H. M.

*  This manner of wearing the coat, so genera, among thepeasantry, is deemed by the natives of the county of Galwaya remnant of the Spanish mode.

Driminduathseemed to share in the obvious poverty of her master—she was almost an anatomy, and scarcely able to crawl. “Poor beast!” said he, observing I looked at her, “Poor beast! little she dreamed of coming back the road she went, and little able is she to go it, poor soul; not that I amoverlysorry I could not get nobody to take her off my hands at all at all; though to-be-sure ’tis better to lose one’s cow than one’s wife, any day in the year.”

“And had you no alternative?” I asked.

“Anan!” exclaimed he, starting.

“Were you obliged to part with one or the other?” Sorrow is garrulous, and in the natural selfishness of its suffering, seeks to lessen the weight of its woe by participation. In a few minutes I was master of Murtoch O’Shaughnassey’s story: * he was the husband of a sick wife; the father of six children, and a labourer, orcotter, who worked daily throughout the year for the hut that sheltered the heads, and the little potatoe rick which was the sole subsistence of his family.

* Neither the rencontre with, nor the character or story ofMurtoch, partakes in the least degree of fiction.

He had taken a few acres of ground, he said, from his employer’s steward, to set grass potatoes in, by which he hoped to make something handsome; that to enable himself to pay for them he had gone to work in Leinster during the last harvest, “where, please your Honour,” he added, “a poor man gets more for his labour than in Connaught; * but there it was my luck (and bad luck it was) to get the shaking fever upon me, so that I returned sick and sore to my poor people without a cross to bless myself with, and then there was an end to my fine grass potatoes, for devil receive the sort they’d let me dig till I paid for the ground; and what was worse, the steward was going to turn us out of our cabin, because I had not worked out the rent with him as usual, and not a potatoe had I for the children; besides finding my wife and two boys in a fever: the boys got well, but my poor wife has been decaying away ever since; so I was fain to sell my poor Driminduath here, which was left me by my gossip, in order to pay my rent and get some nourishment for my poor woman, who I believe is just weak at heart for the want of it; and so, as I was after telling your Honour, I left home yesterday for afairtwenty-five good miles off, but my poor Driminduath has got such bad usage of late, and was in such sad plight, that nobody would bid nothing for her, and so we are both returning home as we went, with full hearts and empty stomachs.”

* It is well known that within these last thirty years theConnaught peasant laboured forthreepencea day and twomeals of potatoes and milk, and four pence when hemaintained himself; while in Leinster the harvest hire rosefrom eight pence to a shilling. Riding out one day near thevillage of Castletown Delvin, in Westmeath, in company withthe younger branches of the respectable family of the F——ns,of that county, we observed two young men lying at alittle distance from each other in a dry ditch, with somelighted turf burning near them; they both seemed on theverge of eternity, and we learned from a peasant who waspassing, that they were Connaught men who had come toLeinster to work; that they had been disappointed, and owingto want and fatigue, had been first attacked with ague andthen with fevers of so fatal a nature, that no one wouldsuffer them to remain in their cabins: owing to thebenevolent exertions of my young friends, we however foundan asylum for these unfortunates, and had the happiness ofseeing them return comparatively well and happy to theirnative province.

This was uttered with an air of despondency that touched my very soul, and I involuntarily presented him some sea biscuit I had in my pocket. He thanked me, and carelessly added, “that it was the first morsel he had tasted for twenty-four hours; * not,” said he, “but I can fast with any one, and well it is for me I can.” He continued brushing an intrusive tear from his eye; and the next moment whistling a lively air, he advanced to his cow, talking to her in Irish, in a soothing tone, and presenting her with such wild flowers and blades of grass as the scanty vegetation of the bog afforded, turned round to me with a smile of self-satisfaction and said, “One can better suffer themselves a thousand times over, than see one’s poor dumb beast want: it is next, please your Honour, to seeing one’s child in want—God help him who has witnessed both!”

* The temperance of an Irish peasant in this respect isalmost incredible; many of them are satisfied with one meala day—none of them exceed two—breakfast and supper; whichinvariably consists of potatoes, sometimes with, sometimeswithout milk. One of the rules observed by the Finian Band,an ancient militia of Ireland, was to eat but once in thetwenty-four hours.—See Keating’s History of Ireland.

