of wild fragrance, which communicates a buoyant sensation to the heart. You feel that you tread on ground where the peace of God, and not the 'peace' of man created in the merciless hurricane of war, has sojourned: where the sun shone on creatures sporting on ground or on tree, as the Divine Goodness of the Universe meant them to sport: where the hunter disturbed alone the enjoyment of the lower animals by his own boisterous joy: where the traveller sang as he went over it, because he felt a spring of inexpressible music in his heart: where the weary wayfarer sat beneath a bush, and blessed God, though his limbs ached with travel, and his goal was far off. In God's desertsdwells gladness; in man's deserts, death. A melancholy smites you as you enter them. There is a darkness from the past that envelopes your heart, and the moans and sighs of ten-times perpetrated misery seem still to live in the very winds.
"One shallow and widely spread stream struggled through the moor; sometimes between masses of gray stone. Sedges and the white-headed cotton-rush whistled on its margin, and on island-like expanses that here and there rose above the surface of its middle course.
"I have said that there was no sign of life; but on one of those gray stones stood a heron watching for prey. He had remained straight, rigid, and motionless for hours. Probably his appetite was appeased by his day's success among the trout of that dark red-brown stream, which was coloured by the peat from which it oozed. When he did move, he sprang up at once, stretched his broad wings, and silent as the scene around him, made a circuit in the air; rising higher as he went, with slow and solemn flight. He had been startled by a sound. There was life in the desert now. Two horsemen came galloping along a highway not far distant, and the heron, continuing his grave gyrations, surveyed them as he went. Had they been travellers over a plain of India, an Austrian waste, or the pampas of South America, they could not have been grimmer of aspect, or more thoroughly children of the wild. They were Irish from head to foot.
"They were mounted on two spare but by no means clumsy horses. The creatures had marks of blood and breed that had been introduced by the English to the country. They could claim, if they knew it, lineage of Arabia. The one was a pure bay, the other and lesser, was black; but both were lean as death, haggard as famine. They were wet with the speed with which they had been hurried along. The soil of the damp moorland, or of the field in which, during the day, they had probably been drawing the peasant's cart, still smeared their bodies, and their manes flew as wildly and untrimmed as the sedge or the cotton-rush on the wastes through which they careered. Their riders, wielding each a heavy stick instead of a riding-whip, which they applied ever and anon to the shoulders or flanks of their smoking animals, were mounted ontheir bare backs, and guided them by halter instead of bridle. They were a couple of the short frieze-coated, knee-breeches and gray-stocking fellows who are as plentiful on Irish soil as potatoes. From beneath their narrow-brimmed, old, weather-beaten hats, streamed hair as unkemped as their horses' manes. The Celtic physiognomy was distinctly marked—the small and somewhat upturned nose; the black tint of skin; the eye now looking gray, now black; the freckled cheek, and sandy hair. Beard and whiskers covered half the face, and the short square-shouldered bodies were bent forward with eager impatience, as they thumped and kicked along their horses, muttering curses as they went.
"The heron, sailing on broad and seemingly slow vans, still kept them in view. Anon, they reached a part of the moorland where traces of human labour were visible. Black piles of peat stood on the solitary ground, ready, after a summer's cutting and drying. Presently patches of cultivation presented themselves; plots of ground raised on beds, each a few feet wide, with intervening trenches to carry off the boggy water, where potatoes had grown, and small fields where grew more stalks of ragwort than grass, inclosed by banks cast up and tipped here and there with a brier or a stone. It was the husbandry of misery and indigence. The ground had already been freshly manured by sea-weeds, but the village—where was it? Blotches of burnt ground, scorched heaps of rubbish, and fragments of blackened walls, alone were visible. Garden-plots were trodden down, and their few bushes rent up, or hung with tatters of rags. The two horsemen, as they hurried by with gloomy visages, uttered no more than a single word: 'Eviction!'
"Further on, the ground heaved itself into a chaotic confusion. Stony heaps swelled up here and there, naked, black, and barren: the huge bones of the earth protruded themselves through her skin. Shattered rocks arose, sprinkled with bushes, and smoke curled up from what looked like mere heaps of rubbish, but which were in reality human habitations. Long dry grass hissed and rustled in the wind on their roofs, (which were sunk by-places, as if falling in;) and pits of reeking filth seemed placed exactly to prevent access to some of the low doors; while to others, a few stepping-stones made that access only possible. Here the two riders stopped, andhurriedly tying their steeds to an elder-bush, disappeared in one of the cabins.
