more completely catholic air, and the population of the adjoining country have preserved some thing of their picturesque national costume. I am sorry I was not able to visit the place, and satisfy myself of the truth of all the marvels told me respecting it; and it was also with much regret that I forbore from visiting a German colony, that settled in the county of Limerick about the beginning of the last century. The settlers were from the Palatinate, and their descendants are still called Palatinates, though they have lost the language of their fathers. They have not, however, lost the German character for good order and honourable dealing, and are looked on as the best farmers in the country. "They are most respectable people," said an Irish lady to me, "and much wealthier and far better off than any of their Irish neighbours."

It is a constant subject of discussion in Ireland, between the Irish patriots and the adherents of the English, that is between the Celtomanes and the Anglomanes, whether the misery and poverty of Ireland ought to be attributed to the tyranny and bad government of the English, or whether the indolence and want of energy of the Irish themselves be not in a great measure to blame. Now the prosperity of this German colony, though subject to the same laws and in-fluences as the native Irish, would seem not to decide the question in favour of the friends of the Celts. Upon the whole, however, there are not many Germans in Ireland, not even in Dublin. They were probably never more numerous there than during the rebellion in 1798, when several regiments of Hanoverians were employed in the country, and their presence in such a form may not have left a very favourable impression respecting them on the public mind.

FROM LIMERICK TO EDENVALE.

In company with an Irishman, who joined me in the hire of a car, I started on the following day, a fine Sunday morning, to pay a visit to a ◆friend of mine, a landholder in the neighbourhood of Ennis, the capital of the county of Clare. The road lay at first along the Shannon, and then over a plain, said to be of the most fertile soil in Ireland. The appearance of the country was beautiful, and wherever the ground was slightly elevated, a fine view was obtained of the surrounding landscape, including the beautiful Shannon and its numerous islands. By the side of the river, and partly surrounded by it, lay the rock Carrigogunal, celebrated for its fairies, who take delight in surprising a mortal upon the rock, and making him partake of their hospitality.

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We passed close by the ivy-mantled ruins of Bunratty Castle, whence whole swarms of ravens issued at our approach, and a little farther on we came to the celebrated Quin Abbey. "In short," said my travelling companion, "you we have no lack of ruins in Ireland. The country was divided among a number of chiefs, who dwelt in these castles, and made war on each other. In a word, it was in those days here just as it is in your country at the present time. Murder and homicide were the order of the day even more than they are now, and the life of a nobleman was valued at forty shillings, and that of a peasant at six. That too is an old German law, I fancy. But you've no Milesian families in Germany; no, there's no people can boast of that but the Irish. And indeed it's something very particular to be a member of such a family.

Such a one may go forty days without food; at least that's the received opinion among the people of Ireland. Faith, if you look yonder you may see a woman who, though of no royal .ace, would fast more than forty days for you any day you like. I say" (turning to the driver), "that's Norisheen, isn't it?"

"Oh, sure enough, who else should it be but Norisheen?"

"Now, that Norisheen," resumed my companion, " is a legislator. We might consult her about the interests of the country. Indeed she knows more than most legislators, for she's as familiar with the future as the past."

I looked and saw an old woman attired in rags, and clinging to a wall by the side of a ruinous hut. She was repairing her mound of turf, for it is usual among the Irish to pile up their turf round their cabins, in the form of of high and thick walls, thus making the turf warm them twice, first by keeping off the wind, and secondly by mouldering to ashes on the hearth. My companion and the driver hailed the old woman as we passed, and she returned the salute, clinging with one arm to the wall, and waving the other in the air, in token of recognition. "There's a learned woman for you, sir," cried the driver. "It's she that knows the history of every family in Ireland, and all that happened in the country long before the birth of Christ. Aye, and she'll prophesy the future for you as easily as the past, for she knows every creature for many miles round, and there's little goes on even at Carrigogunal that she han't an inkling of."

