wrongheadedness, which has no real counterpart outside the Irish race. The Irish animal is lively, rampant, exhilarating, like the sprightly hero of a Spanish bull-right, while English and other bulls are mere commonplace calves blundering along to the shambles. When Sir Richard Steele was asked how it happened that his compatriots made so many bulls, he imputed it to the effect of climate, and declared that if an Englishman were born in Ireland he would make just as many. Undoubtedly he was right, though, for some unimaginable reason, the answer has itself been reckoned among Hibernicisms. Swift was a case in point. Like Wellington, he might have answered that he was not a horse because he was born in a stable. Not a horse, undoubtedly, yet the influence of the stable made him the father of many excellent bulls. In his first Drapier's Letter he says, "Therefore I do most earnestly exhort you, as men, as Christians, as parents, and as lovers of your country, to read this paper with the utmost attention, or to get it read to you by others." Yet the bull was not new with Swift. It finds analogues both in his native and in his adopted country.

As Ferriar points out (" Illustrations of Sterne," i. 80), it is the jest-book story of the Templar over again, who left a note in the key-hole of his door directing the finder, "if unable to read, to carry it to the stationer at the gate, now Messrs, Butterworth's, to read it for him." Grose, in his "Olio," relates it for a fact that in May, 1784, a bill was sent from Ireland for the royal assent relating to franking. One clause enacted that any member who, from illness or any other cause, should be unable to write, might authorize another to frank for him, provided that on the back of the letter so franked the member gave under his hand a full certificate of his inability to write.

Let us apply the historical method to other great Hibernian masterpieces.

Who does not remember the story of the Englishman who wrote in his letter, "I would say more, but that there is a d—d tall Irishman looking over my shoulder and reading every word of this," whereupon the Hibernian exclaimed, "You lie, you scoundrel!" Does not this story find its corollary in the anecdote of the German lady who, writing to borrow money of her sweetheart, added the following ingenuous postscript: •'I am so thoroughly ashamed of my request that I sent after the bearer of this note to call him back, but he had got already too far on the way." And is there not a kinship between both of these and the tale of the English lady who combated George Selwyn's assertion that no woman could write a letter without adding a postscript, and next day sought to prove he was wrong by writing a letter and adding after her signature,—

P.S.—Who is right now, you or Ir

Perhaps the Irish story gave Frederick the Great the hint for that tragic postscript he once dictated to an aide-de-camp whom he had caught in his tent writing a letter home after the hour when all lights had been ordered out. "Add this postscript," said the terrible martinet: "'To-morrow morning I shall be taken out and shot for disobedience of orders.'" The aide-decamp wrote it down, and the king kept his word.

There is a story told of an Irish gentleman who wanted to learn of an eminent singing-master. He inquired the terms.

"Two guineas for the first lesson," said the maestro; "and for as many as you please afterwards a guinea each."

"Oh, bother the first lesson!" said the inquirer: "let us begin with the second."

Yet this may have been wit,—an excellent bit of fooling, not a bull. And, even if a bull, it is not a distinctively Irish bull. An analogue may be found in the story of the Englishman dining with Porson and others, who, wishing to contribute his mite to the conversation, asked the professor, " Was Captain Cook killed on his first voyage?"

"I believe he was," said Porson; "but he did not mind it much, but immediately entered on a second."

Mr. John Dillon quite recently made a famous bull in the House of Commons, when, speaking of his friends, he said that " they had seen themselves filling paupers' graves." This was an avatar of the remark made in the Irish House almost a century before by his great predecessor, Sir Boyle Roche: "Why, Mr. Speaker, honorable members never come down to this House without expecting to find their mangled remains lying on the table." It finds a compatriotic echo in this familiar story: "India, my boy," said an Irish officer to a friend on his arrival at Calcutta, "is the finest climate under the sun; but a lot of young fellows come out here, and they drink and they eat, and they drink and they die: and then they write home to their parents a pack of lies, and say it's the climate that has killed them."