"The heron slowly sailed on to the place of its regular roost. Let us follow it.
"Far different was this scene to those the bird had left. Lofty trees darkened the steep slopes of a fine river. Rich meadows lay at the feet of woods and stretched down to the stream. Herds of cattle lay on them, chewing their cuds after the plentiful grazing of the day. The white walls of a noble house peeped, in the dusk of night, through the fertile timber which stood in proud guardianship of the mansion; and broad winding walks gave evidence of a place where nature and art had combined to form a paradise. There were ample pleasure-grounds. Alas! the grounds around the cabins over which the heron had so lately flown, might be truly styled pain-grounds.
"Within that home was assembled a happy family. There was the father, a fine-looking man of forty. Proud you would have deemed him, as he sate for a moment abstracted in his cushioned chair; but a moment afterward, as a troop of children came bursting into the room, his manner was instantly changed into one so pleasant, so playful, and so overflowing with enjoyment, that you saw him only as an amiable, glad, domestic man. The mother, a handsome woman, was seated already at the tea-table; and, in another minute, sounds of merry voices and childish laughter were mingled with the jocose tones of the father, and the playful accents of the mother; addressed, now to one, now to another of the youthful group.
"In due time the merriment was hushed, and the household assembled for evening prayer. A numerous train of servants assumed their accustomed places. The father read. He had paused once or twice, and glanced with a stern and surprised expression toward the group of domestics, for he heard sounds that astonished him from one corner of the room near the door. He went on—Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of judgment, how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery, yea, happy shall he be who rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us!"
"There was a burst of smothered sobs from the same corner, and the master's eye flashed with a strange fire as he again darted a glance toward the offender. The lady looked equally surprised, in the same direction; then turned a meaning look on her husband—a warm flush was succeeded by a paleness in her countenance, and she cast down her eyes. The children wondered, but were still. Once more the father's sonorous voice continued—'Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.' Again the stifled sound was repeated. The brow of the master darkened again—the mother looked agitated; the children's wonder increased; the master closed the book, and the servants, with a constrained silence, retired from the room."'Whatcanbe the matter with old Dennis?' exclaimed the lady, the moment that the door had closed on the household.—'Oh! whatisamiss with poor old Dennis!' exclaimed the children."'Some stupid folly or other,' said the father, morosely. 'Come! away to bed, children. You can learn Dennis's troubles another time.' The children would have lingered, but again the words, 'Away with you!' in a tone which never needed repetition, were decisive: they kissed their parents and withdrew. In a few seconds the father rang the bell. 'Send Dennis Croggan here.'"The old man appeared. He was a little thin man, of not less than seventy years of age, with white hair and a dark spare countenance. He was one of those nondescript servants in a large Irish house, whose duties are curiously miscellaneous. He had, however, shown sufficient zeal and fidelity through a long life, to secure a warm nook in the servants' hall for the remainder of his days."Dennis entered with an humble and timid air, as conscious that he had deeply offended; and had to dread at least a severe rebuke. He bowed profoundly to both the master and mistress."'What is the meaning of your interruptions during the prayers, Dennis?' demanded the master abruptly. 'Has any thing happened to you?'"'No, sir.'"'Any thing amiss in your son's family?'
"There was a burst of smothered sobs from the same corner, and the master's eye flashed with a strange fire as he again darted a glance toward the offender. The lady looked equally surprised, in the same direction; then turned a meaning look on her husband—a warm flush was succeeded by a paleness in her countenance, and she cast down her eyes. The children wondered, but were still. Once more the father's sonorous voice continued—'Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.' Again the stifled sound was repeated. The brow of the master darkened again—the mother looked agitated; the children's wonder increased; the master closed the book, and the servants, with a constrained silence, retired from the room.
"'Whatcanbe the matter with old Dennis?' exclaimed the lady, the moment that the door had closed on the household.—'Oh! whatisamiss with poor old Dennis!' exclaimed the children.
"'Some stupid folly or other,' said the father, morosely. 'Come! away to bed, children. You can learn Dennis's troubles another time.' The children would have lingered, but again the words, 'Away with you!' in a tone which never needed repetition, were decisive: they kissed their parents and withdrew. In a few seconds the father rang the bell. 'Send Dennis Croggan here.'