Then half in earnest, half in jest, my companions told me so many marvels of Norisheen, that I was sorry I had not made her acquaintance. I asked whether O'Connell and the old woman were known to each other. It was likely enough, they thought, that O'Connell might have heard of her, but it was certain that she knew him, for she had prophesied fifty years ago that such an O'Connell would come; and now, though perhaps she contributed nothing to the tribute, she was one of his warmest partisans. It is of no little importance to O'Connell to have the witches of Ireland on his side, and there are many old crones like Norisheen in the four provinces.

I was grieved as I passed on the Sunday through several towns to see so many poor fellows loitering about, and on the look out for work. They were most of them in their Sunday attire, but with their spades in their hands, and stood grouped about the churches and market-places waiting to be hired to dig potatoes. I was shocked at the sight of such sad and serious multitudes, and all unemployed.

Clare is a poor and ruinous place, that reminded me of the Polish and Lithuanian cities. Though it bears the name of the county, it is not the chief town, that honour being enjoyed by Ennis, a much more orderly and prosperouslooking place, and celebrated in the history of Ireland, on account of the extraordinary excitement that accompanied the election of O'Connell for the county of Clare, in 1828-an election that immediately preceded, and in a great measure contributed to bring about, Catholic Emancipation.

Clare is also famed as the native county of the great Irish family of the O'Briens, of whom representatives are, indeed, scattered over every part of Ireland, but in Clare it is that they do

tle finger there." "Then why do you call them good people if they do you so much mischief? I should rather call them wicked people." " May be, your honour, I had given them some offence unknown to myself. And may be it was kind of them to let me off with a broken finger. I wouldn't call them what your honour calls them for a great deal. I shouldn't like to vex them so."

During that same walk I visited the stately mansions of some of my host's neighbours. These houses looked to me much more suited for spectral visitation than the fairy meadow I had just left. Scarcely a soul dwelt in them, and the rooms were silent like so many graves. The owners were absentees, who spent their Irish revenues in Englana or on the continent. These spectral palaces, I am sorry to say, are almost as abundant in Ireland, as fairy grounds

In Hungary, in Esthonia, in Lithuania, and in many of the other countries of Eastern Europe, one sees habitations of great wretchedness, but such miserable cabins as I beheld in this part of Ireland, I scarcely remember to have seen even in the countries I have mentioned. The fields that lay around these abject tenements, were evidently cultivated with the utmost carelessness, and generally without any fence whatever, except the adjoining bog.

I remember, when I saw the poor Lettes in Livonia, I used to pity them for having to live in huts built of the unhewn logs of trees, the crevices being stopped up with moss. I pitied them on account of their low doors, and their diminutive windows, and gladly would I have arranged their chimneys for them in a more suitable manner. Well, Heaven pardon my ignorance! I knew not that I should ever see a peo

owners feel themselves uncomfortable on many accounts among their Catholic tenants. The wildness of the country is not easily remedied, the barbarism of the people leads them often to murderous acts of vengeance against their landlords; greater attractions are unquestionably to be found in English society; the peasantry are often divided into hostile factions, and perhaps many a Protestant may not be insensible to the injustice of which the wealthier class are guilty towards their poorer countrymen. All these causes, combining to keep, so many wealthy Irish proprietors out of their country, may have given rise to the universally lamented evil of absenteeism. There are families, also, that have estates in England as well as in Ireland, and who naturally prefer residing in the former country. Those gentlemen, however, are all the more deserving of our esteem, who remain at home, where it is hardly possible that they should not in some measure ameliorate the lot of their poor tenants. There are, after all, many of these voluntary martyrs, and my hospitable host of Edenvale being one of them, I returned from my walk with feelings of increased esteem for him, nor was it without some regret that I took leave of him on the following morning.

heavier privations. Now that I have seen Ireland, it seems to me that the poorest among the Lettes, the Esthonians, and the Finlanders, lead a life of comparative comfort, and poor Paddy would feel like a king with their houses, their habiliments, and their daily warfare.

