case in the Protestant churches of England. The pews are a source of revenue to the church, and this has caused them to encroach so much upon the space intended for the congregation, that no room at all remains in the end for the poor. Well-meaning clergymen have often struggled against this abuse of the pews; and some, like the worthy pastor of Edgeworthtown, when they could not bring the parish to provide accommodation for the poor, have done so at their own expense. The vicar in question, it is said, had the greatest difficulty in obtaining a vestry act to enable him to carry his benevolent views into operation. Of late the Puseyites have commenced a spirited opposition against the monopolising system of pews, and in this, at least, least, it is to be hoped, they will succeed. There are 800 Catholics in Edgeworthtown, and 300 Protestants, but the latter do not increase in number in an equal ratio with the former. The Catholics have become wealthier and more powerful since their emancipation, as well as more numerous, and this remark will apply to nearly all Ireland. I was also told that the Catholics endeavour at present to induce young men of better families than was formerly the case, to devote themselves to the church. I visited the schools in the place. They were well conducted, because the gentry did not negJect them. I saw nothing very remarkable there, except that in the arithmetic lesson, the teacher made use of the Chinese-Mongolian-Russian reckoning board. He told me the board had been introduced into the popular schools of Ireland two years previously, and had been found to answer extremely well. He was aware the instrument was of Chinese or Russian origin, and, believed to have heard, that it had been adopted on the recommendation of a Russian nobleman who had travelled in Ireland. I was not able to ascertain whether this was really the case. Perhaps the English obtained it directly from China. The Chinese were, unquestionably, the first inventors of this useful instrument, which, I am only surprised, has not long ago been adopted in every country in Europe. Some strange stories of murders were told me by the farmers of the vicinity. An Irishman had, some years previously, by one of the many secret societies that have existed in Ireland, been engaged to murder a certain individual. The man was on his road in search of his victim, and, being overtaken by a storm, was met by a gentleman, who took him to his country-house, and ordered dry clothes and refreshments to be given to him. On inquiring the name of his benevolent host, the man found that he was in the house of the very being he had undertaken to murder. He was returning without having executed his task, when he met one of his secret associates, to whom he told what had happened, declaring that it was now quite impossible for him to destroy one who had been so kind to him. The associate, who had received a similar commission, proposed that they should change their two victims. The scrupulous assassin eagerly accepted a proposal which, he thought, relieved his conscience from the crime of ingratitude. The arrangement was made, and each slew his man! I was astonished at the slowness with which corn ripens in Ireland. They sow their winter corn there in November, and their summer corn in February, yet it is not till the middle of September that they can think of getting in their wheat harvest. Their oats are still later. Rye is a description of corn they never think of. When the summer has been wet and cold, the wheat is not got in till the middle of October, nor oats till November. In the south of Germany, on the Rhine, rye is generally housed about the 22d of July, and wheat, barley, and oats follow at short intervals. In Courland and Lithuania, countries that lie nearly under the same latitude as Ireland, the harvest is generally got in about the end of July or the beginning of August, though the summer corn is sown only in April, till which month the ground retains its wintry covering of snow. While I was in the vicinity of Edgeworthtown, a little fair was held there, and afforded me an opportunity of observing the manners of the Irish market-people in the disposal of their wares. Some of them-those who deal in fruit, and various kinds of eatables-did as they would have done in most countries, that is to say, they sat by the side of their wares, and waited till customers presented themselves; but those who dealt in knives, scissors, and an endless variety of small articles, were more noisy and mountebankish than I had ever before seen them out of Great Britain. Some of them had arranged their goods on a moveable booth that went upon wheels. One side of this travelling repository formed a kind of stage on which the merchant made his appearance, and presented various articles to the public, to whom, in the style of an Italian vendor of medicines, he recommended his goods with