"The old man appeared. He was a little thin man, of not less than seventy years of age, with white hair and a dark spare countenance. He was one of those nondescript servants in a large Irish house, whose duties are curiously miscellaneous. He had, however, shown sufficient zeal and fidelity through a long life, to secure a warm nook in the servants' hall for the remainder of his days.
"Dennis entered with an humble and timid air, as conscious that he had deeply offended; and had to dread at least a severe rebuke. He bowed profoundly to both the master and mistress.
"'What is the meaning of your interruptions during the prayers, Dennis?' demanded the master abruptly. 'Has any thing happened to you?'
"'No, sir.'
"'Any thing amiss in your son's family?'
"'No, your honour.'"The interrogator paused; a storm of passion seemed slowly gathering within him. Presently he asked in a loud tone, 'What does this mean? Was there no place to vent your nonsense in, but in this room, and at prayers?'"Dennis was silent. He cast an imploring look at the master, then at the mistress."'What is the matter, good Dennis?' asked the lady, in a kind tone. 'Compose yourself, and tell us. Something strange must have happened to you.'"Dennis trembled violently; but he advanced a couple of paces, seized the back of a chair as if to support him, and, after a vain gasp or two, declared, as intelligibly as fear would permit, that the prayer had overcome him."'Nonsense, man!' exclaimed the master, with fury in the same face, which was so lately beaming with joy on the children. 'Nonsense! Speak out without more ado, or you shall rue it.'"Dennis looked to the mistress as if he would have implored her intercession; but as she gave no sign of it, he was compelled to speak; but in a brogue that would have been unintelligible to English ears. We therefore translate it:"'I could not help thinking of the poor people at Rathbeg, when the soldiers and police cried, "Down with them! down with them, even to the ground!" and then the poor bit cabins came down all in fire and smoke, amid the howls and cries of the poor creatures."'Oh! it was a fearful sight, your honour—it was, indeed—to see the poor women hugging their babies, and the houses where they were born burning in the wind. It was dreadful to see the old bedridden man lie on the wet ground among the few bits of furniture, and groan to his gracious God above. Oh, your honour! you never saw such a sight, or—you—sure a—it would never have been done!'"Dennis seemed to let the last words out as if they were jerked from him by a sudden shock."The master, whose face had changed during this speech to a livid hue of passion, his eyes blazing with rage, was in the act of rushing on old Dennis, when he was held back by his wife,who exclaimed, 'Oswald! be calm; let us hear what Dennis has to say. Go on, Dennis, go on.'"The master stood still, breathing hard to overcome his rage. Old Dennis, as if seeing only his own thoughts, went on: 'O, bless your honour, if you had seen that poor frantic woman when the back of the cabin fell and buried her infant, where she thought she had laid it safe for a moment while she flew to part her husband and a soldier who had struck the other children with the flat of his sword, and bade them to troop off. Oh, your honour, but it was a killing sight. It was that came over me in the prayer, and I feared that we might be praying perdition on us all, when we prayed about our trespasses. If the poor creatures of Rathbeg should meet us, your honour, at Heaven's gate (I was thinking) and say—These are the heathens that would not let us have a poor hearth-stone in poor ould Ireland.—And that was all, your honour, that made me misbehave so; I was just thinking of that, and I could not help it.'"'Begone, you old fool!' exclaimed the master; and Dennis disappeared with a bow and an alertness that would have done credit to his earlier years."There was a moment's silence after his exit. The lady turned to her husband, and clasping his arm with her hands and looking into his darkened countenance with a look of tenderest anxiety, said:—"'Dearest Oswald, let me, as I have so often done, once more entreat that these dreadful evictions may cease. Surely there must be some way to avert them and to set your property right, without such violent measures.'"The stern proud man said, 'Then why, in the name of Heaven, do you not reveal some other remedy? why do you not enlighten all Ireland? why don't you instruct Government? The unhappy wretches who have been swept away by force are no people, no tenants of mine; they squatted themselves down, as a swarm of locusts fix themselves while a green blade is left; they obstruct all improvement; they will not till the ground themselves, nor will they quit it to allow me to provide more industrious and provident husbandmen to cultivate it. Land that teemswith fertility, and is shut out from hearing and bringing forth food for man, is accursed. Those who have been evicted not only rob me, but their more industrious fellows.'"'They will murder us,' said the wife, 'some day for these things. They will—'"Her words were cut short suddenly by her husband starting, and standing in a listening attitude. 'Wait a moment,' he said, with a peculiar calmness, as if he had just got a fresh thought; and his lady, who did not comprehend what was the cause, but hoped that some better influence was touching him, unloosed her hands from his arm. 