A wooden house, with moss to stop up its crevices, would be a palace in the wild regions of Ireland. Paddy's cabin is built of earth; one shovelful over the other, with a few stones mingled here and there, till the wall is high enough. But perhaps you will say, the roof is thatched or covered with bark? Ay, indeed! A few sods of grass cut from a neighbouring bog are his only thatch. Well, but a window or two at least, if it be only a pane of glass fixed in the wall? or the bladder of some animal, or a piece of talc, as may often be seen in a Walachian hut? What idle luxury were this! There are thousands of cabins in which not a trace of a window is to be seen; nothing but a little square hole in front, which doubles the duty of door, window, and chimney; light, smoke, pigs, and children, all must pass in and out of the same aperture!

A French author, Beaumont, who had seen the Irish peasant in his cabin, and the North American Indian in his wigwam, has assured us that the savage is better provided for than the poor man in Ireland. Indeed the question may be raised, whether in the whole world a nation is to be found that is subjected to such physical privations as the peasantry in some parts of Ire

ertheless, two inducements for visiting these wild regions. First, I had heard that the celebrated Father Mathew was on his way to Kilrush, the most easterly town on the Shannon; and secondly, in the vicinity of this town lies the island of Scattery, on which stands one of the finest of the Irish "Round Towers," and, again, the ruins of "Seven Churches."

From Edenvale to Kilrush the distance is about sixteen English miles, and along the whole way, though this was the main road for the eastern part of the country, I passed not a single village, nor a single hut fit for a human habitation. The landscape was everywhere naked and tree

a light, for if it can once be shown that the wretchedness of the Irish population is without a parallel example on the globe, surely every friend of humanity will feel himself called on to reflect whether means may not be found for remedving an evil of so astounding a magnitude!

A Russian peasant, no doubt, is the slave of a harder master, but still he is fed and housed to his content, and no trace of mendicancy is to be seen in him. The Hungarians are certainly not among the best used people in the world; still, what fine wheaten bread, and what wine, has even the humblest among them for his daily fare! The Hungarian would scarcely believe

choly that can be imagined - black, or a dirty brown- for one great bog seemed to cover all things, even the rocks. If it made me sad, however, how much sadder must such a country make the poor glehæ adscriptus, the vassal of a hard landlord, the lather of a group of starving ragged children!

which the inhabitants must content themselves with potatoes every alternate day in the year. Servia and Bosnia are reckoned among the most wretched countries of Europe, and certainly the appearance of one of their villages has litthe that is attractive about it; but at least the people, if badly housed, are well clad. We look

barbarous, but good heavens! they look at least like human creatures. They have a national costume, their houses are habitable, their orchards are carefully tended, and their gaylyharnessed ponies are mostly in good condition. An Irishman has nothing national about hiın but his rags, his habitation is without a plan, his domestic economy without rule or law. We have beggars and paupers among us, but they form at least an exception; whereas, in Ireland, beggary or abject poverty is the prevailing rule. The nation is one of beggars, and they who are above beggary seem to form the exception.

The African negroes go naked, but then they have a tropical sun to warm them. The Irish are little removed from a state of nakedness, and their climate, though not cold, is cool, and extremely humid.

The Indians in America live wretchedly enough at times, but they have no knowledge of a better condition, and, as they are hunters, they have every now and then a productive chase, and are able to make a number of feast-days in the year. Many Irishmen have but one day on which they eat flesh, namely, on Christmas day. Every other day they feed on potatoes and nothing but potatoes. Now this is inhuman; for the appetite and stomach of man claim variety in food, and nowhere else do we find human beings gnawing, from year's end to year's end, at the same root, berry, or weed. There are animals who do so, but human beings, nowhere except in Ireland.

There are nations of slaves, but they have, by long custom, been made unconscious of the yoke of slavery. This is not the case with the Irish, who have a strong feeling of liberty within them, and are fully sensible of the weight of the yoke they have to bear. They are intelligent enough to know the injustice done them by the distorted laws of their country; and while they are themselves enduring the extreme of poverty, they have frequently before them, in the manner of life of their English landlords, a spectacle of the most refined luxury that human ingenuity ever in

vented.