surprising volubility, accompanied by jokes that were not always without wit. He would name the price of an article. The spectators laughed, and offered him perhaps a few pence. Others offered perhaps a trifle more, and so went on, till the merchant was satisfied, or till, despairing of an acceptable offer, he put the article by and produced another. Similar scenes are constantly seen at the English fairs likewise, and even in London there are shops in which perpetual auctions are going on, a crowd of spectators being kept all day long around the place, which may be considered half in the light of a shop, and half in that of a playhouse. I saw no gipsies at the fair, and was assured there were none in Ireland. In all the books on Ireland that have come into my hands, I have in vain sought a confirmation of this assertion, yet books ought to tell us what we must not look for in a country as well as what we may expect to see there. It would be strange if the gipsy race, which has found its way into every country of Europe, had avoided Ireland, and yet several Irishmen have assured me the fact is so; and as Ireland boasts of so many peculiarities, has neither toads nor snakes, nor many other animals that are met with everywhere else, one is disposed à priori to believe the assertion. It may be that parties of gipsies crossed over to Ireland at times, but finding there a race almost as barbarous and wretched as themselves, they returned and did not multiply in the land. The Romans also never went over into Ireland, even when they held possession of almost every other country in the known world. Another fact almost equally remarkable, is the total absence of Jews from Ireland. At least, there does not now exist a Jewish synagogue in the whole island; not even in Dublin, a city of 270,000 inhabitants. Some Jews, it is true, came over with Cromwell, and in 1746 there were forty families of that nation in Dublin, where they had a synagogue and a cemetery; but in 1821 the little community had dwindled down to nine individuals. In this respect, Ireland and Dublin certainly stand alone in Europe. In England and Scotland there are Jews and gipsies in all directions. FROM EDGEWORTHTOWN TO THE SHANNON. It was not without a feeling of melancholy that I took leave of my kind friends of Edgeworthtown, when about to visit the glorious Shannon, the great main artery of the island. The usual way of travelling in those parts of Ireland where there are no stage-coaches, is by the aid of a jaunting-car. This is a two-wheeled vehicle with one horse, with a seat for two persons on each side. In the centre between the seats is a cavity called a well, in which the traveller's luggage is deposited. The shaft is fastened, not to the axletree, but to the body of the carriage, and the passenger, in consequence, is obliged to accompany the horse in every movement he makes, just as if the whole concern were fastened to his back. When the horse gallops, the comically violent motion that ensues, affords much fun to some, and makes others sea-sick. The machine is, of course, uncovered, and as it generally rains in Ireland, few travellers neglect to pack themselves and their goods up in some waterproof tissue or other. The price charged for such a car is sixpence for an English mile, just half what is paid in England for a one-horse conveyance. These cars are very much to be recommended to a traveller who wishes to see something of the country he is passing through. He is not bound to any particular line of road, and may ruins of every period of history, from the times of the Phoenicians down to the present day. There are ruins that are supposed to date trom the arrival of the fire-worshippers of the East, others which pass for remains of Druidical temples, or of the palaces of the ancient Celtic kings. Fragments may be seen of the churches built when Christianity was first introduced into the country; the domination of the Danes enriched the land with another rich course of ruins, and down to our own times each century has marked its progress by the ruins it has left. Nay, every decade, one might almost say, has set its sign upon Ireland, for in all directions you see a number of dilapidated buildings, ruins of yesterday's erection. Along my road I passed through no town in which I did not behold houses of very recent construction falling into ruins. In some places I even saw ten or twelve such houses standing side by side. With the ruins of old castles and churches, some sad poetical tradition of war and violence is usually associated; these more modern ruins are connected with the yet sadder story of injustice committed in the time of peace. The cruel expulsion of a tenant by his landlord, or the emigration of the poor occupiers, or the want of means to effect the necessary repairs, these are generally the causes assigned. Generally, indeed, the people are not very communicative