“And art thou then (I mentally exclaimed) that intemperate, cruel, idle savage, an Irish peasant? with a heart thus tenderly alive to the finest feelings of humanity; patiently labouring with daily exertion for what can scarcely afford thee a bare subsistence; sustaining the unsatisfied wants of nature without a murmur; nurtured in the hope (thedisappointed hope) of procuring nourishment forher, dearer to thee than thyself, tender of thy animal as thy child, and suffering the consciousness oftheirwants to absorb all consideration of thy own; and resignation smooths the furrow which affliction has traced upon thy brow, and the national exility of thy character cheers and supports the natural susceptibility of thy heart.” In fact, he was at this moment humming an Irish song by my side.

I need not tell you that the first village we arrived at, I furnished him with the means of procuring him a comfortable dinner for himself and Driminduath, and advice and medicine from the village apothecary for his wife. Poor fellow! his surprise and gratitude was expressed in the true hyperbola of Irish emotion.

Meantime I walked on to examine the ruins of an abbey, where in about half an hour I was joined by Murtoch and his patient companion, whom he assured me he had regaled with some hay, as he had himself with a glass of whisky.—What a dinner for a famishing man!

“It is a dreadful habit, Murtoch,” said I.

“It is so, please your Honour,” replied he, “but then it is meat, drink, and clothes to us, for we forget we have but little of one and less of the other, when we getthe dropwithin us; Och, long life to them that lightened the tax on the whiskey, for by my safe conscience, if they had left it on another year we should have forgotten how to drink it.”

I shall make no comment on Murtoch’s unconscious phillippic against the legislature, but surely a government has little right to complain of those popular disorders to which in a certain degree it may be deemed accessory, by removing the strongest barrier that confines within moral bounds the turbulent passions of the lower orders of society.

To my astonishment, I found that Murtoch had only purchased for his sick wife a little wine and a small piece of bacon: * both, he assured me, were universal and sovereign remedies, and better than any thing thephisicianerscould prescribe, to keep the disorderfrom the heart** The spirits of Murtoch were now quite afloat, and during the rest of our journey the vehemence, pliancy, and ardour of the Irish character strongly betrayed itself in the manners of this poor unmodified Irishman; while the natural facetiousness of a temperament “complexionably pleasant,” was frequently succeeded by such heartrending accounts of poverty and distress, as shed involuntary tears on those cheeks which but a moment before were distended by the exertions of a boisterous laugh.

* It is common to see them come to gentlemen’s houses with alittle vial bottle to beg a table spoonful of wine (for asick relative,) which they esteem the elixir of life.** To be able to keep any disorder from the heart, issupposed, (by the lower orders of the Irish,) to be thesecret of longevity.

Nothing could be more wildly sweet than the whistle or song of the ploughman or labourer as we passed along; it was of so singular a nature, that I frequently paused to catch it; it is a species of voluntary recitative, and so melancholy, that every plaintive note breathes on the heart of the auditor a tale of hopeless despondency or incurable woe. By heavens! I could have wept as I listened, and found a luxury in tears. *

* Mr. Walker, in his Historical Memoir of the Irish Bards,has given a specimen of the Irish plough-tune? and adds,“While the Irish ploughman drives his team, and the femalepeasant milks her cow, they warble a succession of wildnotes which bids defiance to the rules of composition, yetare inexpressibly sweet.”

The evening was closing in fast, and we were within a mile of Bally————, when, to a day singularly fine, succeeded one of the most violent storms of rain and wind I had ever witnessed. Murtoch, who seemed only to regard it on my account, insisted on throwing his great coat over me, and pointed to a cabin at a little distance, where, he said, “if my Honour would demean myself so far, I could get good shelter for the night.”

“Are you sure of that, Murtoch?” said I.

Murtoch shook his head, and looking full in my face, said something in Irish; which at my request he translated—the words were—“Happy aretheywhose roof shelters the head of the traveller.

“And is it indeed a source of happiness to you, Murtoch?”

Murtoch endeavoured to convince me itwas, even upon aselfishprinciple: “For (said he) it is thought right lucky to have a stranger sleep beneath one’s roof.”

