highest elevation that occurs in Ireland. The | Glenart Castle and Shelton Abbey, two highly greater part of the waters that flow down from their several glens are united in the little river of Avoca, that falls into the sea at Arklow. THE VALE OF AVOCA AND MOORE'S POEMS. Interesting and romantic points abound in all parts of the county, but the most celebrated of these is the Vale of Avoca, and particularly the spot where the tributary waters meet together. The Vale of Avoca is as fondly prized in Ireland, as the Vale of Vaucluse is in southern France. To beautiful objects beautiful names often unite themselves. Avoca has quite an Italian sound. Many names with an Italian sound occur in Ireland. Portumna, on the Shannon; Liscanor Bay, on the coast of Clare; Garomna, Castello, and Connemara, in Connaught; Marino and Matilla, near Dublin. Are these names all of Celtic origin, or are not some of them importations from Italy ? Beautifully picturesque groups of oaks and beeches, everywhere hung with ivy, constitute one of the main beauties of the Vale of Avoca. This, to some extent, is the character of all the valleys of Wicklow, through which rivers flow, while the summits of the mountains, and the unwatered vales, remain completely bare. The Irish oak differs materially in appearance from the English oak, yet this difference, so striking that you notice it at the first glance, is difficult to describe. The branches are less knotted and spreading. There seem to me to be more straight Jines and fewer crooked ones, more length and less breadth in the Irish oak. On the other hand, the Irish assure us, the wood of their oaks is harder and more lasting, though the trees may be smaller than those found in England, and Irish oak, I was told, was preferred in England for superior kinds of carved work. The carved roof in Westminster Hall, for instance, is said to consist of Irish oak. In the Vale of Avoca, however, the chief beauty of the oaks consists in the rich drapery of ivy by which they are surrounded. Not a tree in the whole valley is without the decoration, and it is highly interesting to examine the varied and numberless forms, in which the dependent plant winds itself around the noble columns of the sylvan temple. Here a solitary parasite is stealing up the rugged bark of some sturdy forester, while a little farther on hundreds have attached themselves to one stem, and by its site a wasted lifeless trunk is made rich in verdure to the extreme summits of its withered branches. At the autumnal season, when I visited the place, the leaves of the oaks were already faded and picturesque buildings that face each other. The whole way from Arklow to Rathdrum, a small town about twelve miles up the valley, abounds.. in the loveliest scenes. The most celebrated part, however, is that where the Avonbeg and the Aughrim unite their waters with those of the Avoca, though Moore has not told us, whether, in celebrating the "meeting of the waters," he alluded to the first meeting or the second. The Irish say the first is the one he meant, and they even point out the tree under which he drew his first inspiration of the well-known lines : "There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet." Such are the poet's words, and the Irish take them literally. There is nothing out of character in a little exaggeration when a young poet celebrates a beautiful landscape, and calls it the "sweetest valley in the world;" but such things must not be said in plain prose. The natives of a country entertain for it the feelings of a lover, whose ideas of the divinity of human nature, and the loveliness of a woman, are all concentrated upon a single object. He devotes himself to this individual object, in which he studies the numberless beauties of the human soul and the human body; and every charm that he discovers, he looks upon as the personal merit of the beloved one, on whom he bestows the whole of that affection, which he ought to have given to the human race in general. The English call this "falling in love," and it is a condition in which a man may be said to have fallen into so deep a hole, that he can only see one star of the thousands that glitter on the horizon. Something like this is the feeling of the Irish for the Vale of Avoca. Its beauties have been cele brated by their poets and journalists, till all Ireland has fallen in love with the place, as if it were the only lovely valley on the world's great round. The oft repeated lines, "There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet.. As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet; Oh, the last rays of feeling and life must depart, Ere the bloom of the valley shall fade from my heart," have probably contributed more than anything else to give birth to that general affection, so universally expressed in Ireland, for the farfamed spot, even by those who have never visited it. There occur in every literature short striking passages that captivate the imagination with a force for which we find it difficult, oft impossible, to account. Millions of fine sentences may be expended in vain, while two or three words may thrill for centuries on the hearts of a nation. This is a power which Moore often ex falling, and contrasted beautifully with