them in battle, and the rest by downright assassination.... and besides all this, infinite were the depredations, wastings, burnings of the country, besides the endless harassings of the poor peasants, and even sometimes the violating of sanctuaries, burning of churches, killing of clergymen, and abbots, and bishops too, for company; besides lesser fights and skirmishes without number. By all which you may perceive that Christianity wrought so tile on that people, that for 400 years (the most fourishing part of the Milesian history) their princes were more fatally engaged pursuing one another with fire and sword, than their pagan predecessors had been." Nay more, "not even the great holiness of some of their very meekest and most justly celebrated saints has been exempt from the fatality of their genius of putting their controversy to the bloody decision of battle, though they foresaw that the death of so many thousands must needs have followed. Even Columb Cill himself, so religious a monk, priest, abbot, so much a man of God, was nevertheless the very author, adviser, procurer of fighting three several battles."- Prospect of the State of Ireland, pp. 77, 101.

If we may trust Mr. Crofton Croker in his comments upon the Popular Songs of Ireland (p. 102,) the following directions were given in the will of one of Cromwell's followers in that country:-"My body shall be put upon the oak table in my coffin in the brown room, and fifty Irishmen shall be invited to my wake, and every one shall have two quarts of the best aqua vitæ, and each a skein, dirk, or knife, laid before him; and when their liquor is out, nail up my coffin and commit me to earth from whence I came. This is my will, witness my hand, this 3rd of March, 1674. John Langley."

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Some of his friends asked him why he would be at such charge to treat the Irish at his funeral, a people whom he never loved. "Why for that reason," replied Langley; "for they will get so drunk at my wake that they will kill one another, and so we shall get rid of some of the breed; and if every one would follow my example in their wills in time we should get rid of them all."

Now an Englishman safe under the protection of the new police, confident in the impartiality of a petty sessions, kept in awe by a generally quiet and noffensive code of honour, and habitually cautious and reserved, and calculating for others as well as for himself, passes over to Ireland, and there finds a nation of men, whose chief pastime (less perhaps now than it was) is breaking each other's heads. He sees the murderous shillelah, which Mr. Carleton has so portentously described-is present perhaps at a dance, a fair, or a funeral, all of which terminate equally in a fight-witnesses a battle between two factions, which no power can separate but the priest in his vestments, and returns home with disgust and despair at such a sanguinary temperament. We have no wish to undertake the defence either of the shillelah, or of the faction fight; and the instances bappily are becoming more rare every day. But we do think that English notions on this subject also are not hastily to be transferred to Ireland.

The Irish have naturally warm and excitable tempers; they are, by their constitution, comparatively insensible to bloodshed, and indifferent to life; and

We had included weddings, but we gladly bow to the authority of Mr. and Mrs. Hall, who assure us that Irish gallantry never fights at weddings. And this is a trait af delicacy quite worth recording.

under the influence of whiskey they become fearfully cruel. But their love of fighting does not destroy their natural kindness of heart, any more than a boxing-match, or a gladiatorial show, necessarily implies that the parties engaged are bitter enemies. It is an exciting amusement; and the amusement is not deprived of its charm to them by any sense of danger. Society among the lower classes in Ireland is still in a state far less advanced than with ourselves. Law has not yet been firmly established; it is not trusted; party animosity runs high; old traditions and watchwords of tribes and factions are preserved; bitterness of feeling is encouraged by those who are the most bound to correct it. There is a great admiration for courage, and for the exhibition of it, such as we find wherever a national character contains elements of good, and luxury and money-making propensities have not extinguished it. And all these circumstances with the additional stimulus of whiskey, contribute to produce that pugnacious disposition, which by a thoughtless observer is treated as mere savage barbarism. It is no such thing. a disposition capable of being trained into a genuine habit of courage; and instead of lamenting it, a wise legislator would seize on it as an admirable element to form a national character. There are no better soldiers than Irishmen when well trained and disciplined. No people bear real suffering more patiently. None meet death with more equanimityeven with the frightful prospect of purgatory before their eyes. All that they require is to see courage and vigour in their rulers; and to have their spirit properly directed; but a weak, vacillating government, or a landlord who shows signs of fear, can never be a proper ruler for the Irish people.