If superstition was ever thus on the side of benevolence, even reason herself would hesitate to depose her. We had now reached the door of the cabin, which Murtoch opened without ceremony, saying as he entered—“May God and the Virgin Mary pour a blessing on this house!” The family, who were all circled round a fine turf fire that blazed on the earthen hearth, replied, “Come in, and a thousand welcomes”—for Murtoch served as interpreter, and translated as they were spoken these warm effusions of Irish cordiality. The master of the house, a venerable old man, perceiving me, made a low bow, and added, “You are welcome, and ten thousand welcomes,gentleman.” *

* “Failte augus cead ro ag duine nasal.” The term gentleman,however, is a very inadequate version of the Irish nasal,which is an epitthet of superiority that indicates more thanmere gentility of birth can bestow, although that requisiteis also included. In a curious dialogue between Ossian andSt. Patrick, in an old Irish poem, in which the formerrelates the combat between Oscar and Ilian, St, Patricksolicits him to the detail, addressing him as “Ossian uasal,a mhic Fionne”, “Ossian the Noble—the son of Fingal.”

So you see I hold my letter patent of nobility in my countenance, for I had not yet divested myself of Murtoch’s costume—while in the act, the best stool was wiped for me, the best seat at the fire forced on me, and on being admitted into the social circle, I found its central point was a round oaken stool heaped with smoking potatoes thrown promiscuously over it.

To partake of this national diet I was strongly and courteously solicited, while as an incentive to an appetite that needed none, the old dame produced what she called amadderof sweet milk, in contradistinction to the sour milk of which the rest partook; while the cow that sup plied the luxury slumbered most amicably with a large pig at no great distance from where I sat, and Murtoch glancing an eye atboth, and then looking at me, seemed to say, “You see into what snug quarters we have got.” While I (as I sat with my damp clothes smoking by the turf fire, my madder of milk in one hand, and hot potatoe in the other) assured him by a responsible glance, that I was fully sensible of the comforts of our situation.

As soon as supper was finished the old man said grace, the family piously blessed themselves, and the stool being removed, the hearth swept, and the fire replenished from the bog, Murtoch threw himself on his back along a bench, * and unasked began a song, the wild and plaintive melody of which went at once to the soul.

When he had concluded, I was told it was the lamentation of the poor Irish for the loss of theirglibbsor long tresses, of which they were deprived by the arbitrary will of Henry VIII.—The song (composed in his reign) is called theCoulin** which I am told is literally, the fair ringlet.

* This curious vocal position is of very ancient origin inConnaught, though by no means prevalent. Formerly thesongster not only lay on his back, but had a weight pressedon his chest. The author’s father recollects having seen aman in the county of Mayo, of the name of O’Melvill, whosung for him in this position some years back.**  The Cualin is one of the most popular and beautifulIrish airs estant.

When the English had drawn a pale round their conquests in this country, such of the inhabitants as were compelled to drag on their existence beyond the barrier, could no longer afford to cover their heads with metal, and were necessitated to rely on the resistance of their matted locks. At length this necessity became “the fashion of their choice.”

The partiality of the ancient Irish to long hair is still to be traced in their descendants of both sexes, the women in particular; for I observed that the young ones only wore their “native ornament ofhair,” which sometimes flows over their shoulders, sometimes is fastened up in tresses, with a pin or bodkin. A fashion more in unison with grace and nature, though less in point of formal neatness, than the round-eared caps and large hats of our rustic fair of England.

Almost every word of Murtoch’s lamentation was accompanied by the sighs and mournful lamentations of his auditors, who seemed to sympathize as tenderly in the sufferings of their progenitors, as though they had themselves been the victims of the tyranny which had caused them. The arch policy of “the ruthless king,” who destroyed at once the records of a nation’s woes, by extirpating “the tuneful race,” whose art would have perpetuated them to posterity, never appeared to me in greater force than at that moment.

In the midst, however, of the melancholy which involved the mourning auditors of Murtoch, a piper entered and seated himself by the fire,sans façon, drew his pipes from under his coat, and struck up an Irish lilt of such inspiring animation, as might have served St. Basil of Limoges, the merry patron of dancing, for a jubilate.

In a moment, in the true pliability of Irish temperament, the whole pensive group cheered up, flung away their stools, and as if bit to merry madness by a tarantula, set to dancing jigs with all their hearts, and all theirstrengthinto the bargain. Murtoch appeared not less skilled in the dance than song; and every one (according to the just description of Goldsmith, who was a native of this province,) seemed

“To seek renown,

By holding out to tire each other down.”