'Wait just a moment,' he repeated, and stepped from the room, opened the front door, and, without his hat, went out."'He is intending to cool down his anger,' thought his wife; 'he feels a longing for the freshness of the air,' But she had not caught the sound which had startled his quicker, because more excited ear; she had been too much engrossed by her own intercession with him; it was a peculiar whine from the mastiff, which was chained near the lodge-gate, that had arrested his attention. He stepped out. The black clouds which overhung the moor had broken, and the moon's light straggled between them."The tall and haughty man stood erect in the breeze and listened. Another moment-there was a shot, and he fell headlong upon the broad steps on which he stood. His wife sprang with a piercing shriek from the door and fell on his corpse. A crowd of servants gathered about them, making wild lamentations and breathing vows of vengeance. The murdered master and the wife were borne into the house."The heron soared from its lofty perch, and wheeled with terrified wings through the night air. The servants armed themselves, and, rushing furiously from the house, traversed the surrounding masses of trees; fierce dogs were let loose, and dashed frantically through the thickets: all was, however, too late. The soaring heron saw gray figures, with blackened faces, stealing away—often on their hands and knees—down the hollows of the moorlands toward the village, where the two Irish horsemen had,in the first dusk of that evening, tied their lean steeds to the old elder bush."Near the mansion no lurking assassin was to be found. Meanwhile two servants, pistol in hand, on a couple of their master's horses, scoured hill and dale. The heron, sailing solemnly on the wind above, saw them halt in a little town. They thundered with the butt-ends of their pistols on a door in the principal street; over it there was a coffin-shaped board, displaying a painted crown and the big-lettered words, 'Police Station.' The mounted servants shouted with might and main. A night-capped head issued from a chamber casement with—'What is the matter?'"'Out with you, police! out with all your strength, and lose not a moment. Mr. FitzGibbon, of Sporeen, is shot at his own door.'"The casement was hastily clapped to, and the two horsemen galloped forward up the long, broad street, now flooded with the moon's light. Heads full of terror were thrust from upper windows to inquire the cause of that rapid galloping, but ever too late. The two men held their course up a steep hill outside of the town, where stood a vast building overlooking the whole place; it was the barracks. Here the alarm was also given."In less than an hour a mounted troop of police in olive-green costume, with pistols at holster, sword by side, and carbine on the arm, were trotting briskly out of town, accompanied by the two messengers, whom they plied with eager questions. These answered, and sundry imprecations vented, the whole party increased their speed, and went on, mile after mile, by hedgerow and open moorland, talking as they went."Before they reached the house of Sporeen, and near the village where the two Irish horsemen had stopped the evening before, they halted and formed themselves into more orderly array. A narrow gully was before them on the road, hemmed in on each side by rocky steeps, here and there overhung with bushes. The commandant bade them be on their guard, for there might be danger there. He was right; for the moment they began to trot through the pass, the flash and rattle of firearms from the thickets above saluted them, followed by a wild yell. In a second,several of their number lay dead or dying in the road. The fire was returned promptly by the police, but it was at random; for, although another discharge and another howl announced that the enemy were still there, no one could be seen. The head of the police commanded his troops to make a dash through the pass; for there was no scaling the heights from this side, the assailants having warily posted themselves there, because at the foot of the eminence were stretched on either hand impassable bogs. The troop dashed forward, firing their pistols as they went, but were met by such deadly discharges of firearms as threw them into confusion, killed and wounded several of their horses, and made them hastily retreat."There was nothing for it but to await the arrival of the cavalry; and it was not long before the clatter of horses' hoofs and the ringing of sabres were heard on the road. On coming up, the troop of cavalry, firing to the right and left on the hillsides, dashed forward, and, in the same instant, cleared the gully in safety, the police having kept their side of the pass. In fact, not a single shot was returned, the arrival of this strong force having warned the insurgents to decamp. The cavalry, in full charge, ascended the hills to their summits. Not a foe was to be seen, except one or two dying men, who were discovered by their groans."The moon had been for a time quenched in a dense mass of clouds, which now were blown aside by a keen and cutting wind. The heron, soaring over the desert, could now see gray-coated men flying in different directions to the shelter of the neighbouring hills. The next day he was startled from his dreamy reveries near the moorland stream, by the shouts and galloping of mingled