It is

But when the greatest of ancient philosophers was enumerating the elements necessary to form a perfect national character, he requires, besides this physical courage, great natural quickness of intelleet; and no nation, not perhaps even the Greek, ever possessed more of this than the Irish. To an Englishman, if he can see only the dark side of things, it will appear in the shape of cunning, falsehood, a strange ill-regulated imagination and thirst for knowledge, a grotesque humour mixing wildly with bursts of deep feeling, and all the evasive tricks, so frequently ending in perjury, by which an Irishman battles against the law. Even their blunders originate in the same cause. Great quickness of intelligence is seldom compatible with that common sense which is the result of calculation; and the Irish are no ealculators.

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“Common sense," says Lady Chatterton (and we gladly use her words, for no one will accuse her of writing under prejudices against Ireland,) “ is lamentably wanted. And this occasions all other wants. Want of sense peeps through the open door and stuffed-up window of every hovel. It is plainly stamped on every thing that is done or left undone. You may trace it in the dungheap, which obstructs the path to the cabin; in the smoke, which finds an outlet through every opening but a chimney. You may see it in the warm cloaks which are worn in the hottest day in the summer, in the manner a peasant girl carries her basket behind her back. This is generally done by folding her cloak, her only cloak, round it, and thus throwing the whole weight of the basket on this garment, of course to its no small detriment. The same want of sense lurks too under the great heavy coat which the men wear during violent exertion in hot weather. In short it

peasants to a knowledge of truth than could be entertained as to many districts of England, where the labourer, when his work is finished, thinks of little but his supper and his bed. This fondness for learning among all ages might probably turn the attention of those who are interested in the work of conversion, from the establishment of children's schools, which must be conducted, to say the least, on an imperfect plan, to the multiplication and proper training of teachers for adults-at any rate of a class of men who might mix with the peasantry familiarly, and be, as it were, the fingers in the hands of the clergy, to grasp the poor population by the parent instead of the children. It does appear that the schools hither to established on the Kildare and Hibernian system have failed in producing conversion. Is not the child the property of his parent? Can the Romish parent, without a violation of conscience, place his child under what he believes heretical and corrupt teaching? And can the Church demand, or even satisfactorily receive, a child from a parent thus acting? If she does, is she not obliged to compromise her own principles by attempting to educate without instructing the child in the whole of religion; for instance, in the sin of schism and the errors of Popery, which in a popish country must be as necessary a part of a sound scriptural education? Is it right really to abandon the duty of conversion, or honest to attempt it insidiously; or safe even to effect it upon the erroneous principle of placing the child before the Scriptures to find out its meaning by himself, without any guide or comment? These and many other considerations might suggest themselves; and certainly it is more easy, and more safe, and more in accordance with the history of past national conversions, and with the principles of nature and of the Church, to win over the children through the parents, than to attempt to gain the parents through the children. If the body is to be brought over, begin with the head, and the limbs will follow. But begin with the limbs, and the attempt either fails entirely, or only ends in a dangerous mutilation. And it will be a day of happy omen for the Irish Church and for the British empire, when some plan properly digested is commenced for gratifying this thirst for knowledge among adults as well as children, without compromising the order of the Church, or risking, as is too much the case at present, the unsettling of the peasant's mind. by discovering to him the errors of Popery, without substituting for them a clear definite body of truth and discipline.

We might touch on many more peculiarities of the Irish peasantry, which, judiciously watched and managed, might be trained so as to form in truth the finest nation in the world, instead of being hastily condemned, and extirpated-extirpated we should not say, for nature cannot be extirpated; it can only be corrected.

For instance, an Irishman's fondness for potatoes may be a depravity of taste, and it is certainly productive of most serious evils. It is the lowest possible food, and a nation driven to rest satisfied with the minimum of subsistence has nothing else to fall back on, when this fails. It is not portable both from bulk and tendency to ferment. It is subject to constant failures, and therefore produces famine. It teaches the peasantry to depend all of them on their own bits of land; hence no regular wages-no use of money-no thoughtfulness in their characterno habit of prudence-no shops-no taste for comfort-no accumulation of property-but many deeds of violence connected with the possession of land,

and a very prevalent habit of mendicancy. But we do not think that Ireland would be improved if beef and pudding were substituted for potatoes, and eating were made to the Irish peasant, as it is now to the English, the chief want of his heart, instead of encouraging and preserving simple and temperate habits of life, and only reconciling them with prudence and neatness.