when you inquire into the matter. "Ah, sir, it's a sad story, and we'd better say nothing about it," is often the only answer you can get. The painter has least reason to complain, for as all descriptions of creeping plants are very abundant in Ireland, Irish ruins generally wear a very picturesque look. The beautiful ivy hangs its drapery round them all, wild roses, travel whither he will, so he pay but his six-yews, and similar plants nestle everywhere edges of the coat are formed into a sort of fringe, that a hint so often given to him should still be pence a mile; and then, as his feet are never far from the ground, he can step on and off at all times with very little trouble, and need pass nothing unexamined by the roadside. Then, in his driver he has always a talkative Paddy, who, duly to balance the vessel committed to his pilotage, rarely sits on his box, but rather on the opposite seat, dos-à-dos with his passenger, ready to give him the benefit of his experience, and show him "a bit of the country." Having himself an abundant stock of curiosity, he is ready to sympathize with curiosity and desire of information in another. He stops when his passenger wishes it, drives slower of his own accord when he sees him taking notes, not forgetting, when he thinks he has said something witty or clever, to add, "and won't your honour please to put down that too?" On one of the many beautiful and sunny days vouchsafed even unto Ireland by the autumn of 1842, I rolled away with an equipage such as I have described, towards the banks of the Shannon, intending afterward to avail myself of the services of the river itself to continue my journey toward the south-western districts of the island. In the central part of Ireland, till you arrive at the Shannon, there are few natural beauties to admire. The land is level, and the attention of the traveller is naturally more directed to man and his works; neither, I grieve to say, is calculated to awaken much pleasure in the contemplation, for the former is mostly in rags, and the latter in ruins. From a well-ordered country ruins ought to have a natural tendency to disappear, but of all countries in the world, Ireland is the country for ruins. Here you have among the broken masonry, and often have I seen the most wretched huts enveloped in a rich full robe of ivy, worthy to luxuriate around the tottering keep of what was once a royal castle. Many a hut I believe is made habitable only by the ivy that embraces and upholds it. The rags of Ireland are quite as remarkable a phenomenon as the ruins. As an Irishman seems to live in a house as long as it remains habitable, and then abandons it to its fate so he drags the same suit of clothes about with him as long as the threads will hold together. In other countries there are poor people enough, who can but seldom exchange their old habiliments for new, but then they endeavour to keep their garments, old as they are, in a wearable condition. The poor Russian peasant, compelled to do so by his climate, sews patch upon patch to his sheepskin jacket, and even the poorest will not allow his nakedness to peer through the apertures of his vestment, as is frequently seen in Ireland among those who are far above the class of beggars. In no country is it held disgraceful to wear a coat of a coarse texture, but to go about in rags is nowhere allowed but in Ireland, except to those whom the extreme of misery has plunged so deeply into despair, that they lose all thought of decorum. In Ireland no one appears to feel offended or surprised at the sight of a naked elbow or a bare leg. There is something quite peculiar in Irish rags. So thoroughly worn away, so completely reduced to dust upon a human body, no rags are elsewhere to be seen. At the elbows and at all the other corners of the body the clothes hang like the drooping petals of a faded rose; the and often it is quite impossible to distinguish the inside from the outside of a coat, or the sleeves from the body. The legs and arms are at last unable to find their accustomed way in and out, so that the drapery is every morning disposed, after a new fashion, and it might appear a wonder how so many varied fragments are held together by their various threads, were it not perfectly a matter of indifference whether the coat be made to serve for breeches, or the breeches for coat. What in the eyes of a stranger gives so ludicrous an effect to the rags of an Irish peasant, is the circumstance that his national costume is cut after the fashion of our gala dress, of the coats worn among us at balls and on state occasions. The humbler classes with us wear either straight frock. coats, or, when at work, short round jackets. In Belgium, France, and some other countries, the working men have a very suitable costume in their blouses, and a very similar garment, the smock frock, is worn in most of the rural districts of England. Paddy, on