the freshercises in a high degree, and to many a seques green of the ivy. Spring and autumn seemed to join in an embrace. The luxuriant growth of the Irish ivy is really wonderful; but beautiful as it may be to a painter's eye, to the growth of the trees the parasitical plant must be highly detrimental, and the abundance of ivy may be among the principal causes of the scarcity of wood in Ireland. The small town of Arklow lies at the mouth of the Avoca, close to the sea, and thence the road ascends the wooded valley, passing through the Forest of Glenart, in which are situated tered vale and ruined castle his verses have given a fame that will probably outlive monuments of bronze or granite. In this way he has sung to us of the "gloomy shore" of the enchanting lake of Glendalough which I visited on the following day, and thus too he celebrates the beautiful isle of Innisfallen at Killarney, and Arranmore, the largest of the Arran isles, whose inhabitants are to this day convinced that from their shore they can descry Hy Brysail, the enchanted island, the Paradise of the Heathen Irish. 1 1 We commit a great mistake when we look on Moore as an English poet. He is essentially an Irish genius, though he clothes his thoughts, feelings, and sentiments in the English language. The English may enjoy his versification, but they only half understand him, whereas the Irish idolize him. In his patriotic effusions Moore is animated by a spirit essentially anti-English. His is the sanguinary motto which O'Connell has prefixed to his pamphlet on Ireland : "But onward! the green banner rearing, On theirs is the Saxon and guilt!" O'Connell's interminable speeches will long have been forgotten, when the Melodies of Moore will still keep the flame of patriotism alive in the hearts of succeeding generations. Moore, indeed, may be deemed the worst agitator of the two. He stirs the better affections of his countrymen against England. He excites them to tears, to sighs, to blessings, to curses. O'Connell marches as a warrior to the field, and Moore walks by his side, the representative of Ireland's ancient bards. Thomas Moore, Father Mathew, and Daniel O'Connell form the great triumvirate that preside at present over every moral movement in Ireland. After all, the greatest fault of the Vale of Avoca is that it is so short. How gladly would the eye feast on more of those beautiful meadows, those bold crags, those ivy-mantled oaks! On leaving the Avoca, we enter the Vale of Avon, in which lies the little town of Rathdrum, where my host, who likewise keeps a shop for the sale of a great variety of articles, provides the traveller with clean and comfortable rooms, and excellent accommodation. This reminds me that I have not yet spoken a word of all the neat and comfortable rooms that I met with everywhere on my journey through Ireland. I never troubled myself much about the choice of my inn, and yet I soon felt the most perfect conviction that even in the smallest town I should be able to lie down at night in a clean and comfortable bed. A clean and comfortable bed, however, must be with every traveller the main consideration, for the attendance is generally slow, and the cookery not to every man's taste. The beds are usually large, so large that they occupy nearly the whole room, leaving only space enough to walk round and seek a convenient spot whence to climb upon the mountain of feathers. The refreshments consist usually of mutton chops, potatoes, and tea. The tea is almost always good, the potatoes half raw, and the mutton chops often so tough that you attack them with imminent risk to your teeth. Of this description were the mutton chops placed before me at Rathdrum, so I treated them as the Irish sometimes do their herrings; I rubbed my potatoes against the brown and savoury sides of the mutton, and thus imparted to them a delicate rôti flavour. It was a new variety of "potatoes and point." banished by these copper mines. The water, impregnated with sulphur, thrown up from the copper works, is the cause of this. When the salmon enter the Avonmore now, they either turn about again immediately, or jump upon the bank and "die dead." This is another of the many pleonasms that I have heard in Ireland, and that so frequently, that I am tempted to believe there is something nationally characteristic about them. THE LAKES AND RUINS OF GLEN- I had heard so much of the Seven Churchesand the Round Tower of the Vale of Glendalough, that I spent only a few hours in Rathdrum, and then hastened into the mountains on a small one-horse car; had I known what an: incomparable spot of earth it is that is known. by the name of Glendalough, the hours I spent at Rathdrum should have been reduced to as many minutes. The road passes through the Vale of Clara, watered by the Avonmore, and then runs ten miles in a sideward direction, to the sources of some tributary streams of that river. The country is very little inhabited. Along the whole of these ten miles I saw but one village. The mountains to the north of these valleys, however, are still more thinly peopled; so much so, that they have received the name of the "uninhabited mountains," and are in this respect quite a phenomenon, considering their vicinity to Dublin. They occupy an