Although much amused by this novel style of devotion at the shrine of Terpsichore, yet as the night was now calm, and an unclouded moon dispersed the gloom of twilight obscurity, I arose to pursue my journey. Murtoch would accompany me, though our hospitable friends did their utmost to prevail on both to remain for the night.

When I insisted on my host receiving a trifle, I observed poverty struggling with pride, and gratitude superior to both: he at last reluctantly consented to be prevailed on, by my assurance of forgetting to call on them again when I passed that way, if I were now denied. I was followed for several paces by the whole family, who partedwith, as theyreceivedme, with blessings,—for their courtesy upon all occasions, seems interwoven with their religion, and not to be pious in their forms of etiquette, is not to be polite.

Benevolent and generous beings! whose hard labour

“Just gives what life requires, but gives no more,”

yet who, with the ever ready smile of heart-felt welcome, are willing to share that hard earned little, with the weary traveller whom chance conducts to your threshold, or the solitary wanderer whom necessity throws upon your bounty. How did my heart smite me, while I received the cordial rites of hospitality from your hands, for the prejudices I had hitherto nurtured against your characters. But your smiling welcome, and parting benediction, retributed my error—in the feeling of remorse they awakened.

It was late when I reached Bally————, a large, ugly, irregular town, near the sea coast; but fortunately meeting with a chaise, I threw myself into it, gave Murtoch my address, (who was all amazement at discovering I was son to the Lord of the Manor,) and arrived without further adventure at this antiquechateau, more gratified by the result of my little pedestrian tour, than if (at least in the present state of my feelings,) I had performed it Sesostris-like, in a triumphal chariot, drawn by kings; for “so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,” appear to me the tasteless pleasures of the world I have left, that every sense, every feeling, is in a state of revolt against its sickening joys, and their concomitant sufferings.

Adieu! I am sending this off by a courier extraordinary, to the next post-town, in the hope of receiving one from you by the same hand.

Iperceive my father emulates the policy of the British Legislature, and delegates English ministers to govern his Irish domains. Who do you think is hisfac totumhere? The rascally son of his cunning Leicestershire steward, who unites all his father’s artifice to a proportionable share of roguery of his own, I have had some reason to know the fellow; but his servility of manner, and apparent rigid discharge of his duties, has imposed on my father; who, with all his superior mind, is to be imposed on, by those who know how to find out the clew to his fallibility: his noble soul can never stoop to dive into the minute vices of a rascal of this description.

Mr. Clendinning was absent from M———— house when I arrived, but attended me the next morning at breakfast, with that fawning civility of manner I abhor, and which, contrasted with the manly courteousness of my late companion, never appeared more grossly obvious. He endeavoured to amuse me with a detail of the ferocity, cruelty, and uncivilized state of those among whom (as he hinted,) I was banished for my sins. He had now, he said, been near five years among them, and had never met an individual of the lower order, who did not deserve a halter at least: for his part, he had kept a tight hand over them, and he was justified in so doing, or his lord would be the sufferer; for few of them would pay their rents till their cattle were driven, or some such measure was taken with them. And as for the labourers and workmen, a slave-driver was the only man fit to deal with them; they were all rebellious, idle, cruel, and treacherous; and for his part, he never expected to leave the country with his life.

It is not possible a better defence for the imputed turbulence of the Irish peasantry could be made, than that which lurked in the unprovoked accusations of this narrow-minded sordid steward, who, it is evident, wished to forestall the complaints of those on whom he had exercised the native tyranny of his disposition (even according to his own account,) by every species of harrassing oppression within the compass of his ability. For if power is a dangerous gift even in the regulated mind of elevated rank, what does it be come in the delegated authority of ignorance, meanness, and illiberality? *

* A horde of tyrants exist in Ireland, in a class of menthat are unknown in England, in the multitude of agents ofabsentees, small proprietors, who are the pure Irishsquires, middle men, who take large farms, and squeeze out aforced kind of profit by letting them in small parcels;lastly, the little farmers themselves, who exercise the sameinsolence they receive from their superiors, on thoseunfortunate beings who are placed at the extremity of thescale of degradation—the Irish peasantry.—An Enquiry intothe Causes of Popular Discontents in Ireland.