the other hand, seems to have thought the blouse, or the short jacket, not elegant enough for him, so he has selected for his national costume the French company dress coat, with its high useless collar, its swallow tail hanging down behind, and the breast open in front. With this coat he wears short knee breeches, with stockings and shoes, so that, as far as the cut of his clothes is concerned, he appears always in full dress, like a rale gentleman. Now it is impossible that a working man could select a costume more unsuitable to him, or more absurd to look upon. It affords no protection against the weather, and is a constant hinderance to him in his work, yet it is generally prevalent throughout the island. It is said that a mass of old dress coats are constantly imported from England, where the working classes never wear them. If so, the lowness of the price at which they are sold may have induced the Irish peasants to purchase these castoff habiliments, and, laying aside their original costume, which cannot but have been more suitable, to mount the dunghill in a coarse and tattered French ball costume. The fact, however, is, that most of these coats are not imported, but are made in the country, of a coarse gray cloth called "frieze," from which the coats themselves derive the name of "frieze coats." It is only on Sundays, and among the wealthier peasants, that the frieze coat is seen in its complete form, with four buttons behind and six in front. On working-days, not only the buttons are wanting, but the whole gear resolves itself into that indescribable condition of which I have endeavoured to communicate some notion, Often the one half of the swallow tail is gone, and the other half may be seen drooping in widowed sorrow over its departed companion, whom it is evidently prepared to follow, on no very distant day. It seems never to occur to the owner, when one of these neglected flaps hangs suspended only by a few threads, that half a dozen stitches would renew its connexion with the parent coat, or that one bold cut would at all events put it out of its lingering misery. No, morning after morning, he draws on the same coat, with - the tail drooping in the same pity-inspiring condition, till the doomed fragment drops at last of its own accord, and is left lying on the spot where it fell. This tail is generally the first part that is lost of the coat. Is it not strange thrown away on the Irish peasant, and that he should not long ere this have thought of exchanging his coat for a jacket? If he did this, he would not so often, while some blush of novelty is left upon his coat, be obliged to tuck up his tail while at work, or to tie it round his body with packthread. The head gear harmonizes with the ball-room suit. Paddy scorns to wear a waterproof cap, but in its place he dons a strange caricature of a beaver or silk hat, that many a time and ofthow often Heaven a lone knows-has been reduced to a complete state of solution by the rain, and then been allowed to dry again into some new and unimagined shape. How millions of working men can have endured for so many years to wear so inconvenient and absurd a head-dress, is quite inconceivable to me, and utterly irreconcilable to that sound common sense by which the masses are generally characterized. Paddy, it must be owned, pinches and flattens and twists the uncomfortable appendage into a fashion of his own. He pushes up the brim away from his face in front, while behind it soon hangs in festoon fashion. The crown in time falls in, but being deemed an important part of the concern, is kept in its place for some time longer by the aid of packthread. The crown goes, however, at last, and the hat, one would then suppose, would be deemed useless; no such thing, the owner will continue to wear it, for a year or two afterwards, by way of ornament. It is impossible for a stranger to see a peasant at his work, thus accoutred like a decayed dancing-master, and not be tempted to laugh at so whimsical an apparition; I say whimsical, for in his deepest misery Paddy has always so much about him that is whimsical, that you can scarcely help laughing even while your heart is bleeding for him. Nothing offers so striking a contrast to the meager, ragged wretchedness of the Irish peasant than the creature with which he usually shares his home-I mean his pig. You see the animal go where you will, and so well fed, so oily, so round, so paunchy, as you will scarcely ever see it elsewhere. In no other country have I ever seen so many pigs, except perhaps in Walachia; but the Walachian pigs, feeding in the woods, are a much wilder race than the Irish pigs, which are literally the inmates of their master's home, and are reared up with the other. members of his family. What the horse is to the Arab, or the dog to the Greenlander, the pig is to an Irishman. He feeds it quite as well as he does his children, assigns