T&* I (Suvl of OJcjlmton. / c A VIEW OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS, y &c. #c. (j. SIDNEY, PRINTER, Nortburobfrland-street Strand. SOCIETY AND MANNERS, IN THE NORTH OF IRELAND, IN THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN OF 1812. BY J. GAMBLE, ESQ. AUTHOR OF " SKETCHES OF HISTORY, POLITICS, &C. TAKEN IN DUBLIN, &C. IN 1810. " Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame, Still pleas'd to praise, yet not afraid to blame ; Averse alike to flatter or offend, Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend." POPE. JLontion: PRINTED FOR C. CRADOCK AND W. JOY, 32, PATERNOSTER ROW; DOIG AND STIRLING, EDINBURGH; AND MARTIN KEENE, DUBLIN. 1813. ADVERTISEMENT. favourable opinion which some have been pleased to express of a former volume on the North of Ireland, encourages me to lay before the public the present one. It is written nearly in a similar manner, and by hasty sketch, by short tale, and brief dia- logue, rather than by formal dissertation, it endeavours to make better known to the inha- bitants of England, a people well deserving to be known. It makes no pretensions to science, and touches but little on topography, or the natural curiosities of the country. Men and women, however, are of more impor- tance than pillars or columns,, and it gives (I trust) human passions, human actions, and human beings, with all their imperfections on their heads. I know not that I have any where extenuated, and surely I would not set down aught in malice. The mingled gloom and levity of my man- VI ner, will doubtless be as disagreeable to some, as it may be agreeable to others. To the former I would remark, that I describe incidents as they arise, and that incidents do not arise regular and homogeneous, but sudden and changing, as the fleeting colours of the rainbow, or the transient hues of a summer's cloud. The business of the morn- ing is followed by the banquet of the even- ing, and the ball of night. Sadly and wild- ly is the day of business and of pleasure, suc- ceeded by the sorrowful bed of sickness, the last struggle of expiring nature, the long procession, the lighted taper, and funeral of midnight. Nature herself writes Tragi- comedy, and those who follow her will always please the longest, though there may be times when they will not please the most. The Tragi-comedies of Shakespeare, which for a season were displaced by the cumbersome pomp, and unnatural dignity of the French tragedy, are now almost uni- versal favourites, and are the legitimate pa- rents of the modern melo-drama. Should farther vindication be necessary, I have an apology lo offer, which I dare Vll say will be thought a sufficient one. I have somewhere mentioned that I am remarkably short-sighted I am more I was once as- sailed by almost total blindness, and am still liable to frequent attacks of it. Even at the best I can take little share in the bu- siness or the amusements of life, and while feeble is the light that shines on the present, I have the past to remember, and the fu- ture to apprehend. Inevitable blindness, like all other inevitable misfortunes, may be borne, and we know that Homer and Milton composed those grand works which, beyond all others, required the most perfect concentration of the mind, in that situation. But neither to be wholly blind nor entirely to see, to vibrate as it were between light and darkness, may well throw the mind off its balance, and cause joy and sadness, mirth and melancholy, to struggle together, and contend for mastery, like the elemental par- ticles of chaos. Having said this much, I commit my little work, without apprehension, to its fate, in the confident hope that its deficiences will be overlooked, when the circumstances un- Vlll der which it was written are considered, and that if darkness sometimes shadows my page, it will be remembered that darkness often times shadowed myself, and that like the great names I have just mentioned, whom only in their defects I can ever resemble ; So thick a drop serene had quench'd these orbs, Or dim suffusion veil'd. A VIEW OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS, csfc. s?c. CHAPTER I. Newry. THERE is nothing more unaccountable than the fatality which at times governs men, and impels them into situations of danger in opposition to their judgment. I have all my life had a dread of the passage from Liverpool to this country ; and, guided by circumstances, have rarely come by any other. I shall, I trust, be wiser for the future j and to make my experience of service to others, I shall give an account of my present voyage. I went on board the , bound to Newry, about six o'clock on the evening of the second of July, and sailed immediately afterwards. There were three vessels in company, bound like- wise to Ireland. I was hardly on board before I wished myself back again ; the evening was dark and lowering, the wind every moment be- coming more unfavourable, and the captain evi- dently intoxicated. From that moment I had a presentiment of all that was to follow. The whole of the morning, indeed, I had felt a most extraordinary depression of spirits, and twice was proceeding to the Talbot to engage a seat and return to London. On the second of those occasions I met the captain he laughed heartily at my fears said the weather was fine, and the wind fair besides, he was a lucky captain, for he was once shipwrecked, and every body on board perished but himself moreover, there was the Honourable Captain K had just taken his passage, who had been in three great battles in Spain, and was now going to join the second battalion of his regiment in Ireland. This latter argument was so powerful that I resolved likewise to venture with this lucky Captain, and ran a greater risk than if I had been, Uriah like, placed in the front of the worst of the above mentioned battles. On getting round the rock, the Captains of our little fleet had a consultation whether to proceed or put hack three were of opinion it was wisest to put back the fourth (ours) was obstinate, and swore he would go on by himself the others I suppose, lest their courage should be called in question, resolved to follow him. I have remark- ed that in almost all consultations, weak or wicked councils generally prevail no great argument by the bye in favour of popular assemblies. The first two days the weather, though rough, was not very unfavourable, and at ten of the third morning we had a distant view of the mountain of Mourne, dimly seen througfy the dusky vapour that gathered round its head, and mocking us with a sight of the promised land which we were doomed to view afar off, and not to enter. I was standing, or rather endeavouring to stand, on the deck at the time, and gazed upon it with heart-sinking fondness ; gloomy and dreary as it appeared, I am sure it was dearer to my imagination than the most sun-decked hill or sheltered valley, ever feigned by a writer of romance. I would have given " a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, or any thing." About noon the wind suddenly shifted and blew a tremendous gale from the westward. At four we were driving rapidly to the southward, the sea in the common, but expressive phrase, running mountains high. As the evening ad- vanced the horror increased; the gale became still more terrific, and our frail bark laboured so much that each time she sunk, we thought she B 2 would never rise again. The sight, indeed, was 00 shocking that I could witness it no longer ; 1 went below and threw myself into my little birth. Captain K was struck with my agitation and asked the cause. I desired him to go on deck. He returned an instant afterwards. I have seen many sights ("said he) but never one like this. " Venit summa dies, ct ineluctabtle tempus Dardanise." said I to him on one occasion that the vessel re- ceived a fearful shock ; " Nudus in ignota, Palinure, jacebis arena >** he replied with a groan ; the first and the only- one I heard from him. The captain now came down, and, as well as he could speak, addressed the passengers he told us that he was at a loss to know what to do that the gale was so dreadful, the vessel so crazy, and the men so exhausted, he was almost certain of foundering if we kept to sea j that Drogheda river, which lay a little a-head, was, he understood, a very dangerous one, even to those who knew it best ; that he was utterly unacquainted with it ; but, as the lesser evil, would prefer venturing if we had no objec- tion. We told him we were incapable of advising, and begged him to do whatever he thought best for the safety of the vessel, and the preservation of all our lives. We shaped our course (as we thought) for Drogheda river accordingly ; the sea roaring with a violence of which it is impossible to form an idea, though the darkness hid it from our view, we saw nothing we knew nothing of where we were, or where we were going ; we were ignorant of every thing except that danger sur- rounded us on every side ; that shoals and rocks were round us, and about us, and that little short of a miracle could save us. The horrors of that night can never be erased from my recollection ; I am sure the agonies of death "if any sense at that sad hour remains,*' could alone equal it. It was so long that night often when the gust came violent and bore down the little bark that bore us and our hopes when I raised myself in the wretched birth where I lay, and by the miserable lamp that glimmered in the cabin, making " darkness visible ;", 1 observed the slow progress of time I exclaimed in the words of a German poet * c will this eternal night last to the day of judgment !" If time is to be reckoned by succession of ideas^ that night was an age of misery; nor would I spend such another for the sea's wealth. Strange as it may appear, my mind was active and busy all the incidents of my past life passed before me with inconceivable rapidity j many passages from our poets, presented themselves to my memory with extraordinary distinctness, with a heart that vibrated to the sentiment I re- peated, I am sure a hundred times, re all love adventures, and as a soldier's ought to be, toujours comme chevalier sous la rose. " What a low-bred young man," said an elderly lady, the instant the door closed upon him, and the family at whose house he was to sleep. " High-bred rather," I said, " but breeding is a kind of circle, and high and low often touch." " High," repeated she j " high ! I will never believe it." " Oh it is ton, dear mother, it is ton ;" exclaimed a fine animated young woman ; " I have read it all in books a hundred and hundred times and to think I should hear and see it myself Oh, how 12 lucky it was we came here at this time one might have lived one's whole life at the foot of Carantagher and seen nothing like it." " Even at the foot of Carantagher it appears," I said, " you have heard of it." " No, read of it," said she, " only read of it in a novel, where one does not know whether it is truth or lies but I have now seen and heard it, and shall be at no loss in future to know a man of fashion whenever I meet with him." " 1 should be sorry/' said the clergyman, " that such were the manners of an Englishman of fashion for what must the manners of the peo- ple be ?" t: Itis unfair to judge Captain Iv rigorously," said I, " elevated as he is with wine, and still more exhilarated with the contrast between this hos- pitable and cheering party, and the gloomy and sepulchral scene we have quitted. He is not, I dare say, as wicked as he wishes to be thought there is an affectation of vice as well as of virtue." " It is an odious affectation," said the clergyman, " and depraved must the people be where decency even is not attended to, and where to obtain con- sideration, hypocrisy assumes the garb, not of vir- tue, but of wickedness. I pronounce the downfal of that people to be nigh." " God help us," said the old lady, " if those arc IS to be our defenders, in place of our own brave Militia whom they robbed us of." " Fashion," said I, " and courage, or even foppery and courage, are by no means incompatible. The knights were the flower of the Roman army, and the French noblesse, who fluttered round the toilets of the ladies, and, essenced and painted, seemed like ladies themselves, advanced to the cannon's mouth without shrinking. This frivolous young Englishman, as he now appears, displayed beyond all others, the most composure in our late perilous situation ; nor was his liberality less than his resolution : nearly the whole of the sea-store of the passengers in the hold was laid in at his ex- pense, and he paid for the passage of several who were unable to pay for themselves." We were now summoned to supper, and the conversation ended. How I became so uncere- moniously seated at it, it is almost needless to say. Those who know the Irish least, know their hos- pitality ; those who know them best, know their kindness of heart. We had scarcely finished our repast of the morning, when a multitude of peo- ple, in jaunting cars, on horseback, and on foot, surrounded the house. " The wild Irish," said Captain K , jocularly, " are coming down upon us ; they have done plundering the wreck, and now they will murder us for the sake of our wearing apparel." 14 It was very true. The wild Irish were come down on us, wild with joy, with congratulation, and kindness. There was actually a scramble for us. Captain K went with a gentleman who had two handsome daughters I fell to the lot of the worthy \ icar. " I was once in Ireland (I recollect hearing a gen- tleman in London say) and was so tormented with Custom-house officers and boatmen, that I thought it the worst country in the world to land in." It may be so. I am sure it is not the worst country in the world to be shipwrecked in. I am sure to adversity who gazes on it with eyes suffused with tears, it ever shows its bright side ; though I do not deny, but that, like the pillar of fire whfch conducted the Israelites through the wilderness, it of tenturns a dark one to prosperity, who views it with a contemptuous glance. En- glishmen, therefore, see only the half of the Irish character; not the better half; and even what they see they distort, unconscious that, in degrading it, they are degrading their own, and that with folly worse than that of Noah's sons ; it is their own daughter's nakedness they have exposed to the world. On the effects of this caricature I shall say lit- tle, because it is probable time will say enough. I shall therefore dismiss the subject with one brief, yet not very cheering observation. The Romans, 15 in a time of danger, were told by the Sybilline oracle, that the republic would fall, if the Idean mother of the gods were not brought to Rome. It is not, alas ! requisite to be an oracle to foretel, that unless England seeks out and brings home wandering Irish affection, her own situation is nearly as desperate a one. CHAPTER III. Newry. I QUITTED the house of the old clergyman, mounted, he said, on his best steed. He gave me a letter of introduction to a friend who lived in the county of Armagh. It was sealed, yet I had no fear it would be a Bellerophon's letter, nor in truth was the steed I bestrode a Pegasus. He seemed more a-kin to the earth than the sky, and required a pretty tight bridle hand to keep him from falling. Great evils, however, reconcile us to lesser ones. A man escaped from shipwreck does not greatly mind a stumbling horse. I arrived in Balbriggen about ten o'clock. A fe\v moments afterwards, the Newry coach drove up to the door. There was a vacant seat, which I engaged. The company stopped to breakfast, 16 and a most excellent one we had. The price, as formerly, was twenty pence. A young English- man did not express more admiration at the good- ness of the fare, than at the reasonableness of the charge. It was a long time, he said, since he had cat so cheap a breakfast. This wise observation was made before the landlord, who, I suppose, will leave no room for a similar one. The distance from Balbriggen to Drogheda, is twelve miles, which we drove in less than two hours. The coach was heavily laden. It carried ten inside and a still greater number of outside passengers. A .coach behind us was equally loaded. It was an opposition coach, and called the " Cock of tlie North." Ours was called the " Old Cock,'* and certainly it was not a young one. The fore wheel was all shattered, nor did the body seem in a much better condition. The coach- man, however, drove never the easier for the out- side passengers vociferating these circumstances to him. The priority he had obtained he was deter- mined to maintain (to use an old Scotch phrase) " though he should die for it." A gentleman who seemed strongly impressed with the danger of this unwieldy chariot race, threatened him with a prosecution if he did not desist. This menace had no other effect than to make him drive the faster. The law in Ireland is the same as in England j but, either from greater 17 milkiness of disposition, or the dread of being ac- counted an informer, hardly any person stands forward to have it put in execution of course, coachmen in general do, like the Israelites before they had a King, " that which seems right in their own eyes." Immediately on quitting Drogheda, we turned to the right. This is the great north-eastern road. The road straight forward is the north- western, which I formerly travelled. We passed through Dunleer, a little town remarkable for the antiquity of its church, and through Castle Bel- lingham, a pretty little village, formerly celebrated for its fine ale. The brewery is thrown down, or converted into a distillery. Whiskey, like Aaron's rod, seems to swallow every other liquor. There is a fine old spreading elm near the centre of Castle Bellingham, said to be the largest in the kingdom. A few miles from Dundalk, the road runs along the beach. The sky was without a cloud. The sea was calm and unruffled, and its blue bosom reflected the image of repose. It was very different from the merciless element I had so lately witnessed. " What a beautiful day this is," I said. " And what a beautiful country ! " said a pas- senger, " had it but met with good usage." " It has met with good usage," said I. c 18 " Really !" said he, ironically. * With good and bad usage," I proceeded, "like every other country under the sun." " It has had rather a Benjamin's portion of the latter, I should think," said he. "I fearit has," saidl; "how far its own struggling, with a broken limb, may have caused this, I will not take on me to determine." " You mean, I presume," said another, " that we should have submitted to be roasted in quietness j and that when done on one side, we should have meekly desired to be turned on the other ?" "I mean," said I, "that we shouldhave submitted toinevitable necessity, and accommodated our minds to our condition. The one half of the energy, which, like the Cyclop in the Odyssey, we ex- erted in groping for the stranger who put out our independence, would, wisely directed, have long since given us respectability and happiness." " Preach that doctrine," said the gentleman who had first spoken, " to the people of England, it will go down with them ; it wont do here." "I will preach no doctrine to the people of Eng- land," said I," that I do not believe; nor will I to the people of Ireland ; and while I lament so much of evil is in their cup, I must remember that evil is in the cup of all. Our sufferings are not so much greater than those of England, as they are of later date. 19 * 4 When she was assailed by the Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, we enjoyed uninterrupted tranquillity. What has since bifhllsn us, perhaps, v.-^s inevitable. The new-fiedged eagle, which is led by its dam to her own lofty regions of glory, must expect to have its wing tired with the flight, and its eye dazzled with the splendour of the meridian sun.'* This language would have been too poetical for an English coach ; but an Irish one is different ; my sentiments -rxcltsd wonder, but their clothing ex- cited none. The native Irish are a nation of poets, and therefore, I fear, doomed to be an un- happy nation for no matter what may be its oc- casional levity, the essence of a poetic mind ever was and ever will be gloom. We changed horses at Dundalk. I stepped into Lord Roden's gardens, which join the town. I had been in them several years before. They belonged then to the late Earl of Clanbrassil his Lordship was a great botanist, and spared no labour or expense in collecting rare and exotic plants. His gardens, therefore, were among the finest in these kingdoms, and strangers came to see them from the most distant parts. The day I visited them, 1 had the honour of his Lordship's company. He was a highly-dignified gentleman. Though he was most minute in his communica- tions, he never forgot that he was a nobleman 5 c 2 20 and it might be said of him, as of Virgil, that he even tossed the dung about him with dignity. As I was then unacquainted with botany, I was ap- prehensive I should betray my ignorance, and ruin myself in his Lordship's opinion. Luckily, however, the vanity of a botanist is fully as near- sighted as that of an author; and I passed through my four hours' ordeal with as much suc- cess as the courtiers Chrisel and Zoram did that of the genius Phanor, when he insisted on their hearing him read his play in the palace of truth. The gardens at present seem almost entirely neglected. For some time after leaving Dun- dalk, we got along very happily ; but, on descending with more haste than good speed, a steep hill that overhangs the little town of Jones- borough, the calamity we had so much dreaded in the morning, took place. The wheel broke, and we were fairly overset in a ditch. The shock was violent, and for an instant I gave myself up for lost. Yet there was little injury, and in a few moments we were able to proceed on our journey- on foot. The evening was delightful, and the deep re- pose of the valley, through which we walked, afforded a sweet and soothing contrast to the rugged mountain landscape which bounded our horizon. 21 " Is'nt this better," said one of the party, "than to be smothered alive in that crazy old coach ?" " Smothered dead, I think it should be," ex- claimed the young Englishman, with a laugh. This led to a wrangling kind of argument which carried us on to Newry. I stopped at an inn, called the White Cross kept by a woman of the name of Mackintosh, called, by a barbarous contraction, Tosh. It was not the house where the coach stopped ; but the young man above- mentioned promised me, on the authority of in- formation obtained in Dublin, a good dinner and excellent accommodation. The good opinion of Mrs. Tosh's accommodation must have been ge- neral, as the house was crowded with company. The consequence of which was, that every thing was in confusion, which our impatience did not lessen. At nine at night dinner is necessary, and bells were ringing, and oaths swearing innu- merable. I suspect my guide, who probably in England was accustomed to a two o'clock dinner, began to think he had bestowed his praise too freely. Dinner, however, was at length served. The bill was six shillings, including ale, and six shillings for a bottle of wine. Wine is as much dearer as it is worse since I was last in Ireland. From the satisfaction expressed in the countenance of some gentlemen who were drinking punch, at hearing us complain of its badness, I suspect they 22 considered us as coxcombs for having ordered it ; and when I cast my eyes on the group of beggars that surrounded the windows, and consi- dered how happy the shillings thrown away on this execrable liquor would have made them, I confess I was of the same opinion. A man who travels in Ireland should, above all things, arm himself with good humour. He must reconcile himself, during the day, to man- ners more plain and familiar, than refined or con- sideratenor can he always escape from them at night. There are generally two beds in a room. I was shewn into one where there were three, and, not as a special favour, was put in a press one. I had lain down about an hour, when my two col- leagues came in whistling and singing. Whiskey sometimes makes men musical, and always makes them noisy. Those two continued conversing a long time after they had lain down. I kept quiet, though many of the speeches were directed at me. " Our friend in the press bed," at length said one of them, " is strangely silent." " At one in the morning, and in bed, silence is not so extraor- dinary," said I, perceiving that those drunken young gentlemen, like the sober old English law, were determined to press me to speak. I was awaked at an early hour by the bustle of the peo- ple preparing to go with the coaches. They were laughing, conversing, and scolding, with apparent 23 fbrgetfulness of any one being in bed near them. They '* murdered sleep" as effectually asa guilty conscience could have done. I therefore got up and walked quietly away, perfectly sensible, that in no country in the universe, is an humble pedestrian of much consideration with chambermaids or waiters. I walked about the town until the shops were opened. I then waited on a respectable mer- chant, who invited me to breakfast, and insisted on my passing a few days at his house. It is there I write this chapter, which I cannot conclude without remarking, that it would be unfair to judge the Irish character by what we see at inns. The people most frequently met with at them, are young men just escaped from control, who think noise and impudence proofs of courage, and know- ledge of life. The greatest and most valuable part of the community live at home, and are seen to most advantage in their own houses. It is there I like to see them ; and though sometimes I may have experienced slight inconveniences, rarely ever was I in an Irish private house that I did not feel myself at home. CHAFFER IV. Newry. THIS town is but indifferently situated, being almost surrounded by rocks and mountains. It owes its rise to Sir Nicholas Bagnal, knight, Mar- shal of Ireland in the reign of Edward the Sixth. It has been twice burned down, first by the rebels in 1 64 J , and afterwards by the Duke of Berwick, on his retreat to Dundalk from the English who, on their approach, found it in flames. It contains about fifteen thousand inhabitants, of whom one half I should suppose are Presbyterians. The largest half, my host (who is himself a presbyterian) said, and the best. He was driving me down a steep and narrow street in his gig, at the time he made the observation. It was Sun- day, and we were going to dine, and stay the night with a friend of his, in the neighbourhood of Dundalk. A man rode fast past us I called to him to stop lest he should do some mischief. I do not know that mine is the voice of wisdom, but certainly, it had one of the properties of it on this occasion; it " called out in the streets, and no one regarded it." Folly, however, as generally happens, 25 had but a short race. The horse fell with the poor creature a few paces further on He was hurt, but not severely. "You could expect no better" said my companion, * e for riding so fast in sermon time." " D n your sermons and long prayers," replied the other, "there's neither sense nor grace in them, I never had luck yet, where a Presbyterian was, I lay six months in the Castle of Edinburgh, and the half of the time I was in the guard-house.' * He then rode away as fast as before. A poor countryman who had come up to help him on horseback, looked after him in astonishment. " The soldiers" said he to me, "fear neither man nor Deevil poor body, he need na gallop so fast, he's sure enough o' getting to him at last." A rigid observance of Sunday has always been a feature of the presbyterian religion, and perhaps is a great reason why it has made so little progress. A very good reason I must confess I think it. People who labour six days in the week, may, I think, without a crime be merry on Sunday. I viewed, therefore, with feelings very different from those of my friend, the festive scene which the road presented, when we came near Dundalk. The fields were swarming with people, men, women, and children, running, wrestling, throwing long bullets, aud dancing. This latter was fully as 26 violent an exercise as any of the others, and con- sisted in a continued and violent agitation of the limbs and body. I could have wished it had been done in a better style, for the manners of a people may be judged of by their dancing, and what a fa- vourable impression does not the French opera dancing give of that light, airy, and elegant people. I stopped upwards of half an hour looking on, and was at length reluctantly drawn away. I was detained only by the animation of the scene, ;and its expression of happiness; for the musk was no better than the dancing. But what harmony equals, or, alas ! is so rare, as that of happy human faces ? The instrument was the bag-pipes. It has .always been a favourite of the vulgar. Pan, the meanest of the ancient deities, is often represented playing on it ; and Nero, whose taste was as vulgar as his dispositions were corrupt, (vulgar taste and corrupt dispositions, in- deed, generally go together) was no mean per- former on it. It was the music of the Irish Kerns in the time of Edward the Third, and is still the Irish festive music. They probably got it from the Scotch, but they improved upon it. It was they who took it from the mouth, and gave it its present complicated form that is, two short drones and a long one, with a chanter, all of which are filled by a pair of short bellows, inflated by a compressive motion of the arm the chanter has eight holes, beginning with the lower D in the treble the short drones sound in unison to the fundamental E, and the large drone an octave be- low it. This instrument is constructed on the chromatic system; it is therefore the only one, now that the harp is so much disused, on which the native Irish music, all of which is in that system, can be played to advantage. We arrived between three and four at the house where we were to dine. It was a large old fashi- oned one, with a spacious court in front, surround- ed by high walls. The instant I saw the owner, I knew he had been a long time in France. He was dressed in a faded purple coat, white small clothes and waistcoat, and his head was powdered still whiter than they. His accent, gestures, and manners were equally foreign, and altogether gave him the exact appearance of an ancient Frenchman. He was a Catholic, and I believe had been educat- ed for a Priest. His family consisted of his wife and three fine lively girls, his daughters. A plentiful collation was served us ; for dinner was to be at a no less fashionable hour than six. Fashionable hours may do well in cities, but they are sadly misplaced in woods and wilds. I did not however regret them on this particular occasion. 28 The young ladles when they learned my pro* fession, insisted upon carrying me with them to visit the sick it was hardly possible to have a more delightful walk, or more delightful companions they laughed, chatted, sung, and jumped over hedge and ditch with the activity of wood nymphs. We went into several poor people's houses, and to every one they met they had some- thing kind to say, or something gracious to do. A mutual sympathy unites the Catholic gentry and commonality into an intercourse as familiar and affectionate, as that of the Protestant gentry and commonality, is distant and indifferent. Our conversation was mostly in French, though unlike the father, the daughters spoke with an English accent. " You prefer French to English,'* said I, to the eldest. " Sans doute," she replied. " May I ask why ?'