My father, however, by frequent visitations to his Irish estates (within these few years at least,) must afford to his suffering tenantry an opportunity of redress; for who that ever approached him with atearof suffering, but left his presence with a tear of gratitude! But many, very many of the English nobility who hold immense tracts of land in this country, and draw from hence in part the suppliance of their luxuries, have never visited their estates, since conquest first put them in the possession of their ancestors. Ours, you know, fell to us in the Cromwellian wars, but since the time of General M————, who earned them by the sword, my father, his lineal descendant, is the first of the family who ever visited them. And certainly, a wish to conciliate the affections of his tenantry, could alone induce him to spend so much of his time here as he has done; for the situation of this place is bleak and solitary, and the old mansion, like the old manor houses of England, has neither the architectural character of an antique structure, nor the accommodation of a modern one.

“Ayant l’air delabri, sans l’air antique.”

On enquiring for the key of the library, Mr. Clendinning informed me his lord always took it with him, but that a box of books had come from England a few days before my arrival.

As I suspected, they were all law books—well, be it so; there are few sufferings more acute than those which forbid complaint, because they are self-created.

Four days have elapsed since I began this letter, and I have been prevented from continuing it merely for want of something to say.

I cannot now sit down, as I once did, and give you a history of my ideas or sensations, in the deficiency of fact or incident; for I have survived my sensations, and my ideas are dry and exhausted.

I cannot now trace my joys to their source, or my sorrows to their spring, for I am destitute of their present, and insensible to their former existence. The energy of youthful feeling is subdued, and the vivacity of warm emotion worn out by its own violence. I have lived too fast in a moral as well as a physical sense, and the principles of my intellectual, as well as my natural constitution are, I fear, fast hastening to decay I live the tomb of my expiring mind, and preserve only the consciousness of my wretched state, without the power, and almost without the wish to be otherwise than what I am. And yet, God knows, I am nothing less than contented.

Would you hear my journal? I rise late to my solitary breakfast, because it is solitary; then to study, or rather to yawn overGilesversusHaystack, until (to check the creeping effects of lethargy) I rise from my reading desk, and lounge to a window, which commands a boundless view of a boundless bog; then, “with what appetite I may,” sit down to a joyless dinner. Sometimes, when seduced by the blandishments of an even ing singularly beautiful, I quit mydenandprowldown to the sea shore where, throwing myself at the foot of some cliff that “battles o’er the deep,” I fix my vacant eye on the stealing waves that

“Idly swell against the rocky coast,

And break—as break those glittering shadows,

Human joys.”

Then wet with the ocean spray and evening dew, return to my bed, merely to avoid the intrusive civilities of Mr. Clendinning. Thus wear the hours away.”

I had heard that the neighbourhood about M———— house was good: I can answer for its being populous. Although I took every precaution to prevent my arrival being known, yet the natives have come down on me in hordes, and this in all the form ofhaut ton, as the innumerable cards of the clans of Os and Macs evince. I have, however, neither been visible to the visitants, nor accepted their invitations: for “man delights me not, nor woman either.” Nor woman either! Oh! uncertainty of all human propensities! Yet so it is, that every letter that composes the wordwoman!seems cabalistical, and rouses every principle of aversion and disgust within me; while I often ask myself with Tasso,

“Se pur ve nelle amor alcun dileito.”

It is certain, that the diminutive body of our worthy steward, is the abode of the transmigrated soul of someWest Indianplanter. I have been engaged these two days in listening to, and retributing those injuries his tyranny has inflicted, in spite of his rage, eloquence, and threats, none of which have been spared. The victims of his oppression haunt me in my walks, fearful lest their complaints should come to the knowledge of this puissantmajor domo.

“But why,” said I to one of the sufferers, after a detail of seized geese, pounded cows, extra labour cruelly extorted, ejectments, &c. &c.. given in all the tedious circumlocution of Irish oratory,—“why not complain to my father when he comes among you?”

“Becaise, please your Honour, my Lord stays but a few days at a time here together, nor that same neither; besides, we be loth to trouble his Lordship, for feard it would be after coming to Measther Clendinning’s ears, which would be the ruination of us all; and then when my Lord is at the Lodge, which he mostly is, he is always out amongst the quality, so he is.”

“What Lodge?” said I.

“Why, please your Honour, where my Lord mostly takes up when he comes here, the place that belonged to Measther Clendinning, who call ed it theLodge, becaise the good old Irish name that was upon it did not suit his fancy.”

