a sadly pleasing strain, such as sorrow well might utter, and pensiveness would love to hear. Many who will not allow the Irish cry to be musical, have admitted that it is melancholy. -and have thereby admitted their own want of knowledge of music. No concourse of sounds can be melancholy without being musical, nor, paradoxical as it may appear, can any, I think, be fully musical without being melancholy. Music, as v well as poetry, issues from heaven, and never, never, can reside in its perfection, with noisy mirth, or broad faced laughter. Let any person try the simple experiment of listening to a German waltz, and afterwards to an English country dance, and, probably, he will be nearly of a similar opinion. Mourning over the dead, in a manner nearly similar to that in use with the Irish, was practised by almost all ancient nations. Many passages es in the sacred writings shew that it was the custom of the Hebrews. ed "Call for the mourning women, that they may come" "we have mourned unto you, but you have not lamented"-" man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets," are a few of them. Artificial mourners stand round the corpse of Hector, as well as Hecuba and Andromache, and, alternately with the natural ones, bewail his loss and sing his praises. A melancholy choir attend around, The obedient tears, melodious in their woe, A similar display of sorrow over the dead body of Pallas, is to be found in the eleventh book of the Æneid. Circum omnis famulumque manus, Trojanaque turba, Ut verò Æneas foribus sese intulit altis, The high antiquity of the Irish cry, indeed, is unquestionable, from the circumstance of its obsti nately refusing the accompaniment of the base. No kind of base accompaniment, as has been remarked by Doctor Burney, was known to the Greeks or Romans. That, however, which would be classic beauty in them, is hideous deformity in the native Irish, and their Keenagh, as it is most frequently called, is a never-failing subject of derision and contempt. It generally combines with lamentations, the eulogy of the deceased. In the one I have been describing, the mourners sorrowfully dwelt on the extreme youth of the young man, and bewailed, in no rude strains, his untimely fate. With a little correction from the band of taste, it would have spoken nearly such language as the following: The autumn winds rushing Waft the leaves that are searest, cd in But our flower was in flushing 20 duc vnd When blighting was nearest. d I Like the dew on the mountain, I LAN Thou art gone and for ever. CHAPTER XXX. C I AM still in the mountains, though in a different part of them. The house where I write this, is eight miles from the one where I wrote my last chapter. I was six hours on the road, and might have been six days-the roads were so rough, the mountains so slippery, and the people so kind. I went into three or four cabins to seek shelter from 1 the rain. It must have been my own fault if it injured me, as the universal panacea, whiskey, wass pressed upon me. In every instance my kinder hearted physicians shewed their confidence in their prescription, by first taking a large dose thems selves. It would be thought ill manners to offer the cup without first tasting it. This is a remnant of the practice of barbarous times, in barbarous lands, when distrust took 1 every precaution. The custom continues long after the cause which gave birth to it is gone by. Poisoning is not now, and, I trust, though it was an ancient, never was an Irish vice. I had walked about a quarter of a mile from one of these houses, when a little boy out of breath with running, overtook me. 66 Ough, I thought," said he, as soon as he was able to speak, "that I never would get up with you. I have three long miles to walk, and it is so lonesome to go by one's self."" Solitude to a poor Irish peasant is an heavy evil. He finds all his pleasures in society; on Sunday, therefore, he seldom walks abroad, but reclines under a hedge, or sits by the road side, conversing with his fellows. When we came to the place where my little companion was to turn off, he could not bear to part with me, and insisted on conveying me, a little way through the flough, (bog) as he expressed it, and it was only by affecting a degree' of harshness repugnant to my feelings, that I could at length get rid of him. I have often before remarked in the native Irish, a similar overflowing of heart, and have been as much gratified with their simple tenderness, as I was struck with the affectionate imbecility with which they clung to the nearest object, as if seeking for support. The transfusion, therefore, of English soul, and English nature, has, I am persuaded, been of service to the Irish character. They are, (I'do not mean it as a ludicrous illustration,) what Kircher supposes mountains are to the earth, hoops, or ribs, to strengthen and support it. I did not travel long in solitude. A little distance from the road I saw a party of soldiers, standing round a small house on the side of the mountain. I was thinking of stepping up to enquire the reason of so unusual an appearance, when a female shriek issued from the house, and before I could recover from the surprize into which I was thrown, my ears were assailed by a concourse of cries, the most piteous and mournful. I then ran up and went into the house. A young man was standing on the floor, a number of women were clinging, screaming, round him, instinctively as it were, endeavouring to shelter him from the soldiers. The man seemed quite stupified, and gazed alternately on the women, and the soldiers, with a wild and vacant air. nid 13s He was a deserter from a regiment, in which in a moment of drunkenness he had enlisted a few months before. As long as the regiment had remained in the neighbourhood he was content; but when it was removed to a distant part of the county, that ardent longing after his friends and home, which is so strong in the breasts of the inhabitants of these mountains, began to operate and threw him into a state of profound melan |