What awakens the most painful feelings in travelling through one of these rocky, boggy districts, rich in nothing but ruins, is this: whether you look back into the past, or forward to the future, no prospect more cheering presents itself. There is not the least trace left to show that the country has ever been better cultivated, or that a happier race ever dwelt in it. It seems as if wretchedness had prevailed there from time immemorial; as if rags had succeeded rags, bog had forined over bog, ruins had given birth to ruins, and beggars had begotten beggars, for a long series of centuries. Nor does the future present a more cheering view. Even for the poor Greeks under Turkish domination there was more hope than for the Irish under the English. The Turks were never more than a garrison in Greece; the English have struck the deepest roots into all parts of Ireland, and by so many links has the conquest been riveted upon the native race, that it is too painful to contemplate even for a moment the only means by which the present state of things can be altered.

What a revolution would follow if merely those families were deprived of their estates who are known to have acquired them by violent or dishonourable means! The descendants

In the next place, as the English and their injustice are not alone in fault, but the main root of Irish misery is to be sought in the indolence, levity, extravagance, and want of energy of the national character, the question arises, How shall we inspire the people with a new mind? How shall we instil into them industry and perseverance; and how shall we eradicate the turbulent and revengeful spirit, which leads them to murder their oppressors, whereby they but aggravate their misery, and tighten their bonds?

At times we stopped at a mean inn to change horses. The walls were generally tapestried with proclamations offering rewards for the apprehension of criminals. Fifty pounds were promised for the apprehension of those who had murdered Farmer So-and-so; thirty pounds for information that would lead to the conviction of those who had burned a mill, and ill-treated the inmates to such a degree, that two of them had since died; and many others of the same kind. I had not time to read all these placards, instructive as they were respecting the condition of the country.

In passing one field, I noticed a figure that bore a striking resemblance to one of those dressed-up mannikins which in Germany we are accustomed to stick up in a cornfield or a kitchen-garden to frighten away the birds. A congregation of rags and tatters were flapping in the wind, the remains of a hat hung where the head ought to have been, and two sticks, for legs, projected from his garments. Suddenly this figure, which had deceived me while it stood still, moved up towards me to ask for alms, and I now saw before me the complete picture of a well-known spectral apparition that was shown in England some years ago under the title of the Living Skeleton. The said Living Skeleton, by-the-by, came from Ireland. Does the habitual famine of so large a portion of the population tend to the multiplication of such morbid specimens of humanity?

We carried with us the letter bags intended for the several villages and country seats lying away from the road. At every stage we saw one of these living scarecrows waiting to take charge of the bags intended for the adjoining localities. The postmen tried to arrange their rags in a way to protect the correspondence of the country from the effects of the weather. As I looked on these ragged, starved beings, I could not help thinking of the comfortable-looking fellows to whom, in Prussia and Saxony, is entrusted the not unimportant duty of forwarding the public correspondence ace from village to village.

Not one in a hundred of those who look like beggars really beg, still the professional mendicants are numerous enough, in all conscience. Most of them are decorated with Father Mathew's temperance medal, often as a matter of speculation, inasmuch as many are disposed to give more liberally to those who, having pledged themselves to abstain from intoxicating liquors, are thought less likely to make a bad use of any gift that may be bestowed upon them. Many people in Ireland now make a point of

never giving any alms to a beggar who cannot show his temperance medal.

My driver on the last stage to Kilrush was full of fairies and legends, and stories of the beautiful and happy realms where the elfin sprites held sway. All depressed nations are apt to indulge in these visions. As we were rolling in the dusk of evening down the hills, and approaching the little town, he told me of a king who had once been conveyed to this happy land by the fairies. This king lived long in the blissful regions, but one day a longing came over him to see the earth again and mingle with men. The fairies thereupon gave him an enchanted horse, and told him that as long as he continued on his horse's back he would enjoy unimpaired youth and vigour, as he had done during the 200 years he had spent with them, but that the spell would be broken the moment he set his foot on the earth. The king was delighted to see his old mother earth again, but took especial care not to quit the saddle, till he arrived in front of his own palace, where he had formerly been wont to command. Riding into the courtyard, he saw another king commanding there, and was very little pleased with the commands that this other king was issuing. Eager to set his successor to right, the new-comer forgot himself for a moment. He sprang indignantly from the saddle, and while yet descending through the air, he became conscious of his imprudence, and uttered a scream of despair. As he touched the ground his graceful, manly form shrunk into the decrepitude of 200 years, and, unable to exist under so heavy a weight of years, he immediately gave up the ghost. The enchanted horse, meanwhile, had vanished, but the new king recognised his predecessor by a golden medal round his neck, and caused a splendid monument to be erected to his memory.