extent of country nearly fifteen miles in length, and ten in breadth; and within this space, not only the mountains, but even the valleys, are almost untenanted by man. The soil is every-where a thin covering of grass over a rocky bottom, and destitute of every other vegetation. Goats graze upon these mountains, and wander about there in the same half-wild condition as over the mountains of Kerry. Sometimes, indeed, they are said to become so wild, that the herdsman is forced to turn hunter, and, instead of catching his goats, to shoot them. In the last rebellion, one of the insurgent-chiefs kept his ground in these uninhabited mountains long after the rest of the country had been tranquillized. It remains incomprehensible to me, however, that so close to the metropolis of Ireland, so wild a district can exist. There are within the British dominions large districts of greater natural fertility than any of which we can boast, but there are likewise districts much wilder than any to be found in our less populous Germany, with all her forests and mountains. Have we a province in which goats or sheep live in a half-wild state? Even on our loftiest Alps, the cattle is everywhere tended and kept within some sort of enclosure. Nowhere do I remember in Germany to have seen a country so utter-ly wild, so thinly peopled, and that by a race living in such apparent wretchedness, as is the case with this Irish district, and with some I have seen in Scotland. These things form a part of the physiognomy of a country, and are characteristic of its social condition. Not far from Rathdrum, in the vale of Avonmore, are some copper mines that threaten destruction to the beautiful trees. The motto says, indeed, utile cum dulci, but unfortunately we often find the utile and the dulci engaged in an irreconcilable feud. Even the salmon, that formerly abounded in the Avonmore, have been | At the Laragh barracks three wild glens meet : A military road has been run through the wilderness, with barracks, now occupied as police stations, at certain distances from each other. Glen Avon, Glennalnass, and that into which we have now entered, Glendalough. We had scarcely done so, when we observed a man in a purple coat standing in front of a door, who, as soon as he observed us, jumped upon the car, and said to me without farther ceremony, "Your honour will allow me to ride with you, I hope. I am the well-known guide of Glendalough. My name's George Irwin, with your honour's leave." But I ought to describe the man before I allow him to speak. He had a long, shaggy, ragged beard, that hung in patches about his chin and cheek. His features were strongly marked, his cheeks weatherbeaten and meager, his forehead high and wrinkled. A pair of sparkling eyes glowed from under these wrinkles, and from amid all these facial ruins there arose a boldly-curved aquiline nose. His voice was rude and wild, and his words came bubbling over his tongue like the wild waters of an Irish bog, over dirty rocks and mossy stones; it seemed as though his throat had suffered by a struggle of many years against the effects of wind, weather, and whiskey. "I'm George Irwin, your honour, the guide of Glendalough. I've lived in this wilderness from a boy, and know every corner of it by heart. I know every legend that has come down from our ancestors, from generation to generation, and there's no man living can tell you what I can. I've shown all the wonders of the place to Sir Walter Scott, and his friend the famous Miss Edgeworth, and it's I was the guide of Her Most Gracious Majesty, when she came here as princess with her royal lady mother the Duchess of Kent. There are lots of guides here to be sure, but there's none of them can boast of what I can. Now, your honour, if you'll get down from the car and follow me, it's I alone can show you properly all the fine things that lie hid in yonder valley. This way, your honour; this way." And thus, almost by force, but with constant demonstrations of politeness, he led me to the lakes of Glendalough, the Glen of the Two Lakes. I must own, I never met with a more intelligent or entertaining guide than George Irwin, and I only regret that it was impossible for me to understand all the speeches and narrations that poured almost incessantly from his lips. "Sir Walter Scott, the great poet of Scotland, told me, your honour, he had never seen a spot in the world equal for beauty to our lakes of Glendalough; and of the Round Tower, which your honour shall see presently, he told me it was quite unique, and that in all Scotland there were only just the remains of two such towers. when we've more than a hundred in Irelandand what beautiful and perfect ones among them! And then there's our own famous poet Thomas Moore; we call him plain Tommy,' as we allow ourselves to say 'Dan' when we speak of the great O'Connell. Well, I've known Tommy these forty years, and he knows me well too, and he's written a poem about our lakes 'By that lake whose gloomy shore Where the cliff hangs high and steep, Oh, your honour, I know every word of it, but was delighted with the wild charms of the scene, and I dare say it's the recollection of Glendalough that has determined her majesty to visit us again next year. Well, I hope, when she does, I