to it a corner in his sitting-room, shares his potatoes, his milk, and his bread with it, and all these favours, he con-. fidently expects, the pig will in due time gratefully repay. Upon the pig it is that the best hopes of the poor peasant often repose. "The pig it is must pay the rent," is a speech you may hear repeated hundreds of times. The high rent which he has to make up for his landlord is the heaviest of the poor fellow's earthly-cares, and the pig is the friend that must relieve him of it. Of late years, I was sometimes told, that the goat had been preferred, as easier to rear than the pig, but in all those parts of the country which I visited, the pig was the predominant animal. In front of many of the farm-houses that I passed I saw hawthorn bushes cut into fantastic shapes, pyramids, crosses, &c., as I had often seen in England. By the roadside, also, they oc curred frequently, and some had stems of enor-Dublin; for though in some wealthy houses in mous thickness, and appeared of a much greater the seacoast towns, coals are burned, yet the maage than we ever see them in Germany. There jority of the population everywhere burn nothing are parts of Ireland where nothing now remains but these old thorn-bushes, to testify to the mighty forests that once grew there. There are many countries in Europe where the forests that formerly existed there have completely vanished, in consequence of the unthrifty manner in which the inhabitants have dealt with their timber. No other country, however, has been so neglectful of this department of national economy as Ireland, and the inconvenience is now felt. By plantations of young trees, they are endeavouring to repair their bygone errors. It is the same in Switzerland, in Greece, in Southern Russia, &c. The larch appeared to me to be made an object of particular care. In every direction I saw young saplings of this beautiful and useful plant, but always in small parcels, and not in such extensive plantations as we often see in our own well-wooded country. The English require much wood for their ships, and have to pay a higher price for it than most of their commercial rivals; when we think how there lie waste in Ireland many thousands of acres, well suited for the growth of oaks and pines, it is difficult to comprehend why more energetic exertions are not made to plant with timber the lands now left unoccupied and unused. Ballimahon was the second place at which I changed horses. It is a small town, but is known throughout the country for its great egg-market, an article in which much business is also carried on at Lanesborough and other places in the county of Longford. In every direction I was continually seeing the egg-buyers, with baskets on their backs, going about from hut to hut to make their purchases, which are afterwards brought to the several markets. The eggs are sent by the canal to Dublin, and thence shipped to England. Liverpool, and even London, are in a great measure supplied with eggs from Ireland. Passing along a number of crossways and byways, I arrived at Athlone. All the principal towns of Ireland, all those of first and second rank, lie along the coast, or, at all events, within easy reach of the sea; in the inland parts of the island one sees none but towns of inferior importance. One of these is Athlone, which, on account of its central position, appears well situated to be the capital of the country. It is said, indeed, to have once been in contemplation to make it the seat of government; and it is even now the spot where the strongest military force is kept, ready to march upon any part of the island where disturbances may break out. The place is fortified, and has barracks for artillery, cavalry, and infantry. but turf, which may be obtained more easily from the surface of the ground than can the coals from their deep and laborious mines. When their supply of turf has been exhausted, the Irish will pay more attention to their coal-fields, the real extent of which is still unknown to them. Before that time comes some centuries must pass away, but there are parts of Ireland where turf is beginning to grow scarce. In the north of Germany, where we have also many turf bogs, the people provide for the reproduction of the turf. They leave square holes, in which the water collects. The marsh-plants accumulate in those reservoirs, and at the end of thirty or forty years turf may again be cut from the same place, and thus a piece of turf-land is made to afford an inexhaustible supply of fuel to its owners. In Ireland nothing of the kind is thought of. The turf is cut away wherever Nature has deposited the treasure, and none seems to trouble himself about the renewal of the supply. The consequence is that many villages are mourning over their dwindling stock of turf, and can almost calculate the day on which they will have consumed their last sod. A remarkable phenomenon connected