Yet precisely the same confusion of terms exists in this sentence, quoted by the Paris Figaro (February, 1890) 4*from a recent essay on French homelife in the last century:"

We have spoken of that sanguinary year, 1793. In those troubled times it was that French domestics set an example of the greatest devotion. There were many even who, rather than betray their masters, allowed themselves to be guillotined in their place, and who, when happier days returned, silently and respectfully went back to their work.

Not entirely dissimilar was the bull contained in this obituary notice in the London Times:

On the 1st December, at 3, Elgin Crescent, Kensington Park, Col. William Burney, K.N., one of the very few survivors of the Peninsula and Waterloo, in his 88th year.

Here we have the dead man represented as a survivor. He must have borne some kindred^to Johnson's hero:

Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled,

But still fought on, nor knew that he was dead.

Sir Bovle Roche repeated his own trope in a speech on the dangers of a French invasion: "The murderous marshal-law men (Marseiiiais) would break in, cut us to mince-meat, and throw our bleeding heads upon that table to stare us in the face." But, again, he was equalled, if not surpassed, by the contemporary orator quoted by Taine in his " French Revolution," who informed a Parisian mob, "I would take my own head by the hair, cut it off, and, presenting it to the despot, would say to him, 'Tyrant, behold the act of a free man.'" This surpasses the miracle of St. Denis, for, in the original and more authentic form, that holy man merely thrust his head under his arm and walked a goodly distance with it. Careful hagiologists now reject the more recent elaborations that he kissed it on the way, or that he picked it up with his teeth.

A number of other Irish bulls hold a sort of hilarious wake over the subject of death : that of a Hibernian gentleman who told a friend studying for the priesthood, "I hope I may live to hear you preach my funeral sermon;" of another who expressed the grateful sentiment, "May you live to eat the chicken that scratches over your grave ;" of a physician who said oracularly of a murdered man, "This person was so ill, that if he had not been murdered he would have died a half an hour before," and of a lady who, in her will, ordered that her body should be opened at her death, for fear she should be buried alive. A parallel to these ghastly jests may be found in the anecdote of James Smithson, founder of the Smithsonian Institute. He had five doctors, and they had been unable to discover his disease. Being told that his case was hopeless, he called them around him and said, "My friends, I desire that you will make a post-mortem examination of me, and find out what ails me; for really I am dying to know what my disease is myself."

When Garrick condoled with an Irish gentleman upon the recent death of his father, "It is what we must all come to if we only live long enough," said the Irishman. But the idea is no more Irish than French, for when a Frenchman had built his chateau and completed the chapel to it, he called together his children and said, "I hope we shall all be buried there, if God grants us life." And the London Spectator puts in an English claim for it when it quotes from the letter of an English clergyman soliciting a subscription towards the purchase of a burial-ground for his parish, which had grown to the dimensions of a small town with 30,000 inhabitants. "It is deplorable to think," said this clergyman, "of a parish where there are 30,000 people living without Christian burial."

It was a Dublin paper which reported in 1890 that "the health of Mr. Parnell has lately taken a very serious turn, and fears of his recovery are entertained by his friends." But a number of English papers copied the statement without suspicion of the bull. And it was a London paper (the Times) which thus concluded a eulogium on Baron Dowse: "A great Irishman has passed away. God grant that many as great, and who shall as wisely love their country, may follow him." And it was another London paper (the Telegraph) which had this dubious sentence: "Earl Sydney's illness became very acute on Sunday. Prayers were offered on his behalf at the churches and places of worship at Sidcup, Foot's Cray, and Chiselhurst. Lord Sydney, however, on Wednesday, appeared much improved."