police and soldiers, as they gave chase to a couple of haggard, bare-headed, and panting peasants. These were soon captured, and at once recognised as belonging to the evicted inhabitants of the recently deserted village."Since then years have rolled on. The heron, who had been startled from his quiet haunts by these things, was still dwelling on the lofty tree with his kindred, by the hall of Sporeen. He had reared family after family in that airy lodgment, as spring after spring came round; but no family, after that fatal time,had ever tenanted the mansion. The widow and children had fled from it so soon as Mr. FitzGibbon had been laid in the grave. The nettle and dock flourished over the scorched ruins of the village of Rathbeg; dank moss and wild grass tangled the proud drives and walks of Sporeen. All the woodland rides and pleasure-grounds lay obstructed with briers; and young trees in time grew luxuriantly where once the roller in its rounds could not crush a weed; the nimble frolics of the squirrel were now the only merry things where formerly the feet of lovely children had sprung with elastic joy."The curse of Ireland was on the place. Landlord and tenant, gentleman and peasant, each with the roots and the shoots of many virtues in their hearts, thrown into a false position by the mutual injuries of ages, had wreaked on each other the miseries sown broadcast by their ancestors. Beneath this foul spell men who would, in any other circumstances, have been the happiest and the noblest of mankind, became tyrants; and peasants, who would have glowed with grateful affection toward them, exulted in being their assassins. As the traveller rode past the decaying hall, the gloomy woods, and waste black moorlands of Sporeen, he read the riddle of Ireland's fate, and asked himself when an Œdipus would arise to solve it."
"'No, your honour.'
"The interrogator paused; a storm of passion seemed slowly gathering within him. Presently he asked in a loud tone, 'What does this mean? Was there no place to vent your nonsense in, but in this room, and at prayers?'
"Dennis was silent. He cast an imploring look at the master, then at the mistress.
"'What is the matter, good Dennis?' asked the lady, in a kind tone. 'Compose yourself, and tell us. Something strange must have happened to you.'
"Dennis trembled violently; but he advanced a couple of paces, seized the back of a chair as if to support him, and, after a vain gasp or two, declared, as intelligibly as fear would permit, that the prayer had overcome him.
"'Nonsense, man!' exclaimed the master, with fury in the same face, which was so lately beaming with joy on the children. 'Nonsense! Speak out without more ado, or you shall rue it.'
"Dennis looked to the mistress as if he would have implored her intercession; but as she gave no sign of it, he was compelled to speak; but in a brogue that would have been unintelligible to English ears. We therefore translate it:
"'I could not help thinking of the poor people at Rathbeg, when the soldiers and police cried, "Down with them! down with them, even to the ground!" and then the poor bit cabins came down all in fire and smoke, amid the howls and cries of the poor creatures.
"'Oh! it was a fearful sight, your honour—it was, indeed—to see the poor women hugging their babies, and the houses where they were born burning in the wind. It was dreadful to see the old bedridden man lie on the wet ground among the few bits of furniture, and groan to his gracious God above. Oh, your honour! you never saw such a sight, or—you—sure a—it would never have been done!'
"Dennis seemed to let the last words out as if they were jerked from him by a sudden shock.
"The master, whose face had changed during this speech to a livid hue of passion, his eyes blazing with rage, was in the act of rushing on old Dennis, when he was held back by his wife,who exclaimed, 'Oswald! be calm; let us hear what Dennis has to say. Go on, Dennis, go on.'
"The master stood still, breathing hard to overcome his rage. Old Dennis, as if seeing only his own thoughts, went on: 'O, bless your honour, if you had seen that poor frantic woman when the back of the cabin fell and buried her infant, where she thought she had laid it safe for a moment while she flew to part her husband and a soldier who had struck the other children with the flat of his sword, and bade them to troop off. Oh, your honour, but it was a killing sight. It was that came over me in the prayer, and I feared that we might be praying perdition on us all, when we prayed about our trespasses. If the poor creatures of Rathbeg should meet us, your honour, at Heaven's gate (I was thinking) and say—These are the heathens that would not let us have a poor hearth-stone in poor ould Ireland.—And that was all, your honour, that made me misbehave so; I was just thinking of that, and I could not help it.'
"'Begone, you old fool!' exclaimed the master; and Dennis disappeared with a bow and an alertness that would have done credit to his earlier years.
"There was a moment's silence after his exit. The lady turned to her husband, and clasping his arm with her hands and looking into his darkened countenance with a look of tenderest anxiety, said:—
"'Dearest Oswald, let me, as I have so often done, once more entreat that these dreadful evictions may cease. Surely there must be some way to avert them and to set your property right, without such violent measures.'