* I enquired. " Parceque," said she, " c'est le langage de Tamour." She had no idea of the obvious interpretation of these words. She simply meant it was the lan- guage of kindness and affection . And she had reason to say it was so while others admire the light graces of this beautiful language, to me its great charm is its overflowing tenderness. Innu- merable instances might be given. I take two at 29 random. How cold seem in our mouths the ex- pressions of father, daughter, mother, brother, compared to the sweetly affectionate ones of Mon Pere, Ma Fille, Mon Frere, Ma Mere ; and unfeel- ing would be the heart which did not vibrate in unison with the soft and dulcet sounds in the lips of a French woman of je vous aime. We had a large party of ladies and gentlemen at dinner. My friend and I were the only Pro- testants, and, I could plainly perceive there were times when we were a restraint. I therefore went soon to the drawing-room and a happy drawing-room it was, or seemed to be. The young people danced, and the old ones looked on, and beat time with their feet and fingers. I was among the ..lookers on. The gravest looking probably the only grave-looking one of them all. Like Jessica, I am never merry when I hear sweet music and sweet was the simple me- lody which was then playing. In the liveliest Irish air, as has been well remarked there is a lurking shade of melancholy faithful picture of the Irish character, of which, though the border is lightsome, the ground is gloom. One of the fair companions of my morning's walk came running up to me ; and taking me familiarly by^the arm, exclaimed, " Que vous avez 1'air triste et morne." "Vencz." continued she, endeavouring to draw jne to the dance, " venez et jouissez." " Ah quel peuple," I had heard her sister say an instant before j " rien ne les amuse, rien ne les occupe." By the peuple she meant English people. She perfectly knew that, strictly speaking, I was not one of them. But in a certain kind of general reference, Catholics often consider Irish Pro- testants and English as the same. I found she considered the English a sullen, morose, and me- lancholy people. Whether this was Catholic feeling or French education, I cannot possibly de- termine ; but I should suspect the latter. A priest, who had been detained from dinner, carne in at a late hour of the evening. The com- pany flocked round him, with more of joy than of reverence, and more of affection than of either. I approached him likewise. I love an Irish Catho- lic Priest. I regard him as the moss-grown co* lumn of a fallen edifice, which was the admiration of past ages sublime in solitude, and venerable in decay. I love him for what he is, as well as for what he was. Never should it be forgotten, that it was one of this calumniated order of men, who, when all his own subjects had de- serted him, attended the French King to his execution ; and while he was besprinkled with 31 his b-rod, exclaimed in the holy enthusiasm of religion, " Enfant de saint Louis, montez au del." The present one was a tall and elderly man- pale, thoughtful, and bent forward, " in faded splendour wan." He was the melancholy repre- sentative of the body to which he belonged. He conversed with me familiarly and frankly, though he was often obliged to stop to bestow his blessing. " Benedicte domini," said, or rather sung the sweet young women, as they came running down i c rom the dance with their hands joined, and a p A "etty reverence, composed of a bow and a curtsy. " Salus, honor, virtus quoque Sit & benedictio," repliea ' the Priest in the same tone, as he laid his hands v W tne heads of his innocent suppliants, who, ga T an d happy, & ew back to the dancing. How deli ghtful was this mixture of gaiety and re. ligion, of c ievotion and cheerfulness how suited to the fern 0e fragility is its grace, whose vola- tility is its h. ippiness, and whose attribute is its tenderness of h - art ' How delightfi '^ to o, is tbe Catholic religion- solemn in music, "'"ant in incense, splendid in grace ^ --in ornament ; the beads, the 32 scapular and cross, it may be said like the Pagan religion of old, to deify life, and to reflect only in its fair bosom the beneficent author of creation j while the gloomy spirit of Galvanism, like a stern enchantress, waves her wand over the bright landscape of the imagination, and gives in its stead the dark cavern of a ferocious tyrant. CHAPTER V. JBanbridge. I WALKED to Loughbrickland, a distance of eight miles, yesterday, before breakfast. The morning was beautiful the hedges were blooming with the flower of the hawthorn the air was loaded with fragrance I could have fancied myself in Elysium, had I not met numbers of yeomen in every direction. They were in general good looking men ; and were well and uniformly dressed. They all wore orange lilies, I now re- collected that it was the 1 2th of July ; (the 30th of June, old style,) and of consequence the anni* versary of the battle of the Boyne. I entered into conversation with a little group, who were travelling my road. They were very S3 desirous to have my opinion of the Catholic Bill, as they called it, that is expected to be brought forward next Session of Parliament. "Never mind acts of parliament, my lads/' said I, " but live peaceably with your neighbours. I warrant you your fields will look as green., and your hedges smell as sweet this time next year, whether the bill passes or not." " May be so," said one of them ; " and may be we wouldn't be long here to smell or lookat them." I made little reply to this, for I could not ex- pect that any thing I should urge would weaken even the rooted prejudices of their lives. What I did reply they heard with respect, though not with conviction. " Ah, reverend Sir," said a middle-aged man, " you speak like a good man and a great scholar; but, Lord love ye, books won't make us know life." " Tell me," said I, " why you take me for a clergyman ; " is it because I wear a black coat ?" " No," returned he, " but because you have a moderate face." The lower class of people in Ireland are great physiognomists good ones, I am bound to sup- pose, for my face has often received the above moderate compliment. It speaks favourably, however, of the manner of the Irish Protestant clergy, that a man of mild demeanour is almost always taken for one of them. D Loughbrickland consists of one broad street. It takes its name from a lake standing near it, called Loughbrickland, or the lake of speckled trouts, with which it formerly abounded, till the spawn of pikes finding a passage into the lake, multi- plied so exceedingly, that they have almost de- stroyed the whole breed. That body of English forces which were quartered in this part of the north, in the year 1 690, had their first rendezvous here under King William, who encamped within a mile of the town. Nearly at the same distance from it I turned off the great road to go to Tanderagee. I passed a number of gentlemen's seats. I was struck with their uncommon neatness. I asked a countryman if he could tell me the reason. He knew no rea- son, he said, except that the owners were not born gentlemen. Much of the landed property of this part of the country has passed from the extravagant children of idleness, to the sons of the thrifty merchants of Newry and Belfast. I find, in general, they are good landlords. I passed likewise through several villages, and a sweet little town called Acton. It was built by a Mr. Stewart, who calculated on making it a great market, which would benefit the neighbourhood, and enrich himself* Projectors in general are 35 bad logicians, and Robinson Crusoe's boat is a kind of foolscap that will fit most of them. The neighbourhood was not benefited, but he was ruined. I came in sight of Tanderagee about two o'clock. As it is ( situated on a hill, I saw it at a considerable distance. The planting of the late General Spar- row's extensive demesne, which seemed to over- shadow it, gave it a gay and picturesque appear- ance. Nor was the spectacle of the interior less riant. Only that the bright green of nature was displaced by the deep orange of party. Tande- ragee was a perfect orange grove. The doors and \vindows were decorated with garlands of the orange lily. The bosoms and heads of the women, and hats and breasts of the men, were equally adorned with this venerated flower. There were likewise a number of orange banners and colours, more remarkable for loyalty than taste or variety, for King William on horseback, as grim as a Saracen on a sign post, was painted or wrought on all of them. There was much of fancy, however, in the decoration of a lofty arch, which was thrown across the entire street. The orange was grace- fully blended with oak leaves, laurels, and roses. Bits of gilded paper, suited to the solemnity, were interwoven with the flowers. I passed, as well as I could, through the crowd assembled under this D 2 36 glittering rainbow, and proceeded to the house of an acquaintance at the upper end of the street. I had purposed spending a day with him, but he was from home. I, therefore, sat half an hour with his lady, and after having taken some refreshment, descended the hill. The people were now dancing. The music was not indiffe- rent, The tune, however, would better have suited a minuet than a country dance. It was the (once in England) popular tune of Lillybullero, better known, in this country, by the affectionate and cheering name, of the Protestant boys. I stopped an instant, a man came up and pre- sented me a nosegay of orange lilies and roses, bound together I held it in my hand, but did not put it in my hat, as he expected. " I am no party man," I said, " nor do I ever wear party colours." " Well, God bless you, Sir," he replied, " whether you do or not." Nor did the crowd, who heard both the speech and reply, appear to take the slightest offence. This was the more wonderful as I stood before them rather under inauspicious circumstances. It seems, though I was then ignorant of it, the gentleman out of whose house they had seen me come, was highly obnoxious to them. He is minister of the Presbyterian congregation a few months ago, with more liberality than prudence, 37 considering what an untractable flock he is the shepherd of, he signed his name to the Protestant petition, in favour of the Catholics. The fol- , lowing Sunday he found his meeting-house closed against him, nor is it yet opened, and probably never will be. The county of Armagh Presbyterians are the very Spadassins of Protestanism. Their unhappy disputes a few years ago with the Catholics are well known. It is, therefore unnecessary, (and I rejoice at it,) for me to touch on them here. On quitting Tanderagee, I walked a little way on the road which I came. I then seated myself on the top of a little hill, to meditate on my future route. The world was all before me where to choose and a most delightful world I had to choose from. Armagh is as much beautified by the industry, as it has been disfigured by the passions of men. I was not long in coming to a decision, for I recollected the letter the worthy clergyman had given me. I, therefore, turned off on the road, at a little way on which the gentleman to whom it was addressed resided. He was a very different person, and of a dif- ferent persuasion from what I had expected to find him. His conversation I shall not repeat, though I could wish that some of those English- men who cherish such unwarrantable prejudices against Ireland, had heard him, that they might 38 have contemplated, as in a mirror, how absurd national prejudice generally is. I made little reply for I knew I could not convince him. National prejudice, like the giant Antaeus, can only be strangled by being removed from its parent earth* CHAPTER VI. Banbridge. I DID not quit my quarters to day till two o'clock. I had proposed going immediately after breakfast, but the rain came on at that instant. I believe I consulted the sky and the weather glass ten times an hour In truth, I was impatient to get rid of my host, who, perhaps, was as im- patient to get rid of me. The day at length be- came fine, the sun shone bright, and the road soon got clear. I walked, therefore, lightly for- wards At every furlong's length, however, I met with a cross-road ; luckily the people were as plenty as the roads ; nor did I meet with a single crow-answer from one of them. I was over- taken by a young Scotchman on horseback. He had travelled a hundred miles in Scotland, and upwards of a~n hundred in Ireland, to purchase cattle, and was now returning homewards. He civilly insisted on my mounting his horse, and without giving me time to reply alighted to help me on. " It is fitter I should be walking," said he, " than you." I do not know that a good face is always a letter of recommendation I have ever found that a good coat is. I asked him what he thought of Ireland. " Its a heaven of a place," he replied, " but they're the devil of a people." I examined him as to this latter opinion, and found he had every where met with kindness and attention. He had heard it from his father, who probably had heard it from his ; and in this manner are the characters of nations and indi- viduals judged. I arrived at Banbridge about five o'clock It consists of one wide street. The streets, indeed, of almost all Irish north-country towns are wide A proof of the alterations they have undergone, and that successively ravaged, burned, and over- turned, the foundations of them as they now are, were laid in times not very remote from our own. There is but one inn in this town a very large one lately built, and fitted up at the expence of the Marquis of Downshire. His Lordship has 40 put an old follower of his own into it, and . with more liberality to him, than justice to the public, has wire-drawn the road between Banbridge and Hillsborough, from eight to ten miles. To speak more intelligibly, he has substituted English for Irish measurement. I dined at the inn, and intended afterwards to have walked to an acquaintance's house, about two miles forward on the Dromore road ; but the rain, which again came on, prevented me. I know nothing more wearisome than to be left alone at an inn. Drinking is a bad resource, and, moreover, an expensive one. I sauntered, therefore, to the market house, and entered into conversation with a genteel looking man, who was walking there. A party of yeomen, drums beating, and colours flying, passed us. They splashed through the wet to quick time, and looked as jaded and dirty as a company in a ball room, when day breaks on them. Though their looks were impaired, their loyalty was not. At sight of us their music changed to " Croppies lie down" my new acquaintance smiled I asked him the reason. He was, it seems, suspected of being a united Irishman in the year 1 798, and these loyal gentlemen took this method, lie supposed, of rebuking him for his past trans- gressions. 1 drank tea with him, and found him an intelligent man, perfectly awakened from the 41 reveries of republicanism, if he had ever in- dulged in them, though he complained heartily of the pressure of the times, and the exactions of landlords. On this latter subject I must be permitted to say a word. I am little acquainted with country matters, and therefore my opinion is not entitled to much consideration but were I to trust to my own observations, I should hesitate very much before I said the Irish northern gentry are bad landlords. I am sure I know many, very many, instances of good ones. I accompanied him afterwards to a neat little public library, where I found a respectable collec- tion of books. Nor did I find food only for the mind. The committee, of which my conductor was a member, after transacting their business, had a slight supper, and a plentiful bowl (jug I should rather say) of punch, and we did not separate until a late hour. Late as it was, I felt no inclination to sleep, but have continued writing till The dawning beam Purples the mountain and the stream. The hour is as solemn as the scene before me is an impressive one. From my little window I look upon a steep and craggy rock, doomed to everlasting barren- ness, and listen to the hoarse murmurs of the headlong torrent as it gushes from it. Scenes 42 of a similar kind are frequent in Ireland ; and, gloomy at all times, are more gloomy still, when viewed at grey morning or dun evening. To abstract the mind from the local influence of sce- nery I believe is impossible, and therefore the settled state of the Irish peasant's mind is melan- choly, though from the extraordinary sensi- bility of his nature, he kindles flame, and emits the red and glowing sparks of gaiety from the collision of society. CHAPTER VII. Daisy-bank. 1 WALKED this morning to the house just men- tioned on the Dromore road. The virtuous owner of it died about a week ago. He was Presbyterian minister of the parish, and died universally lamented, as he had lived beloved and respected. The family were in the utmost affliction. I consented without reluctance to spend the day with them ; for truly it is said, ** It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of feasting" for that is the end of all men and the living will lay it to his ' A neighbouring clergyman was of the party. He related a little occurrence which I shall men- tion here. It marks strongly the change Pres- byterians have undergone since the days of Cal- vin and Serjtetus. He was assisting, a few weeks ago, an acquain- tance in administering the sacrament. Two other clergyman were present likewise. They were at the most solemn part of the ceremony, when a stranger, genteely dressed, but with a long black beard, stalked into the meeting-house, and ad- vanced forwards with a countenance sufficiently indicative of contempt. Some confusion ensued ; but he was at length prevailed on to sit down and be silent. He remained tolerably quiet until the service was over. The clergymen and elders then, as is customary, went into the retiring room to take some refreshment. This person followed them. He eat a mouthful of bread, and drank a glass of wine. " Ther is some sense'* said he " taken in this way," but you must permit me to say, there is none in the way you have lately been taking it, as I shall endeavour to prove (pulling a bible out of his pocket) from this book." " The New Testament is wanting here," said one of the clergymen. t-*'IknowofnoNewTestament," replied the other," though I have met withabundle cf lies and nonsense that goes under that name." He was a Jew, a travelling Jew. He had come to Ireland only a few days before, led by curiosity, or a desire of making the people what they never were, nor even will be either literally or meta- phorically Jews. The clergymen listened to his arguments, and what they would deem his blasphemies, with pa- tience, and replied to them as well as they could. Neither party, as usual, could convince the other, though the Jew gave one proof of his having the worst of the argument, by his losing his temper. The clergymen making him swallow another glass of wine dismissed him with good humour. He gave them his name and address. He is a partner in a respectable mercantile bouse in the city. Bed- lam, I think, would be a fitter habitation for him. I have Amused myself the greatest part of the evening, with looking over the books in the library. They are mostly Treatises on Divinity and Reviews. A Presbyterian clergyman has not the means of procuring many books, to make himself, therefore, in any degree acquainted with what is passing in literature, he must have re- course to reviews. How imperfectly they ac- quaint him, it is almost needless to say. How necessarily imperfect perhaps for such is the particular irritability of an author's nature, that he is rarely to be trusted, nor should he scarcely ever trust himself in giving an opinion of another. On one of the shelves was a parcel of Dublin 45 newspapers, mouMy, and in some places moth- eaten ; published in the years 1 796 and ] 797* They were a series of a well-known print called the Press ; and seemed to the full as revolutionary, as some publications of the present day. I looked over a few of them, and was as much gratified with the talent they displayed, as I lamented its mis-application. For lamentably is even talent misapplied when it breaks with sacrilegious hand the sanctuary of established order, and profanes, with unhallowed touch, the holy and mystic tye, which unites the different members of a state into one great and peaceful family. For lament- ably (again let me say) is talent misapplied when it employs itself in rousing the passions of the lower classes, and in exaggerating to them the na- tural and inevitable evils of their condition which it must be well known are inherent to mortality, and common, perhaps, (putting feeling apart) nearly equally common, to all countries and governments. In every country, and under every government, a few will revel in luxury, a few will work with their minds, and the many (the happy many would they but think so) must work with their hands. And, notwithstanding all the bustle and disturbance that have been made about modes and forms of government, there is hardly any truth more incontrovertible, than that they have worked 46 in almost all countries in nearly equal security. Luckily for mankind, Providence has not trusted their happiness to statesman or speculatists. The great business of life goes on under despotic, as well as under free governments corn grows in Thrace as well as in Middlesex, and the vintager of the Rhine, or the Moselle, gathers his grapes (in ordinary times) as quietly as the man of Kent does his hops. It is not, indeed, necessary to be deeply conversant in human affairs, to know that mankind have ever suffered more in one year by their endeavours to get rid of what they were taught to consider the evils of their situa- tion, than they would have done in a century by the evils themselves. In the papers I have been looking over, the grand evil of Ireland, the root and source ot every other, is said to be her connection with England, which is, therefore, attacked in every form, serious, jocular, angry, by argument, ridi- cule, and expostulation. Whether the doctrine of separation was ever very acceptable in Dublin, when these papers were published, I do not know but I do know that it was never palatable in the north. The people here, even amidst the wildest frenzy of revolution, still clung to their ancient attachments, and while they listened with cold and reluctant ears to the advantages to be gained by a separation from England, they 47 became animated and exhilarated, when they were told, that they were not to run alone the glorious race of republicanism, but that their English and Scotch brethren were as ready as themselves. I insert the following piece of ingenious levity, to shew, how Proteus like the Press assumed all shapes, and adapted itself to all degrees of rank, and of comprehension. " Patrick 0< Blunder, to John Bull, Esq. " SQUIRE BULL, " I received your letter which did not surprize me it is of a piece with the rest of your conduct towards me ; you eat up my meat, you drink up my drink, I do my best to entertain you and your train, (and a hungry devouring set I find them.) Nothing in my house is too good for you and your's j I am almost beggared with the expense and what is the return ? You loll out your tongue, turn up your nose, and make faces at me nay, I am told, that you have been known, when I had taken an extraordinary glass of whiskey, to spit in my face, and pick my pockets. You think proper at times to call me cousin the Devil take such cozeners, (as Shakespeare saysj when you want to carry any point then it is cousin Paddy, you know, I have a sincere regard for you our interests are the same all I do is for your good your money is just as Safe 48 in my pocket as in your own all things should be in common between loving friends and then Patrick O'Blunder is an honest lad, a generous fellow, he values money no more than the dirt of his shoes, and he's always ready to fight up to liis knees in blood, for the honour of his rela- tions. " Many a fair pound of my money have you ca- joled and wheedled out of me with fine speeches, to carry on your lawsuits ; when you got your turn served, the worst word in your cheek was too good for me and Patrick O l Blunder, was a fool, and a fortune hunter a blunderer, and a bog-trotter. The meanest of your beggarly brats, when -they come to me, are more caressed and courted, than the best of my own children and feed on the fat of the land, while I and my family want a meal's meat but when I go to your place, how am I treated you encourage your very scul- lions and link-boys to twirl my hat, chalk my back, pelt me with mud, and throw potatoes in my teeth. ' " A great part of my grounds lie waste ; I can- riot* send my goods to a fair market, but must let "them rot" in my warehouses, or sell them to you at your own rate. If you want to man a fleet, or raise an army., to fight the blacks or the yellow* lever, "or" to serve under ground in the West Indies, Ogh ! its "send to Paddy Paddy 49 has idle fellows enough, his manufacturers have nothing to do ; beat up for recruits on O'Blun* der's farm, his spalpeens are only fit to be food for powder. " But what provokes me most, is your treat- ment of my sister Granua, a young woman who was a match for any prince in Christendom when a mere child you forced her to marry you, and how have you treated her you have spoiled her growth, given her disorders, that I fear will shorten her days ; you lock her up, and starve her, while you are swaggering about, bragging of your exploits in boxing and beating, and when you get a broken head for your sauciness from your neighbours, home you come ranting and vapouring, and beat and strip poor Granua in revenge. But what is worse than all, you pre- tend, like a base man as you are, that she has gone mad and that there is no other cure for her, than the actual cautery, the strait waistcoat, bleeding in the jugulars, and sending her to the salt water whether any human constitution can stand all this, 1 leave to the impartial world but we deserve this usage for our folly we thought to get good terms by flattering and coaxing you, and filling your pockets with money and that would have answered, no doubt, if you had a grain of generosity in your carcase j but, alas ! 5O only argument you mind is slilllelah, and the only Jaw you regard is club-law. " God knows how I have been involved in my circumstances, by joining you in all your law-suits your litigious temper would never allow you to be at peace with your neighbours, and rather than be without a law-suit, you brought an action against farmer Yankcy, your own tenant, because he would not bring all his grist to your mill. Well, what did you get by that, John ? it turned out that you had a bad title to the estate, and you were cast on a hearing. Oh Lord ! oh Lord ! it makes my hair stand on end to think what bills of cost you have paid and a swinging share of all has fallen on poor poor Paddy but, nabokUsh, the worst is behind, and the 'memory of what is to come will make us forget the memory of what is past you must needs quarrel, like a conceited numskull as you are, with your next door neigh- bour, Mr. Guillotine, the French dancing-master, because, forsooth, he presumed to cook his victuals his own way and so you attempted to trip up his heels and so he has taken the law of you this suit is not over you have hitherto had the worst of it still, you try to banish thought, and divert yourself with your pack of water-dogs, and your other hounds, and your duck hunts but, mark my words, it is a long lane that knows no turning the assizes are drawing nigh the trial must come on how are you prepared to see the law- yers? . " You may talk of my blunders, Mr. Bull but look at home; are you not a stupid dolt? the dupe and the cully of every quack doctor, swindling alchemist, and hungry projector? are you not per- petually the dupe of your own avarice, ambition, and rapacity ? what sums have you lavished on Mr. Von- -cither -side -, the Prussian sleight-of-hand man, for the purpose of setting up a Pkaro-bank, and playing at pushpin and teetotum, on a flirn flam promise of lining your pockets with French crowns and how did he serve you ? he shewed all his best tricks to your opponents, while your money w r ent over to frim, by barrels at a time and you were absolutely brought on the parish. How many heavy guineas have you lavished on your neighbour the German horse-rider, who un- dertook to cure you of the shaking ague, and the falling sickness, by a course of gunpowder and tincture of steel ? " Ohone, ohone ! you call me a blunderer. The greatest blunder I ever committed, was the hav- ing any thing to say to you except it was the calling myself a freeman. Ohone ! Irish freedom, is ./Egyptian bondage, honey. You talk of sending the Scotch and Welsh to flea me, and make drums of my skin, and then beat a charge upon them against French democrats E 2 but, hark in your ear, the Scots and Welsh may not be always in the same mind. The Scots have heard of a place called Tranent and the Welsh may call to mind, how Edward, one of your kings, murdered all their bards, that they might not have a song, or tune on the harp, to cheer them in their misery. You talk of sending Jews, and all the tribes of Gergashites why you have sent them already, John they have overspread the land, like locusts our public offices are full of them they sit on the treasury bench, the bench of bishops, and all our benches. The Jews, I have been told, are great dealers in old clothes they would be the cheapest for my money for we have many turn-coats in Ireland but if an host of Jews were to come amongst us, they could not use us worse than our Christian brethren nay, they might sympathize in our sufferings, recollecting something of what their own nation endured in JEgypt. At any rate, friend John, you have qualified us to fraternize with the Jewish tribes you have circumcised, and exercised us too, with a vengeance. " You advise me to call to mind past occurrences give me something to remember you by call to mind, aye, that I must, Mr. Bull you have left your marks in plenty of cuts and scars, and bumps, on my poor carcase. You bid me eat my potatoes in quiet I wish you had left me a little grain of salt to them. " Remember you, Mr. Bull ! Oh that I may never forget you. These seven hundred long years, I may say, have I been serving my appren- ticeship to you, and I have not yet learned to set up for myself. I wish to God you would either take me into partnership, or give me up my indentures, and that you would treat Granua properly, or be divorced from her. We have never known luck nor grace, since we had deal- ings with you. Mr. Bull is too great a man no fit connexion for us. Many and many an honest fellow has been ruined, and brought to a morsel of bread, by pretending to associate, and claim kindred, and keep company, with those above him. He's like a little cock-boat holding by the painter, and trying to keep close to a big ship in a storm. " I tell you what the very best thing for poor Paddy would be, to make a child's bargain with the great Mr. Bull ; let me alone, and I'll let you alone. I make a proposal, John, I make it with all the veins of my heart the time may come, when you shall be brought to agree to it let us be civil strangers for the future, and that is the way to make us good friends." CHAPTER VIII. Belfast. THE little town of Dromore appeared to me to be situated in a valley ; yet it derives its name from Druim, a back, and Mor, great ; the great back of a hill. It was about ten in the morning when I approached it. The town was in shade, as was the lower part of the green hill beyond it. The upper part was cheerly illuminated by a radiant sun, and looked most gay and verdant. Dromore is a very ancient town, and bears all the marks of its antiquity. I clambered over a parcel of pig-sties to have a look at an old castle,. of which nothing remains, but two roofless walls, and a court overrun with nettles. The cathedral is very small, it is neither in form of a cross like others, nor has it any revenues for supporting cathedral service. I was looking through one of the windows at the inside, when a woman who had observed me, came running with the key. This was disinterested civility, for she would accept of no recompence ; it was useless civility likewise, for there was nothing to see beyond the usual ornaments of a parish church. I walked afterwards to the Bishop's palace, which is about a quarter of a mile from the town. It stands on an elevated situation, and seems a very comfortable and commodious habi- 55 tation. A living bishop occupies a great deal of room, a dead one not more than a much less reverend person. Four bishops of this see are interred in the vault of the chancel. The grounds are not extensive, but prettily laid out. The hedges are filled with roses, delightful emblem of their late mild and benevolent possessor, the perfume of whose name will long shed fragrance over his sepulchre. Doctor Percy was greatly beloved in his dio- cese ; and, though an Englishman, never left his residence during the late unfortunate rebellion. In his younger days he had lived much in the learned world, and was one of the Stella? mi- nores of the literary club. In general he moved quietly in theorbit of itsgreat constellation, Doctor Johnson. Accidents, however, would sometimes occur to interrupt their harmony; of one of which an amusing account is given by Mr. Boswell. Doctor Percy was not only a namesake, but a relation of the duke of Northumberland, and, it appears, sufficiently alive to the honour. Bishops and philosophers have their full share of the weaknesses of common men I was going to add, poets, but checked myself ; they I fear have more than their share. His lordship was blind for several years before his death. Afflicting as this circumstance was to himself, it was a fortunate one for many young men, whom he took 56 into his house as readers, and afterwards brought forward in life. I had the honour of dining with him some years ago. There was a large party. Among others the tiiular bishop and and all his clergy. It was, I understand, his un- varied custom to invite them, whenever they had a meeting at Dromore. I shall never forget with what pleasure, on our going to the drawing room, he listened to a young lady singing his own beautiful song of " O Nanny wilt thou gang with me.'