shall have the honour of showing her over the ground again. When she was here last, she had to skip after me and her mother, to whom I was obliged to tell everything, but when she comes next, she'll come as the mistress of all of us. But only look now, your honour. Here the wood becomes thinner; and now, as we step out of it, you have a view of the whole famous scene. These are the ruins of the Seven Churches, with the Round Tower in the middle, and the lakes and the mountains behind." The scene was indeed wonderful, and so peculiar in its kind, that I nowhere remember to have seen anything like it. Wild, naked, dark, rocky mountains projected so as to form a sharp promontory. To the right of this proinontory runs Glendassan, to the left Glendalough. You look into the two glens at once through the broad rocky gates. In the amphitheatre in front lie the lowly ruins of the seven churches, and amid them, forming a central point to the whole scene, rises the slender tower, standing there in complete preservation in the wilderness, like Pompey's Pillar in the desert of Alexandria. Behind this antique temple lie the two far-famed lakes, like mirrors laid there to reflect the scene. The whole view was one of ruins. There were the ruins of nature and the ruins of art. Not the least vestige of cultivation was to be seen. At a distance some smoke rose to mark the dwelling of a mountaineer, and here and there lay scattered in the valley the cabins of a few professional guides, and of some peasants who made a wretched subsistence by selling refreshments to visiters. "Its a melancholy condition in which your honour sees it now," began Irwin again; "but when Dublin itself was only a turf-bog, there stood here a flourishing town, and a great theological university, to which students came from France and Germany, ay and from Italy too. This was in the first ages of Christianity. There was a college here, a convent, buildings for the students and professors, and no less than seven churches. The number seven, as your honour knows, has always been a holy number, in the east as in the west. There were the seven wise men of Greece, the seven wonders of the world, the seven councils of the bishops of Asia Minor, and in our blessed religion we have seven sacraments and seven deadly sins. Therefore it was that our Irish ancestors always built seven churches together, upon some of the most glorious spots in Erin. Most of these seven churches lie on our beautiful Shannon, the king of all British rivers. There are four sets of them there. First on Inchclorin, an island of Lough Ree; then there are the seven churches of Clanmacnoise, near Athlone; then there are those of Inniscaltra in Lough Derg, and those at Scattery Island, at the mouth of the Shannon. The most westerly seven churches are those at Arranmore, where the people think they can see Paradise in clear weather. Oh, Arranmore, loved Arranmore, How oft I dream of thee!" young princess too, her gracious majesty that is, Oh, I've been there, your honour, and could tell you a deal of the islands, if I had not now to show you Glendalough. All these seven churches that you see before you are from the earliest times of Christianity in Ireland; but God was worshipped in these valleys even before St. Patrick's time, in the days when Fionnulla, the daughter of Lir, was wandering over the lakes and rivers of Ireland, and sighing for the first sound of the mass bell, that was to be the signal of her release. On the promontory there I shall show your honour some remains of Druidical temples, but here before you stands the lofty round tower built in our country by the eastern fire-worshippers. I know there are some great scholars, your honour, who deny this, and say the round towers were built for other purposes by the Christians; but it's not true, for all the travellers that have been here have told me that nothing like these towers is to be seen in any part of Europe, or anywhere but in the East. And then, sure, we Irish know well enough who it was that built these towers, and what they did it for. At daybreak, the priests of the fire-worshippers used to mount to the top of the tower, and cry • Baal, Baal, Baal!' to the four quarters of the compass, by way of announcing the arrival of the sun, and summoning the faithful to prayer. All this we know well enough, for it has been handed down to us from generation to generation. If it wasn't so cloudy there behind us, I could even show your honour a mountain which is called Baal's Mountain to this day, and over the summit of which the sun becomes visible every morning from the Round Tower." I repeat these words of George Irwin's, because they express a tradition generally current among the lower Irish, and if there be not some truth in the tradition, we must believe in a won der quite as great-namely, in the existence of an illusion, almost amounting to a monomania, to which the great mass of a nation has abandoned itself. The Round Tower of Glendalough is one of the lottiest and most complete in all Ireland. It is 110 feet high, and 51 feet in circumference. The door is not so high up that it may not be easily reached by climbing. Near the summit are the four customary small windows or openings, and two others somewhat