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to eat voraciously, utterly to swallow up with rending and tearing; and in this sense is the word used by Henry. Unless the falconer's phrase is understood, what sense is there in either of these passages?

25. In the first scene of the first act of the Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus addressing Hermia says—

Question your desires,

Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun;
For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage.

Here is another passage in which a perfect intelligence of the falconer's objects adds force to the meaning; for if the hawk be mewed and the nun cloistered, if watching and frequent waiting be the lot of both, if they are neither of them full fed nor fare daintily if they are jessed or bound, as it were, to the point round which the circle of their training winds: if both be hooded or veiled, if both be broken from all bating and disobedience, all checking or rambling, and both taught to pursue the one great object of their education with the most perfect self-denial, the truest courage, and the most undeviating fidelity, it is, in both cases, that the mew or cloister may be quitted for the empyrean, the destiny of both is far above the earth. We are not about to compare the pitch of the bird with the soaring of the spirit; but for all purposes of poetry, and to an audience intelligent of the phrase in which the thought is clothed, what word in any language could imply so much as the word "mewed" in the above quoted sentence, and what course is more likely to render us masters of the sense of Shakspere than a collection of passages which interpret each other? It is thus we propose to proceed to other sports of the poet's period, and as occasion serves, like the French falconers of Hamlet's time, to "fly at any thing we see."

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THE PONTINE MARSHES.-On leaving Terracina, we come upon the Pontine marshes. The Roman Maremma, or Campagna, extends from the frontier of Tuscany, to the Neapolitan frontier, and from the foot of the Apennines to the Mediterranean. This tract, including in its widest scope Rome itself, is all more or less unhealthy, or subject to malaria, but is not all marshy. The greater part, on the contrary, is a flat, dry, pasture land, with too little rather than too much moisture, the ditches holding no water from want of a retentive subsoil, and the ponds and watering places for cattle, artificial. The Pontine marshes, included in this Maremma, begin here at Terracina, and occupy an area of about eight leagues in length along the coast, by about two in breadth; and are so inundated that they cannot be cultivated or inhabitated. The whole marshy surface in this state has been estimated at about 56,000 English acres. On the south, this marsh is bounded by the sea, or by salt water lagunes; on the east, by the high grounds and shore at Terracina; on the north, by the high grounds about Velletri; and on the west, by the plains of Cisterno. This marsh is formed by the rivers Amasino, Uffente, Cavatella, Tippin, Ninfo, and other mountain streams, which are the drainage of a large amphitheatre of country, but have no sufficient outlet, nor sufficient descent to carry off the waters they bring down. In the time of the Romans, great works, among others the canal by which Horace travelled, and the Appian way itself, were constructed for draining, and giving access to this tract; and although it was so far rendered habitable, that Pliny says there were three-and-twenty towns in, or round this district, the same author still speaks of it as a lake, or marsh, of which the exhalations were considered noxious as far as Rome. The draining of this marsh has often been attempted, and abandoned, in later times. The blame of the unsuccessful attempts at drainage, is always thrown by travellers upon the papal government. Bad enough the government may be, and like all governments, good or bad, it must put up with more than its own fair share of all that does not succeed but the Popes in reality have not been so very inert in attempting to recover this land. Martin V., in the beginning of the 15th century, constructed a drain, the Rio Martino, on such a scale, that it has been sometimes ascribed to the

