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It was very true. The wild Irish were come down on us, wild with joy, with congratulation, and kindness. There was actually a scramble for us. Captain Kwent with a gentleman who had two handsome daughters-I fell to the lot of the worthy vicar.

"I was once in Ireland (I recollect hearing a gentleman in London say) and was so tormented with Custom-house officers and boatmen, that I thought it the worst country in the world to land in."

It may be so. I am sure it is not the worst country in the world to be shipwrecked in. I am sure to adversity who gazes on it with eyes suffused with tears, it ever shows its bright side; though I do not deny, but that, like the pillar of fire which conducted the Israelites through the wilderness, it of tenturns a dark one to prosperity, who views it with a contemptuous glance. glishmen, therefore, see only the half of the Irish character; not the better half; and even what they see they distort, unconscious that, in degrading it, they are degrading their own, and that with folly worse than that of Noah's sons; it is their own daughter's nakedness they have exposed to the world.

En

On the effects of this caricature I shall say lit. tle, because it is probable time will say enough. I shall therefore dismiss the subject with one brief, yet not very cheering observation. The Romans,

in a time of danger, were told by the Sybilline oracle, that the republic would fall, if the Idean mother of the gods were not brought to Rome. It is not, alas! requisite to be an oracle to foretel, that unless England seeks out and brings home wandering Irish affection, her own situation is nearly as desperate a one.

CHAPTER III.

Newry.

I QUITTED the house of the old clergyman, mounted, he said, on his best steed. He gave me a letter of introduction to a friend who lived in the county of Armagh. It was sealed, yet I had no fear it would be a Bellerophon's letter, nor in truth was the steed I bestrode a Pegasus. He seemed more a-kin to the earth than the sky, and required a pretty tight bridle hand to keep him from falling. Great evils, however, reconcile us to lesser ones. A man escaped from shipwreck does not greatly mind a stumbling horse.

I arrived in Balbriggen about ten o'clock. A few moments afterwards, the Newry coach drove up to the door. There was a vacant seat, which I engaged. The company stopped to breakfast,

and a most excellent one we had. The price, as formerly, was twenty pence. A young Englishman did not express more admiration at the goodness of the fare, than at the reasonableness of the charge. It was a long time, he said, since he had eat so cheap a breakfast. This wise observation was made before the landlord, who, I suppose, will leave no room for a similar one.

The distance from Balbriggen to Drogheda, is twelve miles, which we drove in less than two hours. The coach was heavily laden. It carried ten inside and a still greater number of outside passengers. A coach behind us was equally loaded. It was an opposition coach, and called the "Cock of the North." Ours was called the " Old Cock," and certainly it was not a young one. The fore wheel was all shattered, nor did the body seem in a much better condition. The coachman, however, drove never the easier for the outside passengers vociferating these circumstances to him. The priority he had obtained he was determined to maintain (to use an old Scotch phrase) "though he should die for it."

A gentleman who seemed strongly impressed with the danger of this unwieldy chariot racę, threatened him with a prosecution if he did not desist. This menace had no other effect than to make him drive the faster. The law in Ireland is the same as in England; but, either from greater

milkiness of disposition, or the dread of being accounted an informer, hardly any person stands forward to have it put in execution-of course, coachmen in general do, like the Israelites before they had a King," that which seems right in their own eyes."

Immediately on quitting Drogheda, we turned to the right. This is the great north-eastern road. The road straight forward is the northwestern, which I formerly travelled. We passed through Dunleer, a little town remarkable for the antiquity of its church, and through Castle Bellingham, a pretty little village, formerly celebrated for its fine ale. The brewery is thrown down, or converted into a distillery. Whiskey, like Aaron's rod, seems to swallow every other liquor. There is a fine old spreading elm near the centre of Castle Bellingham, said to be the largest in the kingdom.

A few miles from Dundalk, the road runs along the beach. The sky was without a cloud. The sea was calm and unruffled, and its blue bosom reflected the image of repose. It was very different from the merciless element I had so lately witnessed.

"What a beautiful day this is," I said.

“And what a beautiful country!" said a pas senger, "had it but met with good usage." "It has met with good usage," said I.

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"Really!" said he, ironically.

"With good and bad usage," I proceeded, "like every other country under the sun."

"It has had rather a Benjamin's portion of the latter, I should think," said he.

"I fear it has," saidI; "how far its own struggling, with a broken limb, may have caused this, I will nöt take on me to determine."

"You mean, I presume," said another, "that we should have submitted to be roasted in quietness; and that when done on one side, we should have meekly desired to be turned on the other?"

"I mean," said I, "that we should have submitted toinevitable necessity, and accommodated our minds to our condition. The one half of the energy, which, like the Cyclop in the Odyssey, we exerted in groping for the stranger who put out our independence, would, wisely directed, have long since given us respectability and happiness."

will

go

"Preach that doctrine," said the gentleman who had first spoken, "to the people of England, it down with them; it wont do here." "I will preach no doctrine to the people of England," said I," that I do not believe; nor will I to the people of Ireland; and while I lament so much of evil is in their cup, I must remember that evil is in the cup of all. Our sufferings are not so much greater than those of England, as they

are of later date.