lower down. The building has been erected of two descriptions of stone-granite and clay-slate. It is difficult to look on these magnificent, extraordinary, and enigmatical buildings, without participating in the passion with which Irishmen speak of them. So great is this, that almost every literary man has put his opinions about them to paper, and almost every studious ecclesiastic residing in a secluded part of the country is sure to have a theory respecting the round towers, which he intends to give to the world, whenever his affairs allow him leisure. The remains of the Seven Churches at Glendalough, lie scattered about the Round Tower, much in the same way as at Scattery Island, and the whole site is still used as a cemetery by the inhabitants of the neighbouring glen. Close to the foot of the Round Tower was the recent grave of a young girl. The wooden cross erected over it was decorated with cuttings of paper that were playing in the wind, while some had already been scattered around to a considerable distance. A small portion of the site, called the Sacristy, is set apart as a burying-ground for priests. St. Kevin, the patron of the Glen, is said to have prayed to Heaven that all buried within the compass of the Seven Churches, should be saved, or at least leniently dealt with, on the Day of Judgment. On this account, the people of the surrounding country flock hither on some day in June, to decorate the graves and crosses of their friends with flowers, wreaths, and cuttings of paper, in commemoration of the goodness of St. Kevin, and in honour of the dead. "Oh, then it's a beautiful festival, your họnour, and the whole churchyard is full of people singing and praying, that have come from twenty and thirty miles round Glendalough. As they are tolerably easy about the souls of their friends, who have every hope of being saved, the festi val is not a very melancholy one, but on the contrary, so gay often, that I might be tempted to call the churchyard Erin's Pleasure-ground."" Here also popular tradition points to certain graves as those of ancient Irish kings. The entrance to the enclosure is through an old halfruinous Saxon gate, now thickly clothed in ivy. Among the stones that lie scattered about, are many of which extraordinary tales are told. Thus, one has a hole to kneel in, and prayers said on this stone are supposed to have a more than ordinary efficacy. There is also a stone cross which women embrace who long for the joys of maternity. Yet to speak truth, this cross must be a very superfluous piece of furniture in a country where families seem to be everywhere blessed with such an abundance of offspring. Next to the ruins lies the sinaller of the two lakes, "It is also called the Lake of Serpents, your honour, or Lough Napeastia; for into this lake it was, your honour, that St. Patrick banished all the snakes of Ireland. The snakes, naturally enough, were little pleased with such damp lodgings, and one big one, in particular. used often to put up its head and pray the saint to grant it a little more liberty, So St. Patrick in his good nature, drew a circle on the ground, and told the serpent to consider that as its own ground. Now, when they began to build the Seven Churches, the serpent was very angry at what it considered as an invasion of its own territory; and at night it used to come out of the water, and destroy what the workpeople had built during the day. At last St. Patrick prayed to God to dispense him from the promise he had inade to the snake, and God allowed the saint to banish the reptile into the lake again, and then the workmen got on fast enough with the building." Irwin went on to tell me the reason why for 1300 years no skylark had ever warbled o'er the gloomy shore of the larger lake. "When the seven churches were building, your honour, it was the skylarks that used every morning to call the men to their work. They had no watches in those days, and the song of the lark served as a signal that it was time to begin their labour. Well, when the holy work was at an end, St. Kevin declared that no lark was worthy to succeed those pious birds that had helped in the building of the churches. For it was St. Kevin that built the seven churches, and it was he was the first Bishop of Glenda Jough. In time, however, these seven churches, and every seven churches in Ireland, fell into the power of the English, and everything here went to ruin and decay, and the see of Glendalough was merged in that of Dublin. But old as these churches are, we Irishmen know the names of every one of them. That heap of stones there, your honour, is Trinity church, that bit of wall there belonged to Our Lady's chapel, and that other was part of St. Kevin's church. We shall remember these names as long as there's a stone remaining." On the narrow isthmus between the two lakes are some traces of ancient circumvallation. One, seventeen paces in diameter, and in perfect preservation, was at once declared by Irwin to be a temple of the Druids. Other antiquarians pretend that it was only an enclosure for cattle. I am disposed to reject both suppositions. For a temple the wall is scarcely large enough, and for an enclosure for cattle it is built with too much care and solidity. On St. Kevin's day, of