In the evening I asked Mr. Clendinning if my father did not sometimes reside at the Lodge? He seemed surprised at my information, and said, that was the name he had given to a ruinous old place which, with a few acres of indifferent land, he had purchased of his hard labour, and which his Lord having taken an unaccountable liking to, rented from him, and was actually the tenant of his own steward.

O! what arms of recrimination I should be furnished with against my rigidly moral father, should I discover this remoteCassino, (for remote I understand it is) to be theharemof some wild IrishSultana; for I strongly suspect “that metal more attractive” than the cause he assigns, induces him to pay an annual visit to a country to which, till within these few years, he nurtured the strongest prejudices. You know there are but nineteen years between him and my brother; and his feelings are so unblunted by vicious pursuits, his life has been guided by such epicurian principles of enjoyment, that he still retains much of the first warm flush of juvenile existence, and has only sacrificed to time, its follies and its ignorance. I swear, at this moment he is a younger man than either of his sons; the one chilled by the coldness of an icy temperament into premature old age, and the other!!!———Murtoch has been to see me. I have procured him a little farm, and am answerable for the rent. I sent his wife some rich wine; she is recovering very fast. Murtoch is all gratitude for the wine, but I perceive his faith still lies in thebacon!

Ican support this wretched state of non-existence, thisarticula mortis, no longer. I cannot read—I cannot think—nothing touches, nothing interests me; neither is it permitted me to indulge my sufferings in solitude. These hospitable people still weary me with their attentions, though they must consider me as a sullen misanthropist, for I persist in my invisibility. I can escape them no longer but by flight—professional study is out of the question, for a time at least. I mean, therefore, to “take the wings of” some fine morning, and seek a change of being in a change of place; for a perpetual state of evaga-tion alone, keeps up the flow and ebb of existence in my languid frame. My father’s last letter informs me he is obliged by business to postpone his journey for a month; this leaves me so much the longer master of myself. By the time we meet, my mind may have regained its native tone.Lavaltoo, writes for a longer leave of absence, which I most willingly grant. It is a weight removed off my shoulders; I would be savagely free.

I thank you for your welcome letters, and will do what I can to satisfy your antiquarian taste; and I would take your advice and study the Irish language, were my powers of comprehension equal to the least of the philological excellences ofTom ThumborGoody Two Shoes,—but alas!

“Se perchetto a me Stesso quale acquisto,

Firo mai che me piaccia.” *

* “Torquatto Tasso.”

Villa di Marino, Atlantic Ocean

Having told Mr. Clendinning, that I should spend a few days in wandering about the country, I mounted my horse. So I determined to roam free and unrestrained by the presence of a servant, to Mr. Clendinning’s utter amazement, I ordered a few changes of linen, my drawing-book, and pocket escritoire, to be put in a small valice, which, with all due humility, I had strapped on the back of my steed, whom, by the bye, I expect will be as celebrated as theRozinanteof Don Quixote, or theBeltenbros L’Amadis de Gaul; and thus accoutred set off on my peregrination, the most listless knight that ever entered on the lists of errantry.

You will smile, when I tell you my first point of attraction was theLodge; to which (though with some difficulty) I found my way; for it lies in a most wild and unfrequented direction, but so infinitely superior in situation to M——— house, that I no longer wonder at my father’s preference. Every feature that constitutes either the beauty or sublime of landscape, is here finely combined. Groves druidically venerable—mountains of Alpine elevation—expansive lakes, and the boldest and most romantic sea-coast I ever beheld, alternately diversify and enrich its scenery; while a number of young and flourishing plantations evince the exertion of taste in my father, he certainly has not betrayed in the disposition of his hereditary domains. I found thisTusculuminhabited only by a decent old man and his superannuated wife. Without informing them who I was, I made a feigning wish to make the place a pretext for visiting it. The old man smiled at the idea, and shook his head, presuming that I must be indeed a stranger in the country, as my accent denoted, for that this spot belonged to a greatEnglish Lord, whom he verily believed would not resign it for his own fine place some miles off; but when, with some jesuitical artifice I endeavoured to trace the cause of this attachment, he said it was his Lordship’s fancy, and that there was no accounting for people’s fancies.

“That is all very true,” said I, “but is it the house only that seized on your Lord’s fancy?”