with these bogs is the manner in which they develop themselves sometimes in their centre, and then overflow their banks in all directions. The sides of a bog, for instance, will often become dry and hard, and form a rampart round the middle part, which continues moist, and therefore continues to grow. The middle, naturally, soon rises to a higher level, and this elevation of the middle of the bog may be seen at a glance as you passthrough the country. In general there are some brooks or rivulets, which carry away the surplus water from these bogs, but not always, and when this is not the case, as soon as the accumulated moisture has grown beyond a certain volume, it breaks its way, and overflows fertile fields, burying houses, trees, and often men, in its progress. Accidents of this kind still occur in Ireland, and have probably done so from the remotest times, affording a ready means of accounting for the vast extent of country which the bogs have in time been able to cover. Many articles still found in the bogs seem to bear testimony to the suddenness of some of these eruptions: trunks of trees, human skeletons, implements of husband-ry, and the bones of animals no longer to be met with in Ireland; for instance, those of the elk. The most remarkable substance found in the bog is the bog-butter, as it is called, and which the common people believe to have been really butter; though why butter should have been swallowed up in such vast quantities it would be difficult to say. Leaving Athlone, we crossed a portion of the Bog of Allan, a bog, which, under various names, occupies a large part of the great plain which runs from east to west, from Dublin to Galway, dividing the country into two sections, a mountainous north and a mountainous south. The lower grounds are quite covered with the morass, which presents the appearance of a reddish monotonous level. The cultivated fields often come down close to the edge of the bog, as the flowery fields of Switzerland advance to the extreme margin of the glaciers. Large quantities of turf are obtained from this bog, and sent down the Shannon to Limerick, or along the canals toties of Galway oysters, and as I found it impos Shannon Harbour lies on the Shannon, at the mouth of the Grand Canal. This canal extends to Dublin, and the Shannon being navigable hence to Limerick, Shannon Harbour forms an intermediate point of some importance for the inland navigation between those two cities. The commerce along this canal is not, however, very considerable, and Shannon Harbour, whatever it may hereafter become, consists at present only of a good inn, with a row of warehouses and counting-houses along the canal, and a sort of appendix of cabins for the Irish labourers. In the warehouses I saw little except large quanti sible to take a very lively interest in this description of merchandise, I turned from the present to the past, and examined some ruined castles, which were said to have once belonged to an Irish hero of the name of Mac Oghlan, who possessed no less than six castles in the neighbourhood. One of these castles I had observed as we came along. It had all the appearance of an old feudal castle, was quite as ruinous as its age warranted, and was almost covered with ivy; nevertheless, neverthe rtheless, the owner seemed to have made himself a very comfortable dwelling among the ancient halls and the toppling ruins. I have met many similar instances in Ireland of ruined castles, in which the owners contrived still to live very much at their ease. Another of the ruins lay about a mile and half from the place, and a young man accompanied me thither as guide. When we arrived it was getting dusk, and on my preparing to jump over a ditch, that I might go close up to the castle, which lay in the middle of a large potato-field, my youth hung back, and told me he would wait in the road till I came back. I soon saw he was afraid of the "good people," of whom the Irish are certainly far more in dread than they are of the devil. I was curious to see how far my companion's fear went, and threatened to withhold the promised shilling unless he went with me. "Oh, I don't care about that!" he murmured to himself, and remained obstinately behind. I had to explore the ruin by myself, but it contained nothing very remarkable-nothing but a few loopholes, and a few vaults that had fallen in. Not far off lay a small house to which my at tention had been directed in Shannon Harbour, as one the inmates of which would be able to give me some information respecting the traditions connected with the castle. Thither I directed my steps, and, seeing a woman at the door, I called to her. She appeared for a moment to consider whether she should attend to my call, then, retiring as I advanced, cried out to know what I wanted. On my approaching nearer she started off across some fields, and ran toward a house at a distance from her