So also of their mendicancy. Mendicancy is a wretched thing; and yet a nation of which so large a portion of the poor population are supported by the alims of the other-alms indeed given improvidently, but never grudgingly-cannot be without its deepseated spring of charity; and we doubt if the poorhouse will improve it.

So also of their attachment to land. It runs at present into most mischievous excesses, producing an overgrown population, infinite subdivision of the soil, a bad system of farming, annual famine, early marriages, agrarian outrages, and materials for Ribbon conspiracies. But it would be fatal for Ireland to substitute for an agricultural a manufacturing population. An agricultural population is a far sounder and healthier body than any other. It requires indeed in Ireland a new distribution-the farms to be enlarged-a class of labourers to be formed, with gardens and not small farms attached to their cottages, and little more; and the surplus population to be employed in domestic manufactures, or in such as would be required for the home market alone. It is not, most assuredly, from any English jealousy of Irish industry, that we say this; nor do we wish to undervalue the good effects which have resulted from the introduction of certain branches of manufacture, with the necessary establishments, into the sister island. But we most deeply and seriously consider the vast extension of the modern millsystem, as constituting the greatest evil under which our own social condition is suffering; and we would fain, for Ireland's sake-for the sake of her morals and her peace-see her escape those melancholy alternations of gluts and over-demands, which are the necessary consequences of an unlimited trade, and must bring infinite dangers to any country, but especially to a nation so excitable and at the same time so prone to self-abandonment as the Irish.

So of their early marriages. They also have produced much mischief. But it would be another evil day for Ireland which should hastily check them, risking the destruction of a comparatively pure morality and of strong family affections, in order to avert the mischief of over population-a mischief which might easily be remedied, partly—and largely, we are confident-by draining off the crowded districts to the waste lands of Ireland herself-provided only the new colonies were formed upon right principles, and placed under proper superintendence on the model of a good parochial system; and partly, perhaps, as to certain provinces, by encouraging and promoting emigration to our own daily expanding settlements in Australia and America.

So also of the fatalism of the lower orders of Irish. An Englishman is accustomed to think and to act for himself. Put, therefore, opportunities of exertion before him, and he moves spontaneously. But an Irishman has a strange Oriental disposition (and it is only one out of many Oriental features in his character) to allow every thing to be done for him. Hence his indolence, patience, disregard to improvement, apparent want of enterprise, coupled at the same time with the paradoxical exhibition of the utmost energy under excitement. The attempt to

remove this by simply giving him opportunities of exertion is idle. It must fail. To remove it altogether, and substitute a cold, selfish, and what is called independent spirit, as if the whole world were to be reduced under his power, would be no satisfactory improvement. But stand over him with assistance and encouragement, suggesting exertions, aiding him to maintain himself upon his own footing, as we teach a child to walk, and the Irish indolence, broken as it is now by fits of violent energy, may be trained into settled habits of industry, and the country become rich and flourishing, in the only way in which such an object can be gained, by the steady efforts of its own people, not by giving a false stimulus to manufactures, or introducing a sudden accumulation of capital-a plan which can only end in converting the Irish peasant-who, naked and starving as he is, is still, compared with the Socialist of Birmingham, free, innocent, high-minded, and unCorrupted-into the slave of a factory.