* The piano was not in the best tune, nor was the young lady's voice the most harmonious. But, ah ! what discord ever reach- ed a poet's ear, whose works were sung or said before him. Dromore was likewise then, and probably is still, the residence of another poet, not of an humbler name, but of an humbler rank in life Mr. Stutt, a linen merchant, better known by the name of Httfiz, who never has allowed the daz- zling corruscations of the imagination to seduce him far from the sober round of his bleach-green. The distance from Dromore to Hillsborough, is three miles. Of the latter, which is the paragon of Irish towns, it is needless to say much its fame is so universal, that my praise can neither increase nor diminish it. It stretches out in the form of an oblong square, on the top of a hill. The extensive demesne of the Marquis of Down- 57 shire is so close to the town, that the great gate opens on the market place. Lord Downshire is not very popular, if I am to credit the accounts of those I have conversed with. They say he has made a great rise in his rents, and that if he con- tinues as he has begun, the country will shortly lose that appearance of comfort, for which it is now so remarkable. It is fair, however, to men- tion, that so much was expected from him, that even moderate metit would not suffice. He is probably not a bad landlord, but the people look for a phoenix. Lord Castlereagh and he, or rather Lord Castlereagh and the Downshire family, are the Castor and Pollux of northern popularity, and when one sets the other rises. Lord Castlereagh seems at present lord of the ascendant. The service he lately rendered the people, by freeing them from the discount charged by their landlords, is, I believe, the great cause of this. Greivous, indeed, must the exaction have been to their feelings, when the removal of it reconciled them to a man whom they had a short time before so much disliked. Not disliked, it should beunderstood, for the share he had in bringing about the union, for, disap- pointed in their beloved parliamentary reform, all political questions became of little consequence to the people of this part of the north of Ireland; but on account of his having turned renegado to all those professions of patriotism he had so 58 fluently and profusely made on his entrance on public life. Lord Castlereagh has explained, as great men generally do with their promises, many of those professions away and certainly he ap- pears to have been so wary and cunning, even in extreme youth as (like his great prototype, Mr. Pitt) to leave himself a number of loop-holes to creep out at. Statesmen may think this sort of cunning necessary, and for ordinary ones in ordi- nary times perhaps it is. But it should be remem- bered, that no really great man ever was a cunning one; still less should it be forgotten, that a great man or great men only, can rescue England from the shoals and quicksands of her present perilous situation. There are two inns in Hillsborough. I stopt at the second, kept by a person of the name of M'Garry. The first, I understand, is an excellent house for those who travel in chaises ; but I never, when I can avoid it, enter with unhallowed foot the precincts of a Jirst inn. Insolence is every where disagreeable, but the insolence of inns is particularly so. I got a comfortable dinner at M'Garry 's. I asked him if he had any good beer. "As good as any in England," he replied. Shortly afterwards I asked the waiter some questions about the church. He was credibly informed, he said, that it was as handsome as an English one. It is impossible to travel in Ireland without re- 59 marking the predominance of every thing Eng- lish, and the hold that England seems to have taken of the imagination. As good, as fashion- able, as beautiful as in England, is the climax of praise ; nor, indeed, has any thing a chance to be reckoned either good, or fashionable, or beauti- ful, unless it comes from England, or has been ap- proved of there. I found the church in reality as handsome as an English one. It is built in the form of a cross, with a light and graceful spire. A spacious lawn is in front, and two rows of lofty elms. There are eight windows of stained glass, gracefully and fan- cifully, rather than solemnly done, in oblong and circular compartments. The descending sun shone on several of them, and threw on the rich pavement, long yellow and blue, and yellow and red shadows. It reminded me of the following lines of Mr. Scott : " The moon bsam kissed the holy pane, And threw on the pavement, a bloody stain." The family vault runs under the family seat, and the living Lord sits on the ashes of the dead one. The first Marquis is buried here. He was the great benefactor of Hillsborough, and the ef- fects of his munificence are still discernible in the comfort, neatness, and beauty, which distinguish this town and neighbourhood. What a pity that GO in a country where this beneficent influence of wealth and greatness is so necessary, it should be so rare, that in many parts (I do not here speak of the north) landlords should too often be known to the people only as their tax gatherers, not as their friends, benefactors, and fathers and that so- ciety should be left in a state of almost primitive barrenness, satisfied with the rough enjoyments, and necessaries of nature, with little of grace to allure, of beauty to charm, or of elegance to ad- mire. After remaining an hour in the church, I pro- ceeded on my journey though the sun was de- clining, the heat was excessive, and I walked over the Maes course as jaded as a tired racer. This is the second race-course in the kingdom, and is to the Curragh, pretty much what Epsom is to Newmarket. I stopped at Lisburn a few moments only. I had loitered so much the former part of the day, that as I was determined to reach Belfast that night, it was necessary I should now be expeditious. I shall therefore briefly remark of Lisburn, that it was once burned down, and that the present Phoenix rose from its ashes. I must not forget, likewise, to mention, that Lisburn is a kind of Irish Athens, where the purest language may be heard in the market-place. The inhabitants, I am told, assert, that their servant men and servant 61 maids, speak better English than the ladies and gentlemen of other places. This is a preference, however, that the ladies and gentleman of other places do not readily acquiesce in. The citizens of Dublin are their great rivals in pronunciation, and in many of their tones are thought by profound judges to exceed them. One point, however, on which the inhabitants of all towns are agreed is, that they speak better Eng- lish than the English themselves. It is whimsi- cal that while the Irish allow the English the lead in fashion, literature, and the arts, they should so sturdily claim it in language, for their mistakes in which they have been so much and so unjustly ridiculed. Perhaps, such is the tortuosity of the human mind, they claim it more sturdily for those reasons. The tauntings and mockeries of Tarquin did not lower, in the Sybil's estima- tion, the value of the sacred books. I was delighted with my evening's walk. I met crowds of people returning homewards, their hooks on their shoulders, and women and chil- dren by their side. They all bade me good e'en as they passed. Several were smoking. I was not sorry to see this. Men will intoxicate them- selves some way or other, and smoking is a better way than drinking. I do not think I met a single wheel-car between Lisburn and Belfast. The vehicles for the conveyance of goods were all 62 waggons and carts. Every step, indeed, 1 ad- vanced, I felt more forcibly I was in the neigh- bourhood of a great town. Had it not been for the lofty ridge of mountain on my left hand, which seemed to move along with and accompany me, I should have thought myself in the environs of London. The country was in the highest state of cultivation it looked like one continued garden, shadowed with trees, interspersed with thickets, and neat white-washed houses, smiling in beauty, scented with fragrance, thrilling wivh harmony, delightful to the eye, ear, and smell. I looked into one or two of those cottages. I saw nothing to heighten the delusion certainly, nor did I see any thing greater than might be expected, to lessen it. Wherever, or whenever we see human nature close, we see it to disadvantage. A man finds in a house food and repose ; if he wishes for enthusiasm, he must keep out cf doors. The evening shades came fast upon me in the latter part of my journey, nor could I at length distinguish more than the soft repose of the green vale by my side yet the indescribable noise, the faint hum, told me I was approaching the habitations of men. There are two great inns in Belfast. The Donegal Arms, and another kept by a person of the name of Pat Lynn. The former is the greatest, the latter was considered the best kept house. It has of late, however, lost something of 63 its reputation, without the other finding it. I should suppose, from the name (for a zealous Protestant would as soon call his son Judas as Pat) that Mr. Lynn is a Catholic. It is singular, that even in the north a large proportion of the innkeepers are Catholics, and what is more sin- gular, that Protestant travellers generally give them the preference probably, as French land- lords were[formerly preferred to English ones on account of their greater subserviency and civility. The lower classes of Catholics are not now cha- racterized by servility ; they seem rather to have passed into the opposite extreme, and give offence by what is called their rudeness and sulkiness. Protestants can never cease wondering at' this extraordinary change, which, however, is a very natural one. The man employed in bending the tough elm into a bow, need not be astonished when it flies back in his face. I stopt at a small house in Ann-street, kept by one Campbell. The people were civil, and I had a very good cold supper. It was not their fault I had not a hot one, for there was a hot joint of mutton set on the table it was, however, rather oppressive for a night in July, and I ordered it away. People in the country are seldom nice in this particular. I remember once, in another part of the north, and in much warmer weather, supping with a small party on roast beef and hot 64 apple pye, and the Convivator seemed to pride himself very much on the delicate repast he had provided for us. CHAPTER IX. Belfast. I HAVE now been a week in Belfast, which has rolled not unpleasantly away. In the morning I walk the streets, and frequent the libraries ; and in the evening I go to card parties and con- certs. I am, therefore, in some degree competent to speak of the place and people. I do it without reluctance, for I can say little of either but what is good. Belfast is a large and well-built town. The streets are broad and straight. The houses neat and comfortable, mostly built of brick. The po- pulation, in a random way, may be estimated at thirty thousand, of which probably four thousand are Catholics. These are almost entirely working people. A few years ago there was scarcely a Catholic in the place. How much Presbyterians out-number the members of the Established Church, appears from the circumstance of there being five meeting-bouses and only one church. 65 Three of these meeting-houses are in a cluster, and are neat little buildings. Neatness and trimness, indeed, rather than magnificence, are the character- istics of all the public buildings. A large mass- house, however, to the building of which, with their accustomed liberality, the inhabitants large- ly contributed, is an exception. The new college, when finished, if like the Edin- burgh college, and, for the same reason, it is not doomed to remain for ever unfinished, will, I should suppose, be another. The principal library is in one of the rooms of the linen hall. 1 spend some hours every day in it solitary hours; for the bustling inhabitants of this great commercial town have little leisure (1 do not know that they have little inclination) for reading. Round the hall there is a public walk, prettily laid out with flowers and shrubs. I meet with as few people here, as in the library. Young women appear to v/alk as little as the men read. I know not whether this is a restraint of Presbyterianism, or of education; but let the cause be what it may, it is a. very cruel one young women have few enjoyments ; it is a pity, therefore, to deprive them of so innocent a one as that of walking. I have conversed with them at parties, and generally found them rational and unassuming. To an Englishman, as may be easily conceived, the rusticity of teir accent would at 66 first be unpleasant. But his ear would soon accom- modate itself to it, and even find beauties in it- the greatest of all beauties in a female, an apparent freedom from affectation and assumption. They sel- dom played cards, nor did the elderly people seem to be particularly fond of them. Music was the favourite recreation, and many were no mean pro- ficients in it. They are probably indebted for this to Mr. Bunting, a man well known in the musical world. He has an extensive school here, and is organist to one of the meeting-houses 5 for so little fanaticism have now the Presbyterians of Belfast, that they have admitted organs into their places of worship. At no very distant period this would have been reckoned as high a profa- nation as to have erected a crucifix. I was highly gratified with Mr. Bunting's execution on the piano-forte nor was I less so with the voice of a gentleman of the name of Ross. He is, I think, one of the finest private singers I ever heard. Mr. Bunting is a large jolly-looking man; that he should fail to be so is hardly possible, for Bel- fast concerts are never mere music meetings they are always followed by a good supper, and store of wine and punch. Mr. Bunting is accused of be- ing at times capricious, and unwilling to gratify curiosity. But musicians, poets, and ladies, have ever been privileged to be so. I went to themeet- ing-house at which lie performs, to hear himon the 67 organ, but as it was only a common psalm he ac- companied, I had no opportunity of judging of his powers. I heard a very rational discourse from Doctor Drummond, minister of the congregation. The Doctor is likewise principal of an academy in the neighbourhood, and a poet. He has published a long work in verse on the Giants' Causeway, of which I know not the success. He does not ap- pear to me to have been judicious in his choice of a subject. Topography cannot be made interest- ing, even by rhyme it is like hanging a garland of roses round the neck of a skeleton. I have taken but a cursory view of his work, yet it ap- pears to me, that Doctor Drummond emits, at times,aspark of true poetry If he " straight grows cold again," it is, perhaps, in a considerable de- gree, the fault of his profession a poet, above all men, must have the imagination free a Presby- terian clergyman is fettered by customs, usages, and modes of thinking he is obliged, therefore, to curb his Pegasus, when he should rather slacken the rein. I know of no other literary man in this town or neighbourhood, except Doctor Drennan He is principally, or indeed only, known as a writer of politics, and people will judge his writings dif- ferently, according to their sentiments on this sub- ject. He is a little smart man, between fifty and F 2 68 sixty years of age. I have no acquaintance with him ; but I learn he is a valuable member of so- ciety, and an exemplary character in private life. If literary men are scarce, merchants, however, are plenty. They predominate as much in society here, as lawyers do in that of Dublin. When disengaged, I dine at an ordinary with a large party of them, mostly young men, who have no establishments of their own. They seem agreeable and good-natured, as ready (a rare thing in Ireland) to listen as to talk, and, after supper, more disposed to sing than to do either. The last evening I was there, the box which contains the records of the club was brought forward, and unlocked, in order to shew me, what was deemed an almost invaluable treasure this was a letter from a no less important person than Sir Francis Burdett, in answer to an address of theirs the whole letter was commented en in terms of high approbation ; but a paragraph, in which Ireland was termed a long-suffering and much-injured country, was repeated with admiration. The people of Ireland are so far a-kin to the people of England, that they seem never so happy as when proved to be the most wretched people under the sun. I have, I believe, on a former occasion, taken notice of the singular veneration in which Sir Francis Burdett is held in this country. 1 have 69 hardly ever been in a company in which I was not asked whether I was acquainted with him ; and had I availed myself of a traveller's privilege, and answered in the affirmative, I have little doubt but that, like a needle rubbed upon a load- stone, I should have been myself a magnet of at- traction. An ardent love of liberty is, indeed, the strong- est feature in the character of the Presbyterians of the North of Ireland. It is like the bone Luz of the Hebrews, which no accident can impair or destroy, and remains in life and in death It was the irregular expansion of this spirit which, in a great measure, caused the late unfortunate rebel- lion. As far as they were concerned, I must add, the late most unnatural rebellion. For whatever might be the conduct of government to others, to them it was ever a tender one. It is the same unperishable spirit which makes them now adhere to the party in England, I will not say the most revolutionary, but the most innovating. I must confess, though I am " native here and to the mat- ter born," it is a spirit in which I am in no degree a participator. I think mankind in general have fully as much freedom as they know how to make a good use of ; and I dislike untried and untrodden ways. Like Hardcastle in the play, I love every thing that is old old customs, old re- ligions, old constitutions, and old governments. 70 And should my head at times detect this as a delusion, my heart ever recognizes it as a legi- timate one. For what can novelty or new crea- ted greatness command of respect or veneration, compared to that which has its origin in past ages ! and I do not hesitate to declare, that I should prefer the decaying frame of ancient greatness, when viewed in the yellow light thrown on it through the stained casement of the sanctuary of the Gothic Cathedral, in which it has lain so long, to a constitution just issued from the head of the goddess of wisdom, did it even come into the world as perfect and full grown as she did herself. Of no people as of no man can every thing be praise Having thus reluctantly given the shade of the northern character, or what appear^ to me to be the shade, I turn with cheerfulness to its bright side. I know no where more sedate or virtuous men nor any men who estimate human life, perhaps, by a more rational, though not by an exalted standard high-sounding titles, greatness that rolled in its chariot were unattend- ed to and uninvited, while humble merit, or what they were pleased to consider as merit, experi- enced attention that never remitted, and kindness that never decreased. 71 CHAPTER X. Larne. I LEFT Belfast this morning at seven o'clock I was detained two or three days by the rain. I found this delay very irksome, for Belfast had lost much of its charms by losing its novelty my heart bounded, therefore, to be once more in the green fields ; and, like the madman, I thought there was nothing good but fresh air and liberty. I stopt to breakfast at a pretty house about two miles from Belfast, the property of a Mr. Simms probably the same who was confined in Fort St. George with Arthur O'Connor, and other mis- guided heads of the United Irish this house com- mands an extensive view of Carrickfergus Bay, and the opposite shore of Down. The latter ap- peared to me to be a barren mountain ; but on examining it through a telescope that stood in the parlour window, I found it was a highly fertile country. I had a glimpse likewise of the castle of Carrickfergus, with its ash-coloured walls and time-worn turrets, rising, as it were, out of the sea. I have often had occasion to mention an Irish breakfast I shall notice it again for the last time. I had to-day a most delicious one rich creara 72 and butter, cakes of various descriptions honey, too, an invaluable sweet, of which it is astonish- ing that use is not more frequently made pre- served strawberries, and, in short, every article of a Scotch breakfast, except marmalade. How pre- ferable was this innocent and pastoral meal to the (I must say) brutal custom now so prevalent in England, of bringing flesh meat to the breakfast table : a custom equally offensive and unfeeling, which mingles the effluvia of a dead animal with the odours of tea, which compels us when rising from the death of sleep, and raising our eyes to the sun and sky, to throw them on the lacerated flesh and disjointed limbs of an animal, which had sensations, and instincts, and affections, like ourselves. But waving these objections, which to many will appear absurd, there are, in my mind, many others against the use of flesh meat in the morning. It injures essentially, and almost im- mediately, the breath and teeth. The Persians are so sensible of this, that in conversing they always, as is remarked by Chardin, hold their hands to their mouths. It likewise considerably quickens the pulse, rekindling instantly the fever which sleep has extinguished, and when the frame, soft, relaxed, opening in the morning of day, as in the morning of life, demands mild iind bland food, it wears and irritates it by the strength of its stimulus. 73 The instant 1 swallowed my breakfast I pro- ceeded on my journey, and to say the truth I required a little exercise to digest it. I found the road equally beautiful with the one which led to Belfast. The neat little villas were even, if possible, more numerous, I suppose on account of the neighbourhood of the sea, the blue waves of which rolled in long succession close to where I walked a striking illustration, as has often been remarked, of the passing generations of men, which swell an instant in a wide-spreading circle, then break, and for ever disappear. About half a mile from Carrickfergus, I stepped into a house it was in a very ominous situation just opposite the gallows. It was for that reason I stopt at it. I wished to know the particulars of the conduct of an unfortunate Scotch captain of a vessel, of the name of Brown, Svho had been executed the evening before. There was one woman only at home nor could I desire a better informant than a woman, when a tale of sorrow was to be told. Before she had pro- ceeded far in her narration, several of her neigh- bours, who had likewise been spectators of the exe- cution, came in. They had not been uninterested spectators, though the unfortune sufferer was an entire stranger to them. The starting tear, the stifled sob, and tale continued by one, when another a overcome by emotion, had suddenly left 74 off, bespoke the deep interest with which they had viewed it, and did credit to their sensibility. There is no wickedness, it has been said, like that of a woman. I am sure there is "no tenderness like that of one, and sweetly did David describe the love his brother Jonathan bore him, when he said it was wonderful, passing the love of women. Carrickfergus is a very ancient town. It is disputed whether it was built by the Irish, or by the first English colonists. It is a matter of little importance; but I should suppose there was a town here before the coming of the Eng- lish. Carreg or Crag-fergus is an Irish word, and signifies a rock or stone it is not probable, therefore, an English colony, settled there by right of conquest, would give a name to any settlement of theirs in the language of the country. The castle is an interesting specimen of the early Norman architecture. As it is built on a high rock that projects into the sea, it is impos- sible to view it in a great part of its extent with- out getting into a boat. The entrance is on the northern side, between two towers, or half moons, which are joined by a curtain, on which are mounted several pieces of cannon over the gate- way is a portcullis and aperture for throwing down stones. Previous to 1 793, the castle was in a very ruinous condition, but was then 75 thoroughly repaired, and twenty-seven pieces of ordnance mounted on the batteries since which tii e it serves as the principal magazine for the northern district. There was formerly a constable of this castle, which office was con- sidered of such importance, that it was enacted that none but an Englishman by birth could hold the office. There were at that period three degrees of Englishmen in Ireland English by birth, English by blood, and English by descent, of which English by birth was superlative. These different classes mutually hated and quar- relled with each other. The only points on which they ever agreed, were to plunder and misuse the unfortunate native as much as possible ; and, when they had fooled him to the top of his bent to clamour against the excesses he was guilty of in his madness. They teazed and goaded the slumbering bull into fury, and then exclaimed, when he turned on them with his horns. Our fathers eat green fruit, and the children's teeth are set on edge. I fear the present generation is doomed to pay a heavy penalty for the trans- gressions of former ones. I took a hasty view of the church, which is repairing. I did not enter by the door, but by the wail, in which there is a great breach. The great window is of stained glass ; it represents Jesus baptized in the river Jordan by John. It did not originally belong to the church, but was brought from the private chapel of Dangan-house, County Meath, lately the seat of the Marquis Wellesley, and was presented to the parish as a gift by a gentleman of the neighbourhood. So lately as the year 1711, eight women were tried at Carrickfergus for witchcraft. The parti- cular act alleged against them was, tormenting a woman of the name of Dunbar. The circum- stances on the trial appeared as follow : The af- flicted person being in a house lately occupied by a woman, who, according to report, died by witch- craft, found an apron which had been missing some time, tied with nine knots, which knots she un- tied without the least suspicion of harm. Im- mediately after, she fell into violent fits, and cried that a knife was run through her thigh, and that she was tormented by three women, whom she minutely described. Shortly afterwards, she ac- cused five others, though unacquainted with them. Those persons were instantly sent for from diffe- rent parts of the country, and the afflicted person appeared to suffer more torture, as they approached the house. Several witnesses produced a consi- derable quantity of pins, buttons, feathers, yarn, &c.and swore, that they caught them in their hands, as they fell from the mouth of the afflicted, who vomited them. They also swore, that the clothes often slid off the bed, and that she was at 77 one time carried off the bed, and laid on the floor by an imperceptible power. In the defence of the accused, it appeared, that they were all honest industrious people that they had received the communion and generally prayed both public and private. One of the judges, in his charge to the jury, laid great stress on these circumstances, and gave it as his opinion, that such religious persons could not be guilty of so foul a crime. The other alleged, that character could not out- weigh facts, and that the jury, on the evidence adduced, should find them guilty. It is almost needless to add, that the most foolish opinion prevailed, and that they brought in their ver- dict accordingly. In the neighbourhood of the town is a large lake of fresh water, called Loughmorn, or the Great Lough. It is said to be the largest sheet of water, in the same altitude, in Ireland, being several hundred feet above the level of Carrick- fergus Bay. Its water is supposed to be formed by a large spring near its centre, as there is no ap- pearance of any near its margin. This opinion is somewhat confirmed, as a place near the centre is seldom frozen during winter. Concerning the origin of this Lough, there is the following tra- dition: That it was once a large town, where one evening an old man came into it seeking a lodg- ing, and being refused by several people, he said, 78 *' although it was a town then, it would be a lough ere morn." He instantly left the town, and retired to an adjacent hill. The people were soon alarmed by the ground sinking, and eels rising about their hearth stones, when, lo ! in an instant, the town sunk, " and like the baseless fabric of a vision, left not a wreck behind." This tradition shews how dreadful a violation of the rights of hospitality is considered in Ireland, where, be- yond any other country in the universe, a stranger is, perhaps, still a holy name. About two miles from Carrickfergus the road separates ; that to the right leads to Island Magee, as it is called, though in reality it is a peninsula. Island Magee is famous, or infamous rather, for the barbarous murder, in the year 1641, of thirty poor Catholic families, innocent and untainted with the rebellion. I had an idea of visiting it, but changed my mind. At the extreme point, in order to get there, I must have crossed an arm of the sea; I had suffered too much from this element to be willing lightly again to venture on it; besides, Pres- byterians I knew were in general predestinarians, I feared I should find them more confiding in Pro- vidence, than attentive to the condition and tackling of their boats. I passed several gentlemen's seats, and passed, and met, and was overtaken, by a number of people, who either bid me good-day, or good-e'en, 79 or stopped to ask me a few questions. Custom renders it necessary on an Irish road to say some- thing in passing \he observations made to me on the weather were endless it was hot, cold, fine weather, and threatened rain, in the course of half an hour. It was impossible, therefore, to give meditation much room. It was impossible, for another reason, the abominable custom of repair- ing the road with stones is almost universal in one part there was upwards of a mile covered in this manner. I crawled on it for some time, but at length found it intolerable it was a real penance, and I might as well, like Peter Pindar's pilgrim, have gone to my lady's house of Loretto, with peas in my shoes. I, therefore, got into the fields, and scrambled over hedge and ditch as well as I could. I incurred a heavy curse of the Jewish law, for I am sure I must have trod down the standing corn. The road near Lame is more sub- lime than beautiful it winds along the sea, and in some parts descends so abruptly, that one would suppose, like the sun, it was going to bury itself in it. I stood on one of those precipices. The sea spread itself beneath and around me with a little help of the imagination, I might have fancied my- self at the Ultima Thule, beyond which it was im- possible to travel farther. Larne is a clean but straggling town, f arrived about seven o'clock. I stopped at a quiet little 80 house, kept by a Mrs. Ritchie. I ordered dinner, and amused myself by looking out of the window till it was ready. An elderly man, on a lean horse, rode slowly up to the door. A moment afterwards the girl (girls in these small inns are almost always the waiters) came in to know if I would allow *a stranger to dine with me. I consented readily, for there are times when any company is better than a man's own thoughts. " He'el be well worth his room," said the girl, " for he's a knowing chap, and has written a printed buke" The lower classes here, like the Scotch, are brought up in an habitual reverence for literature, and to have written a printed buke is high praise; whether it is an Almanack or Paradise Lost, makes little difference. My brother traveller, from his appearance and manner, might have been author of a dictionary; he was, however, only editor of a magazine, and was then abroad collecting orders or materials. I found him a rational and intelli- gent man a politician, but a gloomy one. The absolute conviction of his mind was, that a great and awful change was at hand, and that the pre- sent system, to use his own words, could no more last seven years than it could seven hundred. "The disease of Ireland," said he, in reply to something I had said, " will admit neither of remedy nor relief. Consider her situation your- 81 self, the population is Catholic, with some com- mercial wealth ; while the property, the landed property, the improvement, the civilization, is Protestant. The Protestant has the natural par- tiality for government, which sympathy and identity of interest never fail to inspire ; but the Catholic has no such partiality ; he is * foreigner, a stranger in his quiet, perhaps, an enemy in his heated moments. Can government, then, I ask you, adopt him, and exclude the other ; for, mind, it cannot have both ; nor can you, or any man upon earth, who thinks at all, think that it can go on many years longer, if the Catholic is its enemy." From this opinion I must here, as I did to him, express my unqualified dissent. I think govern- ment may have, easily have, both ; and while it gains the Catholic, need not lose the Protestant. The Protestant gentry are every day becoming more enlightened ; and, I trust, will shortly be as distinguished for their liberality and good sense, as they have always been for their hospitality and social virtues. I shall mention another observation of my companion's, which is, at least, an original one. "The truth is," said he, "you must have a change. What we are doing now, were there no other reason, would be a sufficient one." " What are we doing ?" I asked. .82 " Drinking spirits," he replied, " when, were it put entirely out of the reach of people of mode- rate fortune, we should be drinking wine. Wine was meant by nature to be a necessary of man he may fancy substitutes, but they are only for a season, he can no more do without wine long, than he can without; water or without air." He said a great deal more of a similar nature, so that at length I became infected with his gloom ; and, instead of going to bed as I ought to have done, sat up tormenting myself with efforts to unravel the future fortunes of these kingdoms; unavailing efforts, for an impenetrable cloud rests on the destinies of nations, as well as of men. The Parcae were the children of Erebus and Nox. CHAPTER XI. Rose Hill. I BREAKFASTED the following morning with a Mr, Sullivan Sullivan is a Catholic name. The gentle- man was, probably, afraid I should take him for a Catholic for I had not swallowed my first cup of tea, until he informed me he was a Pro- testant, and a descendant of a French Hugonot. 