the preceding year, this isthmus had been the scene of a great temperance festival. Father Mathew had chosen that day for holding a great meeting on a spot so dear to the recollection of every Irishman. "It was upon that wall, your honour, that the heaven-gifted man stood to address the people. There they were from Glenmacnass, and Glenavonmore, and the Vale of Avoca, and from Glen malure, and the goatherds from the uninhabited mountains, and people from all the country round, twenty or thirty thousand of them at least, and a great many nobility and gentry among them. Through the village of Rathdrum alone, twenty-four temperance societies marched with their bands of music. Faith, I don't believe since the days of St. Kevin there ever were so many people assembled here on a pious errand. Some thousands took the pledge that day; and I believe, your honour, that those who took it here, between the Lake of the Serpents and the lake o'er whose gloomy shore skylark never warbles, within view of St Kevin's bed, and of the seven churches, and of the venerable old pillar temple, and on the ground that was held to be holy by our ancestors, even in the times of the Druids-no, I don't believe those who took the pledge here that day will be so easily persuaded to break it." On the second lake a boat was awaiting us, and we rowed out to enjoy the view of the overhanging rocks. The great wonder of these rocks is St. Kevin's bed, a little cavern, hollowed out apparently by the hand of man, and just large enough for one person to lie down and stretch himself out in it. It is situated forty feet above the lake, but a narrow path leads up to it, and every woman who lies down there may expect plenty of children and an easy delivery. As we were rowing along the lake, we observed, winding up this path, our tail of women and girls, who thus far had followed us at every step. I had forgotten to mention this tail. It consisted of women, maidens, lads, and children, who attached themselves to us immediately on our entrance into the glen. Every stranger in Ireland must expect to carry a tail of this sort behind him, and will find it as im possible to divest himself of it, as O'Connell finds it to dispense with his tail. You may E pray or you may scold, but leave you they will not. They run along by your side, and it is hard but they will find an opportunity, now and then, to put in a word, by way of lending a helping hand to your regular guide. These would-be attendants of ours were now on their way to St. Kevin's bed, and seemed all desirous of entering it; but an old woman drove them all away, declaring it was her privilege to show strangers the position of a woman in the saint's bed. This is the bed whence poor Kathleen was hurled down the beetling rock by the pious Kevin. Irwin told me the legend somewhat more fully than Moore tells it, and added that the saint prayed to Heaven that no one might ever again be drowned in that lake. that's now 1300 years ago, your honour, and no man, woman, or child, has ever been drowned in the lake since. That's the reason people are so fond of bathing here; but no man would set foot in the other lake, the Lake of Serpents. Now, what I tell your honour is true; and if it stands otherwise in books, it's the books that are wrong. Sure, we've better authority than books, for we have it all handed down from generation to generation." "And I lingered fondly about the lovely scene I was about to quit. I passed all its details once more in review: the beautiful lakes, the gloomy rocks, the Druidical isthmus, the crosses, the churches, the graves, and the round tower. What abundance of interesting objects was here! At length I passed out through the old, half ruined ivy-mantled gate, and by the side of a thorn-bush of extreme old age, which Irwin told me marked the boundary of the city that once stood here; I mounted my car, and rolled away, for once blessing the Irish for their invention of the jaunting car, which allowed me, instead of keeping my looks fixed on the horse, to turn them towards Glendalough, as long as a glance could be caught of its beauties. FROM GLENDALOUGH TO DUBLIN. At Rathdrum I was told, though there were several hundreds of protestants in the place, not one of them had taken the pledge. The same remark had been made to me in several towns of the south. In the north, on the contrary, many protestants have taken the pledge. The protestants in the south, being the smaller number, are probably jealous of a movement which originated with the catholics. Near Rathdrum are some copper-mines, the property of Cornwall gentlemen of the name of Williams, who, I was told, were likewise the owners of some mines in America No less than two thousand workmen are employed in the mines of the vales of Avonmore and Avoca. The managers are Englishmen, the workmen Irishmen. Some lead-mines are also worked in the neighbourhood, under the direction of the Irish Mining Company. In the workhouse at Rathdrum I found 300 paupers. Three months before they told me there had been 350 inmates; but it was now the potato-harvest, so there was plenty of work, and potatoes were cheap. At that period of the year numbers were sure to demand their discharge, whereas in spring they crowded to the house. 1 |