"The stern proud man said, 'Then why, in the name of Heaven, do you not reveal some other remedy? why do you not enlighten all Ireland? why don't you instruct Government? The unhappy wretches who have been swept away by force are no people, no tenants of mine; they squatted themselves down, as a swarm of locusts fix themselves while a green blade is left; they obstruct all improvement; they will not till the ground themselves, nor will they quit it to allow me to provide more industrious and provident husbandmen to cultivate it. Land that teemswith fertility, and is shut out from hearing and bringing forth food for man, is accursed. Those who have been evicted not only rob me, but their more industrious fellows.'
"'They will murder us,' said the wife, 'some day for these things. They will—'
"Her words were cut short suddenly by her husband starting, and standing in a listening attitude. 'Wait a moment,' he said, with a peculiar calmness, as if he had just got a fresh thought; and his lady, who did not comprehend what was the cause, but hoped that some better influence was touching him, unloosed her hands from his arm. 'Wait just a moment,' he repeated, and stepped from the room, opened the front door, and, without his hat, went out.
"'He is intending to cool down his anger,' thought his wife; 'he feels a longing for the freshness of the air,' But she had not caught the sound which had startled his quicker, because more excited ear; she had been too much engrossed by her own intercession with him; it was a peculiar whine from the mastiff, which was chained near the lodge-gate, that had arrested his attention. He stepped out. The black clouds which overhung the moor had broken, and the moon's light straggled between them.
"The tall and haughty man stood erect in the breeze and listened. Another moment-there was a shot, and he fell headlong upon the broad steps on which he stood. His wife sprang with a piercing shriek from the door and fell on his corpse. A crowd of servants gathered about them, making wild lamentations and breathing vows of vengeance. The murdered master and the wife were borne into the house.
"The heron soared from its lofty perch, and wheeled with terrified wings through the night air. The servants armed themselves, and, rushing furiously from the house, traversed the surrounding masses of trees; fierce dogs were let loose, and dashed frantically through the thickets: all was, however, too late. The soaring heron saw gray figures, with blackened faces, stealing away—often on their hands and knees—down the hollows of the moorlands toward the village, where the two Irish horsemen had,in the first dusk of that evening, tied their lean steeds to the old elder bush.
"Near the mansion no lurking assassin was to be found. Meanwhile two servants, pistol in hand, on a couple of their master's horses, scoured hill and dale. The heron, sailing solemnly on the wind above, saw them halt in a little town. They thundered with the butt-ends of their pistols on a door in the principal street; over it there was a coffin-shaped board, displaying a painted crown and the big-lettered words, 'Police Station.' The mounted servants shouted with might and main. A night-capped head issued from a chamber casement with—'What is the matter?'
"'Out with you, police! out with all your strength, and lose not a moment. Mr. FitzGibbon, of Sporeen, is shot at his own door.'
"The casement was hastily clapped to, and the two horsemen galloped forward up the long, broad street, now flooded with the moon's light. Heads full of terror were thrust from upper windows to inquire the cause of that rapid galloping, but ever too late. The two men held their course up a steep hill outside of the town, where stood a vast building overlooking the whole place; it was the barracks. Here the alarm was also given.
"In less than an hour a mounted troop of police in olive-green costume, with pistols at holster, sword by side, and carbine on the arm, were trotting briskly out of town, accompanied by the two messengers, whom they plied with eager questions. These answered, and sundry imprecations vented, the whole party increased their speed, and went on, mile after mile, by hedgerow and open moorland, talking as they went.
"Before they reached the house of Sporeen, and near the village where the two Irish horsemen had stopped the evening before, they halted and formed themselves into more orderly array. A narrow gully was before them on the road, hemmed in on each side by rocky steeps, here and there overhung with bushes. The commandant bade them be on their guard, for there might be danger there. He was right; for the moment they began to trot through the pass, the flash and rattle of firearms from the thickets above saluted them, followed by a wild yell. In a second,several of their number lay dead or dying in the road. The fire was returned promptly by the police, but it was at random; for, although another discharge and another howl announced that the enemy were still there, no one could be seen. The head of the police commanded his troops to make a dash through the pass; for there was no scaling the heights from this side, the assailants having warily posted themselves there, because at the foot of the eminence were stretched on either hand impassable bogs. The troop dashed forward, firing their pistols as they went, but were met by such deadly discharges of firearms as threw them into confusion, killed and wounded several of their horses, and made them hastily retreat.