“Nay, for the matter of that,” said he, “the lands are far more finer; the house, though large, being no great things.” I begged in this instance to judge for myself, and a few shillings procured me not only free egress, but the confidence of the ancientCicerone.

This fanciedharem, however, I found not only divested of its expected fair inhabitant, but wholly destitute of furniture, except what filled a bedroom occupied by my father, and an apartment which waslocked. The old man with some tardiness produced the key, and I found this mysterious chamber was only a study; but closer inspection discovered that almost all the books related to the language, history, and antiquities of Ireland.

So you see, in fact, my father’sSultanais no other than theIrish Muse; and never was son so tempted to become the rival of his father, since the days of Antiochus and Stratonice. For, at a moment when my taste, like my senses, is flat and palled, nothing can operate so strongly as an incentive, as novelty. I strongly suspect that my father was aware of this, and that he had despoiled the temple, to prevent me becoming a worshipper at the same shrine. For the old man said he had received a letter from his Lord, ordering away all the furniture (except that of his own bed-room and study) to the manor house; the study and bed-room, however, will suffice me, and here I shall certainly pitch my head-quarters until my father’s arrival.

I have already had some occasions to remark, that the warm susceptible character of the Irish is open to the least indication of courtesy and kindness.

Mypolitesseto this old man, opened every sluice of confidence in his breast, and, as we walked down the avenue together, having thrown the bridle over my horse’s neck, and offered him my arm, for he was lame, I enquired how this beautiful farm fell into the hands of Lord M————, still concealing from him that it was his son who demanded the question.

“Why, your Honour,” said he, “the farm, though beautiful is small; however, it made the best part of what remained of the patrimony of the Prince, when————”

“What Prince?” interrupted I, amazed.

“Why, the Prince of Inismore, to be sure, jewel, whose great forefathers once owned the half of the barony, from the Red Bog to the sea-coast. Och! it is a long story, but I heard my grandfather tell it a thousand times, how a great Prince of Inismore in the wars of Queen Elizabeth, had here a castle and a great tract of land on theborders, of which he was deprived, as the story runs, becaise he would neither cut hisglibbs, shave his upper lip, nor shorten his shirt; * and so he was driven, with the rest of us beyond thepale. The family, however, after a while, flourished greater nor ever. Och, and it is themselves that might, for they were true Milesians bread and born, every mother’s soul of them. O not a drop ofStrongboneanflowed in their Irish veins, agrah!

* From the earliest settlement of the English in thiscountry, an inquisitorial persecution had been carried onagainst the national costume. In the reign of Henry V. therewas an act passed against even the English colonists wearinga whisker on the upper lip, like the Irish; and in 1616, theLord Deputy, in his instructions to the Lord President andCouncil, directed, that such as appeared in the Irish robesor mantles, should be punished by fine and imprisonment.

“Well, as I was after telling your Honour, the family flourished, and beat all before them, for they had an army ofgalloglassesat their back, * until the Cromwellian wars broke out, and those same cold-hearted Presbyterians, battered the fineold ancientcastle of Inismore, and left in the condition it now stands; and what was worse nor that, the poor old Prince was put to death in the arms of his fine young son, who tried to save him, and that by one of Cromwell’s English Generals, who received the town lands of Inismore, which lie near Bally————, as his reward. Now this English General who murdered the Prince, was no other than the ancestor of my Lord, to whom these estates descended from father to son. Ay, you may well start, Sir, it was a woful piece of business; for of all their fine estates, nothing was left to the Princes of Inismore, but the ruins of their old castle, and the rocks that surround it; except this tight little bit of an estate here, on which the father of the present Prince built this house; becaise his Lady, with whom he got a handsome fortune, and who was descended from the Kings of Connaught, took a dislike to the castle; the story going that it was haunted by the murdered Prince; and what with building of this house, and living like an Irish Prince, as he was every inch of him, and spending 3000 l. a year out of 300 l., when he died (and the sun never shone on such a funeral; the whiskey ran about likeditch water, and the country was stocked with pipes and tobacco for many a long year after. For the present Prince, his son, would not be a bit behind his father in any thing, and so signs on him, for he is not worth one guinea this blessed day, Christ save him;)—well, as I was saying, when he died, he left things in a sad way, which his son is not the man to mend, for he was the spirit of a king, and lives in as much state as one to this day.”