83 How must the native Irish have been treated in their ancient land, when it is thought degradation even to be descended from them. There were no Catholics formerly in Lame, there are now several j there are a few even in Island Magee, of which their horror was so great, at no very distant period, that they shuddered to pronounce its name. In the year 1798, the United Irishmen made a smart attack on a body of regulars, stationed in the town, and were not repulsed until several lives were lost. Those who hold Protestant and Loyalist synonymous in Ireland, must exclude from the definition of Protestant the Presbyterian. The Presbyterians of the north were not much less deeply and universally engaged in the rebellion, than the Catholics of the south. I quitted Larne immediately after breakfast. I took the road to Ballymena. I had originally proposed going to Glenarn, and along the coast to the Giant's Causeway. Circumstances have oc- curred to prevent me; and probably will ever now prevent me, yet I should strongly recommend this route to every person who visits this part of Ire- land. . The coast is, I understand, highly roman* tic, the people civil and obliging, and the accom- modations not uncomfortable. I advise the tra- veller to carry with him Dr. Drummond's poem on the Causeway. The notes contain much valua- ble matter, and the prints are said to be faithfully a 2 84 executed. As a specimen (not an unfavourable specimen) of his versification, I give his account of Dunluce Castle. Dunluce Castle is the most strik- ing ruin on this coast, and is situated on a rock nearly insulated, and perforated by a cavern re- echoing to the noise of the waves. Its command- ing situation, and its numerous gables and turrets, resembling th,e ruins of a village destroyed by fire, excite an idea of its former magnificence, and a feeling of regret for its lost splendour. It is joined to the main land beneath by an isthmus of rocks, and above, by a narrow arch like a wall, to which it appears that there was formerly another wall, of similar structure, running parallel, and that when the two walls were connected by boards, a passage was formed of sufficient width for the accommoda- tion of a garrison. A room in the castle is said 'to be the favourite abode of Mave Roc, probably a Banshee, or some other fictitious personage, who sweeps it every night. " Thou too, Dunluce, proud throne of feudal state, Hast bowed beneath the withering arm of' fate; For time has been, when jirt with martial powers, High wav'd thy banners o'er thy sea-girt towers j When deep and awful rose the battle's roar, And war's artillery shook thy trembling shore. Then rude magnificence adorn'd thy boant, And valour steel'd thy lord's victorious sword 3 Then loud was heard the voice of festive glee, With dance, and song, and heaven-taught minstrelsy- 85 _ Wide to the storm now stand thy echoing halls, Time saps the base of thy basaltic walls j Jn ruin lies thy bridge's narrow pass, Sunk in the fosse, and clothed with waving grass j The sea-pink blooms upon thy turrets' height, There the lone bird of ocean sits by night; While far beneath, thy wave- washed cavern moans, As the sad spirit of the whirlwind groans, And fell Banshees, across the lonely heath. Shriek to. the blast, and pour the song of death." The following lines are, I think, poetical and just. " Sad are thy changes, time and mem'ry's tears Fall as she pauses on the wrecks of years ; While many a tint, from fancy's pallet thrown, Gives to the past a beauty not its own, And bids the muse in savage life behold Heroic virtues, and an age of gold. Thus the rough wildness of the mountain bare, By distance mellowed in the clear blue air, Presents creative thought with many a scene Of woods, and cots, fair glen, and rural green. At truth's quick glance, the vain delusions fly, And reason checks the momentary sigh. While hope ecstatic, points to happier skies, And bids new scenes of bliss and glory rise." I was told, on leaving Larne, that Ballymeoa was only sixteen miles distant long ones my informant said. I found afterwards it was more than twenty. I stepped into a cabin on the road side to enquire my way. A woman was spin- 86 ning and singing. She instantly discontinued the latter, nor could all my intreaties prevail on her to resume it. She was ashamed, she said, " a poor woman's song could be no treat to gen- tlefolks it made the wheel gang lightsome though, and it kept one from thinking." How general must be the perception of misery, when the poor, as well as the rich, have such a horror of thought. I asked her if the road before me was level there was one " wee brae," she said. I found the wee brae was a mountain of most wearisome ascent. It is called Shane's Hill, and is nearly three miles from bottom to top. I stopped several times and turned round, as well to draw breath, as to enjoy the extensive prospect which lay at my feet. In the course of a few miles walk I stopped, I dare say, upwards of twenty persons, to enquire the way. They were mostly bare-legged, not bare-footed, lads, driving horses loaded with turf drawing turf is the phrase, for language is here unconsciously me- taphorical. I am certain I did not get an uncivil, or even an indifferent, answer from one of them. True it is, they addressed me with no extraordinary respect, and the appellation, Sir, was commonly omitted. This, doubtless, in part proceeded from the plain manners of the country ; but more, I should suppose, from the circumstance of my being on foot. The gentry of Ireland generally 67 travel on horseback. The people, therefore, con- sider a gentleman and a horse a kind of winged Centaur, and can no more form an idea of the former without the latter, than Martinus Scriblerus could of an alderman without his gown and chain. I stopped at a lone public house about half way between Larne and Ballymena. The good man brought me a gill of whiskey. I asked for some bread and milk, and got bread, butter, and cream. The whiskey, however, did not go to loss, as my host kindly drank it for me. I asked him if he could inform me why the mountain I had lately laboured up, was called Shane's Hill. That he could, .he said, and instantly gave me the following narration. Little disposition as it is thought there is in the world to give, nobody refuses to give information or advice. Shane, in English, John, was*, rapparce, and lived by plundering the Scotch, for so the Pres- byterians were then, and sometimes are yet called. He drove away their cattle at times, and at other times was contented with houghing them. On one of those occasions he was closely pursued, and ran up the mountain with all his might. There was then no road, and before he got half way to the top, he (which was natural enough) was exhausted, and threw himself in despair into a whin ditch. The day instantly darkened, and 88 V a heavy storm of wind and rain came on, which hid his pursuers from his view. It hid not, however, a great battle fought near him, between the Scotch and Irish fairies. Ideas of bloodshed are so natural to man, that the chil- dren of his imagination, like his own miserable self, are engaged in constant warfare, and the poet, whose works, next to those of Shakespeare, are an honour to his country, could not describe even heaven without a battle in it. After an obstinate resistance, the Irish fairies seemed to have the worst of the fray, which was more than Shane's patriotic feelings could bear. He took up a stone, of which certainly there are plenty, and threw it at the rabble rout. At this interposition of mortal, arm, with a loud shriek, the whole pageant faded, and on the middle finger of the hand which had saved his countrymen from de- struction, Shane found a ring, on which was engraved an Irish word, of which the English is, wish twice. His first wish was a very natural one ; he wished himself in a place of safety, and in an instant he was whirled through the air as fleetly as Alarus, the Scythian, was on the arrow given him by Apollo, and seated on a high cliff on the top of the mountain. He was in safety here, for nobody would venture to follow him. His next wish, therefore, was for plenty of 89 whiskey to make himself comfortable. He got drunk, tumbled down, and was killed, It is astonishing how little novelty there is even in fiction itself. The tale of one country and generation, disfigured and altered, becomes the story of another. I in->tantly traced the above one to a fairy tale I have read in my younger days, called, if I am correct in my recollection, Perfect Love; or, the Loves of Prince Percinus and the Princess Irolita. How much Irish tradition disfigures it, may be seen by referring to the origi- nal. Shane, it is true, is a bad name to found a romance on, and a robber's adventures could never be made as interesting as the sorrows of a princess. I returned my host thanks for his long story, and offered him payment for my dinner, which by this time I had finished ; but he would accept of nothing for it. " Na, na, surr," said he, " I wunna drink a man's whiskey, and take mammon for a drap out o* the crock that wou'd na be de- cent." - About two miles from his house I came to a place where two roads meet. I sat down until some person should come up who could inform me which of them I was to take. Though seated on the ground, I had an extensive prospect ; not very fruitful in any part, and as barren as ever Churchill found Scotland in many 90 places. It consisted of reclaimed land and irreclaim able of scanty grass and barren heath but not therefore useless for while sheep grazed on the one, there was plenty of turf on the other. I continued sitting nearly an hour, without hearing a single footstep. I hardly recollect any thing more still ; the silence was even oppressive. I gradually fell into a kind of reverie. " Utrum horum," I heard from a voice behind me ; I looked round, and saw a little man in black, mounted on a horse no larger than a mule. He wore a large grizzled wig and cocked hat. They formed a ludicrous contrast to his jolly face and swollen cheeks, puffed up by good cheer, like a trumpter'Sj or Eolus when he gave the winds vent. " Am'nt I right," said he, clapping me famili- arly on the back, " hav'nt you missed your way ?" " No," I said, " it was to avoid missing it, I remained here." " And well you did," said he, " for I can in- form you, come along," taking hold of my coat, " this is the way." " It may be your way," I replied, " but you will better knotv mine when I tell you where I am going." " / can tell you," replied he ; " you are going along with me to a neighbour's house, where 91 you'll get a good dinner and plenty of whiskey into the bargain." He then informed me he was Priest of the pa- rish, and was going to a parishioner's to marry his daughter t> a neighbouring young man. He civilly pressed me to accompany him, apologizing for the freedom with which he had accosted me. I declined the offer ; but as our road happened to be for a part of the way the same, we travelled on together. His conversation was as grotesque as his appearance, and was interlarded with scraps of Latin, delivered in a nasal tone, like a French- man. He had been educated in France, and had resided there several years. I asked him how he liked it ? " C'est un pays de dieu," he replied. " And Ireland," said I, " did it not appear strange to you after quitting this Paradise ?" " Ireland is a Paradise," said he ; " I mean will be, when the bugs have left it." Who he meant by the bugs I cannot conjecture, nor did I ask him. " You Priests are to be pitied," I said, " you can go to other people's weddings, but can never go to your own.'* " We don't think of our own," he replied ; c< we keep ourselves pure and undefiled vessels of the Lord." " You would not be less pure," said I, " for 92 having good wives but I suppose you console yourselves with the wives of your neighbours." " It is so supposed," said he ; " but I believe wrongful'/ for my o\vn part, I bless God> nothing worse ever passed beiween me and my neighbour's wife than is doi.-o; at present." " Even if there sometimes had," I said, " I should forgive you your situation exposes you to temptation, 1 and, humanum est errare." " Scd non persistere," said he. "When I was a younker at college I was no saint, I warrant you ; but since then I was never once either fornicator or adulterer Coelum hoc, et conscia sidera testor." We parted at a narrow lane which led down to the house where he was going. I walked slowly forward. Had I suspected what was to follow, I should have gone quicker. I had scarcely got a quarter of a mile, when a man on horseback overtook me. lie took off his hat, and hoped I would condescend to eat a mouthful with him. I told him it was impossible, that the evening was advancing, and I should be very late in getting to Ballymena. " I can get you a bed in a neighbour's house," said he. " I am sorry I cannot ofler you one in my own it will be so crowded but if you will demean yourself so far as to make one of us, it 93 will be a great" compliment to my daughter and the bridegroom you travelled better than a mile with the Priest, and it would'nt be reckoned lucky to pass by without taking a drap to their healths." " A curse on the word," said I ; " I wish it was out of the dictionary it got me shipwrecked a short time ago, and now it is going to get me into a quarrel for your feasts, I suppose, generally end in that way." " God forbid," said the man, " there should be any fighting at my bairn's wedding ; but even if there were, I am sure you could'nt think any one would forget the respect he owes to a gen- tleman like you." I turned round, and accompanied him back to his -house. The lane which led down to it was rocky and uneven a shallow brook ran along the centre my companion made me mount his horse, least my feet should get wet. The house was mean-looking enough, but it was cheerly illu- minated by the setting sun, impatient, as a poet would say, had it been the wedding of a princess, to hide himself behind the lofty mountain beyond it. No bad emblem, it may be permitted a sober prose writer to remark, of the fugitive sun- shine of a married life. 1 dismounted from my steed with almost as much state as a Pope (I cannot immediately recollect his name) did between two 94 great Kings, for the bridegroom held the stirrup, and the priest the bridle. The latter welcomed me with the cordiality of an old acquaintance. " Salvo multum exoptate," said he, shaking me heartily by the hand. We then proceeded to the room where the company were assembled. The floor was earthen, but clean. A table was de- cently laid out for dinner. I was introduced to the bride. She was a modest-looking girl about seventeen. She was dressed in a white calico gown and ribands, and had a fan in her hand. The Priest now began the ceremony. The evening was close and the room crowded. He soon got into a violent heat, and to cool him- self, took his wig off several times, wiped his head, and replaced it. But whatever there might be uncouth in his manner, there was nothing ludicrous, either in that of the bride or her parents. The voice of nature will always find its way to the heart, and the tears which streamed down their cheeks bespoke the affection they bore each other. After the ceremony was over, the whiskey went round, and we then sat down to dinner. It was a very abundant one, not ill dressed, nor, consi- dering the condition of the people, ill served. The priest was grand carver, grand talker too, and grand laugher. I was seated at his right hand, and if I were not comfortable it was not his fault, for no person could be more attentive. The moment 95 dinner was over, the table was removed, and the company began dancing. The music was a fiddle and dulcimer. The dances were reels of three and of four when one person got tired, another in- stantly started up in his or her place, and the best dancer was he or she who held out the longest. A singular kind of pas seul was performed by a crack dancer. A door was taken off the hinges, and laid on the floor, on which he danced in his stocking- soles. He displayed considerable activity, but there was an almost total want of grace. His principal movement consisted in rapidly and alternately raising his feet as high as his waistcoat, and when he succeeded in getting his toes a little way into the pocket, there was a universal burst of applause. Every nation has a dance, as well as a song, peculiar to itself. Yet of the ancient Irish dance no mention is made by any historian. Tradition, indeed, gives us a description of the Rinceadh' Fada which, it affirms, was the dance of the ancient Irish. If it were, I regret that the use of it has passed away, as it appears to have been a very elegant one. When that unfortunate monarch, James II. landed at Kinsale, his friends, who waited his arrival on the sea shore, welcomed him with the Rinceadh' Fada, the figure and execution of which delighted him exceedingly. Three per- sons abreast, each holding the ends of a white handkerchief, first moved forward a few paces tu 96 slow music, the rest of the dancers following, two and two, a white handkerchief between each. Then the dance began. The music suddenly changing to brisk time, the dancers passed with a quick step under the handkerchiefs of the three in front, wheeled round in semicircles, formed a variety of pleasing and animating evolutions, interspersed at intervals with entre chants or cuts, united, and fell again into their original places be- hind, and paused. This it is conjectured was the dance of the Pagan Irish during their festivals on the 1st of May and the 1st of August, when fires were lighted, and sacrifices offered on the most lofty mountains in every part of the kingdom, to Bael, or the Sun. It is likewise conjectured, that the dancers were a kind of chorus, who sung as they danced, an hymn in praise of the Deity whom they were honouring. But to return to the scene of which I was so un- expectedly a spectator. The whiskey was handed frequently about, a few took it mixed with water, but the generality drank it plain. The women scarcely tasted it, nor did the Priest. His spirits, indeed, seemed of themselves sufficiently buoyant he drank plentifully of tea, however, in which I was happy to join him. The company at length got noisy and intoxicated, and I began to find my situation unpleasant not that I was apprehensive of the slightest danger ; but coarseness is oppres- 97 sive whenever it becomes familiar- vulgarity may be endured when it is modest, which drunkenness seldom is. I was, therefore, agreeably surprised, when the man of the house came and told me a gentleman wanted to speak to me at the door. It was his landlord. The poor man had run up to his house to inform him of me, and to request him to offer me a bed* The gentleman, with great civility, had come down himself, and I gladly consented to accompany him back, to the great annoyance of my friend, the Priest, who said, he should now have nobody fit to talk to. I left him singing a French song, which , in the company he was in, could not be very edifying. He had sung one or two in the course of the evening. " I must give these barbarians," whispered he to me, " something they don't understand, or they would soon lose all reverence for me." It was, probably, to excite their reverence that he wore his grizzled wig and cocked hat : and with reason. When authority threw aside its flowing robes, and thrust itself into a drab-coloured strait coat, it did itself more harm than it was aware of. 98 CHAPTER X. Rose Hill. No country I ever saw abounds more in pictu- resque situations than the North of Ireland. This fcouse is in a most delightful one. It stands on the green brow of a little hill, which overlooks the town of B , and commands an assemblage of hill and dale, of wood and water, of verdant mead and lofty mountain, the beauty of which it is impossible to describe. An extensive garden is in front, arranged in terraces. It is now in its highest perfection. Flora herself seems to preside over it, and Proserpine might come hither to gather her fairest flowers. The rose is in endless profusion, and sheds its rich fragrance on the room where I write. I love this flower ; nor would I think myself solitary in a wilderness that was blooming with the rose. The name, even, and all its combinations, are beautiful, and the soft dew of heaven becomes more beatified still when, it is called la rosee. Well might the heroine of a German drama, when with enthu- siastic rapture she recalled the voice of young and mutual love, exclaim, " Methought it was the song of the nightingale j methought it was the smell of the rose." If there were a place, indeed. 99 upon earth where care could not enter, it might be supposed to be here, and in what fairy scenes of delight does the imagination revel, when it figures to itself the happiness virtuous love might enjoy in this vvildernesss of wild pleasures and solitude of sweets. The family of my hospitable entertainer, con- sists of his wife, of whom I shall presently speak, an old bachelor, his brother, and an unmarried daughter. I do not, however, know, that he who sees in this an Arcadia would choose her for his queen. She is a sickly-looking young woman, with a remarkably pale face, and an expression of deep melancholy. The complexion, indeed, is rather the lividness of a corpse, than the paleness of a living being. To explain the 'paleness and melancholy of a female countenance, romance is always at hand, and ascribes it to love the most powerful of all the passions in a tale. But love is only one of the many sources of human misery, perhaps not the most powerful, and certainly not the most lasting slight causes often produce powerful effects, and what is little romantic, is sometimes very distressing. The young lady owes her ill health and pale face, to a cause that has injured the health and looks of thousands. When a growing girl she was inclin- ing to be fat, and had besides, what she thought, a rustic floridness of countenance. She drank, H2 100 therefore, large quantities of vinegar, and has for ever got rid both of flesh and complexion. She has likewise contracted a kind of nervous movement of her head and shoulders, which is disagreeable. If, indeed, it were permitted me to say so of people, to whom I am indebted for so much hospitality, they seem all rather originals. In proportion as we recede from the metropolis, original characters became more common. Men who live much together lose their peculiarities. Men who live apart retain them, and acquire new ones. It is impossible to live long in a retired country, surrounded by mountains and glens, and torrents, without receiving their impression on the soul, and acquiring a disregard of the common usages and objects of life. The brother assisted the Americans in their revolution, and had the rank of captain in their service. He was wounded in the head at the battle of Prince- town, and is, I understand, completely deranged whenever he drinks wine or spirits ; of both of which, like most old soldiers, heis inordinately fond. His brother, on this account, therefore, seldom goes into company, and as seldom sees any- for as Doctor Johnson has remarked, nobody in Ire- land visits where he cannot drink. Presbyterians, J have elsewhere remarked, are enthusiasts in favour of liberty they bow down reluctantly to kings, lords, or bishops, and to get rid of J01 them, particularly the two latter, as much as to bet- ter their condition, v/as probably the reason why so many of them emigrated to America. It is not wonderful, therefore, that almost universally they took part with her in her struggle for freedom, as they would consider it. Almost the entire Pennsylvania line, as it 'was called, were Irish Pres- byterians. Of the veneration which the old gen- tleman, I am speaking of, bears the country for which he bled, it is difficult to form a conception. He actually shrieked at the idea, that, in what I must deem the most unfortunate struggle about again to commence between them, the mercenary slaves of England should prove a match for the free-born sons of America. I thought he would have suffocated, nor was I relieved from my appre- hensions, until I saw the tears of affection roll down the poor man's furrowed cheeks, as in ima- gination he beheld the future greatness of his beloved adopted country. "And oh !" exclaimed he " that I may be permitted to look down a hun- dred years hence, and to see her greatness extend- ing from the rising to the setting of the sun. I warrant ye her low-minded enemies will be then as low laid." His dress bespeaks his fondness, as forcibly as his conversation. He wears upwards of two dozen of silver buttons on his single-breasted blue coat and waistcoat on each of which are en- graved some great American statesman, general, 102 or event. General Washington occupies the upper button of the coat, and Mr. Handcock, Pre- sident of Congress, the same station on the waist- coat. Should (no uncommon thing with books) the history of that memorable sera be ever worn out, we may obtain a tolerable knowledge of it from this worthy veteran's habiliments, and his silver buttons may be of as much use to the future enquirer into American affairs, as ever a series of medals was to the curious in Greek or Roman antiquity ; for, with a modest distrust of his own abilities, the artist has engraved on the exergue of each button the name or the event it commemorates. The wife I have not seen though not an ex- traordinary old woman, she is in a complete state of dotage. Dotage is more common in country parts, than in cities, for the same reason that sin- gular characters are. Bad as society often is, the agitation of it seems necessary to keep the mind from stagnation. It is not improbable, however, that the early dotage of this lady may be in a great measure owing to a very cruel disappoint- ment she experienced in her younger days and as thereby does actually hang a tale, a tale of love too and death, I shall as briefly as I can, con- sistently with being intelligible, give an account of it. Her father was a druggist in extensive business 103 in the city of Dublin. One of his shopmen was a remarkably handsome young man. This was a great recommendation to the young lady ; but was none to him. Irish druggists, as well as English ones, like exactness and attention to business ; and poor Mr. Walsh got many bitter rebukes for his want of both. When he should have been busy in the warehouse with the father, he was seated in the parlour with the daughter ; one while making love, and another while making verses. Poets are doomed to love and be unsuccessful. But this can only be when they are old and ugly ones. Daphne did not fly our young and hand- some Apollo. On the contrary, he gained com- pletely the young lady's affections. She had the courage to inform her father of it, requesting him to let her take the idol of her affections for her husband. The father heard her with as- tonishment that she should like so idle and heedless a young man was inconceivable, and who, moreover, as he informed her, was as poor as Job. Riches how paltry, how insignificant ! what are they compared to one's true love, as every young lady well knows. The father, there- fore, was obliged to resort to other arguments. " The whole earth," at length said he, in a passion, " would not tempt me to give my daughter to a Papist." The young man was no bigot, and fonder of his mistress than zealous for the Pope. 104 when apprized that his religion was the chief objection, he offered to become a Protestant. But nothing will satisfy him who is determined not to be pleased. An apostate was worse even, in the druggist's opinion, than a Papist, and be- sides, did'nt all the world know that Walsh was a Catholic name, and if he did read his recantation, would his old mother and all his maiden aunts read theirs, and go to church along with him ? A short time after this conversation, the young gentleman was dismissed from his situation, and, with a slender stock of moveables, a light purse, and a heavy heart (for to the youthful heart the first parting from what it loves is dreadful) pro- ceeded to London. He applied to several drug- gists for employment. The elegance of his ap- pearance, and gentleness of his manners, would soon have procured him it ; but some Irish idiom or phrase, some mis-pronunciation, betrayed him some unlucky word was the shibboleth on which his tongue tripped and threw him. " Take an Irishman into a laboratory, he would give the customers arsenic instead of cream of tartar, he would set the house on fire with oil of vitriol, to say nothing of the inflammation he would raise in the bosoms of wives and daugh- ters." The poor young man was beginning to despair, when an elderly gentleman, an apothecary, took 106 . pity on his disconsolate situation, and gave him employment. Mr. Walsh was in love, and was proud -proud even of the country he found so much despised or rather thought so much despised, for he was, perhaps, under a mistake on this subject ; an Irishman is not despised, in England, but rather dreaded. With an Irishman, an Englishman, by an unfortunate association, con- nects the idea of a dissipated, unmanageable, and turbulent being but when this idea is broken in upon, there is no person with whom he associ- ates more freely and kindly. Yet still the Irish- man labours under great disadvantages. The Englishman is presumed deserving when he is almost unknown. The Irishman is presumed un- deserving until the reverse is proved (it must be very fully proved) by his own good conduct. It is not wonderful, therefore, that teazed and ha- rassed, he often breaks forth into impatience and violence, and that, rejected by respectable society, he is often to be found in low and worthless com- pany. Mr. Walsh was not such a one. He was in love, as I said before, and formed no degrading connection. Where love is, no grovelling passion can exist. Swine was never the offering on the altar of Venus. He wished likewise to redeem the cha- racter of his country, wounded in its represen- tative. He gave universal satisfaction, therefore, to the customers, old as weil as young, to the el- 106 derly lady who came to order her box of asa- foetida pills to mend her health, as well as to the younger one who bought elder-flower water to mend her complexion. Many a servant maid came to the shop to purchase salt of tartar to take out stains, in order to have a look at the handsome Irishman. His employer was delighted with him, and treated him more as a friend and companion than a shopman. " I know not what to say of that young man," said he one day after he had been about a year with him, to his daughter " but I think, I love him as if he were my own son he is so like in person and manner as well as name my poor dead Edward, I could almost imagine it was your brother." The young lady blushed. It seemed as if she could also love him, though not perhaps as a brother. A few days afterwards the old gentleman called Mr. Walsh into the parlour and offered him his daughter (she was an only one) and a share of the business. " I am poor," said he. " You are rich," said the other, " for you have industry and integrity at your age I had only those, and now have wealth beyond my wishes." "I am a Catholic," said the young man, "but " " That makes no difference," interrupted the liberal-minded old one, " I have no objection to 107 the religion of a virtuous man. I prefer my own, because I think it has a greater chance of making a man so." a I was going to say/' resumed Mr. Walsh, " that I am not a bigotted Catholic, and as I offered to renounce the persuasion I was brought up in, for the sake of the daughter of another employer, I should certainly not hesitate to do the same for your's. Religion,, therefore, would be no obstacle were there not another insur- mountable one." " You refuse my offer then," said the other, in a sorrowful tone. " M/ benefactor," said the young man, squeez- ing his hand, while the tears started to his eyes " but it would be an ill return to your kindness, to give your daughter my hand, while another has my heart." He then gave him an account of his former attachment j and the old man listened to the tale, which overthrew the darling scheme of his heart, with an emotion which filled Mr. Walsh's heart with unfeigned sorrow. Shortly afterwards he was called again into the parlour. " After what has passed," said the old gentleman to him, with a friendly but sorrowful smile, " we cannot live together. But I must not turn you out of my house without giving you one of your own. It is in Dublin, to be sure, when 108 I had hoped it would have been in London but act well your part as you have hitherto done, and the stage is of little consequence.'* So saying,he put two letters into his hand and left him alone. The first was a copy, it was dated London, and was addressed to T L , Esq. G Street, Dublin. The signature was the worthy apothecary's. It contained a succinct account of the late transaction in his family. " The young man," continued he, " to whom I would have en- trusted my child's happiness, I must ever regard as a son as such I solicit for him your daugh- ter's hand in marriage, and have this day lodged the sum of three thousand pounds in his name, and for his sole use." The answer of the Dublin druggist is so cha- racteristic, that I insert it without abbreviation or alteration. " SIR, " Dublin, May 19, 1766. " I received your letter of the 1 2th instant, with what feelings of astonishment you will not con- ceive, for goodness is natural to you. I have heard of you as a man of integrity. I know you as a man of exalted benevolence. I am glad I know you it will serve to keep me in good hu- mour with the world, the worthless ness of which has often disgusted me. " I will give my daughter to your son I give her to him for her own sake ; for the man whom 109 you so strongly recommend must be an extraor- dinary one. I must take shame to myself for my own want of discernment which did not find it out. I have only to regret, that my daughter's happiness should be obtained by the failure of a plan of your's. " I will not take the fortune you mention. The virtue 1 cannot emulate I will endeavour to imitate ; and it would be a shame to break on a fund which will be ever, I am sure, sacred to dis- tress. The young man will thank me for this if he did not, he would be unworthy of a friend such as you. You are doubtless aware he is a Catholic ; in giving my child to one of that com- munion, I shall have much obloquy, censure, and animadversion to encounter. I am prepared to encounter them. I am now regardless of the world's good opinion ; but I would act in a manner to merit my own. He must, therefore, not only fas he once proposed to me) conform to the established religion, but he must read his recantation of the errors of the Church of Rome, before the Bishop of London, if he prefers doing it in England to Ireland. You will, I trust, have the goodness to be present ; and I further beg of you, to make him pledge himself before you, that he does it without either equivocation or mental reservation ; and that, after I am gone, he will not attempt to shake my daughter's faith, or that no of any children she may happen to have to him. If he engages this to you, I shall be satisfied. " I am gouty, and pay, at scarcely fifty years of age, the penalty, as it is fit I should, of the claret I drank in my early days. I cannot, therefore, go to London. You are an Englishman, and have led, I have no doubt, a life of temperance and sobriety. Perhaps you will have the goodness to accompany your young friend hither. Ireland would be a novelty to you, and I would think my house hallowed to have you even one night under its roof." To comment on the feelings with which Mr. Walsh read those letters, would be needless. By the warmth of his intreaties, he prevailed on hig benefactor to accompany him to Ireland. As the vessel was entering Dublin Bay, they were stand- ing on the deck to view a scene so much admired, a sailor was swinging round a bar of iron, un- conscious that they were at his back. It would have struck the good apothecary on the head, but Mr. Walsh rushed forward like lightning, and re- ceived the blow on his own. He fell stunned and senseless on the deck a quantity of blood poured from his mouth and ears he soon, however, re- covered ; and, on the vessel's getting into port, was able to go with his aged friend in a coach to a hotel in Dame-street. The following day he seemed perfectly reco- Ill vered, waited on his mistress, and was received by her with rapture, and by her father with the ut- most kindness. The pleasure, however, the latter took in his society, and in that of his benefactor, did not in the least diminish his attention to the important article of religion. Mr. Walsh read his recantation of the errors of the Church of Rome in the Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, and probably became as sincere a Protestant as King Henry the Fourth of France did a Catholic. As his friend was impatient to return to Lon- don, the marriage ceremony was hastened, in order that he should be present at it. It was per- forming in the parlour of Mr. L 's house - f several of his friends were present. 