"There was nothing for it but to await the arrival of the cavalry; and it was not long before the clatter of horses' hoofs and the ringing of sabres were heard on the road. On coming up, the troop of cavalry, firing to the right and left on the hillsides, dashed forward, and, in the same instant, cleared the gully in safety, the police having kept their side of the pass. In fact, not a single shot was returned, the arrival of this strong force having warned the insurgents to decamp. The cavalry, in full charge, ascended the hills to their summits. Not a foe was to be seen, except one or two dying men, who were discovered by their groans.
"The moon had been for a time quenched in a dense mass of clouds, which now were blown aside by a keen and cutting wind. The heron, soaring over the desert, could now see gray-coated men flying in different directions to the shelter of the neighbouring hills. The next day he was startled from his dreamy reveries near the moorland stream, by the shouts and galloping of mingled police and soldiers, as they gave chase to a couple of haggard, bare-headed, and panting peasants. These were soon captured, and at once recognised as belonging to the evicted inhabitants of the recently deserted village.
"Since then years have rolled on. The heron, who had been startled from his quiet haunts by these things, was still dwelling on the lofty tree with his kindred, by the hall of Sporeen. He had reared family after family in that airy lodgment, as spring after spring came round; but no family, after that fatal time,had ever tenanted the mansion. The widow and children had fled from it so soon as Mr. FitzGibbon had been laid in the grave. The nettle and dock flourished over the scorched ruins of the village of Rathbeg; dank moss and wild grass tangled the proud drives and walks of Sporeen. All the woodland rides and pleasure-grounds lay obstructed with briers; and young trees in time grew luxuriantly where once the roller in its rounds could not crush a weed; the nimble frolics of the squirrel were now the only merry things where formerly the feet of lovely children had sprung with elastic joy.
"The curse of Ireland was on the place. Landlord and tenant, gentleman and peasant, each with the roots and the shoots of many virtues in their hearts, thrown into a false position by the mutual injuries of ages, had wreaked on each other the miseries sown broadcast by their ancestors. Beneath this foul spell men who would, in any other circumstances, have been the happiest and the noblest of mankind, became tyrants; and peasants, who would have glowed with grateful affection toward them, exulted in being their assassins. As the traveller rode past the decaying hall, the gloomy woods, and waste black moorlands of Sporeen, he read the riddle of Ireland's fate, and asked himself when an Œdipus would arise to solve it."
A large number of the peasantry of Connemara, a rocky and romantic region, are among the most recent evictions.
"These hardy mountaineers, whose lives, and the lives of their fathers and great-grandfathers have been spent in reclaiming the barren hills where their hard lot has been cast, were the victims of a series of oppressions unparalleled in the annals of Irish misrule. They were thickly planted over the rocky surface of Connemara for political purposes. In the days of the 40s.freeholder, they were driven to the hustings like a flock of sheep, to register not alone one vote, but in many instances three or four votes each; and it was no uncommon thing to see those unfortunate serfs evicted from their holdings when an election had terminated—not that they refused to vote according to the wish of their landlords, but because they did not go far enough in the sin of perjury and the diabolical crime of impersonation. When they ceased to possess any political importance, they were cast away like broken tools. It was no uncommon thing, in the wilds of Connemara, to see the peasantry, after an election, coming before the Catholic Archbishop, when holding a visitation of his diocese, to proclaim openly the crime of impersonation which their landlords compelled them to commit, and implore forgiveness for such. Of this fact we have in the town of Galway more than one living witness; so that, while every thing was done, with few exceptions, to demoralize the peasantry of Connemara, and plant in their souls the germs of that slavery which is so destructive to the growth of industry, enterprise, or manly exertion—no compassion for their wants was ever evinced—no allowance for their poverty and inability to meet the rack-renting demands of their landlords was ever made."