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ancient Romans. His death, in 1431, interrupted this work ; but in each succeeding century, in almost each pontificate, considerable efforts at drainage have been made. But to drain an extensive area of flooded marsh land on a level with the sea, sive amphitheatre of high grounds and hills, without any lower or with very little fall, and receiving the water of a very extenlevel to drain it off into, would puzzle the most Protestant of governments. The Mediterranean Sea, be it remembered, has no rise and fall, no ebb tide giving a drainage of several feet of level for half of the twenty-four hours, as on our no-popery shores of Kent, Lincolnshire, or Holland. After leading the inland waters by canals to the sea side, there is, after all, no outlet or escape for them. This impediment to drainage on all the coasts of the Mediterranean is insurmountable, and from century to century is necessarily increasing. Land is forming, and gaining upon the sea by the diluvium of the rivers, and the accumulation of vegetable matter on it; but such low tracts never can have been healthy, never can be made so, and must every century, as the marshy surface extends itself, be growing less and less habitable. True it is, ruined habitations, which show that the Maremma at least, if these tracts are studded thickly with shapeless masses of not the marsh itself, has been inhabited densely in the time of the Romans. But the agricultural population of the ancient Roman territory were slaves working in chains under a few freedmen as slave-drivers, or factors, and were in reality in no higher condition than the oxen, or husbandry horses of the present day. The waste of human life, in this class, was regarded only as a matter of profit and loss. If a farm had to be stocked with slaves, the losses by fever, or malaria, was a matter of no more importance than the tear and wear of horses and cattle in any of our agricultural undertakings—a deduction merely from the gross value of the crops, to be allowed for in the calculation. The aqueducts, towns, arches, ruins great and small, thickly sprinkled over this waste and uninhabited Maremma, indicate no greater salubrity of the air perhaps any great resident free population. The fixed inhain former days, but only a greater disregard of human life, nor bitants of the whole district called Maremma do not now exceed, it is said, 16,000 souls, as, owing to the unhealthiness, or malaria, few places in it are habitable all the year round; but from 25,000 to 30,000 people come down from the high grounds, the Abruzzi and the Sabine hills, to lay down the crops and to reap them. The unhealthiness is aggravated by this kind of migratory life of the cultivators. When there is work to be done in this flat unwholesome country, they leave the villages on the high ground to pass a few weeks or months in it, and wood being very scarce, as the Maremma is destitute of trees, they lodge on the ground in temporary straw or reed huts, like bee-hives in shape, put up in the fields in which they are working, with a few sticks or hurdles to support the straw or reeds; and into these huts the labourer crawls at night, and in the heat of the day, and sleeps on the bare earth. Fever and ague would be inmates of such a lodging in any climate. This migratory life, also, is unfavourable to the morality, as well as to the health and industry of the people. A shifting population is always in a low moral condition, because the influence of public opinion upon private conduct is lost, where the individuals are isolated, and beyond the social restraints and influences which neighbours and friends exercise over each other in a fixed state of inhabitation. This appears to be the great demoralising influence in the condition of the peasantry or labouring class in this part of Italy, and the true cause of the bandftti life resorted to sometimes by people, who in general are found to be not the fixed inhabitants but the migrating wanderers about the Maremma. The little towns, also, in which the people live when not employed in the Maremma-viz. Cisterno, Gensano, Velletri, Albano, and many others-furnish very unwholesome lodging to the lower, and even the middle classes. The inhabitants occupy ill-ventilated cellars, or coach-houses, on the ground floors of the better classes, or of ruinous decayed buildings not fully inhabited. A perpetual malaria must exist in these damp small dungeons, without ventilation, light, cleanliness, or any domestic convenience. The cooking goes on just within the door, which must be left ajar for receiving light, and letting out the smoke, it being door, window, and chimney, in most of the houses of the labouring class in these little towns. The beds are in the interior of the den, concealed by a bit of curtain, or more usually by wine casks, jars, or such household goods, piled up before them. In the far end twinkles a little lamp, night and day, before a print of the Virgin.-Laing's Notes of a Traveller.

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HIDING FROM ONE'S OWN FLESH. In a famous passage of one of the old prophets there is a vehement reproof dealt out to those who pretend to "fast," but accompany their religious observance with unjust and tyrannical doings; and these wicked persons are enjoined to make their fast acceptable by feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. When thou shalt see one naked, cover him, and despise not thy own flesh." The Protestant wording of this passage differs a little from the received version given above. In it the words are "hide not thyself from thy own flesh;" and on this phrase is founded a rather interesting dialogue recorded in a recent publication, the title of which is given below.* In this clever work the learned author mentions that in lately passing through one of the villages on the Irwell the name of the village is not given, but it would appear to be not far from Bolton-he found most of the operatives unemployed, the mill-wheels idle, the chimneys smokeless, and grievous distress pervading the whole population. Distress produced discontent, discontent was gradually egging on the men to side with the advocates of physical force, and the most gloomy and bitter language was in the mouths of them all.

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punish the sinful in the land, Providence would have "made a great mistake in coming to the working classes. "I tell thee, man, that if I believed what thou sayest I "would turn Atheist for if I thought that the Lord was "the cause of all the misery I see around me, I would "quit his service, and say he was not the Lord I took "him for.'"

It may perhaps be objected to this "most remarkable "of men," from the specimens here given of his reasoning powers, that he was quite as quick at using a fallacy and employing a sophism as at detecting the one or exposing the other. The sagacity shown in declining to thank God for a national benefit, because attended with a disadvantage to oneself, is by no means rare among selfish people; and, as to the expression, it is deserving of notice that the maxims of worldly wisdom and selfishness are generally those which admit most readily of a terse and pointed expression. In like manner the contingent Atheism of this "fine specimen of nature's orators" is not ill expressed either; but there is not much of novelty nor of Christian wisdom in the thought, any more than of reverence in the words. However, we must not judge hungry men harshly. The speaker spoke hastily and rashly, and in very pardonable ill-humour; and at any rate we should heartily forgive him, if it were only for the important truth so vividly depicted by him in the remaining portion of the discourse set down by Dr. Taylor to his credit.