'As to the bridegroom's relations, for they had ceased to be his friends, none of them would sanction so vile and wicked a union with their presence -not even his mother, though she was almost living on charity^ and the marriage held forth to her the prospect of a comfortable maintenance. The clergyman was at a most solemn part of the cere- mony ; he was repeating these word " O Eternal God, Creator and Preserver of all mankind, giver of all spiritual grace, the author of everlasting life, send thy blessing upon these thy servants" when, all at once, the bridegroom, giving a wild shriek, fell on the floor. " Such another pang !" exclaimed he, " and I cannot survive it." 112 One of the company \vas raising him in his arms, when he uttered another shriek, fainter than the former, and fell dead on the fire-place. It was an old-fashioned one, covered with tiles, on which were painted scriptural stories. A ser- vant, who alone on this melancholy occasion had power to raise him, offered to swear, that his head rested on the tile on which was painted Christ on the cross. Superstition caught eagerly at the cir- cumstance, and confirmed itself in its opinion, that his death was a judgment from heaven. The surgeons opened the skull, and found a quantity of extravasated blood on the brain. They there- fore pronounced the blow he received on ship- board to be the cause of his death. Superstition hearkened, but did not heed ; for when did ever superstition heed, when reason spoke ? The youthful martyr of gratitude was still considered the victim of an avenging and offended God for men attribute to their God the hateful and pitiful passions of themselves. The sorrow of the venerable apothecary, who was the innocent cause of this unfortunate ca- tastrophe was excessive, and caused him a long and severe attack of illness. That of the young lady, whose bridal bower was so soon shadowed by mournful cypress, was equally violent, but not so lasting. She renounced the world in a pa- roxysm of passion ; but after a season was wooed 113 back to it again. It is not a single disappointment that can wean the youthful heart from a world it imagines so sweet. After a decent time given to mourning had elapsed, she married her present husband, and if she lost romance, met with happi- ness. To her daughter, who dwelt on each minute circumstance with the fondness with which youth ever tells a tale of love, I am indebted for this narrative. If there be any thing in my manner of relating it, or of mentioning herself, to give her pain, I heartily pray her excuse. Could I have told it in her own words, it would have been, better worth the hearing. Love seems to a young lady almost the only object of concern, and while she is ever eloquent on it, by a happy delusion of nature, notwithstanding the disap- pointment of others, she ever expects to find it, what neither it nor life ever was, nor ever will be, to any human being a rose without a thorn. CHAPTER XIII. C Vale. I DESCENDED yesterday from the lofty hill where my head touched the clouds, to mingle with the 114 inhabitants of the lower world. I traversed the little town of B . It was market day. There was little in the costume of the country people that was remarkable the men were warmly and comfortably clad the better class of them wore English cloths. Vanity is more pow- erful than patriotism, and all attempts to sub- stitute Irish for English cloths have hitherto been unsuccessful. The women were pretty generally dressed in a modern style flaunting and tawdry looking, perhaps; but women in white and muslin dresses always appear so in wet weather thera had been a good deal of rain, of course the streets, where there was so great a concourse of people, were miserably dirty. Much more rain falls in Ireland than in England, which is one reason why Englishmen find towns here more cheerless and uncomfortable ; for nothing gives an aspect of greater dreariness to a place than constant rain. I pressed through the crowd as well as I could though with all the expedition 1 could use, it was a tedious business. A market day is a kind of rustic conversatione, and the streets were crowded with little groups conversing. They seemed quite regardless of the carts, carriages, and horsemen that were passing. They took no heed about being run over, it was our business to take fceed not to run over them. This shews, how- 115 ever, that the people are of considerable account. In France, before the revolution, the populace turned aside from a carriage, it never turned aside from them. On getting clear of the town, I took the Ballymena road. (I was mounted on a horse of my late hospitable entertainer he would force on me likewise a letter of introduction to a friend, who lived a little way beyond Ballymena.) It was the great road. Great roads, like sea-ports, are pretty much the same all the world over. They are noisy, crowded, troublesome, and dis- agreeable. I dislike them, as I do every place where a number of people intent upon gain are brought together. The selfishness of man is bad, even in its solitary and insulated state ; how much more odious does it become when encouraged by society, and quickened by rivalship and example. The new method of repairing great roads, which I have mentioned in a former chapter, is another reason of my disliking them. It gives one art instead of nature. I look for grass and I find a stone. I have found, I am persuaded, more pleasurable sensation in a solitary ramble through a lonely glen or sequestered valley, than I should have done in the whole road from Rome tt> Brun- dusium, had I even had Horace for a com- panion. I met as I went along immense droves of oxen i 2 and swine going to be slaughtered for exportation. All animals feel the effects of the vices of man He fights in Portugal; and, therefore, cattle must be killed in -Ireland. The lamb goes to slaughter and opens not its mouth the pigs did not go so quietly they made such a noise, squeaking and running about, that they were near overturning my horse. " The devil has got into the pigs, I think I" said a man, who came up and extricated me from the swinish multitude. " It isn't the first time," said I " as doubtless you must know, if you ever read the Testament.'* " I never did read it," said he. " Of course then you are not a Presbyterian," I said. " No ; I thank God," replied he, " I don't belong to the black-hearted breed." " Why do you call them black-hearted ?" I asked. " Why, why," said he, somewhat puzzled : " because I always heard them called so." " Well, but your reason ?" I said, u I should expect from so judicious a person as you appear to be, a fair reason for so foul a charge." " Why then, if you must have it," said he, " didn't they sell Hie pass upon us at BalHna- hiach, and didn't they do worse still didn't 117 they give up their good king for silver, and a ship load of meat to the murdering English ?" His meaning in this latter part is obvious. He alluded to the surrender of Charles the First, by the Scotch to the parliamentary commissioners ; a transaction over which time has not yet thrown, and probably never will throw, a shade of obli- vion. Many, doubtless, admire the ambition which beheaded a king, all despise the avarice which sold him. I do not understand the precise import of the phrase selling the pass ; but, I pre- sume, it implies abandoning, deserting, be- traying. The feeling which dictated the expres- sion, is common, perhaps universal, among the Catholics. They accuse the Presbyterians of leading them into the rebellion, and when they had got them fairly engaged in, it, leaving them to shift for themselves. .Tor a certain degree, I believe, this is true. The Presbyterians gave the solidity, combination, and method, to the united system, which ^ induced so many Catholics to embark their lives and fortunes in it. The two sects entered into it in nearly equal numbers, and were apparently grouped together for one common object ; but in reality, their objects were as different as their manners, characters, and religions. The Presbyterians were enthusiasts in the cause of Parliamentary reform. They were the same people who, a few years before, under the ever 118 memorable appellation of Irish volunteers, had freed Ireland, from what they conceived the ty- ranny and oppression oFEngland, and among other invaluable blessings had gained the rare one of an independent parliament. This independent par- liament, however, not answering expectation, and not being sufficiently dependent on themselves, they had, towards the conclusion of the American war, engaged in a number of wild speculations on governments and constitutions, and given im- portance to modes and forms in governments and constitutions, which modes and forms never de- served. By the activity of government influ- encing Parliament, seducing some of the volun- teer leaders, frightening others by displaying to them the evils of anarchy every where, and the particular evils of anarchy in Ireland, the spirit of innovation appeared to be laid. It was smothered, however, not extinguished; it was covered, not en- tirely concealed ; and by its concentration in the middle classes gained fresh strength. It broke out afresh, therefore, a few years afterwards. About the same time was reared in France that fatal Columna Bellica, from which was thrown the burning spear, which has caused such conflagration on earth. The spirit of Ulster innovation be- came sublimated, and blazed with borrowed vio- lence. The sober Presbyterian drew infection from the boiling cauldron of French atheism, and while the livid fires gleamed on his visage, he could hardly be. distinguished from the blood-stained de- mons, who, with shouts and yells, in uncouth and unseemly garb, were dancing round it. He asso- ciated, he united, he armed himself, with gun, and pike, and lance, and appeared resolute to rush on the government he had once so much loved and cherished, and which, whatever might be its faults to Catholics, had always loved and cherished him. But he appeared only. Government did not know him the Catholic did not know him- perhaps he did not know himself. As long as it was uniting, and writing, and speaking, he took the lead ; but when the rubicon was to be passed, when the final decision was to be taken, when the fatal sword was to be unsheathed then his moral sense resumed its influence, then the voice of con- science was hearkened to, then his feelings and his prejudices, which were slumbering only, awoke. And when he heard of the rebellion in the South, of its butcheries and murders, its plunderings and burnings, its horrors and devastations, he shrunk dismayed from his colleagues, and, sick of politics, sick of innovation and change, wisely reflecting, that as evil is the nature, so it must be ever the portion of man, that every where there must be misery, and that cruelty is the greatest of all misery, he laid down his unnatural weapon, the pike, resumed his natural implement, the shuttle. 120 and returned to his allegiance to government, to which, I trust, it will ever be his inclination, as it is his duty, even when he disapproves of parts of its conduct, to cling. The Catholic now hates him as as a renegado, and has no confidence in him. I stopped at Ballymena a few minutes ; but saw nothing in it different from other northern country towns. It was, a day or two, in the possession of the rebels, in the year 17QB ; but received no ma- terial injury. I quitted it a little after two o'clock. I arrived at the gentleman's house, where I was to leave my horse, about five in the evening. I presented my letter, and met with a most friendly reception. I expected that dinner would have been over. -I was disappointed. I found a large party in the drawing-room waiting to be summoned to it. Every one was in his best attire, except my- self; I felt awkward, for I was not of consequence enough to be singular. The silence was to the full as solemn as that which precedes an English dinner, and it seemed tome, that people held their tongues only to make more use of their eyes. Dinner, however, was luckily announced, and every minor consideration was absorbed in the more important one of eating. The dinner was abundant, and excellent in its way ; but not, I I must own, in the way that 1 like. The second class of Irish gentry still retain the ancient mode of eating their food. They have little else than 121 plain dishes, as they are termed that is, great joints of meat, ribs and sirloins, shoulders and legs, which retaining their ancient forms, instantly re- mind us of the animal to which they belonged. This, I think, must be ever painful in proportion as men cease to be savages. The French shrink so much from such coarseness, that by various altera- tions, they endeavour to conceal the nature of the food, and to weaken, as much as possible, in the imagination, the idea of a living animal. In the same manner they eat their meat very much done, that they may not be shocked, if on raising their heads they see, as in a mirror, in the blood-stained mouths of their opposite neighbours, what a carnivorous animal man is. In this country, as is too frequently the case in England, meat is gene- rally eaten rare, and a leg of mutton I saw last night, seemed rather fitted to be torn by the teeth of mastiffs, than separated by the knives of men. The ladies retired immediately after dinner. Fo- reigners ridicule this custom as a very barbarous one. I am sure both in England and Ireland, it is a very rational one. The air of a dining-room conta- minated by the frouzy steam of twenty great reeking dishes, is as unwholesome as it -must be disagreeable to organs of the slightest delicacy. Vases of preserved rose leaves, are common in dres- sing-rooms, I am sure they would be more nces- 122 sary in dining-rooms, and it has often occurred to me as strange, that in addition to this simple ar- rangement, which is in the reach of every person, by some such contrivance as is practised in the East, a gentle shower of rose or other scented water is not made to descend on the tables of the great, whenever there is a large party assembled to dinner. The conversation the moment the ladies with- drew, turned on the never to be exhausted sub- lect of politics ; and the claims of the Catholics underwent, I will not say a very learned, but a very animated discussion. The majority were decidedly in their favour. Some (many I should hope) from a sense of justice, others, no doubt, from a feeling of irresistible necessity. An over- whelming sense of the power which the state of the universe gives the Catholics is now, I should suppose, becoming general with thinking and en- lightened Protestants. Happy would it have been had it sooner become general, and not been con- fined to Ireland, but have been extended to Eng- land, where, by a lamentable infatuation, the pub- fcc ear has been closed to this most important sub- ject ; and where poor wren-like human intellect will hardly believe, that the tempest shakes the forest, because it has not yet reached the twig on which it is perched. 123 CHAPTER XIV. C Vale. I HAVE been induced to stay several days at this house. It stands in a kind of wild glen, with a large hill in front, and a little lake behind. It has been blowing and raining ever since my arrival, and there is as much storm without as there is quietness within. I have, therefore, amused my- self in the morning with reading in the gentle- man's library, and in the evening, with drinking his whiskey and listening to his stories. The library is no bad likeness of the northern character. It contains much that is solid and useful, little that is brilliant or glaring. The under shelf is occupied by the ponderous volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Treatises on Agriculture and Bleaching, (the gentleman is a bleacher) Anderson on Commerce, Smith's Wealth of Nations, are next in orckr. L'he ork$ of fiction are few, but all of a description that may be reckoned classical. Clarissa H.ulo\v , Sir Charles Grandison, Don Qui.-ita ,, Tom Jcs s, Roderick Random, and Zelucco, make up the whole numb, . T'. e gtntl ; it is not of use to others. Young H , unknown to his father (who, though 135 lie indulged in speculative, would have shrunk from practical, rebellion) had assisted at several meetings of the United Irishmen, and was even appointed leader of one of those innumerable corps, which, when rebellion struck the ground with its brazen hoof, were to burst forth, ready armed and caparisoned, from the earth, and bear down all opposition before them. This dangerous elevation he descended from, and gave up all connexion with the united brethren, to the utter astonishment of his worthy associates. They denounced woe against him for putting his hand to the plough, and then turning back (in the North, rebels as well as others, quote the scrip- tures) they treated with sovereign contempt his promise to his dead father, when their mother, the Green Erin, with her white bosom bare to the wind, wept over her faded shamrocks, and called on all her sons for assistance. The green shamrock, however, was no longer to him the furies' torch, and he continued immoveable in his resolutions. The impressions made on his mind by the above melancholy scene, was the immediate cause ; yet there was another remote one, scarcely less powerful. But, before I proceed to men- tion it, I must stop to remark, that in Ireland, as in every country where the prints of nature retain any thing of their primitive freshness, great attention is paid to the last words of a dying 136 man, and something prophetic is annexed to them. Should this opinion be thought weak or superstitious, I should be sorry, for I must con- fess it is, in some degree, my own, as it was of a celebrated poet of the seventeenth century, whose lines on the subject 1 cannot forbear transcribing. " The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er, So calm are we when passions are no more ; For then we know how vain it were to boast Of fleeting things so certain to be lost j Clouds of affection from our younger eyes, Conceal that emptiness which age descries ; The soul's dark cottage batter' d and decay 'd, JjCts in new right through chinks that time has made j Stronger by weakness, wiser men become, As they draw near to their eternal home ; Leaving the old. both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new." CHAPTER XVI. RESPECTABLE society in the North of Ireland is divided into two great classes. The gentry, who live on their estates, and are mostly descendants of the English, and Protestants strictly so called, and the great linen buyers and bleachers, who are al- most entirely of Scotch descent, and Presbyterians. 137 Between these two little intercourse ever sub- sisted, and at the period I am writing of, no inter- course subsisted whatsoever. The jealousy with which, in all countries, ancient greatness views newly-acquired wealth, was probably the cause of the first difference of opinion on political sub- jects was certainly the cause of the second. The loyalty of the Irish gentry was of the most exalted kind, and resembled rather the romantic feeling which predominated in other times, than that which is supposed to be operative on the minds of men at present. The enthusiasm of the Presbyterians never was loyalty, it was now re- publicanism. The immediate neighbours of Mr. H were of the former class : after what I have already mentioned, I need not say, that he was of the latter. Of course young H was little in the society of men. This was no great misfortune, for swearing, betting, (challenging I think is the phrase), cock-fighting, and hard drinking, could excite no other feeling than that of disgust in a young and ingenuous mind but to a passionate admirer of the female sex, and an enthusiast in favour of every thing that was beau- tiful, it was not a slight misfortune to be mocked with the sight of loveliness which he durst not ad- dress, or scarcely even approach. In his rambles through the romantic glens, in which this neigh- bourhood abounds, he sometimes met an elegant 138 young woman, who took strong hold of his ima- gination, and whom he soon persuaded himself he loved. She was the daughter of a clergyman, who lived at a short distance, and who was a High Churchman, in a degree that would have satisfied Archbishop Laud (had he been alive) himself. Her youthful admirer, therefore, never ventured to address her he thought she would be as inexorable to a Presbyterian's suit as he knew her father would be. In 'uiis he shewed more mo- s desty than knowledge of female nature when a young man happens to be handsome and amiable, a young lady, different from an old clergyman, seldom enquires after his theological opinions. He contented himself, therefore, with throwing himself frequently in her way, taking a glance under her bonnet as she passed, and singing her praises to the fawns of the glen. Fawns and satyrs are not a part of Irish mythology, though it was to one of the latter, he was at length indebted for an acquaintance with the young lady. He saw her one evening enter her favourite glen. He instantly followed her. He was resolved on this occasion to take courage and speak, and even composed an extempore address on the occasion. He was, however, saved the trouble of delivering it. A female scream issued from the glen. A female scream is a sound of woe, even to the coldest heart ; what was it, therefore, to a 139 lover's? He started forward, and found the young lady struggling in the arms of some in- toxicated person, who probably availed himself of the loneliness of the place, to force from her a kiss, or some such favour. There is no country, I believe, in the universe, in which the extre- mity of insult is less frequently offered to a female than in Ireland. At the sight of succour, the drunkard had sense enough to let go his hold, and run away. Mr. H did not follow him he found at his side a fairer object, and when he gazed on her face, streaming with gratitude, and listened to the sound of her voice, which trembled in sweet agitation from the danger she had under- gone, he felt little disposition to be angry, even with the cause ; but rather blessed his stars which procured him so favourable an introduction. He conducted the young lady homewards. A lover could not desire a better place to conduct a mistress in, than an Irish glen a silver brook ge- nerally runs through it, which is here and there a rude torrent, which dashes against rough rocks, rude stumps, and fallen branches of trees the banks are covered with the wide-spreading bram- ble and long-matted grass, interwoven together. The lark sings the sweet song of love above, and the fair object of admiration, viewed in the sun- struck stream, as in a broken mirror, dances in a thousand airy and indistinct shapes beneath htiw 140 many times, therefore, must he stop to look, to admire, to take up, to let down, to carry for- wards ? A novellist would expatiate on the con- versation of the present happy pair. I do not write a novel ; and shall, therefore, pass it over in silence. It is not impossible, however, but that the unpremeditated speeches of Mr. H were as successful as his studied address would have been. On their arrival at the young lady's house, she insisted on his stepping in to receive her father's thanks for the service he had rendered her. The old gentleman received him with great courtesy and politeness. He gave him an invitation to dinner, and desired frequently to see him. The young man was now, as he thought, at the summit of happiness he read to, conversed and walked with, his fair mistress, and soon inspired her with a mutual passion. The summit of hap- piness, however, is a height which no mortal ever reached, and in the moment even of joy there was sadness he clearly foresaw that the prejudices of both their parents would oppose insuperable obstacles to their union. Youth, how- ever, never cherishes gloomy forebodings, though it sometimes receives them in Mr. H 's breast hope would springup even from the depths of despair. These were eventful and wonderful times, and who could tell but that Providence, 141 ;< who scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts, who puts down the mighty from their v seats," would exalt him, though of low degree. Indistinct and unacknowledged ideas of a similar nature float in most young men's minds, and are the great cause why they are ever foremost in revolutions. Reformers talk of the community ; but, like all other men, they think mostly (some of them only) of themselves. These reveries, however, Mr. H was careful to conceal from his mistress for she was taught to love God and honour the King, and would have shrunk in nearly equal horror from the breach of either of these duties. He even strove to persuade her that he was not a repub- lican. He succeeded with her, for as man can dissemble to the object he loves ; or, rather, he is in her presence a different being, on whom her likings and dislikings, her feelings and affections, are impressed and he may be said, without much exaggeration, to be indued with a new and etherial existence, floating in the cerulean dew of her creation. He did not succeed with her father, for he did not love him he despised him rather, as an Aristocrat, and almost thought it a duty, notwithstanding the relation he bore his mistress, to hate him as an enemy to the rights of man for such was the jargon spoken in those days. 142 The prejudices of the t\vo, indeed, were diame- trically opposite, and hardly did they ever meet that they did not come in collision a casual ex- pression, a random word, a loose observation, a letter or newspaper received, was the apple of discord thrown up, which set them a quarrelling. Mr. H , when he became cool, made many bitter reflections on his want of prudence, and received many bitter rebukes from his mistress for his failure in his engagements. They had agreed that by all possible means he should endea- vour to gain the old man's affections small hopes as this afforded of his ever consenting to their marriage, for could the young man even have won his heart, his prejudices were invincible. One unfortunate morning (then he thought it a fortunate one) he walked over and was invited to stay dinner. His young mistress congratulated him on the kindness with which he was received. ** Beware of politics," said she, " and come as soon as possible to the drawing room after dinner." As she was leaving the dining-room she trod on his foot, and by an expressive look reminded him of her injunction. By another he promised obedi- ence, and firmly did he intend to keep his engage- ment. But oh, vain boast ! who can controul his fate, his planet was unpropitious. AS far of dark augury broke upon him ; in literal language, the London newspaper of that name was handed into 143 the room, as the young lady quitted it, and the curate of the parish (for the rector had weak eyes and could not read, and he would n?t trust the young democrat) was appointed reader. The paper contained much that was calculated to excite disunion. There was little news, and much conjecture, as is common j and anticipated, as is likewise common in every pause of news, the de- structic>n of the French, and the overthrow of Buonaparte. This was in the latter end of the year 1796, when that extraordinary man had begun to attract universal attention. He is now execrated by all republicans as the Caesar who has destroyed liberty, he was then hailed as the Mes- siah who was to extend its blessings to the remo- test corners of the earth. He was in a particular manner the idol of all descriptions of United Irishmen. The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream. The two clergymen predicted that his fall would be as rapid as his rise. This was a severe trial of the patience of young H . , he kept silent, however, for he remembered his engagement, and that he might not break it, got up to go to the drawing-room. The curate called to him to stop to hear a glorious piece of news he had stumbled on in an obscure corner. The young ' man paused a moment on his feet* It was an ac-> count of the death or assassination (I forget which, but I believe it was the former) of Buona^ parte. The exultation of the two reverend gen- tlemen was unbounded. The sorrow first, and rage afterwards, of the youthful Democrat was equally violent. Why should I dwell on a painful subject, and painful it must be to a human heart to dwell on the overthrow of virtuous love ; when Milton could not make even Satan think of it unmoved. The altercation went to a fright- ful height. The clergyman, in an agony of rage, told young H to leave his house, and never to enter it again. A robust servant was even called to turn him out of the room. The disturbance called down the young lady, whose tears and supplications instantly disarmed the fury of the combatants for a woman's sorrow is the lyre of Orpheus, which has power to soften the ruggedest hearts. Into her father's breast, how- ever, when he came to reflect, they plunged a weapon sharper than a sword, for they told him, in language too intelligible to be mistaken, that this vile anarchist, this ferocious democrat, who was the subject of his horror, was the object of his daughter's love. This was a circumstance he had never suspected, or conceived the possibility of, no more than if they were beings of a diffe- rent species so impenetrable was the barrier pride 145 and prejudice had raised, where nature had left every thing open and clear. When recovered from the first shock of the fatal discovery, he wept over his daughter in helpless and desponding sorrow with such sorrow as a vir- tuous pontiff might weep over a fallen vestal, or a humane priest over an erring virgin who had for- gotten hermonastic vows. He did not utter a single harsh expression or reproach ; for, little as the Irish gentry, or established clergy, are fond of freedom, (and no people can be less fond of it) they are seldom, if ever, tyrants in their families j and as parents, husbands, and masters, their conduct is generally humane and exemplary it would be well, indeed, for many great sticklers for freedom to imitate them in these particulars. Mr. S even told his daughter that her choice would be so far his, that he would oppose no obstacles to it, and that if. on deliberation, (a month's deliberation) she wished it, he would send for her lover and give his consent to their union. " I will see you afterwards," proceeded he solemnly, " as often as you wish it, and your husband as often as I can bear it ; but mind I tell you, that the moment of your marriage will be the last of my comfort, and, I earnestly pray to Almighty God, the last of my life." Policy, perhaps, could not have dictated a fitter proceeding than feeling made him adopt. Un- 146 pardonable, indeed, must the daughter be, who purchases her own gratification at the expense of her father's happiness ; and sacrilegious the child's hand, which would pluck flowers of love, were they even ten times fairer than fancy ever formed them, to reach which she must trample on her parent's tomb. Miss S was not such a one she wept, she implored her father's forgiveness she promised to renounce for ever the thoughts of love, and to dedicate her whole future life to him. The father mingled tears with her's for an instant, perhaps, he hesitated for an instant, perhaps, (could we have penetrated into his heart) he asked himself what right he had to sacrifice his daughter's happiness to vain prejudice and idle scruple but his honourable name, his ancient family, his untainted loyalty, his holy religion to mingle blood with the de- scendant of a vile Scotch farmer, a Presbyterian, who was disposed to destroy his anointed king in the present century, as his ancestors had sold their's in a preceding one oh ! it was impossible that the prejudices of sixty years should not start appalled from considerations such as these. " Yes, my child," said he at length, when he was able to speak, " I accept your generous offer ; I know how painful it is to you now, but I trust even here you will meet with your reward ; but should you not, what happiness does it not prepare for you hereafter. Blessed angels will welcome 147 the child who gave up hey own to her old father's wishes, and long as it will be, I trust, before you follow me Heaven will hardly be so until I embrace and thank you there." This was high- flown language ; but Mr. S was an enthu- siast, and his heart was touched. Times of revo- lution, while they quench the judgment, inflame the imagination. Miss S was an enthu- o blast also, and her father's passion strengthened her in her virtuous resolution. She wrote a long and tender letter to her lover, informing him of what had passed, and bidding him a long and everlasting farewell. The letter itself gave me- lancholy evidence of the greatness of the sacrifice, for it was blotted, and in many parts oblite- rated with her tears. She received one letter from him in return, but sent back unopened ano- ther that he addressed to her. He made several efforts to gain admittance to her, but her resolu- tion was unalterably taken, never to see or conve - e with him more. His persecutions, she sent him word, might break her heart, but could never, nev^r alter her resolution. Mr. H , therefore, de- sisted, for his heart was a tender one ; and he had magnanimity enough to admire, though it made against himself, the conduct of this noble-minded young woman. I trust she will meet the reward of it hereafter. She did not meet with the re- ward of it here. Her fortitude was greater than I. 2 148 her strength she was tall and delicately formed, the seeds of decay, it is therefore, probable, were sown in her constitution, and disappointment only matured their growth. However that maybe, a few weeks after the events I have been relating, she was attacked with a cough, and pain in her breast, which were shortly succeeded by more dangerous symptoms. Her father became alarmed, and carried her with him to Dublin, as well for amusement as for advice. But society will not heal a \vounded spirit, and sorrow mocks the feebleness of a doctor's skill the lethalis arundo still stuck to her side and rankled there. Bristol Hotwells were recommended as a last resource. Reluctantly she embarked in a Bristol trader, under the care of a family going to Eng- land. It was at her father's earnest request, for she had herself given up all hopes of recovery, and wished to return home and die. To a young and romantic female it seems so sweet to die where she had lived to press with feeble limbs the green field she had so often lightly flown over to view in the clear stream the pale and changed face it had so often reflected fair and blooming to sit under the oak which had given her shelter in the days of her happy infancy, as it had to so many genera- tions which had preceded, and should to so many which would follow her to listen to the evening's harmony, to gaze on the well-known prospect, to take one last look of the earth, the water, 149 and the sky, before she shuts herself in her sor- rowful chamber, which she is never to quit more, until she exchanges it for her dark and everlasting abode. What would have been the efficacy of the Bristol waters was never tried. The vessel was wrecked somewhere about the entrance of the Severn most of the crew, and several of the passengers, were saved among those who perished was the inno- cent victim of party politics, which, 'could we look into private life in Ireland, would, I am per- suaded, be found to have occasioned many catas- trophes as tragical as the present one. The poignancy of Mr. S J s feelings when the distressing intelligence was communicated to him, hardly any pen, certainly not my pen, could describe. He could not disguise to him- self that he was in a great measure the cause, and that his prejudices had deprived his daughter of life, as they before had of happiness. Men talk fluently of death when it is only present to the imagination, and think it preferable to a thou- sand evils which, in the arrogance of prosperity, they imagine great. But how different were Mr. S 's feelings, now that sorrow had subdued his pride, and laid his hopes and his prospects in the dust ! When he tore his hair, and wrung his hands, and beat his breast in una- vailing anguish ; when in the storm that shook his habitation, he heard his child's parting cry, isb and by the lightning whih struck from his blood-shot eye-balls, saw her raise her imploring arms above the waters which were closing over her head ; how gladly would he have seen her the wife of the merest wretch that crawled upon the earth, of the vilest beggar that ever subsisted upon charity, could he have recalled her from her watery and everlasting abode. Young H was nearly as inconsolable at this absolute extinction of his hopes. A dark and black melancholy took possession of his soul ; and, when in the bitterness of anguish he cursed the barbarous prejudices of men, he revelled in gloomy satisfaction on the prospect that the system on which they were founded would shortly be overthrown. He had a short time before, in a partial degree, become a United Irish- man. He had taken the oath of secrecy. This was the previous step, and several young men Iiad taken it from motives of vanity or curiosity, proposing to proceed no farther but oh ! vain boast, how few of those could stop themselves On the steep hill of vice, or escape the fatal gulph which yawned to swallow them at its foot ! Mr. H was present at two or three meetings held for the instruction of the uninitiated every art was practised to inflame their passions, to exalt their imaginations, and to pervert their judgments. Mr. H in a particular manner was 151 enchanted with the deceptive lanthorn of rebellion thus artfully moved before him, and contemplated in its sooty sides the image of a better and fairer world in which things appeared in almost celes- tial splendour. He hesitated, however, to take the final step, for love had firmly entwined itself round his heart but when that hold was loosened by death, when enthusiasm was unre- strained