"These hardy mountaineers, whose lives, and the lives of their fathers and great-grandfathers have been spent in reclaiming the barren hills where their hard lot has been cast, were the victims of a series of oppressions unparalleled in the annals of Irish misrule. They were thickly planted over the rocky surface of Connemara for political purposes. In the days of the 40s.freeholder, they were driven to the hustings like a flock of sheep, to register not alone one vote, but in many instances three or four votes each; and it was no uncommon thing to see those unfortunate serfs evicted from their holdings when an election had terminated—not that they refused to vote according to the wish of their landlords, but because they did not go far enough in the sin of perjury and the diabolical crime of impersonation. When they ceased to possess any political importance, they were cast away like broken tools. It was no uncommon thing, in the wilds of Connemara, to see the peasantry, after an election, coming before the Catholic Archbishop, when holding a visitation of his diocese, to proclaim openly the crime of impersonation which their landlords compelled them to commit, and implore forgiveness for such. Of this fact we have in the town of Galway more than one living witness; so that, while every thing was done, with few exceptions, to demoralize the peasantry of Connemara, and plant in their souls the germs of that slavery which is so destructive to the growth of industry, enterprise, or manly exertion—no compassion for their wants was ever evinced—no allowance for their poverty and inability to meet the rack-renting demands of their landlords was ever made."
Perhaps, it requires no Œdipus to tell what will be the future of the Irish nation, if the present system of slavery is maintained by their English conquerors. If they do not cease to exist as a people, they will continue to quaff the dark waters of sorrow, and to pay a price, terrible to think of, for the mere privilege of existence.
During the famine of 1847, the heartlessness of many Irish landlords was manifested by their utter indifference to the multitudes starving around their well-supplied mansions. At that period, the Rev. A. King, of Cork, wrote to the Southern Reporter as follows:—
"The town and the surrounding country for many miles are possessed by twenty-six proprietors, whose respective yearly incomesvary from one hundred pounds, or less, to several thousands. They had all been respectfully informed of the miserable condition of the people, and solicited to give relief. Seventeen of the number had not the politeness to answer the letters of the committee, four had written to say they would not contribute, and the remaining five had given a miserable fraction of what they ought to have contributed. My first donation from a small portion of a small relief fund, received from English strangers, exceeded the aggregate contributions of six-and-twenty landed proprietors, on whose properties human beings were perishing from famine, filth, and disease, amid circumstances of wretchedness appalling to humanity and disgraceful to civilized men! I believe it my sacred duty to gibbet this atrocity in the press, and to call on benevolent persons to loathe it as a monster crime. Twenty-one owners of property, on which scores, nay hundreds, of their fellow-creatures are dying of hunger, give nothing to save their lives! Are they not virtually guilty of wholesale murder? I ask not what human law may decide upon their acts, but in the name of Christianity I arraign them as guilty of treason against the rights of humanity and the laws of God!"
"The town and the surrounding country for many miles are possessed by twenty-six proprietors, whose respective yearly incomesvary from one hundred pounds, or less, to several thousands. They had all been respectfully informed of the miserable condition of the people, and solicited to give relief. Seventeen of the number had not the politeness to answer the letters of the committee, four had written to say they would not contribute, and the remaining five had given a miserable fraction of what they ought to have contributed. My first donation from a small portion of a small relief fund, received from English strangers, exceeded the aggregate contributions of six-and-twenty landed proprietors, on whose properties human beings were perishing from famine, filth, and disease, amid circumstances of wretchedness appalling to humanity and disgraceful to civilized men! I believe it my sacred duty to gibbet this atrocity in the press, and to call on benevolent persons to loathe it as a monster crime. Twenty-one owners of property, on which scores, nay hundreds, of their fellow-creatures are dying of hunger, give nothing to save their lives! Are they not virtually guilty of wholesale murder? I ask not what human law may decide upon their acts, but in the name of Christianity I arraign them as guilty of treason against the rights of humanity and the laws of God!"
It is to escape the responsibility mentioned by Mr. King, as well as to avoid the payment of poor-rates, that the landlords resort to the desolating process of eviction. To show the destructive nature of the tyrannical system that has so long prevailed in Ireland, we will take an abstract of the census of 1841 and 1851.
Or, 286,030 souls fewer than in 1821, thirty years ago.
"We shall impress the disastrous importance of the reduction in the number of the people on our readers, by placing before them a brief account of the previous progress of the population. There is good reason to suppose, that, prior to the middle of the last century, the people continually, though slowly, increased; but from that time something like authentic but imperfect records give the following as their numbers at successive periods:—
"Though there are some discrepancies in these figures, and probably the number assigned to 1785 is too small, and that assigned to 1805 too large, they testify uniformly to a continual increase of the people for eighty-seven years, from 1754 to 1841. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, a complete change has set in, and the population has decreased in the last ten years 20 per cent. It is 1,659,330 less than in 1841, and less by 286,033 than in 1821.