I am convinced that a diligent collector in Ireand might easily find materials for more than 1001 nights, and that an Irish Sheherasade might, with her marvellous narratives, have preserved her life quite as long as did the Arabian with hers. I am surprised that so little has been printed of the rich Irish popular poetry.

O'Connell, when he moves about in Ireland, has always a long tail of admirers after him. A traveller, on arriving in a new place, is seldom without a similar tail. If he go to see a sight, he may reckon on the attendance of at least a dozen cicerones. Along the high road, a little tail of children and beggars will be certainly rolling behind him, and on entering a town his little tail immediately grows into a big one by the accession of innkeepers and their waiters. In short, every star in Ireland assumes the character of a comet. As I drove into Kilrush I had at least twenty grown people, and twice as many children running behind my car, some to beg, some to recommend inns and shops, some out of curiosity, but most of them for the mere fun of the thing.

Kilrush is a small seaport town, and, like all seaport towns in Ireland, has fewer ruins and a greater appearance of freshness and comfort than any of the places in the interior. I put up under the roof of an old sailor who had fought, in his time, under Nelson, and now directed the only tolerable hostelry in the place.

town in Ireland, and these are called "temperance halls." The temperance hall of Kilrush lay in a by-street, a small court yard was in front of it, and a few steps led up to the house door. The hall itself, if I am not mistaken, was used in the daytime as a national school, and in the evening the men of temperance held their meetings there. A shilling was demanded ot every one who entered, for which he was entitled, in the evening, to partake of the soirée that was to be given. A resident of the town, and one of the most distinguished among the temperance men, whose acquaintance I had already made, showed me the decorated hall, which was still empty. Round about the walls hung the banners of the several corporate bodies of the town, surmounted by mottoes all calculated to please the popular taste of the time. That of the cabinet-makers, for instance, was, "Sobriety! Domestic Comfort! and National Independence!" This inscription struck me immediately. "What," I asked myself, "has national independence to do with temperance, which is a purely moral question?" I believe, however, that, in point of fact, the two causes are more nearly united than is generally supposed. It appeared to me as if all these temperance men were engaged in a conspiracy against English ascendancy.

Nowhere has the cause of temperance more adherents than in Ireland. Not less than five millions of Irish, according to Father Mathew's own report, have received the pledge at his hands. "Our temperance society," said my companion, "is the only genuine one in the world. There were temperance societies in America before ours, but they are not the thing after all. They don't even adopt the principle of total abstinence, and break the pledge very often. But with us, when Father Mathew has once blessed a man, and hung the medal round his neck, he is dedicated to temperance for life, and from that moment detests all intoxicating liquors himself, and feels an aversion to those who continue to drink. So

powerful is the effect of our apostle's blessing." The Catholic priesthood in Ireland looked at first with jealousy upon the temperance movement, set on foot as it was by a simple monk but they have since yielded to the current, and have even placed themselves at the head of it, the consequence of which has been that the whole matter has assumed a catholic religious character.

Every great movement in a nation, and every widely ramified confederacy, whatever its object may be, is certain to assume a political charac ter, and O'Connell and his patriots could not fail to see the great additional strength they would acquire from an accession of so powerful an aux iliary. They have, therefore, on all occasions, declared their adhesion to the temperance cause, which has thus been made to assume a patriotic anti-English character. Temperance, by giving to its votaries greater domestic comfort and moral vigour, strengthens their claims and hopes of national independence, and the conspiracy of temperance and the conspiracy of independence may one day melt into one.

Garlands and festoons were wound about the hall. A large horse-shoe table stood in the cen-> tre of the room, and boards resting on empty casks and blocks of wood were arranged as seats. At the head of the table were two arm