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many: an elegant writer attributes it to the depressing influence of the English invasion. "Sinking beneath the weight of sorrow, the bards," he remarks," became a prey to melancholy, and the sprightly Phrygian (to which they were before wholly inclined) gave place in all their subsequent compositions to the grave Doric or soft Lydian measure.”

This is ingenious, and probably, in a degree (a small degree), is true. But I have doubts whether ever Irish music was essentially other than grave Doric or soft Lydian. Melancholy is its essence, and incidents could do no more than heighten it. Climate, soil, and descent must have combined with events to give it this character. Were I to seek another cause, I should, perhaps, find it in the great susceptibility of the passion of love in the native Irish. Some of their songs breathe the soul of tenderness and affection, and would do honour to any age or nation. It would be well for many writers of the present day, who give the debasing ravings of desire instead of the ennobling passion of love, could they catch a portion of the pure spirit that pervades them. Would it be believed that the beautiful song in the Duenna,

"How oft, Louisa, hast thou said,”

is a literal translation of an old Irish ballad, and that Mr. Sheridan even borrowed with it the air to which it was sung?

The following is the production of an obscure poet, who died many years ago. I do not understand Irish, but I am assured that it is as literally translated as the idiom of the two languages will allow.

SONNET.

Thou dear seducer of my heart,
Fond cause of every struggling sigh!
No more can I conceal love's smart,
No more restrain the ardent eye.
What though this tongue did never move,
To tell thee all its master's pain;
My eyes, my look-have spoke my love.
Alvina! shall they speak in vain ?
For still imagination warm

Presents thee at the noon-tide beam,
And sleep gives back thy angel form,
To clasp thee in the midnight dream.
Alvina! though no splendid store

Of riches more than merit move;
Yet, charmer! I am far from poor,
For I am more than rich in love.
Pulse of my beating heart! shall all
My gay seductive hopes be fled?
Unheeded wilt thou hear my fall;

Unpitied wilt thou see me dead?
I'll make a cradle of this breast,
Thy image all its child shall be;
My throbbing heart shall rock to rest
The cares that waste thy life and me.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Minecherin-Cabins-Hardships and comforts of the peasantry -Advantages attending their habits of living-Oppressions suffered by them.

A

I WALKED this morning to the little town (as it is called) of Minecherin. It is situated in the very heart

of the mountain, and, at a little distance, might be taken for a part of it. It consists of twenty or thirty little cabins. To each of these are attached a few acres of land; a portion is a potatoe garden, and the remainder gives grass for a cow, and produces a little oats. To an Englishman nothing would seem more wretched than the situation of these cabins. The ground on which they stand is half-reclaimed bog, and heaps of manure are piled and scattered round them, which render entrance a matter of considerable difficulty. Nor does the state of the interior appear to make amends for the exterior. In mid-day the darkness of midnight rests upon it. The chimney is seldom so well constructed as to carry away the smoke, through which some women, blear-eyed, shrivelled, and blackened, seated on their three-legged stools, like so many sibyls in the act of prophecy, gradually become visible. A cow, a calf, and a pig, generally fill up the background. The appearance of the furniture corresponds with that of the inhabitants; a few earthen vessels, tin porringers, and wooden noggins on the dresser, two or three stools around the fire, and a bed or beds covered by a coarse and black rug, make up the whole of it. All this (it will be said) is wretchedness, surely, or there is no such thing as wretchedness upon earth.

To many, very many, no doubt it would be so; but happily the people most interested are not wretched ; very far from it: and many good reasons might be given why they should not.

In the first place, neither they nor their immediate fathers ever knew a better way of living. way of living. This in itself is almost every thing. Man is the mere creature of habit, and all those tastes which have the most in

fluence over him are acquired ones: no man ever was born with a love of snuff, of coffee, of pepper, or of claret.

In the next place, the bogs on which (in which I should rather say) they live give them plenty of turf. The poorest man has (if it is not his own fault) an inexhaustible abundance of firing. Chilled, and as it were impregnated, with the damp and moisture of his mountains, even the smoke of his cabin gives him pleasure. He is not a creature who lives in a medium way, nor is he, perhaps, the more to be pitied on that account. He has the rapid alternation of heat and cold, of drought and moisture, and if he is often chilled and drenched during the day, he has a more exquisite relish for the fire during the night, and when he is dried and baked, as it were in an oven, he returns again with cheerfulness to the open air.

His food is simple; but he has it in tolerable abundance. It is wholesome food likewise: vegetables and milk, potatoes, butter, onions, and oaten-bread. Onions and garlic are of a most cordial nature. These vegetables composed part of the diet which enabled the Israelites to endure, in a warm climate, the heavy tasks imposed upon them by their Egyptian masters. They were likewise eaten by the Roman farmers to repair the waste of their strength by the toils of harvest. When, notwithstanding their cordial properties, he feels uneasy sensations in his stomach from the ascescent qualities of their food, nature kindly extends her hand to him, with a medicine drawn from his own mountains; a medicine which he does not take reluctantly, but readily and cheerfully—whiskey; which, when not drank to excess, is perhaps as well-suited to

his temperament and necessities, as wine is to a Frenchman's, or ale to an Englishman's.

Milk and vegetable diet humanize the heart, and if they do not create, cherish benevolent dispositions. All fierce animals are carnivorous, all gentle ones are granivorous. An Irish mountaineer is mild, humane, and affectionate, and he shrinks-yes, paradoxical as it will be reckoned by many-he shrinks beyond most other men from the idea of inflicting misery, or of shedding blood. This is his natural and quiescent character.

But he is social, and he has extraordinary sensibility. His sympathy is easily excited, and he catches the flame of enthusiasm with an ardour inconceivable to persons of a more phlegmatic temperament. The quarrel, therefore, of his neighbour, his friend, his relation, is his own quarrel: he kindles as he goes along, passion takes entire possession of him, and under the influence of this temporary frenzy, he is capable of committing the greatest excesses. Women are more tender, more humane and affectionate than men; but when in a passion they have much less selfgovernment, and have, perhaps, done more atrocious deeds.

The wretched condition of society in Ireland, the contest which has so long subsisted between the two great sects into which it is divided, the occasional arrogance and oppression of the Protestant, plant the thorns of envy, jealousy, and hatred in the poor Catholic's breast, which never fail to shoot forth into a plenteous crop of resentment whenever an opportunity presents itself.

On such an occasion he does not scrupulously discriminate between the Protestant his bene

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