own. Perhaps my arrival from the haunted ruin at such an hour had appeared something very awful to her, and my foreign accent may have completed the effect. My guide too, I found, had taken to his heels, and I did not see him again till my return to Shannon Habour, whither he had run as fast as his legs could carry him, to seek shelter by his mother's turf fire from all the fays and goblins in the world. His mother scolded him for a coward, but who knows whether she would have behaved more valiantly in his place. Wherever English civilization comes, the "good people" grow more and more scarce, so at least people told me, but my own experience scarcely bears out the assertion, for even in the most Anglified parts of Ireland I found myself surrounded by swarms of "good people," soon as I ventured abroad in the dusk. as Not far from Shannon Harbour, a little farther up the river, are ruins of much greater interest, known as the "Seven Churches." This is a spot that has been held sacred from the earliest period of Irish Christianity. The ruins of the churches lie near the beautiful banks of the river, and among them are scattered the graves, it is said, of a number of the ancient Irish kings, I had occasion, afterwards, to see other places of similar sanctity, and shall return to the subject. In the same way that Shannon Harbour had its Mac Oghlan, almost every district in Ireland had once its renowned king or chief, of whose achievements the people continue to speak with admiration to the present day, and whose legitimate descendants a stranger is sure to meet with, if he make any stay in the country. Almost every Irishman of good family can trace his descent from one of the kings rings of Ulster, Leinster, Munster, or Conraught, and many families are still looked upon by their friends as the genuine representatives of the ancient sovereigns of the country. There are persons who, though their names may not be found in the peerage, yet in certain circles are looked upon as nobler than the proudest peers in the land. The most ancient of these genuine Irish families are the Milesian families as they are called, who are supposed to be able to trace their genealogy to Miletius, the conqueror of Ireland, and the second son of Heremon, King of Spain, who "came over" to Ireland, some say 500, and others 1000 years, before the Christian era. Most of the Irish names having an O before them, as O'Connell, O'Donnell, O'Sullivan, &c., pointed, I was told, to a Milesian origin. In general, historians reject as mere fables, all these old traditions of Heremon, Miletius, and of the Tuatha-de-danaans that lived in Ireland before Miletius, and of the Firbolgs that occupied the country several thousand years before Christ. A few, with Thomas Moore, believe a portion of these oral chronicles, but the people at large place entire confidence in them, and will, no doubt, long continue to do so. An Irishman has the history of Miletius, Heremon, the Phoenicians, the Spaniards, the Tuatha-dedanaans, and all the rest of them, as completely at his fingers' ends, as a German gymnasiast has the history of Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, &c. Even granting then that there may not be a particle of truth in many of these old tales, the fact is still remarkable enough, that the Irish, like the Indians, should have built up for themselves a system of traditions, that spreads out its roots inte the grayest antiquity. Nor is it less remarkable that a whole people should still continue to amuse itself with imagined legends and invented names, and should tell of them with as much confidence as of the events of yesterday. If this be no historical, it certainly is an ethnographical and psychological phenomenon, and, to the best of my belief, nothing like it is to be met with in any other part of Europe. In Italy the people have no current legends about the empire of Janus, or the domination of Saturn; nor in Germany or Scandinavia shall we find any tales about Odin, or about our original immigration from the east, unless we turn to the books of the learned. In France, also, Cæsar effectually obliterated all the legends and tales of the Druids and of the originai Celts, but the Sarons have not been able to dissipate the glory of Miletius and his consorts, who hop about in all directions with their old stories, as freshly and merrily as if they were gifted with perpetual infancy. Even among the Norman and Saxon names in Ireland, an o'd Celtic race often lies concealed; some Irish families having found it convenient in periods of persecution to seek a nominal shelher against their enemies. Thus the real name of the well-known family of Fitzpatrick is "Mac Guillo Phatrick." The memory of the ancient name, however, is always carefully preserved, and the people often prefer to call the members. of these Saxonized and Normanized families by their original Celtic appellations. |