It is indeed not the poor that "hide themselves from "their own flesh," but the rich. It is too true that "mistress" cannot bear to have "her delicate sense

too apt to scorn and despise him; and it is also true that as these persons hide themselves from their own flesh now, "it is odds if their own flesh will not find them out "some day or other, with a vengeance"-if not in this world, then, of a truth, in the world that is not this. There are few things more generally and deeply lamented by all thinking and even by some thoughtless persons than this very separation of rich and poor in our present society. In a romance it sounds so touching to read of the mutual offices of rich and poor, and the sort of patriarchal existence which" our highly artificial state of society" is con-fidently asserted to have banished altogether and irrevocably. In former days, we are told, rich men were led to this knowledge of, and communion with, the poor, naturally and of themselves. But now (it seems) the new structure of society keeps the various orders apart; and so it is that not rich men hide them-selves, but are hidden from their own flesh by the screens which society places to keep rich and poor asunder. This, if true, would not indeed be a very comforting doctrine; yet let us try it by the test of facts. Let us see in a characteristic instance whether the sympathy evinced for, and the care taken of, the poor in the olden time had not to make their way across barriers just as difficult to cross as any which now impede us; and whether the chief thing which we now lack is not an inward disposition to the task rather than the removal of any outward impediment. If we were strongly resolved to mingle with and to love the poor, this love would soon break through the bonds of the "artificial state," as if they were so many spiders' webs. Whether this be so or not, let us try, as we said, by a characteristic instance..

"In this village," says Dr. Taylor, "I met with one of the most remarkable men I have ever seen, a perfect specimen of the abnormis sapiens:' he never studied logic "in his life, but I never saw any one who approached him "in quickness of detecting a fallacy or exposing a sophism. "His art of reasoning consisted in his powers of graphic "and comic illustration. For instance, some conversation arose respecting war; he said, in a strong Lancashire "dialect which I am quite unable to imitate, 'My father" offended by the nasty beggar," and that "master" is "was killed at Waterloo ;-there was a day appointed "for thanksgiving in church-parson comes to me and says-Will you not come to church and thank God for "the great victory which he has bestowed upon your "country? And, says I,-What should I thank God "for? Is it for killing my father?'-He told us several "anecdotes of his anti-corn-law debates, for he is a "zealous agitator in the cause of repeal. On one occa"sion he met with a Methodist preacher, who averred that "the present suffering in the manufacturing districts was a visitation sent from God to punish the sins of the working classes, and proposed that they should hold a day of solemn fast and humiliation. The operative replied that there would be no objection to it, provided "it were such a fast as that described by the prophet "Isaiah, quoting the passage: Is not this the fast that I "have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo "the heavy burthens, and to let the oppressed go free, "and that ye undo every yoke? Is it not to deal thy "bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor "that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the "naked that thou cover him, and that thou hide not "thyself from thine own flesh?" Who are they,' con"tinued this fine specimen of nature's orators, that hide "themselves from their own flesh? Is it the poor? "No! Those who have scarcely enough for themselves "will share their bite and their sup with a brother in "distress. If a man is in distress and comes here, which "will he soonest go to, the door of a cottage or to one of "the big houses? You know well where he would ob"tain the best reception. Mistress would run upstairs, "that her delicate sense might not be offended by the "nasty beggar, and in her bed-room hide herself from "her own flesh;'-if master did not set the dogs at him, "he would whistle them to his heels, and in the "'cover' hide himself from his own flesh.' The great "people in London, who know that we are starving "for want of work and food, and that means for giving "us both are in the country, which they withhold "lest they might lose a farthing in the pound of their "rents, they are the persons who hide themselves from "their own flesh;' but it is odds if their own flesh will "not find them out some day or other, with a vengeance. No, said I to the Methodist, if Providence wanted to *Dr. Taylor's "Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts

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of Lancashire."

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The first wife of Henry I., King of England-the third. son of William the Conqueror-was Matilda, the descendant of Saxon kings, niece of Edgar the Etheling, and. daughter of Malcolm, King of Scotland, and his wife Margaret-"good Queen Molde," as she was affectionately and familiarly termed by the people. This good Queen had been brought up in the Monastery of Ramsey to save her from the violence of the Norman soldiers. She was the hope of the conquered Saxons; and, in order to do something to bring about a reconciliation between the two races, she consented-much against her will-to a marriage with the faithless and licentious Henry the First, to whom, nevertheless, she proved "a right loving and obedient wife." We are not going here to trouble our readers with

an outline of her life, but only to quote a short episode in it, which has been preserved by Robert of Gloucester, and is strictly to our present purpose.