Here is a story which has many ramifications until it finally loses itself in a Greek root: "I was going," said an Irishman, "over Westminster Bridge the other day, and I met Pat Hewins. * Hewins,' says I, * how are you?' 'Pretty well,1 says he, * thank you, Donnelly.' 'Donnelly!' says I: * that's not my name.' * Faith, no more is mine Hewins,' says he. So we looked at each other again, and sure it turned out to be nayther of us; and where's the bull of that, now?"

A similar story is told of Sheridan Knowles, an Irishman by birth, an Englishman by adoption.

The names of Mark Lemon and Leman Rede used to puzzle him severely, and, as both were frequently before the public as writers for the stage, he could never bring himself to understand which of the two was the subject of congratulation when a dramatic success was achieved by either of them. At length he met Leman Rede and Mark Lemon walking arm in arm. "Ah," said Knowles, the moment he was close enough to accost them, "now I'm bothered entirely. Which of you is the other?"

Are not the above identical with the query addressed to Thomas Sandby by Caulfield, a pure-blooded Englishman: "My dear Sandby, I'm glad to see you. Pray is it you or your brother?" But the same story had been told by Hierocles, the Greek Joe Miller.

Nevertheless, we cannot take back our assertion that the finest breed of bulls are those produced by the Emerald Isle. Here is a collection of specimens that have excited the laughter of generations, and will continue to make chanticleers of our children:

"Has your sister got a son or a daughter?" asked an Irishman of a friend. "Upon my life," was the reply, "I don't know yet whether I'm an uncle or an aunt."

An equivocal compliment „„. knees before a new sweetheart, .»..« a«.v., ,/«,„.., j known ye for seven years—and a great deal betther."

was that of the Irish youth who dropped on his ;art, and said, "Darlin', I love ye as well as if I'd

"My dear, come in and go to bed," said the wife of a jolly son of Erin who had just returned from the fair in a decidedly how-come-you-so state; "you must be dreadful tired, sure, with your long walk of six miles." "Arrah, get away with your nonsense," said Pat; "it wasn't the length of the way at all that fatigued me : 'twas the breadth of it."

A poor Irishman offered an old saucepan for sale. His children gathered around him and inquired why he parted with it. "Ah, me honeys," he answered, "I would not be afther parting with it but for a little money to buy something to put in it."

A young Irishman who had married when about nineteen years of age, complaining of the difficulties to which his early marriage subjected him, said he would never marry so young again if he lived to be as ould as Methuselah.

An invalid, after returning from a southern trip, said to a friend, "Oh, shure, an* it's done me a wurruld o' good, goin' away. I've come back another man altogether; in fact, I'm quite meself agen."

An eccentric lawyer thus questioned a client: "So your uncle, Dennis O'Flaherty, had no family?" "None at all, yer honor," responded the client. The lawyer made a memorandum of the reply, and then continued: "Very good. And your father, Patrick O'Flaherty, did he have chick or child?"

In an Irish provincial paper is the following notice: "Whereas Patrick O'Connor lately left his lodgings, this is to give notice that if he does not return immediately and pay for the same, he will be advertised."

Two Irishmen were working in a quarry, when one of them fell into a deep quarry-hole. The other, alarmed, came to the margin of the hole and called out, "Arrah, Pat, are ye killed intirely? If ye're dead, spake." Pat reassured him from the bottom by saying in answer, "No, Tim, I'm not dead, but I'm spacheless."

At a crowded concert a young lady, standing at the door of the hall, was addressed by an honest Hibernian who was in attendance on the occasion. "Indade, miss," said he, "I should be glad to give you a sate, but the empty ones are all full."

"Gentlemen, is not one man as good as another?" "Uv course he is," shouted an excited Irish Chartist, "and a great deal betther."

"Pat, do you understand French?"

"Yis, if it's shpoke in Irish."

An Irish hostler was sent to the stable to bring forth a traveller's horse. Not knowing which of the two strange horses in the stalls belonged to the traveller, and wishing to avoid the appearance of ignorance in his business, he saddled both animals and brought them to the door. The traveller pointed out his own horse, saying, "That's my nag."