by affection, when republicanism was sublimated by misanthropy, he eagerly embraced every obligation of this fatal association. He was shortly afterwards (as I have mentioned in the preceding chapter) appointed leader, or colonel, of a part of the county armed force, and at- tended in that capacity several secret meetings. At. a very solemn one of those, he was given to understand that the retired committee (I may not be correct in the appellation) had decided on making a great example, and had done him the honour of selecting him, with anothermember, for the execution of it. He made some enqui- ries about the nature of the example that was to be made, but was answered in a vague and eva- sive manner, and referred for particulars when it should be necessary for him to know them, to the senior member, by whose directions he was to be guided. The following night, at the dark of the moon, he set out with his associate. They tra versed the little glen where he had first met her he had now for ever lost and where he had so often 1.52 walked and conversed with her with how dif- ferent a companion was he now his heart sunk at the thought, and at the nature of the errand he feared they were on ; for he now knew that the United Irishmen, though they professed their ends were virtuous, with the true adaptation of Jesuitical principles to their system, were not very scrupulous about the means. He, therefore, seated himself on the bank, and declared he would go no further until he was informed of the busi- ness they were on. The business, the glorious business was soon told. It was to inflict signal and deadly vengeance (as his informant termed it) on his arch enemy, and the persecutor of their righteous brethren, the Reverend Mr. S <-. Young H started in horror at the thought, for sophistry could not conceal from his judgment that private vengeance was murder ; and his beat- ing heart told him it was the murder of the father of the woman he had so fondly loved. His companion laughed heartily at his scruples, as he merely expected to find them, and over- ruled his objections with the fashionable cant of the day for murder has its fashionable cant, as well as dress and amusements. He talked of Brutus, who killed his benefactor in the capitol, -of another brute, who put his own son to death for fighting contrary to his orders, and urged him to the glorious deed by their great names and example, by the duty he owed his suffering country, and above all, by the opportu- nity- he now had of taking ample revenge. Mr. H caught at the latter word " Yes," said he, " you are right, I will take revenge, ample revenge." They each carried a case of small pistols. They did not venture to carry any other weapons, lest they should lead to detection. Mr. H asked to see the other's pistols. He returned them in a few seconds, saying they were right" since it must be done," added he, " I should wish to do it effectually." They stole gently up the avenue, which led to Mr. S 's house every thing was silent, and still. Nature reposes, the evil passions of man keep awake. The companion gave three small knocks at the parlor window. The door was softly opened, and they advanced into the hall. A man stood within, with a candle in his hand. He instantly recognized young H . " Ah !" said he, " is it you ? you are come in brave time you'll have fine revenge now of the oidd Aristo- crat." The man was rather a confidential servant, and was the same who had turned out of the house, the last time he had been in it, the young man whom he now welcomed back. Mr. H anxiously asked him if his fire arms were in order. " The devil a lire arm have I got ," replied he, " or arms of any kind, except these two here, with which I will send him to purgatory in a jiffy," 154 TLe triumvirate now moved forwards. The servant led the way to Mr. S 's bed chamber, Mr. H purposely trod hard to awake him. He started up as they entered the room. The companion advanced a pistol to his head, and drew the trigger It missed fire. " It must be me, after all," said the servant. The master extended his arms and shrieked. " By my daughter's soul," said he to the young man, " I conjure you save me." < I am come to save you," said he, extending a hand, a pistol in it, to each of his associates. The companion felt for his second one. concluded this method of spin- ning was commonly in use in it ; it is even now practised by some old women here, and in the 192 Western Isles. The rim of the Irish spinning wheel (as it is mostly used at present) is of oak per- fectly turned, twenty inches diameter. The spokes are of the same, or of some other heavy wood, which causes it to act both as a fly and a wheel ; one end of the axis is formed as a crank, which the spinner moves with the foot. The right hand is left free, and at liberty occasionally to assist the left, in letting down the thread. As the distaff and spindle were the first utensils used in spinning, and the motion was given to the spindle, and to the ancient wheels with the right hand, the left became the spinning hand univer- sally. Many attempts have been made within these few years, to teach girls to spin with both hands at the same time, but as far as I have learned, without success. Spinning flax has been brought to such perfec- tion in Ulster, that many girls spin so fine, that twenty hanks, and sometimes thirty, weigh only one pound. A young woman in Comber, in the county of Down, a descendant of the ancient family of M'Quillin, in the county of Antrim, spins so ' fine, that sixty-four hanks weigh only one pound ; each thread round the reel is two and a half yards long, one hundred and twenty threads in each cut, twelve cuts in each hank. A specimen of her spinning was sent to the linen board, for which she received a small pren^um j she spins this fine yarn only in summer. She fixes, I understand, a black cloth behind the thread, and often divides the fibres of the flax with a needle. The looms mostly in use, resemble a bedstead upon a large scale, with six posts. The posts, which correspond to the head-posts of a bed, connect the whole frame, support the seat of the workman, and the breast-board over which the Wrought cloth is strained as it passes to the cloth beam. Looms on an improved plan are made with two long head-posts only, and four short posts, which support that part of the frame on which the ends of the yarn-beam rest ; on this part of the frame two wooden slides are placed, on which the workman lays the ends of the yarn- beam, and slides it on these to a proper distance for one dressing. Cambrics, lawns, and diapers, or damask, as they are more frequently called, are likewise manu- factured from flax. The damask invented at Damascus, was silk cloth ornamented with flowers in their natural colours, thrown up in it by the workmen in the loom. The damask of Ulster is fine linen, with flowers or other figures woven in it, all of the same colour as the rest of the piece it does not shew the figures by the colours being different from the ground, but by reflecting the rays of light more perfectly. o 194 Damask looms are on the same plan as those generally used, but much larger and stronger. Some of them are furnished with five thousand sets of pullies, which support as many threads, on each of which a loop resembling a heddle is formed to the lower end of each a lead weight, like thick wire, is suspended. The threads of the warp intended to form the pattern, are drawn through the loops when one of these is pulled up, it draws up the weight, and the thread of the warp in its loop, out of the shade formed by the common heddles, so that it cannot be drawn by them to the lower part of the common shade. The method of drawing up the threads of the warp, so as to correspond perfectly with any painted flower or figure, is very curious. The figure is first drawn with a transparent colour, upon paper, divided by engraved lines into squares, each side of which is about half an inch- these sides are sub-divided by finer lines, into ten parts thus, each of the larger squares is divided into a hundred smaller. This figure- paper is laid upon a desk and opposite to it, on the other side of the desk, is a frame of cords, which pass through a reed, like warp in a loom these cords or threads correspond with the lines on the design, or pattern paper. A man sits on each side of the desk he who sits on the same side with the pattern-paper, tells off the squares 195 as he sees them covered with the colour. The person who sits at the side of the desk on which the frame of cords is fixed, has a very long coarse needle threaded, which he passes in a horizontal direction, through the threads or cords in the reed, raising some of them, and depressing others, as he may be directed by the person at the opposite side of the desk, who tells off the squares as he sees them covered with the colour of the pattern. This is done as often as there are ranges of squares in the depth of the design- paper. The threads thus darned into the cords passed through the reed, are allowed to continue as lay-bands. When all the squares in the pattern are thus told off, the cords with the lay-bands between them, are taken out of the reed, and attached to the small cords, which have loops in them like heddles, with lead weights suspended to them, and which are passed over pullies, fixed above the loom. The other ends of the pattern - cords are fixed to the sill of the loom. When a thread of the warp designed to form a part of the figure, is passed through a loop of one of the perpendicular cords, and the cord drawn, this thread is raised above the general shade of the web. Five threads are drawn through each of these loops which take up as much space in the web as is between each of the small lines. "When the weaver or weavers have wrought to o 2 the part of the web where the pattern is to begin, a boy standing at the pattern-cords, passes a staff* between them, as the cross threads, or lay-bands, were passed with the needle, and pulling it out fixes it to rests attached to the loom. The heddle- cords are thus pulled up, and the threads of the warp which have been passed through their loops are drawn out of that part of the warp which forms the common shade. Eight leaves of hed- dles next the workmen are attached to each loom, which are so contrived, that the weaver by treading one of the treddles attached to one of the heddles, depresses one eighth part of the threads from the body of the warp, raised by the draw-boy as he is called and raises at the same time one eighth from that part of the warp which forms the lower side of the shade, and thus the figure is produced on both sides of the piece. When the boy takes away the staff, the lead weights draw down the cords and loops, and allow the warp which they raised to fall into the common shade. The boy, after a certain number of shots, passes the staff along another lay-band, and raises another part of the figure, in the same manner as at first. The twill, which is formed on the ground and pattern, is of such texture, that the damask is stronger than any other description of linen. Although the warp and woof are of the same 107 colour ; yet, because the figure and the ground are differently woven, they reflect the rays of light differently the figure resembling satin, generally reflects most rays ; and, therefore, appears whiter than the ground. The patterns are as various and extensive, as the productions of the pencil in the hand of the painter. Rich centre-pieces, coats of arms, crests, and mottoes, are accurately delineated. The table-cloths are made from one yard and a half wide, to three yards and a quarter, sometimes twenty yards long, and of various degrees of fineness. The napkins are from five-eighths to a yard wide the patterns wrought in them, correspond to the patterns of the cloths if arms are wrought in these, the napkins are wrought with a corres- pondent crest or cypher in each. This elegant branch of the linen manufacture was introduced into Ireland about fifty years ago, by a person of the name of Coulson, and is now carried on at Lisburn by his sons, on the most improved and extensive scale. Linen is purchased in its brown state by the bleachers. They have men employed for this purpose, who attend at fairs and markets. They have in general a salary of one hundred a year each, and a small allowance for keeping a horse. The fatigue these men undergo is extraordinary some of them ride upwards of four thousand 198 miles in the course of a year, which, considering the storm and severity of an Irish winter, is equivalent to six thousand in many other coun- tries. In their robust frames and florid counte- nances, we perceive the favourable and benign influence of the open air on man, and how infi- nitely the advantage of almost constant exposure to it, counterbalances the slight inconveniences of cold and rain. A habit of riding in all weathers, is, I am persuaded, the most effectual means of strengthening the frame, and I should recommend every delicate person, whose avoca- tions will permit it, (to make use of the words of Doctor Fuller,) to learn like a Tartar to live on horseback, by which means he will acquire in time the constitution of a Tartar. I have known several instances of young men, who appeared to have the strongest predisposition to consumption, and who, had they been put to sedentary employ- ments, would, in all human probability, have lived a very short time, by the healthful fatigue of even severe riding, and long journies, become stout and vigorous men. The late Doctor Rush, of Philadelphia, in one of his essays, mentions two cures of consumption in a similar manner. I think them so extraordinary, that I shall relate them here. Though Doctor Rush is a fanciful theorist, I am convinced he would not misstate a fact j and sickness, which throws its eye over a 199 light work like this, in quest of amusement, might find something useful, which it would not have spirits to seek in a graver one. The son of a farmer in New Jersey was sent to sea as the last resource for a consumption. Soon after he left the American shore, he was taken by a British cruiser, and compelled to share in all the duties and hardships of a common sailor. After serving in this capacity for twenty- two months, he made his escape, and landed at Boston, from whence he travelled on foot to his father's house, (nearly four hundred miles) where he arrived in perfect health. In travelling through New England, Doctor Franklin overtook the post-rider, and after some inquiries into the history of his life, he informed him that he was bred a shoe-maker that his confinement, and other circumstances, hadbrought on a consumption, for which he was ordered, by a physician, to ride on horseback. Finding this mode of exercise too expensive, he made interest, upon the death of an old post-rider, to succeed to his appointment, in which he perfectly re- covered his health in two years. After this he returned to his old trade, upon which his con- sumption returned. He again mounted his horse, and rode post, in all seasons and weathers, be- tween New York and Connecticut river, (about one hundred and forty miles) in which employ- 200 ment he continued upwards of thirty years in perfect health. At the inns where the buyers, or cloth-mer- chants, as they are more commonly called, pay for their webs, a penny is left by the seller for each one if a number pay in the same house, this will amount to something considerable in the year^ it is, therefore, an object of con- siderable importance to landlords to draw them to their houses, and many methods of seduction are practised for this purpose. In some places, they do not charge for the horses' oats, in others, for the buyers' drink, and in others again, for their meat and some adventurous publicans beginning business, charge for none of the three. The most usual mode, I believe, is to charge for liquor and oats, and to give the breakfast and dinner for nothing supper is seldom an Irish meal with these honest cloth-merchants it would be a very unnecessary one exercise furnishes better sauce than the first French cook, and no meat is so sweet as that for which we do not pay. A shoulder of mutton, I am credibly informed, is often finished by one person at dinner, and it is no unusual thing to see him eat four, or even six eggs at breakfast. The middle class in the North of Ireland, live in a kind of rough abun- dance, which bears no resemblance to poverty what is often wasted, or given away in charity, 201 would be nearly sufficient to support an English family of the same rank in life. Until a few years ago payments for linen-cloth were always made in gold, and so abundant was it, that weavers would take no guineas, but those that were down weight a pair of scales was then as indispensable an appendage to a cloth- merchant, as it has always been to a picture of justice. It is melancholy to think how these golden times have passed away. Guineas now are never seen in circulation, though they still are a regular article of commerce. They are, I believe, at present worth thirty shillings each, or probably more. They are mostly bought to be sent to Dublin or London of course, in a short time none will be left in the North, except what may be concealed by those who look to the probability of an alteration, at no very remote period, in the existing order of things. The number of those is not inconsiderable a few, perhaps, (I believe very few) wish it, but many, very many, dread it. During the late rebellion concealing gold was very common. I have touched upon it in a foregoing chapter. Concealing gold, or burying it, as it is more frequently termed here, is an ancient practice in Ireland, and a melancholy evidence of the woes it has under- gone. Pots of gold are, at times, found in old walls, or in digging up anciently-inhabited places 202 even to this day. This circumstance, as may be supposed, gives great scope to imagination, and village narration and hope a pot of gold found by accident, sets thousands a digging; and a dream three nights running of money concealed in a particular spot is a mine of wealth to the happy dreamer, until hope, by repeated and una- vailing diggings, is converted into disappointment. The dream of a poor man, who lived not many miles from where I write, led to a more disastrous consequence. He imagined that he was walking by the side of a river the moon shone bright, and every thing was serene and beautiful in an instant, with the transition common to dreams, the fair landscape vanished, and was replaced by a dark and dreary heath, over which the tempest wildly raged there was neither tree nor shrub of any kind, and he betook himself for shelter, to a projecting part of a bank which rose above a deep and sullen stream. He had scarcely got there, when the ground seemed to give way with him, and he found himself in a coffin, in which was likewise a dead body crawl- ing with worms, and loathsome with putrefaction. He awoke in great fright and communicated his dream to his wife, who, according to the establish- ed custom of interpreting dreams by contraries, comforted him, by telling him that it denoted a concealment of gold near to a part of their own 203 river, with which they were both well acquainted he got up in the morning without saying any thing further on the subject, and went, at it was supposed, to his work. The night, however, came on, and there were no tidings of him, and the wife became exceedingly alarmed ; when the greatest part of the following day passed in the same manner. She communicated her ap- prehensions to her neighbours, who searched for him in every direction, and by her desire dragged the river in which there was a small flood. As they passed a part of the bank which seemed to have newly fallen in, she told them of her hus- band's dream, and fright on the occasion it was immediately proposed by one of the party to examine thereabouts ; and, upon removing a little loose earth and rock, they found the body of the unfortunate man, whose dream, like that of many others, had wrought its own fulfilment, with a pick axe and shovel by his side. As bleach-greens, when the cloth is on the ground, contain property to a great amount, and the fences which surround them are weak, Go- vernment endeavours to fence them by severe laws. It is a capital offence to rob a bleach- green. This law, from its rigor, is inefficient so general is a feeling of humanity in Ireland, and so strong is a sense of justice in the North, that no one will prosecute for a crime, the penalty of 204 which is traced in characters of blood, and so dis- proportionate to the offence. Presbyterians, who are more conversant with the Bible than with Blackstone, think that blood only should have blood. The law, therefore, like that against witchcraft, is a dead letter on the statute book, and the bleachers trust to precaution, rather than to punishment. They have a two-fold guard. The least formidable, is a man armed with a blunder- buss, who perambulates the grounds during the night. But the Jides Achates, on whom the greatest reliance is placed, is a large and feroci- ous dog, of a particular breed, which is kept chained during the day, and turned loose when it becomes dark. These animals are little less formi- dable than tygers, and hardly know any person except their keeper. When bleach-greens lie near the public road, they are dreadful annoy- ances, and many persons travelling at night have been severely injured by them. With all due deference to the feelings which led to their em- ployment, I think it would be more humane for the bleachers, until a fitter one is passed, to enforce the law, and discard their dogs. No man, I trust, abhors more than I do, sanguinary laws ; yet surely, it is better that a rogue should be hanged, than that an honest man should be assailed in the darkness of the night by an animal almost as fierce as the Erymanthian boar. I have 205 heard of several instances of persons being dragged off their horses by them, and dreadfully lacerated but even when the wounds they inflict on the body are slight, how dreadful are those they in- flict on the mind, and what misery does not the unfortunate sufferer experience during the months that must elapse, before he can be thoroughly satisfied that the animal was not mad. "What is the most dreadful situation in which a human being can be placed?" was a question I once heard discussed in a debating society. A great deal of nonsense, as is common in all debating so- cieties, was spoken. Sentimental and youthful orators seemed to think, that the most deplorable of all conditions, was that of a lover, seated on the thick grass under a shady oak, whose mistress was struck dead by lightning at his side or that of a disconsolate husband, whose beloved wife had just expired in his arms. The graver, and more elderly ones, who, perhaps, spoke from experience, seemed to imagine that these were misfortunes which the bulk of mankind contrived to bear with considerable philosophy. To be on board a ship on fire at sea j to have a soul loathsome with vice j or a body loathsome with the leprosy ; were likewise mentioned. A gentleman related some instances he had seen of this disease among the planters in the West Indies, in which the whole body was one immense and putrifying sore. I stop for an instant, to remark, that when we con- sider this, and the many other evils, which by a just re-action, slavery has brought on its authors,, when we consider the disease which, as well as gold, the Spaniards brought from America,and see before our eyes the fearful punishment they are undergoing in the old world, for the misery they inflicted in the new, we can hardly avoid tracing the hand of an avenging God, who of our pleasant vices " Makes instruments to scourge us." As I am not an orator, I did not speak on the occasion had I spoken, I should have given the palm of misery to a man bit by a mad dog. I have seen but one instance of it, and never, I trust, shall I see another the animal was one of these bleach-green guards.. The man was crossing on horseback a field at the bottom of the green. It was day-light, but the dog had unfortunately slipped from his chain, and was roaming about. He instantly flew at the man, who drove his horse against him, and threw him back. He made seve- ral other attempts, biting the horse, and clinging . about his neck. The rider, in despair, could hardly hollow for assistance ; and the poor animal he was on, its limbs weakened and relaxed by appre- hension, in a short time came tumbling down. The dog caught the man by the throat, and 207 would soon have killed him; but the keeper, who- had seen the whole transaction, and run as fast as he could, fortunately now came up, and took him off. The man was wounded in the throat and the thigh but in both places slightly. The keeper congratulated him, and he congratulated himself on his narrow escape. About six weeks afterwards the horse was affected in a very singular manner. The unfortu- nate man immediately took alarm, and became a. spectacle of indescribable misery no argument or reasoning, or flattering delusion, could give him even a moment's comfort. He knew that he was bit by a mad dog, he said, and felt that the disorder would soon shew itself. He made two attempts on his own life ; but was prevented each time by some officious person. He was then secured by cords, which prevented him from doing mischief, either to himself or to others. The following day the madness displayed itself in the most unequivocal manner. I saw him on the third day of the disorder. He was seated on the ground a large chain went round his body, and fastened him to the wall. He was naked nearly to the waist, his heart heaving as if inflated with a pair of bellows his hands, which were tied, were cUsped his face was on the ground he lifted it up on my approach but, such a face such an expression of misery, horror, and anguish, as 208 nothing but this direful disease could have occa- sioned. He was not insensible, for that would have been happiness, and, in a particular manner, his was the disease of misery. His daughter came a little forward he gave a wild shriek and started back to the utmost extent of his chain. " Keep off, keep off," said he, " I am possessed, not by one, but by seven devils, and could take a delight in tearing those I used to love the best." " Murder, murder !" said the wretched daugh- ter, " I cannot kiss my father before he dies." Happily for him the next night put a period to his sufferings. His shoutings, startings, bellowings, and convulsions, for some time before death, re- sembled more those which fancy attributes to a condemned soul in a state of torment, than a human being's. " His last word," said his daughter, almost breathless with horror, " was ' damna- tion !' " Living folk gabble, but dying men prophecy, is an expression I have frequently heard here; and the poor child of simplicity read, in the casual ex- pression of madness, an intimation of her father's fu- ture fate. Of what nature (to borrow the idea of the fair sufferer of the preceding chapter) must that being be, who could not think the misery he had suffered here was enough ? sop CHAPTER XX. Violet Bank. I quitted the house where I had so long and so agreeably sojourned, yesterday after breakfast. I walked. I was pressed by the worthy bleacher to take a horse, but declined it. A man who walks is the most independent, the most secure, and, I think, the most happy. We breathe too much the depressing air of chambers and towns, and we should, therefore, prolong as much as possible the pleasurable sensations which the sight of hill and dale, and rock and mountain, rarely fails to inspire.. The day was fine. The road had become dry though traces of the late rains were to be observed in the little brooks that in some places crossed the road, and in the deepened murmur of the blue streams as they rushed headlong down the moun- tain's side. The road led through a delightful country. Nature and art seemed to have conspired together to try which should beautify it most. The projecting rock, and deep glen, and venerable oak, of the former, were diversified with the swelling emi- nence, the sloping law r n, and graceful planting, of the latter. In the distant horizon the brightness of the bleach-green, the russet of the mountain p 21O top, and the verdure of its sides, shot into each other like the changing colours of a lutestring ; while the rich purple of the sky threw over the whole a kind of celestial brightness. A gentleman in his carriage passed me. He civilly opened the door and invited me in. I pre- ferred the open air. He had a book in his hand something in the form of it struck me, and T requested leave to look at it. I found it was the small volume, of which this is, in some degree, a continuation. Not even the feelings of an author, which I do not pretend to be entirely above, could reconcile me to the man who took his eyes from the sublime book of nature which lay open before him, to fix them on a paltry production of man. He repeated his invitation ; which I again declined. I assured him I did not walk from necessity but from choice. He smiled (I thought incredulous) and betook himself to his book again. He pitied me, therefore, I dare say. I am sure I pitied him when I looked upon mine. I was rewarded for my humility by the con- versation of an old Covenanter, who was going home from meeting, and overtook me as the coach quitted me. He had already walked three miles, and had five more to go. He seemed in raptures with the preacher he had travelled so far to hear. "A bonnier discourse," said he, " was ne'er penned 211 poke for two. gude hours and a half, and ne'er looked at book or paper proved to us from atv authorities, both ancient and modern, that man was born to die." "Thatisnodifficultmattertoprove," I said," most people know that as well as the preacher." " For what they know I canna say;" answered he, " but I know what they do there is the big man, now, that owns that pelace before us." " Yes," said I, " he's a great lord." " He's na great lord, sur" said he, " there's na great lord ava, but the great lord of heaven ough, but man puts himself in the place of his maker, and must be bowed down to, and wor- shipped, like the golden calf of the Israelites." "His lordship," I said, " is the head of an ancient family." " Alder than gude," said he," I'll be bound for it gin we are to judge by what we hear o him he leads a bra ranting life in London gangs to plays and such like places, and then he comes over among us, and brings his fine medems, like so many painted Jezabels but yough, hough, the worm is their mother and their sister, and when they are dead what becomes then of aa their pride and their airs ? Lezerus will be in Abraham's bosom I "jtunna say where they may chance to be." A well dressed and good-looking young woman was washing her feet by the road side. We P 2 212 stopped to have a few moments conversation with her. She had walked some distance, and was going to a friend's house on a very particular errand with true northern foresight she had carried her shoes and stockings in a handkerchief, and was now washing her feet in order to put them on, that she might step in with all due smartness. When she had finished dressing herself she proceeded on with us. She was very communicative, and told us the business she was coming on, which was to look after a stray sweetheart. As I walked a little behind I over- heard her tell my companion, who had a good deal the look of a diviner, the dream which pointed out the spot where she would find him. Dreams, I believe it is Homer says, come from Jove he must have been in one of his pleasantcst moods when he sent tier's going to visit Europa, perhaps, or descending in a shower of gold into the lap of Danae. The old Covenanter and I continued conversing a good while after the young dreamer had left us. He was a shrewd and intelligent man. I was impressed as much with the singularity of his language, as the singular construction and independence of his mind. He never, in speaking of persons the most exalt- ed in rank, or considerable for wealth, said lady or gentleman, but woman or man lords, bishops, and even esquires, were not so much the objects 213 of his hatred, as of his derision and contempt. " Na, na, na" said he " it wtmna bear controversy when there is na meerit, you would na surely gee a teetk, and when there is, it only disgraces wJia ever said Mr. Matthew, or Mr. Luke, or Mr. John." Were my opinions the same as his, and, as far as transcendent mentis concerned, they certainly are, I should have given a similar, though probably, a less evangelical illustration. I should, probably, have asked who ever said Lord Verulam, or Mr. Milton, or Mr. Shakespeare. The Covenanters, it is hardly necessary to say, are the most rigid of Presbyterians, and the same who in Scotland, by their fatal opposition to the unfortunate Charles, led to the overthrow of the monarchy, and the inundation of these king- doms with blood. They do not even yet pray for the king, because he has not taken the solemn league and covenant ; nor do they pray by name for any person whatever. They are rigid main- tainers of the ancient, and now almost exploded, doctrine of Election and Reprobation, and would not choose to waste their prayers on one whom, according to their benevolent system, the Al- mighty has, perhaps, preordained to eternal misery before the world was : " As wordlingsdo, giving their sum of more To that which has enough." 214 They pray (generally) for all under the influ- ence of the Election of Grace, or for whom there are purposes of Salvation or Mercy absent or present, from the highest to the lowest, and from the nearest to the remotest, throughout the im- mensity of created space. The number of their congregations in this country is about twenty. They have now public worship pretty generally in houses formerly it was almost universally performed in the open fields. Their ancestors were driven by persecu- tion to wilds and glens, where only they could worship their Maker by stealth and in secrecy ; and by a natural association, more pleasurable than otherwise, they retained the custom long after the original cause was removed. I recollect being at one of those meetings when I was a very little boy, it is present to my recollection as fresh as if it were only yesterday. I see it now as if it were before my eyes ; the bright sun and clear sky the wild glen, and dark woods, and foaming tor- rent the thin dapper figure the sharp face, and keen visage of the preacher, as he projected his head from the little pulpit covered with canvas, placed on the verge of the hill ; the immense multitude of all ages and sexes, in scarlet cloaks and grey mantles, and blue and russet-coloured, and heath-dyed coats in hoods and bonnets, and mob caps, and old-fashioned bats, standing, sitting, and lying, around. 