And how then, it will be asked, with all these admirable qualities, is the Irish peasant at this moment, in the nineteenth century, and under the rule of a British government, an object not of envy, but compassion-naked, famished, almost houseless, the slave of superstition, notorious for falsehood and perjury, arrayed against the laws of his country, and too often stained with blood? It is because the best faculties and the purest natural feelings, not placed under discipline and directed to right ends, can only turn to evil—because hitherto they have been left to themselves, and those who have really wished their good have attempted it without duly adapting themselves to the peculiarities of the Irish character. It is because bad men have taken advantage of their almost child-like credulity and passionateness in order to extort money for themselves by exciting sedition among the people; and because Popery has come in to foster their evil tendencies—their fatalism, their reliance upon others, their indifference to life, their ingenuity in evasion, their defiance of law, their gregariousness, and their rash prodigality, instead of rousing them to exertion, encouraging a spirit of independence, making them reverent of truth and law-prudent and economical, while benevolent and merciful without losing their courage. When the Irish peasantry shall have been converted, not to a vague Protestantism, without fixed creed, or discipline, or rule, but to the true Church of England, brought out in its venerable simplicity, and placed before them as the old religion of their country, with its bishops, its sacraments, its apostolical faith, its solemn ceremonies, its elevated ritual, and its self-sacrificing piety-then (and, if signs may be trusted, the time is not far off, nor the prospect an idle dream) Ireland may again become, what it has once been already, the source of blessing to Europe and to the world; and hold out more hopes than any other country on the globe of restoring a pure and holy form of Christianity amidst a noble and enlightened people. Till this time arrives, it will continue what it is now, a spot on which the eye cannot rest without sorrow and fear; sorrow that so many germs of good should be suffered to run wild unto evilfear lest it should form a part of the destinies of Providence to visit the sins of England upon her head by bringing a curse upon her from the people whom she (under whatever circumstances) assumed the responsibility of ruling, and then ignobly abandoned to their own misrule. And under this misrule the Irish peasantry will become-But we will not proceed. was not our intention to describe them ourselves,

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but to select descriptions of them by others, and those, Irishmen and we will close our observations with one more extract from Mr. Carleton, which will tell its own tale, and contain its own moral. The story of Wildgoose Lodge is founded on notorious facts. It opens with a scene in a Romish Masshouse, to which a member of the Ribbon conspiracy is summoned by a secret order:

"The scene which presented itself here was in keeping not only with the external appearance of the house, but with the darkness, the storm, and the hour, which was now a little after midnight. About eighty persons were sitting in dead silence upon the circular steps of the altar. They did not seem to move; and as I entered and advanced, the echo of my footsteps rang through the building with a lone distinctness which added to the solemnity and mystery of the circumstances about me. The windows were secured with shutters on the inside, and on the altar a candle was lighted, which burned dimly amid the surrounding darkness, and lengthened the shadow of the altar itself, and those of six or seven persons who stood on its upper steps, until they mingled in the obscurity which shrouded the lower end of the chapel. The faces of the men who sat on the altar-steps were not distinctly visible, yet their prominent and more characteristic features were in sufficient relief, and I observed that some of the most malignant and reckless spirits in the parish were assembled. In the eyes of those who stood at the altar, and whom I knew to be invested with authority over the others, I could perceive gleams of some latent and ferocious purpose, kindled, as I soon observed, into a fiercer expression of vengeance, by the additional excitement of ardent spirits, with which they had stimulated themselves to a point of determination that mocked at the apprehension of all future responsibility, either in this world or in the next.

"The welcome which I received on joining them was different from the boisterous good-humour that used to mark our greetings on other occasions; just a nod of the head from this or that person, on the part of those who sat, with a ghud dhemur tha thu?" (how are you?) in a suppressed voice: but from the standing group, who were evidently the projectors of the enterprise, I received a convulsive grasp of the hand, accompanied by a fierce and desperate look, that seemed to search my eye and countenance, to try if I were a person not likely to shrink from whatever they had resolved to execute.

"None of the standing group spoke; but as each of them wrung my hand in silence, his eye was fixed on mine, with an expression of drunken confidence and secrecy, and an insolent determination not to be gainsayed without peril. If looks can be translated with certainty, they seemed to say, 'We are bound upon a project of vengeance, and if you do not join us, remember we can revenge.' Along with this grasp they did not forget to remind me of the common bond by which we were united, for each man gave me the secret grip of Ribbonism in a manner that made the joints of my fingers ache for some ninutes afterwards. . .

"During our conversation, those who had been summoned to this mysterious meeting were pouring in fast; and as each person approached the altar he received from one to two or three glasses of whiskey, according as he chose to limit himself; but, to do them justice, there were not a few of those present who, in despite of their own desire and the captain's