*  The second order of military in Ireland.

“But where, where does he live?” interrupted I, with breathless impatience.

“Why,” continued this living chronicle, in the true spirit of Irish replication, “he did live there in that Lodge, as they call it now, and in that room where my Lord keeps his books, was our young Princess born; her father never had but her, and loves her better than his own heart’s blood, and well he may, the blessing of the Virgin Mary and the Twelve Apostles light on her sweet head. Well, the Prince would never let it come near him, that things were not going on well, and continued to take at great rents, farms that brought him in little; for being a Prince and a Milesian, it did not become him to look after such matters, and every thing was left to stewards and the like, until things coming to the worst, a rich English gentleman, as it was said, come over here and offered the Prince, through his steward, a good round sum of money on this place, which the Prince, being harrassed by hisspalpeencreditors, and wanting a little ready money more than any other earthly thing, consented to receive; the gentleman sending him word he should have his own time; but scarcely was the mortgage a year old, when this same Englishman, (Oh, my curse lie about him, Christ pardon me,) foreclosed it, and the fine old Prince not having as much as a shed to shelter his gray hairs under, was forced to fit up part of the old ruined castle, and open those rooms which it had been said were haunted. Discharging many of his old servants, he was accompanied to the castle by the family steward, thefosterers, thenurse* the harper, and Father John, the chaplain.

*  The custom of retaining the nurse who reared thechildren, has ever been, and is still in force among themost respectable families in Ireland, as it is still inmodern, and was formerly in ancient Greece, and they areprobably both derived from the same origin. We read, thatwhen Rebecca left her father’s house to marry Isaac atBeersheba, the nurse was sent to accompany her. But inIreland, not only the nurse herself, but her husband andchildren are objects of peculiar regard and attention, andare called fosterers. The claims of these fosterersfrequently descend from generation to generation, and thetie which unite? them is indissoluble.

“Och, it was a piteous sight the day he left this: he was leaning on the Lady Glorvina’s arm as he walked out to the chaise, ‘James Tyral,’ says he to me in Irish, for I caught his eye; ‘James Tyral,’ but he could say no more, for the old tenants kept crying about him, and he put his mantle to his eyes and hurried into the chaise; the Lady Glorvina kissing her hand to us all, and crying bitterly till she was out of sight. But then, Sir, what would you have of it; the Prince shortly after found out that this same Mr.Mortgagee, was no other than a spalpeen steward of Lord M————‘s. It was thought he would have run mad when he found that almost the last acre of his hereditary lands was in the possession of the servant of his hereditary enemy; for so deadly is the hatred he bears to my Lord, that upon my conscience, I believe the young Prince who held the bleeding body of his murdered father in his arms, felt not greater for the murderer, than our Prince does for that murder’s descendant.

“Now my Lord is just such a man as God never made better, and wishing with all the veins in his heart to serve the old Prince, and do away all difference between them, what does he do, jewel, but writes him a mighty pretty letter, offering this house and a part of the lands a present. O! divil a word of lie I’m after telling you; but what would you have of it, but this offer sets the Prince madder than all; for you know that this was an insult on his honour, which warmed every drop of Milesian blood in his body for he would rather starve to death all his life, than have it thought he would be obligated to any body at all at all for wherewithal to support him; so with that the Prince writes him a letter: it was brought by the old steward, who knew every line of the contents of it, though divil a line in it but two, and that same was but one and a half, as one may say, and this it was, as the old steward told me:

“The son of the son of the son’s son of Bryan, Prince of Inismore, can receive no favour from the descendant of his ancestor’s murderer.”

“Now it was plain enough to be seen, that my Lord took this to heart, as well he might, faith; however, he considered that it came from a misfortunate Prince, he let it drop, and so this was all that ever passed between them; however, he was angry enough with his steward, but Measther Clendinning put hiscomehitheron him, and convinced him that the biggest rogue alive was an honest man.”

“And the Prince!” I interrupted eagerly.

“Och, jewel, the prince lives away in the old Irish fashion, only he has not a Christian soul now at all at all, most of the old Milesian gentry having quit the country; besides, the Prince being in a bad state of health, and having nearly lost the use of his limbs, and his heart being heavy, and his purse light; for all that he keeps up the old Irish customs and dress, letting nobody eat at the same table but his daughter, * not even his Lady when she was alive.”

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