215 The sermon lasted upwards of three hours. The text was taken from the first chapter of* the Song of Solomon. " While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof." The preacher in this text clearly per- ceived a type of something pertaining to the Christian dispensation, and emblematic of the fu- ture glory of the church ; for Theologists (as Commentators have done with Homer) maintain, that scripture has a double sense, the one obvious and literal, the other hidden and mysterious, which lies concealed, as it were, under the veil of the outward letter. The former they treat with the utmost neglect, and turn the whole force of their genius (such as it is) to the latter. What reference the above text could have to the Chris- tian dispensation, or the future glory of the church, it would, I believe, puzzle any but a Theologist or Commentator to discover. I arrived at an old friend's house in the evening. He was an old friend in the strictest and most literal acceptation of the word. He was upwards of eighty when I had seen him last, which was nearly fourteen years before. His daughter, whom 1 saw first, did not immediately recognise me. When I told her who I was, she gave me a cordial, though, perhaps, a melancholy welcome it is sorrowful to meet as we are beginning to grow old, the friends we have known in our youthful 216 days fourteen years are a great death-stride in the life of man how few can look back upon them with pleasure, how few can contemplate them without despondence, when they reflect how little they performed of what, elate in youth and hope, they expected when they looked forward to them yet happy are they, or ought to be, who have only the common ills of life to complain of, who have been able to hold the even tenor of a vir- tuous life, and who never have had their souls wrung by the recollection of crime. My venerable friend had walked into the gar- den, where I followed him. He was seated on a kind of rustic seat by the side of some bee-hives his long hair, u hite as the stricken flax, shaded his forehead. He was asleep, for age as well as sorrow knows no seasons. His white locks and whole appearance reminded me of the aged mo- narch of whom this was spoken happily for him, to watch bees and not to govern men was his oc- cupation, and in this innocent employment, and in the cultivation of his garden, he spent the great- est part of his time. Could I give him a higher eulogy than this ? and does it not exclude the necessity of any other? Les gouts simples ac- compagnent presque toujours les grandes vertus, it has been well remarked by an elegant female French writer. I was astonished on his awaking, to see the little change time had wrought on him 217 -r- a little more stoop in his shoulders, a wrinkle perhaps more in his forehead, a more perfect whiteness of his hair, was all the difference since I had seen him last. We walked into the house together. We passed into his room, it appeared as if it were as little changed as himself the spectacles lay on the table as I had formerly seen them I believe the identical book was there likewise, it was a volume of monthly reviews a work once highly prized in the North of Ire- land, for the same reason that it was disapproved of by Doctor Johnson the liberality of its opini- ons on religious and political subjects. " My me- mory fails me," said the good old man, I believe quoting the words of some other person ; " but my eyes are the same my old books, therefore, do for me, and my old spectacles." They wanted to prepare dinner for me ; but I would not allow them. It was their tea-time, and I knew what a plentiful meal tea was generally with them besides, flesh-meat in my revered friend's house was an article rarely to be met with for sixty years he had not tasted it, nor did he greatly like to see others take it his food was vegetables, bread, milk, butter, and honey. "Butter and honey shall ye eat," is said in the Scripture, " that ye may fly evil and choose the good." And he had flown evil, and he had chosen the good his whole life was a series of bene- 218 volent actions, and Providence rewarded him even here by the peace of heart which passeth all understanding, by a judgment unclouded, and by length of days beyond the common course of men while the sensual and beastly gormandizer of a metropolis, who with greasy hands, and blood- stained mouth., dozes snorting over the table, co- vered with the hecatomb of animals which aremur- dered to fill his rapacious maw, and pays the penalty of his barbarity, in his habitude, his stupidity and lethargy, his face distorted out of ail human re- semblance, and his body tortured with the gravel and gout. " No flocks that range the valley free, To slaughter I condemn ; Taught by the power that pities me, I learn to pity them," Could my aged friend, with the venerable her- mit of Goldsmith, exclaim, as he made his simple meal of curds and cream and when seated, in a delicious summer's evening, on the grassy bank of the blue stream, that rolled its sparkling waters past his garden, when he raised his eyes to his Father in Heaven, who also is the Father of all his creatures when he looked round him on the lamb which his humanity had saved from slaughter, which cropped the flowery lawn by his side, and upwards to the dove, which bore the olive 219 branch of his mercy, to gladden the hearts of its young, how pure would ascend his devotion, how expanded would flow his benevolence, and how unfaded would bloom his hopes. CHAPTER XXI. Violct-JBank. IN the harvest of 1 798, a stranger applied to Mr. S for employment he was an uncommonly able young man, and did as much work as any two of the labourers yet he never threw off his coat as the others did, and his left arm was tied up he said he had received a slight hurt in it from a splinter of wood as he looked very pale and thin, Mr. S , from motives of humanity, allowed him to sleep in the house. Mr. S conversed with him often in the fields, and found, though an untutored man, he had great strength of understanding, and uncom- mon energy of mind and expression. He was always anxious to hear the newspapers, which Mr. S , as is not unusual in this part of Ire- land, often read to the labourers of an evening, after their work was finished. On one of those occasions he stumbled on. a paragraph, beginning 220 "with, " Whereas a most daring robbery." At this instant his eyes rested on the countenance of the stranger the expression struck him as so singular, that he discontinued his reading. On retiring to his own room, he read the article in question. It gave an account of a most daring robbery, com- mitted a short time before, by four armed ruffians, one of whom was killed, and another supposed to be desperately wounded an exact description of the person of the latter followed, and Mr. S had little doubt that he was the stranger whom he had taken into his family. He did not hesitate a moment on what he should do. An Englishman would, perhaps, have hesitated a little, but the conclusion he would have arrived at, would, probably, have been a different one. He reasons better than an Irishman, and therefore he is oftener just his feelings are less lively, and he is seldomer merciful. Mr. S could not bear to give up to punishment an unfortunate stranger, who had been sheltered under his roof. This was his feeling as an Irishman. He thought that the punishment of death, which he knew would be inflicted, was disproportionate to the offence. This was his conscience as a Presbyte- rian. Except in cases of cool and deliberate murder, Presbyterians think (and I think along with them) that man has no right to deprive his 221 fellow of that life, which no power short of that which gave it first, can give him back again. Mr. S brought the stranger in he shut the door, and read to him the paragraph without comment. The other listened without betraying any emotion. " I see what you suspect," said he ; " you think I am the person." Mr. S was silent. " You may give me up to justice if you will," proceeded the man. " I shall make no resistance; I am innocent, and have nothing to fear." 6C Were you innocent, I should give you up to justice,'' said Mr. S , " for then you would have nothing ; but I know you are guilty, and have every thing to fear. Go your ways, then, and betake yourself to a place of safety." " Do you mean," said the man, " that you will not send the army after me ?" The army are the great peace-officers of Ire land, and hardly any thing, on their first coming over, astonished the officers of the English mi- litia more, than that even a pickpocket could not be sent to a county gaol, without an application being made to them for an escort of soldiers. " I mean," said Mr. S , " to do you no harm I shall pay you your wages, and you may go your ways." " A Presbyterian," said the man (retiring 222 from the proffered wagesj " a Presbyterian Minister/' " Go, go," said Mr. S -. " I was a rebel and a robber," said the man, " and am a Catholic." " You are a bad man/' replied the other, " I have little doubt ; but it was not your religion that made you so repent, and live as it directs." The man instantly threw aside his coat, which, hung loose over his left arm in the same hurried manner he tore off the dressing from his sore the hand had been shattered by a ball, and had been amputated by a country apothecary in a bungling manner. The sight of the wound filled Mr. S with horror it was covered with filth, and crawling with maggots. " 1 have suffered this" said the robber, " with- out a groan I could go to the gallows without a tear ; but cannot bear your goodness it over- comes me." It did fully overcome him, for he wept and sobbed aloud. Mr. S , who, like most Presbyterian clergymen, is a surgeon and physi- cian likewise, washed and applied some mild and clean dressing to his sore- he would have applied likewise healing balsam to his wounded and ulcerated spirit ; but his efforts were unavail- ing. " Repent !" said the man with indigna- 223 tion, " let them repent who drove me to this. I have done nothing of which I should repent, or be ashamed I only endeavoured to get back a part of what was my own, and that's no crime in the eye of God, whatever it may be in that of man my forefathers were robbed of their land by Oliver Cromwell's soldiers, and a great man has the property which by right should be mine and may be will be my children's yet, though I will not live to see it but though I do not repent of what I have done, I repent of what I intended to do." Here, to the utter astonishment of Mr. S , he confessed that he was in his employment not by accident, but in consequence of a scheme of his man servant. He had been sheltered in the cabin of the father of the latter, before he ap- plied to Mr. S for employment. The misguided man had often meditated robbing his master, but shrunk dismayed from so daring a crime. The presence of so adventurous a rob- ber encouraged him. He opened his plan to him, to which the other readily consented. They only waited until Mr. S should receive his half year's stipend to carry it into execution. And here one may remark the singular contra- diction of the human mind, and how erroneous it would be to affirm of any vicious man, that he is entirely destitute of virtue this wretched 224 creature, who would have robbed his master, his benevolent master, and risked his own neck for a few guineas, might have earned instantly and safely, a hundred pounds, by giving up the rob- ber to justice but his ideas of honour were such, that perhaps no sum would have induced him to be guilty of what he would have deemed so foul a deed, and so dreadful a breach of hos- pitality. His master summoned him, and charged him with the crime he had meditated. He was sulky and would confess nothing. Mr. S paid him his wages and dismissed him. He went away with his companion. Mr. S gave them much good advice, which the robber repaid with tears and blessings ; the servant with threats of revenge for the injury he had done his character. A few weeks afterwards he learned, that the unfortunate robber had died of a mortification in his arm, in a cabin on a neighbouring moun- tain. The following year Mr. S had occasion to go to a town thirty miles distant. Towards evening, when he was very near it, he was sur- rounded by a party of men, who seemed like Cadmus's men of old, to start armed and prepared for combat from the earth he had seen no traces of human beings the instant before. They pulled him down from his horse and pro- 225 ceeded to rifle his pockets, with oaths and im- precations of vengeance if he did not keep quiet. One of them, getting a glimpse of his face, ex- claimed, " Ough, sweat Saviour of the world ! it's my master's own self ; don't one of you harm a hair of his white head,'* " Ah, Dennis!" cried Mr. S . " Eh ! you know him then ; but, by the Holy Ghost, you shant live to tell it ;" said another of the gang, striking him on the temple with the but- end of the pistol. Mr. S fell senseless on the ground. When he recovered, he found himself in a strange kind of cell, with a low roof a glimmering light, as from an outward apartment, enabled him to discover that it was a cave, or excavation in a rock, and from the rushing of waters he indistinctly heard, he concluded it was in or near a glen a man was sitting at the head of the bed of heath, on which he was laid, It was his man Dennis, who, notwithstanding the terms on which he had parted with him, had not forgotten his ancient master's kindness, and who, by his exertions, had probably saved him from being murdered. The man who had given him the blow, now came in, and shook him cordially by the hand. " De whole of de boys" said he " are widout, and only wait for your reverence to come and Q 226 say grace don't be uneasy, you will be as safe wid us, as if you were in your own pulpit Dennis here has told us what a kind-hearted man you are to all sects he gave me de devil of a thump just now to be sure ; but it was in your defence, and I don't bear malice." Mr. S found little inconvenience from his wound, and accompanied the two men to the outward part, which was only partially sepa- rated from the inner, by a projection of the rock a large oaken table was placed in the cen- tre, round which were seats formed by laying boards on large stones. The robbers were seven in number. He was congratulated by them on his escape, and they insisted on his pledging them in a bumper of whiskey. He readily complied, and found himself much the better of it a man who sits down in a dark cave, cer- tainly stands in need of a little spirits. He had now recovered himself sufficiently to be able leisurely to survey the apartment he was in it seemed a natural cavern, perhaps a little en- larged by art it was lighted by splinters of bog-wood, which were stuck up in different places, and threw their dusky red shadows on the visages of the men, rendering them, to the terrified imagination that feared for its safety, still more ferocious. The countenances of some of them, however, were mild and agreeable. and gave no indication of the savageness of their lives. There was for dinner a ham, a large cheese, and some other matters. Contrary to Mr. S 's expectations, great decorum was observed there was neither laughter nor loud conversation : as these are essentials (disagreeable essentials) in parties, even of persons in re- spectable ranks of life, Mr. S concluded, they were excluded here by the dread of dis- covery ; the drink was ale, of which there seemed to be abundance, and, after dinner, a cer- tain quantity of whiskey was placed before each person, by a man who acted as chief. This man sat in an easy unembarrassed kind of manner, and conversed with facility and correct- ness. The impression on his mind that he should one day be taken and hanged, was as strong as any impression could be yet it had no influence in making him wish even to change his course of life. Mr. S wondered at this ; but checked himself, when he recollected that all men know they are to die ; but, as the precise moment is un- known, act as if they were never to die at all, The gang were mostly desperadoes, who had been concerned in the rebellion, and a life of violence and plunder was become natural to them. Their whole conversation turned on the exploits they had performed ; and as the flame from their sooty pipes gleamed on their faces and habitation, it 228 required no violent stretch of the imagination to fancy oneself in the infernal regions. Mr. S 's countenance, he supposes, displayed his uneasiness at his situation, as the company repeatedly told him not to be under the least apprehensions, and Dennis in particular assured him, that he was as safe as if he were on his own potatoe ridge. " We keep your money," said the chief, " be- cause we want it, and you can spare it but sleep in peace, not a man here will hurt or harm you." He stretched himself again on his bed of heath, and a blanket was thrown over him before going to sleep he had some conversation in a low voice with his old servant, on whose mind he endea- voured to impress the danger of the company he was in the poor creature shed tears, and promised to think on what he had said, swearing at the same time, he would sit up all night to watch him, and that neither man nor devil should do him harm. Early next morning he was awakened by the crowing of a cock the sound was distant ; but the thought that he was within hearing even of the habitations of men gave him inexpressible pleasure the sound was likewise the herald of day, and such weak beings are we, that with day- light we ever associate the idea of safety. Before he quitted the cave his eyes were blind- folded, though Dennis swore by his grandmother's aoul, who was dead and gone, that his master 229 was a God-fearing man, and woudn't turn in- former to save himself from purgatory. The character of an informer is of all others the most odious in Ireland. It is the braying together in the mortar of the imagination a thousand little sooty devils to make one great arch black one. This, I should suppose, in a great measure, proceeds from the extraordinary sensibility of the lower Irish, who, in the contemplation of mi- sery, lose all recollection of the causes which gave rise to it doubtless, in some measure, from a feel- ing of dislike to the laws and government. Mr. S was mounted on horseback, and ac- companied by two (he heard the voices of no more) of the gang. They travelled for about an hour over rough and uneven ground . His com- panions then bade him adieu. An instant after- wards he raised the handkerchief from his eyes and looked round he saw nothing of the men ; but, to his astonishment, he found himself not five hundred yards from the town he was going to. The career of a robber is short a few weeks after the event I have been relating, Dennis and one of his companions were taken in the act of robbery, tried and convicted. Mr. S re- ceived a message from his unfortunate man, beg- ing some money to assist in burying him. This is one of the strongest appeals that can be made to charity, and a man who refused his assistance 230 would be considered a barbarian. Mr. S was not a man to refuse it he resolved even to go himself, and administer consolation to the poor condemned. It was the night before the execution. As he approached the gaol, he endea- voured to summon up resolution to meet the scene of woe he expected. It was a scene of noise and confusion. A crowd was assembled be- fore the grated door of the cell. Dennis was mounted on his coffin, from which, as from a pul- pit, he addressed them, begging money to bury him, and pray his soul out of purgatory. He rated those who were tardy in drawing out their purses, scolded others \vho had already given, for not standing back to make room for new comers ; wept, preached, and prayed, all in the course of a few minutes. No sooner did he see Mr. S than he descended from his rostrum. He wept bitterly as they went apart together. " To think of my ill-luck," said he, " in quit- ting the trade. I was coming with my comrade to see my friends, and then take up, as you ad- vised me, and go to America and to be taken for nothing else, and hanged like a dog." " Nothing else !" said Mr. S , " did you not rob a gentleman and lady ?" " Of nothing but seven two-pound notes, and a handful of silver," said the other, " and that 231 was to pay our passage we couldn't go to Ame- rica without money, you know." Mr. S now attempted to give him some spiritual advice. " Don't, dear master," interrupted he ; " don't, for the love of the sweet Jesus, speak about it. I have settled all them things with priest Higgins, and it might be the loss of my poor sowl, if a man of another sect meddled with it." Mr. S then turned to his companion, who was seated on a stone at the extremity of the cell. " Is there any thing I can do for you ?" said he to him. " Nothing," replied the other. " The priest then," said Mr. S , " has given you absolution, I suppose, likewise." " I know too much, to believe any man can do that," said the other, " would to God I had lived as well as I was taught I am a Protestant." " I am sorry, very sorry," said Mr. S , " to see a Protestant in such a situation." " I should be sorry, too," said the man, " if sorrow was of any use but 1 have sinned against good advice, and it is fit I should suffer for it." " Have you any friends ?" asked the other. " I had friends,'* said the man, " if my evil courses hav'nt broken their hearts." " Do they live near this?" enquired Mr. 232 S , " or is there any message you would wish to send them ?" " Message," repeated the other, " they shall never hear from me ; when I entered on this life, I changed my name ; my sin, if I can help it, will never be their shame." " I will pray with you," Mr. S said. " Of what use ?" said the man with firmness, " I have given my days to the devil ; I need not give my last night to God ; that poor creature there may tell his beads, and thump his breast, and kiss his crucifix, and believe what the priest tells him ; I know what God himself has said j that no unrighteous person shall see his face." Mr. S , however, prevailed on him to hear a prayer or two, and left him in a better state of mind. Dennis, who had all this time been busied in addressing the gaping country people outside, now hung about him with shouts and lamentations. He extricated himself from him with difficulty, nor could he for a long while reflect without astonishment on the singii- lar alternation of frantic sorrow, and thoughtless levity, of overflowing affection, and careless in- difference, of dread of death, and anxiety about his funeral, which characterised the conduct of this poor creature. The following day he and his companion were put on a car, and brought, under the escort of a 233 party of soldiers, to the neighbourhood where the robbery was committed. A gallows was erected in a field. The criminals were allowed to rest them- selves for a few minutes in a cabin. They here, as is the universal custom with the unfortunate persons who are to be executed in Ireland, put on their dead dress. This consists of a shroud and cap with a black ribbon, and gives a person clothed in it, the look of a spectre, as imagination forms it, or of a corpse newly raised from the tomb. Poor Dennis came out with a show of great fortitude ; but it entirely forsook him when he cast his eyes on his fellow-sufferer, and beheld in him, as in a mirror, the reflection of his own funeral appear- ance. He uttered a wild shriek, and fell senseless on the ground. The reality of death seemed now, for the first time, fairly to have struck him. It seemed never to have made a thorough impres- sion upon him, until presented thus to his ima- gination through the medium of his senses. When the car arrived at the fatal spot, he could scarcely be said to be alive ; his eyes were closed, his heart scarcely beat, and all colour had left his face. The conduct of his fellow-sufferer was calm and intrepid. Mr. S took a kind leave of him, he was affected, and even felt his cheek moistened ; he could not be mistaken, for by the force of sympathy, a tear started in the poor sufferer's eye j but he instantly recovered him- 234 self, and shook Mr. S by the hand. u I have lived the life of a brute/* said he, " but I would wish to die like a man." Mr. S rode to his own house, which was about seven miles from the place of execution. It was the latter end of summer. About dawning day, (grey morning as he beautifully and poetically termed it) he was awakened by a noise in the room, he drew the curtains, a figure like one of the hanged men, in its shroud and dead cap, stood pale and sad at the window. He rubbed his eyes, he strove to wake himself ; he turned himself in the bed ; he stretched himself forward, and endeavoured to penetrate the gloom ; the figure of sleep did not, as he imagined it would, melt into thin air ; it moved its eyes even, it opened and shut its mouth, it seemed preparing itself to speak. Na- ture was now too strong either for reason or philosophy ; a cold damp bedewed his forehead, and he lay speechless and nearly senseless. The phantom approached the bed, and fell on its knees before him. " Master," said it, " remember I have saved your life, now save mine." It was Dennis, the poor hanged Dennis his fears had saved him. He had to be supported on the car as it was drawn slowly away, and he swung gently off, his fellow sufferer threw him- self off with violence, and was almost instantly dead. Dennis was likewise a tall man the gal- 285 lows was low, and his feet at times touched the ground. After hanging the limited lime he was cut down and given to his friends; he was ca/ried to the nearest cabin, and as is almost always clone in Ireland, all the vulgar methods in use were practised to recover him ; his feet were put into warm water, he was blooded b, a couniryman with a rusty lancet, and rubbed with spirits, which were likewise applied to his nostrils and lips, and poured dow^i his throa' . He opened at length his eyes, and milk was given him from a woman's breast, which in Ireland is supposed to be a medicine of great efficacy. When night came on, he resolved to go to his master's house, which, across the fields, was not more than four miles off. He was advised to lay aside his dead dress now that he had so unex- pectedly returned among the living; but it was too valuable a piece of finery, and had cost Den- nis too much oratory the preceding day, to be parted with so readily. He met nobody on the road ; but if he had, his dress would have been his protection ; for every one would have run from him as from a ghost. He might have gone in any dress, however^ in security ; few people in any country would be willing to lead to the gallows a man just escaped from it few people in Ireland would refuse to run some risk to save him from it. He knew well the room where his master slept, open- 236 ed the window, and stepped into it, from the gar- den. Mr. S kept him for some time in his house, and then got him put on board a vessel bound to America, where he arrived in safety. He is at present a porter in Baltimore, is married, and the father of several children. When time has thrown its dark mantle over the origin of their family, the descendants of poor hanged Dennis may rank with the greatest in Ame- rica. CHAPTER XXII. Viokt* bank. MR. S has been minister of this con- gregation upwards of sixty years. He was not a very young man even when first placed. He had received several calls before, and was so often rejected, that at length he despaired of being placed at all. By a call is meant the summons which a con- gregation on the death, or removal of its minister, gives the young probationer, who preaches before them, and resides among them a certain number of weeks upon trial. The election is completely 237 popular, and the intrigues of the conclave are often rivalled by those of a Presbyterian congre- gation. Of various modes it is easier to affirm that they are different, than that they are better or worse. Popular election, doubtless, has many advantages. It gives a congregation a man to their mind, and as he is, in a great measure, dependent on their voluntary subscription for support, he is obliged to be humble, attentive, and, if not virtuous, to seem so. But, then, popular election has its disadvantages. A congregation, like a flattered lady, sometimes do not know their mind, and often are of a different mind.. There are rival candidates, with different pretensions and claims. Parties arise, disputations and wranglings follow, and at length, when all become pretty well exhausted, and the successful candidate is chosen, he is still only forced upon a part of the congregation. In manners, modes of living, and doctrine, he must often follow, fully as much as he can lead he must often flatter the prejudices of the congre- gation, in order to influence their actions, and what to a Theologian is, perhaps, the most difficult of all, he must often preach what they like, rather than what he likes himself. Many of the parish- ioners think themselves as profoundly versed in Bible learning as he is, and will not endure the 238 slightest heterodoxy. Jeroboam, Jeroboam, your blood will be licked by the dogs, was, a good many years ago, the mild rebuke of an Old-light Presbyterian to a clergyman, of whose doctrine he disapproved. The Presbyterian church, at the period I am speaking of, (as in a greater or lesser degree it has been ever since) was divided into two great parties, called Old and New-light. The Old-light party were rigid Calvinists, and believed and taught exactly as Calvin and John Knox believed and taught before them. It would be taking up too much room to give a particular account of all the points on which they disagreed with their opponents, nor, indeed, would it be worth either the trouble of reading, or writing for unintel- ligible as most human disputes are, theological ones are the most unintelligible of any ; and there- fore could man be brought to think so, the most useless ; as, happily for him, whatever is necessary to his happiness, heaven has left plain. I shall, therefore, briefly mention only the most prominent article of their creed. They believe, that all man- kind, by the fall of Adam, lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and made liable to the pains of hell for ever. But God, in his infinite mercy, they teach, did not leave all mankind to perish in this state of sin and misery. Having, out of his mere good will and pleasure. 239 from all eternity elected some to everlasting life, he entered into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of a state of destruction, and to bring them into a state of salvation by a Redeemer. This Re- deemer of the elect is Jesus Christ, who by making continual intercession for them, and by offering himself up a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, reconciles them to God. These happy few, are called the elect. The unhappy many, Old-light leaves in a state of dark and hopeless reprobation. The New-light doctrines are more rational, more liberal, and infinitely more humane. They are nearly the same as those now preached by the clergy of the church of England. The recorded opinions of the church itself, I need hardly say, are exactly the same with the above-given merciful ones. Nor is it the least wonderful circumstance of the present wonderful age, that they have been lately drawn from the sepulchre, wherein they were so quietly inurned, to fill the pages of a tale of a female's tale, and that the hero should sally forth, like another David Simple, or Simple David, in quest of a wife, whose great merit should be a firm belief in them. Young clergymen generally leaned to the New-light doctrines, which the graver and more elderly members of congregations considering as mere ignes fatui to lead men astray, they were careful to conceal until they were placed, 240 and then, as occasions were favourable, they gra- dually unfolded them to their hearers. Mr. S was of a lofty and unbending spirit, He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Nor Jove for his power to thunder. He would not yield to selfish or worldly con- siderations a particle of his principles, and did not scruple to avow, that he thought the doctrine of Election and Reprobation, as it is called, a dam- nable one damnable indeed might that doctrine well be called, which makes God, who the scrip- tures emphatically say is love, the author of the misery of millions of his creatures, and the hap- piness of tens. (In a parenthesis let me here re- mark, that the beautiful line in the Lay of the Last Minstrel " That Jove is heaven, and heaven is love." is taken from the Epistle of St. John.) Mr, S had even the audacity, on one occasion, as he was taking a glass of punch with a leading member of a congregation that had given him a call, to doubt of the reality of everlasting punishment so heterodox an opinion would have lost him the see of Canterbury, no wonder, there- fore, it should a north country Presbyterian con- gregation. " I believe he did not well know what he was talking about," said (the next day) the liberal shopkeeper, " he was at his fourth tumbler I would be loth, therefore, to say when he's himself, he's so great an Atheist." 