"Certainly, yer honor; I know that; but I didn't know which one of them was the other gentleman's."

A domestic, newly engaged, presented to his master, one morning, a pair of boots, the leg of one of which was much longer than the other.

"How comes it that these boots are not of the same length?"

"I raly don't know, sir; but what bothers me the most is that the pair downstairs are in the same fix."

An Irishman, having feet of different sizes, ordered his boots to be made accordingly. His directions were obeyed, but as he tried the smallest boot on his largest foot, he exclaimed, petulantly, "Confound that fellow! I ordered him to make one larger than the other; and instead of that he has made one smaller than the other."

That was a triumphant appeal of an Irish lover of antiquity, who, in arguing the superiority of the old architecture over the new, said, "Where will you find any modern building that has lasted so long as the ancient?"

An Irish magistrate, censuring some boys for loitering in the streets, argued, "If everybody were to stand in the street, how could anybody get by?"

An Irishman got out of his carnage at a railway-station for refreshments, but the bell rang and the train left before he had finished his repast. "Hould on !" cried Pat, as he ran like a madman after the car, " hould on, ye murther'a ould stame injin; you've got a passenger on board that's left behind."

"It is very sickly here," said one of the sons of the Emerald Isle to another.

"Yes," replied his companion, "a great many have died this year that never died before."

An old Dublin woman went to the chandler's for a farthing candle, and, being told it was raised to a halfpenny on account of the Russian war, "Bad luck to them !" she exclaimed, "and do they fight by candle-light?"

An Irish lover remarks that it is a great comfort to be alone, "especially when yer swateheart is wid ye."

An eminent spirit-merchant in Dublin announced in one of the Irish papers that he had still a small quantity of the whiskey on sale which was drunk by his late Majesty while in Dublin.

But the great protagonist of all bull-perpetrators was Sir Boyle Roche, who was elected member for Tralee in the Irish Parliament of 1775. Here, "through his pleasant interference, the most angry debates were frequently concluded with peals of laughter." He was known upon one occasion, after a withering exposure or patriotic denunciation of government, to say, with solemn gravity, "Mr. Speaker, it is the duty of every true lover of his country to give his last guinea to save the remainder of his fortunes!" Or, if the subject of debate was some national calamity, he would deliver himself thus: "Sir, single misfortunes never come alone, and the greatest of all national calamities is generally followed by one much greater." When some one complained that the sergeant-at-arms should have stopped a man in the rear of the house while the sergeant was really engaged in trying to catch him in front, Roche considerately asked, "Do you think the sergeant-at-arms can be, like a bird, in two places at once?" Shocked at the tempora et mores of Young Ireland, he broke out, "The progress of the times, Mr. Speaker, is such that little children who can neither walk nor talk may be seen running about the streets cursing their Maker.'" Arguing, on another occasion, in favor of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, "It would be better, Mr. Speaker," said he, "to give up not only a part, but, if necessary, even the whole of our Constitution, to preserve the remainder." One of his most famous mots was the imperious demand, "Why should we put ourselves out of the way to do anything for posterity? for what has posterity done for us?" Supposing, from the roar of laughter which greeted this question, that the House had misunderstood him, he explained "that by posterity he did not at all mean our ancestors, but those who were to come immediately after them." Upon hearing this explanation "it was impossible," Harrington assures us, "to do any serious business for half an hour." A letter supposed to have been written by Sir Boyle Roche during the Irish rebellion of '98 gives an amusing colleotion of his various blunders. Perhaps he never put quite so many on paper at a time; but his peculiar turn for "bulls" is here shown at one view. The letter was first printed in the Kerry Magazine^ now out of print:

Dear Sir,—Having now a little peace and quiet, I sit down to inform you of the bustle and confusion we are in from the bloodthirsty rebels, many of whom are now, thank God, killed