241 The next congregation he was called to, he lost in the following manner : One market-day a countryman asked him to step into a public house and have a glass of something. Mr. S civilly declined it, saying he never drank in the morn- ing. " He's too proud," said the man, " for me I like a clergyman I can be free with, and can crack to on occasions." A proud clergyman, and one who would not crack with the congregation, was nearly as bad as one who did not believe in the eternity of Hell's torments he was rejected, therefore, and another chosen, who, as long as he could, neither refused conversation nor drink indeed, he generally took so liberal a portion of the latter, as shortly to disqualify him for the former. On the third occasion, my friend was more circumspect avoided the imputation of being either moralist or legalist ; left eternity in the state the ancients did, a serpent biting its own tail Quod in sese vohitur and drank at all hours, and at all places, with such pious and thirsty Christians as wished to have questions of faith discussed, and doubts cleared up, over the bottle. He was going swimmingly along, and thought himself secure of his election, when an unlucky circumstance occurred. A gentleman of large fortune in the neighbourhood interested himself in his behalf. The greater part of the congregation were his tenants. He spoke to 242 them, he expressed a wish that they would choose Mr. S , in which case he would give him, he said, a good farm at a moderate rent. 1'hough this gentleman had lived all his life among those people, he did not know them* They fired up at his interference, as an unjus- tifiable attempt to deprive them of their rights ; and instantly, to assert them, proceededto elect a rival candidate, whose rusticity of manners, and uncouthness of appearance, effectually and happily preserved him from the patronage of a great man. " It is the Lord's affair," said the congregation with one voice, " and not the landlord's we want none of his parasites we can't abide flatterers." These good people did not know that they liked flattery so well, that they wished it to be Addressed only to themselves. They are mistaken who think that great men only seek praise mobs are equally voracious of it. Dryden, who, as Doctor Johnson remarks, in the meanness and servility of hyperbolical adulation has not been surpassed since the days in which the Roman emperors were deified, did not bestow more flattery on his patrons, than a modern patriot is obliged to lavish on his constituents; or since the omnipotence of public opinion has become so established, each party lavishes on the nation. Horace did not besprinkle with stronger, though he might with more courtly and elegant incense, Augustus, or Boileau, Lewis the Fourteenth, than 243 writers of all descriptions, - Encyclopjediasts, Tourists, Dramatists, Journalists, down even to the humble followers of literature, Novelists, do the English people, who are now the great land- holders of the East and the West, to say nothing of their extensive watery possessions. It must be admitted, that John, est bon de son nalurel, or so much flattery would have corrupted him. Mr. S now gave up all hopes of ever being placed. Industry, learning, meekness, and benevolence, he found were no helps to get bread as a clergyman ; he resolved, therefore, to try them in the humbler sphere of a school- master, in which situation he meant to continue, until a favourable opportunity should occur of going to America, which is the great ocean into which the overflowing stream of Northern Irish population loves to empty itself. An unexpected circumstance made him change his determination, and procured him a comfortable establishment in his native country. quod obtanti Divtim promittere nemo Auderet, volvenda dies en attulil ultro ! A young Catholic clergyman, just fresh from Salamanca, challenged him to a dispute on the relative merit of their two religions, and offered to prove, by irrefragable arguments, not only that his was the best, (which every one thinks of R 2 244 his own,) but that the others was the worst. This theological challenge was given in a public house at a fair. My friend prudently declined it. He liked not controversy at any time, and as at that particular time it was to be carried on before a number of his opponent's persuasion, he feared that the lightness of his arguments would be overpowered by the weight of theirs, and that if their leader's reasons, when weighed, were found wanting, the ultima ratio, like the sword of Brennus, would be thrown in by his enlight- ened followers. Some of the parents of the children at his school, when informed of it, considered this as a most shameful dereliction of duty, and threa- tened instantly to remove them from under his care, if he did not give immediate battle to Anti- christ. Mr. S complied, though reluc- tantly. He was a friend to all religions, because he knew that religion was essential to man, and was to his heart what air was to his lungs a necessary without which it would be dead. He wondered at the mysteries of none, because he knew there were mysteries in all because he knew there were many articles of his own utterly incomprehensible, and thought it mattered little that the Catholic had, perhaps, two or three additional ones. But he was a Presbyterian, and, consequently, the enthusiastic friend of liberty. 245 civil and religious; and though he did not dislike e Catholic church for its doctrines, he did for the opposition he supposed it gave to free enquiry, and the shackles he imagined it placed on the mind. A day was, therefore, appointed for the solemn disputation, and care was taken to exclude those numerous erratic sophists, who prefer the argumentum ad hominem, and the argumentum Bacculmum> to all others. The first point in dispute was the often enough disputed doctrine of transubstantiation. This is a vast Sorbonian bog, in which whole armies of controversialists have sunk. It is, of all the tenets of the Romish church, the most incom- prehensible which was precisely the reason, why the young Salamanca pedant chose it. The more unmalleable it was, the more credit he thought he would have in hammering it into the hard head of his Presbyterian antagonist. He was not, however, more successful in carrying on the controversy, than Henry the Eighth had been on a similar occasion, and, luckily for my friend, he could not have recourse to the flaming argument, with which the royal disputant, when every other had failed, silenced his adversary. The parties separated, after many hours of discus- sion, as is customary on such occasions, in mutual ill-will, and confirmed in their respective opinions. The Presbyterians, however, were clamorous in 246 their rejoicings, (in which they were joined by their brethren of the established church,) at the great victory, as they deemed it, their quiet schoolmaster, who looked as soft, they said, as if butter would not melt in his mouth, had gained over the priest of Baal. He had trimmed the scarlet whore with whom kings had com- mitted fornication, and who had made" the nations of the earth drunk with her abomina- tions, so soundly, that if she had either grace or shame, her face would be as red as her mantle. A neighbouring congregation, (whose clergyman opportunely for him died,) gave him an imme- diate call, and he was unanimously ordained their minister. The elders got drunk for joy the day of v his ordination, and generously voted him an addition of ten pounds a year to the usual salary, for having so well fought the good fight, and like little David, armed with sling and stone, pelted to death the huge Goliah. In general he has lived on the best terms with his flock little causes of dissension, however, sometimes arose his memory became impaired, and he found it difficult, after having composed his sermons, to retain them in his recollection. He requested, therefore, permission to read them. This was refused him as subversive of all discipline, and a scandalous example to indulge Jiira, however, as far as possible, he was to!4 247 neither to compose nor commit to memory, but to preach as the spirit of the Lord might dictate. " I shall preach nonsense," said the good man. " Never fear ;" said an elder of the old school, " but even if you should, I would sooner hear nonsense spoken, than your fine philosophy read out of a printed book It was'nt so the Apostles preached." Mr. S likewise dwelt too much on good works. He did not say enough about faith to please the zealots. He gave the bone, but seldom or never the marrow of divinity. He was too fond of the filthy rags of his own righteousness, and did not, as he ought to have done, clothe himself in the white wool of the Lamb, and preach Christ crucified. In reality, his mode of preaching was too ab- stracted to be popular with any congregation, ex- cept a singularly enlightened one. Truth is too strong for the eye of the ignorant, (all men whose avocations do not leave them great leisure for thinking, are ignorant,) and, therefore, as St. Pierre has told us, in his beautiful tale of the Indian Cot- tage, " nous la voilons d'allegories et de mysteres pour en soutenir 1'eclat." The scriptural phraseo- logy and metaphorical language of many Presby- terian preachers shadow the truth, raise the imagi- nation, and relieve the understanding, as much as the chaunted litany of the church of England, or the high mass of the church of Rome and 248 those preachers, as it is natural they should, are by far the most popular ones. I have heard prayers and exhortations, in which, from the beginning to the ending, hardly a word was spoken, to which a definite idea could be attached-r-they were a continued metaphor, or rather concatenation of metaphors, (many of them certainly beautiful metaphors,) taken from scripture, and ingeniously put together. The audience were exhorted to take righteousness as a breast-plate, and the hel- met of salvation on their heads -to put on the garment of holiness, and to be clad with zeal as with a cloak. They were comforted with the assurance, that if they were sorrowful sojourners, upon earth, all tears should be wiped away from their eyes in the heavenly Zion, where beauty will be given unto them for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of peace for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified. But the grand subject of dispute between Mr. S and the congregation was the psalmody, which he wished to reform. He was something of a musician, and still more of a poet. He could not, therefore, abide the barbarous tunes that were sung, and still less the barbarous version to which they were sung. It was that of Sternhold and Hopkins. Many people have heard of those cele- 249 brated scripture versifiers, who never saw their works. I select a couple of verses taken almost at random, that those who read this may never wish to see or hear of them more. He hath in thee shew'd wonders great, O Egypt void of vaunts : On Pharaoh thy cursed King, And his severe servants. He smote then many nations, And did great acts and things : He slew (he great and mightiest, And chiefest of their Kings. Sehon, King of the Amorites, And Og, King of Bashan : He slew also the kingdoms all That were of Canaan. And gave their land to Israel, An heritage we see, To Israel his own people An heritage to be. It surely did not require (one would have thought,) two people to put their heads together to produce such verses as these so improved are we in taste, if not in virtue, that hardly any per- son at the present day could, I think, be found to make such ones, were he even to strive to do it. For several years Mr. S waged frequent, but unsuccessful war with this Bavius and Maevius of sacred song. The elderly parishioners persisted in singing to their dying day, the psalms, as they said, King David had, and as they had always done themselves, and their fathers before them. By 250 degrees, however, as these venerators of King David were gathered with him and their fathers, the remaining congregation became more com- pliant, and at length yielded, though reluctantly, to the introduction of a more modern version, and a better style of song. There were two points, however, on which he found them inflexible. He wished that the psalms should be given out by the clerk verse by verse, instead of line by line, which he thought, from the rapid alternation of speech and song, destroyed the harmony, and pro- duced a ludicrous effect. The congregation started in horror at the first mention of so daring an innovation, and he prudently never mentioned it to them a second time. The fifth psalm was a very favorite one of his, and so likewise was -the tune to which it was sung. The first verse in his version was as follows : Lord in the morning thou shalt hear, My voice ascend the skies j To thee I will direct my prayer, To thee lift up mine eyes. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah! One would have thought that these lines might have escaped without animadversion the four first were unobjectionable, but the mischief lay in the fifth. Hallelujah was a word of novel sound, and savoured too much of the church of Rome. Mr. S addressed the congregration several successive Sundays, explained its meaning, and 251 reminded them, that the spirits of just men made perfect, are said in scripture, to stand before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands, and to sing Hallelujah for ever. They were, however, obstinate one Hallelujah might have been endured, but four Hallelujahs was a. superstitious repetition, which no true Presbyterian could abide. of die changes time has wrought either in others or in himself. But on a return to the place in which he formerly lived, he finds every thing changed children are grown up to be men and women, middle age is old age, and old age is either helpless imbecility, or moul- dering in the tomb. Man sees now he is not moving in a circle, but fast approaching the goal whither tend- all the sons of men. He mingles with society, but finds it so different from what it had formerly been j the sympathy, the interest, 277 the community of feeling, which intercourse had occasioned, is broken off he is received with, and feels kindness, but it is kindness only dif- ferent habits, different manners, and different degrees of communication with the world, will hardly allow him to feel much friendship or to experience much gratification. The landscape seems changed likewise he still mounts the hills with pleasure, but it is not unmixed pleasure he wanders over his favourite walks time he thinks has changed them, alas! it has only changed himself. Upwards of forty years ago, a lad, about six- teen years of age, the son of a respectable far- mer, was sent to America, to pitch his fortune, as the phrase here is. His passage was paid for him. He had a couple of suits of clothes, a dozen of shirts, and ten guineas in his pocket, which is the common outfitting farmers give their sons. Extravagance is no more a Presby- terian's vice, than distrust in Providence. For four years the friends of the young man heard frequently from him, and wrote to him in return. On one of those occasions, they informed him of the death of his rather. As he was an only son, the farm, which was a valuable one, was now become his, and his mother and sister were left without my pro- vision. He was desired to come immediately 278 home and take possession. A paragraph ot his letter (which was addressed to his mother) in reply, is so characteristic of an upright and noble mind, that I cannot forbear inserting it. When the universe is shaken by the crimes of man, it is pleasant to pause and contemplate his virtues, however humble the sphere in which they are exerted. " I have not succeeded here to my wish. I am preparing to go back to the wilderness, and should I not make something like a fortune, you will never hear from me more. In the mean time act, manage, and dispose of the pro- perty, as if there were no such person as me in the universe. I renounce all right to it. I will, never touch a haporth of it, or a haporth's worth, and God's curse light on me if I do not keep my word. Should any thing happen to m^, I have given your direction to a friend who will not fail to let you know but I do not fear, for I am under the care of a good God, who spread a table for the Israelites in the wilder- ness, and whose eye will watch over me the same as if I were on the fairy waterside. For has he not said e when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.' ' Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evi! for he is with me, his rod and his staff they comfort me.' " 279 The good dame to whom this letter was ad- dressed, shed many tears as she perused it not bitter ones, however, for precious as the oil which poured on Aaron's beard, and ran down to his skirts, are the tears which flow from a mother's eyes upon the letter which bespeaks the affection of her son. She shed, however, many bitter ones afterwards, when years rolled away and brought no tidings of himwhen she reflected that while she enjoyed comfort and affluence, he to whom she was in- debted for them, was, perhaps, toiling in some American forest, or (dreadful thought) sinking beneath the grasp of some American savage. In the mean time her daughter grew up, was married, and had sons and daughters of her own. They likewise became men and women, and bethought of marriage themselves. Birth, mar- riage, and death, are the three grand epochs in the history of man. Short is the space be- tween them, even with the longest liver, and the author who passes them in rapid succes- sion before the eyes of his reader, does little more than imitate the movements of time, which Ever eating, never cloying, All devouring, all destroying, Never finding full repast, Till it eats the world at last. The wedding day of one of them arrived. It was to take place in the evening, at the grand- mother's house. Fabhion weds in the morning, for what reason I know not, nor probably does it know iti If. Nature weds at night as man is conceived at night, is generally born at night, almost ever dies at night, and is then .involved in night. Nox was the oldest of the deities, and an ancient poet asscribes to her the generation of gods and men. A survejor was measuring the farm, in order that it might be fairly divided among the young people. The grandmother wished to leave them the earth she was old, and her thoughts were on the sky. An elderly man passed the surveyor as he was at work. He returned and asked him . what he was doing. The other informed him, as well as the reason of it. " I like a wedding" said the man, " for I like to see happy faces, though I have seen, by a great number, more sorrowful ones if I thought I should be welcome, I would go along with you." " "Welcome/* said the surveyor, " that 1 am sure you will be, a hundred and a hundred times. Mrs. N is a Christian ; would you have her shut her door on the stranger, or refuse a corner of her fire-side to the weary traveller ?" The bridal oarty was now assembled, rejoic- ing and carousing. The stranger, as the surveyor promised him, received a cordial welcome. In Ireland, even at the present day, it may be truly said, that to refuse admittance to a wearied man w ere shame - } And stranger is a holy name. The present one was a great traveller. Kad been in various parts of the world, he told the company, and had experienced many vicissi- tudes of fortune, both by sea and land. " Ay, Lord help us !" said a jolly-looking young man, " there's sorrow enough, I dare say, every where even people abroad must expect to meet with it, as well as we poor slaves, who toil all our lives, and have never any thing com- fortable at home." This poor slave was the uncontrolled master of his actions, had never toiled an entire day in his life, and at the moment he was speaking, was in the midst of plenty. But he forgot all these things. He spoke the language of the country, of human nature rather, which, since the days of Horace, perhaps since the days of Adam, is always dissatisfied with the lot Provi- dence assigns it. The question ever uppermost with the old woman, was now asked the stranger. " Had he ever been in America ?" " He was just come from it," he said. " And had he ever, by any chance " 282 " Seen your son ?" interrupted he "aye, many a good time and often, and so will you, too, when you least expect it." " Oh, blessed Saviour of the world!" exclaimed the enraptured mother ; " let me but see my boy once again, let me but see his red cheek and flaxen hair, and I will die content." " That you will not see,*' said the man, with a melancholy smile j " his red cheek is now a pale one, and his flaxen locks, like your own, are grey ones. Time changes the face, but it does not change the heart, and many a sorrowful pang his gave him when he thought of you." The tears started into his eyes as he spoke. The old woman fell on his neck and wept her heart told her who he was a son's tears speak a language a mother cannot mistake. The rest of the company, however, were not mothers. Some of them, indeed, were going to be married, and hoped, no doubt, in due time to become so. They did not, therefore, greatly relish the sight of this full-grown son, who started up in a drab- coloured great coat to rob them of their inheri- tance. A murmuring, even, went among them, that he was not the son, but an impostor. Mr. N had lived among the Americans, who are a judicious people, and understand the nature of evidence, A handful of bank notes he drew forth to share among the young people made 283 many converts, and when he declared his deter- mination to confirm any distribution his mother should make of the land, the most incredulous were satisfied, and declared that he was a true man and not an impostor. Of his lands and his notes she did not think ; she only thought of him- self, and in the words of Jacob to Joseph, said, " now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive." Mr. N 's adventures in America were curious. I regret I cannot give them at length. I shall relate one or two of them. At the breaking out of the war in 1775, im- pelled by his zeal for liberty, he entered into the American service. He was present at several engagements, was wounded in one of them, and gradually rose to the rank of a captain. A love of liberty, however, seldom exists long in a soldier, for he soon finds that obedience is a more necessary virtue ; besides, he had sworn not to return to his friends until he had made a fortune, and though the army leads to the temple of honour, it seldom does to that of Plutus. He resolved, therefore, to quit the profession, but wavered about the mode. An accident that occurred assisted him in his determination. A young officer in one of the American corps in the British service was found lurking near the American camp. " To be a loyalist was a crime deserving of death ; but to be both loyalist and spy hanging was too good for him," a member of tke court martial that tried him humanely said. In vain he urged that lie was no spy, that he was not caught in the camp but near it, and that he was going to see a young woman he was attached to, whose father lived in the neighbourhood. The court treated this defence with great con- tempt. Love is not the deity of a camp in a time of civil war, but hate. Nemesis presides there, not Venus. The young man was sentenced to be hanged. The night before the intended execution, Mr. N , as captain of the guard, sat up with the prisoner. He listened to his tale of sorrow with commiseration, and believed his protestations of innocence. The young man cut off a lock of his hair, which he requested him to convey to his mother. " Poor woman," said he, " it will be a sorrowful sight for her ; little did she think, when we left Ireland, that I should meet with such a fate as this." " Ireland!" said Mr. N , aghast. " I thought you were an American." " No," the other answered ; " I left the county of Fermanagh when 1 was a child ony name is O- , but I changed it when I went into the army." Mr. N clasped him in his arms ki rapture. He was a relation, not a very distant one, of his own. The rapture was followed by agony, when he recollected that his unfortunate relation was to be hanged the following day. " Ah, man," said he, when he was able to speak, " why did you bring yourself to such a pass why did you not take the right side ?" " I did take the right side," said the young man " all my forefathers were loyal men I would die ten deaths sooner than be a rebel They may tell in Fermanagh that I was hanged ; but nobody there will think the worse of me when he hears it was for being a loyalist." The Protestants of Fermanagh and of the neighbouring county of Cavan, are mostly members of the established church, and have an immeasurable attachment to that monarchy ouisa, hast thou said is a literal translation of an old Irish ballad, and that Mr. Sheridan even borrowed with it the air to which it was sung? The following is the production of an obscure poet, who died many years ago. I do not under- stand Irish, but I am assured that it is as literally translated as the idiom of the two languages will allow I- SONNET. Thou dear sedncer of my heart. Fond cause of every struggling sigh ; No more can I conceal love's smart, No more restrain the ardent eye. What tho' this tongue did never move, To tell thee all its master's pain ; My eyes, my look have spoke my love, Alvina ! shall they speak in vain? For still imagination warm, Presents thee at the noon-tide beam, And sleep gives back thy angel form, To clasp thee in the midnight dream. Alvina ! tho' no splendid store Of riches more than merit move ; Yet, charmer ! I am far from poor, For I am more thaa rich in love. 310 Pulse of my beating heart ! shall all My gay seductive hopes be fled j Unheeded wilt thou hear my fall ? Unpitied wilt thou see me dead ? I'll make a cradle of this breast, Thy image all its child shall be; My throbbing heart shall rock to rest, The cares that waste thy life and me. CHAPTER XXVIII. I WALKED this morning to the little town (as it is called) of Minecherin. It is situated in the very heart of the mountain, and, at a little distance, might be taken for a part of it. It consists of twenty or thirty little cabins. To each of these are attached a few acres of land a portion is a potatoe garden, and the remainder gives grass for a cow, and produces a little oats. To an Eng- lishman nothing would seem more wretched than the situation of these cabins. The ground on which they stand is half-reclaimed bog, and heaps of manure are piled and scattered round them, which render entrance a matter of consi- derable difficulty. Nor does the state of the inte- 311 rior appear to make amends for the exterior. In mid-day the darkness of midnight rests upon it. The chimney is seldom so well constructed as to carry away the smoke, through which some women, blear-eyed, shrivelled, and blackened, seated on their three-legged stools, like so many Sybils in the act of prophecy, gradually become visible. A cow, a calf, and a pig, generally fill up the back ground. The appearance of the furniturecorresponds with that of the inhabitants a few earthen vessels, tin porringers, and wooden noggins on the dresser, two or three stools around the fire, and a bed or beds, covered by a coarse and black rug, make up the whole of it. " All this is wretchedness, surely, or there is no such thing as wretchedness upon earth." To many, very many, no doubt it would be so, but happily the people most interested, are not wretched very far from it, and many good reasons might be given, why they should not. In the first place, neither they nor their imme- diate fathers, ever knew a better way of living. This in itself is almost every thing, Man is the mere creature of habit, and all those tastes which have the most influence over him, are acquired ones no man ever was born with a love of snuff, of coffee, of pepper, or of claret. In the next place, the bogs on which (in which I should rather say) they live, give them plenty of 312 turf. The poorest man has (if it is not his own fault) an inexhaustible abundance of firing. Chilled, and as it were impregnated, with the damp and moisture of his mountains, even the smoke of his cabin gives him pleasure. He is not a creature who lives in a medium way, nor is he, perhaps, the more to be pitied on that account. He has the rapid alternation of heat and cold, of drought and moisture, and if he is often chilled and drenched during the day, has a more exquisite relish for the fire during the night, and when he is dried and baked, as it were in an oven, he re- turns again with cheerfulness to the open air. His food is simple ; but he has it in abundance. It is wholesome food likewise. Vegetables and milk, potatoes, butter, onions, and oaten-bread. Onions and garlic are of a most cordial nature. These vegetables composed part of the diet which enabled the Israelites to endure, in a warm cli- mate, the heavy tasks imposed upon them by their Egyptian masters. They were likewise eaten by the Roman farmers to repair the waste of their strength, by the toils of harvest. When, notwithstanding their cordial properties, he feels uneasy sensations in his stomach, from the aces- cent qualities of his food, nature kindly extends her hand to him, with a medicine drawn from his own mountains a medicine which he does not take reluctantly, but readily and cheerfully SIS whiskey which, when not drank to excess, is as well-suited to his temperament and necessities, as wine is to a Frenchman's, or ale to an English- man's. Milk and vegetable diet humanize the heart, and if they do not create, cherish benevolent dispositions. All fierce animals are carnivorous, all gentle ones are granivorous. An Irish moun- taineer is mild, humane, and affectionate, and he shrinks yes, paradoxical as it will be reckoned by many he shrinks beyond most other men from the idea of inflicting misery, or of shedding blood. This is his natural and quiescent charac- ter. But he is social, and he has extraordinary sen- sibility. His sympathy is easily excited, and he catches the flame of enthusiasm with an ardour inconceivable to persons of a more phlegmatic temperament. The quarrel, therefore, of his neighbour, his friend, his relation, is his own quarrel he kindles as he goes along, passion takes entire possession of him, and under the influence of this temporary frenzy, he is capable of committing the greatest excesses. Women are more tender, more humane, and affectionate, than men; but when in a passion they have much less self-government, and have, perhaps, done more atrocious deeds. The wretched condition of society in Ireland^ 314 the contest which has so long subsisted between the two great sects into which it is divided, the occasional arrogance and oppression of the Pro* testant, plant the thorns of envy, jealousy, and hatred, in the poor Catholic's breast, which never fail to shoot forth into a plenteous crop of resent- ment, whenever an opportunity presents itself. On such an occasion he does not scrupulously dis- criminate between the Protestant his benefactor, and the Protestant his oppressor in his ordinary and insulated state, he thinks only of the man, in his artificial and gregarious state, he thinks only of the Protestant. But besides his great susceptibility of impression, .his great tendency to association, and his political situation, there is another reason why the inci- dental character of the Irish mountaineer should so often predominate over his intrinsic one. I mean his great tendency to drunkenness which, after all, he has only in common with the inhabi- tantsof other mountainous countries. The craving and longing of man, in a cold and damp climate, for ardent spirits is so universal, that it seemsan instinct given by nature for his preservation, rather than a pernicious habit which leads to his destruction. It has been remarked, that the Indians have di- minished every where in America, since their con- nection with the Europeans. This has been justly ascribed to the Europeans having introduced spi- 315 rituous liquors among them. In the same period the Irish peasantry have every where increased, nor is there, perhaps, a healthier body of men in the universe. But to return to the other advantages of the poor mountaineer's condition. I return to them with pleasure, for sweet it is to find that the flower of human happiness will not wither, even when stuck in the bosom of what at first view appears wretchedness itself. Milk and vegetable diet, not only mend his heart and humanize his disposition, but give him, if not better health, at least longer life. Animal food is a much higher stimulus than vegetable. It quickens the circulation much more, and sooner wears out the powers of life. The lamp burns the brighter, perhaps, (and only perhaps) but it burns the quicker. I have felt the pulses of a number of English and Irish peasants, and have always found those of the latter, slower than those of the former. Constant intercourse with his cattle, sharing with them his room and his roof, gives him health to enjoy life. Nature, which made man and those animals equally necessary to each other, has kind- ly prevented any inconvenience from their living together. On the contrary, to repay him for af- fording them shelter, she has done more. She has endowed them with the power of destroying 316 the effects of marsh exhalations, and of prevent- ing fever. Constant living out of doors during the day gives him more health, more enjoyment. Hap- piness not only depends on objects, but on ca^- pacities not only on the application of them to the nerves, but on the state of the nerves them- selves. When they are not in a state of proper tension, impressions made upon them will be feeble and unattractive. To the healthy state of the nervous system, frequent and almost continued exposure to the open air, which, beyond even sleep, is chief nou- risher in life's feast, is indispensable ; and I will ven- ture to assert, that the English tradesman or ma- nufacturer, whose avocations exclude him so en- tirely from it, though he has so much more of what the world calls comfort, has not the one lialf of the enjoyment of the Irish peasant, who labours in wet and cold, and snow, on an im- mense morass, or dreary mountain, but whos2 heart is fanned by the storm which passes over him, whose imagination is quickened by the so- lemnity around him, and whose nature is enno- bled by the intercourse of those airy beings with whom in fancy he associates. One more advantage, (a very great one) and I have done. The bounty of nature has by one gift, in a great measure, levelled the conditions of 317 men. A simple weed brought from America, has put on an equal footing the king on his throne, the lord in his castle, and the peasant on his mountain perhaps, with benevolence beyond jus- tice, has given the superiority to the latter. I question whether one of those poor Irish moun- taineers, seated by his blazing fire, drying his drenched garments, resting his wearied limbs, and inhaling from his little soot-covered pipe obli- vion to his cares, his hardships, and his wants, quickening his imagination at each breath, to revel in ideal communication with the fairies of the stream which flows near him to listen in as- tonishment to the song of the witches in the storm which passes over him, does not for one pleasurable sensation which fastidious prosperity, shut up in a close apartment, picking dainties, for which the best of all sauces is wanting, sipping the finest wines, which to its jaded palate have lost all their relish, ever experiences, enjoy a hun- dred. Are then these poor people, perhaps may be asked, perfectly satisfied and content ? Alas ! no, who are content ? The rich London merchant who heaps thousands on thousands The mighty conqueror who adds provinces to king- doms, as a girl strings beads, merely to be scat- tered again Are they content ? These poor people, like all other men, are suf- 318 ficiently alive to the evils of their present condi- tion. Like all other men they do not live in the present alone, but in the future, and in the past, and while they have hope to brighten, have recollection to darken their path. Into these mountains their ancestors were driven. They were driven and pent up like sheep, and left upon black bog, and dun heath, and barren rock, to mourn over their fallen greatness, their ancient possessions, their fertile vales, their flocks, and their fields. In these mountains even they could not worship their God in quietness. Insult and injury followed them even here, and the pious and venerable priest, who would have raised their thoughts from earth to heaven, was driven, with tauntings and mockery, from the black rock which sheltered his grey locks from the storm, from the simple sod of earth, which was the only altar he could raise to the Almighty, and from the dark lake, which mournfully reflected his own still darker fate. In these mountains their generous hearts be- came ulcerated, their souls corrosive, their judg- ments perverted, and they preyed in large gangs, on the lands and properties of the inhabitants of the vallies, as a matter of right, of inheritance, and of revenge. In these mountains, when re- sentment dared no longer openly shew itself, it became, perhaps, only the stronger for concen- 319 tration. Protestant magistrates, Protestant land- lords, Protestant masters, to bow down to, to flatter and to obey. To bow down to those who had injured them, to flatter those they hated. Dreadful condition ! which Homer, whose know- ledge of human nature will not be doubted, makes in a special manner the wretchedness even of the wretched Priam* himself.