وو

This good lady, say the Chroniclers, was not only charitable but devout. She heard " God's service aloud;' she wore a hair shirt; and all through Lent she went barefoot whenever she could do so with decency. From her royal palace this Queen would go out into the streets and filthy places of Westminster, and hunt out poor men, "both mesélés (leprous) and others," and take them into her chamber. There she greeted them "fair enough," washed their feet all clean, and tried to heal or alleviate their diseases. She then kissed their sore limbs, and afterwards set meat before them to eat.

One day "this good Molde" came down into the hall of the palace with her mantle over her shoulders, and seeing there a knight of her own attendants, she called him aside and took him up into her chamber, where there were seated many mysélés, or leprous persons. She straightway cast off her mantle and girded a fair linen sheet about her middle, and, without stopping, washed every one of these lepers' feet and wiped them "nicely," and kissed them "well sweet;" while her maidens brought her clean water whenever she bid them. The knight stood and looked on; but at length broke silence, and "a few "words said" indignantly, and quite in the spirit of a modern moralist: "Madam," he said, "for God's love "is this well done, that thou thus handlest and kissest "so these unclean limbs? Foul would my lord the King "think it, when he kissed thy mouth that has now been "so vilely defiled-if he knew it; so me thinketh." "Sir, "Sir," quoth the Queen, "be still; why say'st thou so? our Lord himself gave us an example to do such things; "and therefore did I call thee up that thou shouldst see me, and take an example hereafter to be mild, and "meek, and lowly."

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The old Catholic Chronicler admires this tender piety, and breaks out into the following exclamation:"This was a good lady, as it was there ysene,

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LONDON LACKPENNY.

In our fourth number we tried to give our readers some notion of the very different appearance of the narrow, rutty, overhung London streets of the middle age, with their quiet cheerfulness, sports, processions, and out-ofdoor commerce and chaffering, compared with the wide, well-paved, noisy, thronged streets of the present day, and the tumultuous tide of business that now flows along them through almost every hour of the twenty-four. Perhaps we cannot give a better notion of the more antique half of the contrast than by transcribing, in modern spelling, the following ballad of the celebrated Lydgate, monk of Bury St. Edmund's, and follower of Chaucer, iu the reign of Henry VI., the most prolific poet of his time. It gives the adventures of a poor Kentish man, who, coming up to Westminster Hall once on a time on law business, cannot speed by reason of his poverty; and thereupon retraces his steps through Cheap (side), Eastcheap, Cornhill, Billingsgate, and so across the water to Kent home again. What he met with in the course of this eventful pilgrimage is best described in his own quaint language.

She was worthy to be ycleped, Molde the good Queen." It cannot be said of her that she "hid herself from her "own flesh;" nor can the age which allowed and admired such doings in a Queen, be justly chargeable with the same sin. But we have made a mighty advance in civilization since those times. And how is this advance marked? Why thus: the morality and philosophy of the courtier of the sons of the Conqueror has been adopted and consecrated by our profoundest historians and philosophers. By most of the later writers who affect to give us the life of" good Queen Molde," this incident is omitted altogether, as if out of tenderness for her memory. One writer, who affects to give all the minuter details that lend a colouring to history, merely relates that she was "tinguished by great charity to the poor." Another records, in general terms, her acts of benevolence. A third, who quotes the narrative we have here given, hastens past it to dwell on "less objectionable" modes of charity. And it is in exactly this spirit that in this age (as the “ fine "specimen of nature's orators" on the banks of the Irwell justly complains,) we have hastened past those religious feelings towards the poor which were common seven centuries ago, and have become proficients in another art than that of charity, namely, the art of "hiding from one's own "flesh." Following the spirit of the writers above referred to, there is now a certain amount of pecuniary" charity to "the poor;" there are many "acts of benevolence." But hearty, personal, bodily sympathy for the poor as for our own flesh-all notion of such a thing is agreed by all sensible people to be nasty in the extreme. In a word, the age takes part with the knight against the good Queen, leaving the absence of the royal example to be lamented, and all unconsciously denounced by irritated cotton-spinners in most wrathful language. It is a pleasant subject for reflection, how far in advance of his own superstitious age the gallant courtier above mentioned contrived to make himself by the simple expedient of being worldly-minded; and thus anticipating, by several centuries, the wisdom of the present day!

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I.

To London once my steps I bent,

Where truth in no wise should be faint;
To Westminster Hall I forthwith went
To a man of law to make complaint;

I said, “ For Mary's love, that holy saint,
Pity the poor that would proceed;"
But for lack of money I could not speed.

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VIII.

Then to Westminster Gate I presently went,
When the sun was at high prime;
Cooks to me they took good intent,

And proffered me bread with ale and wine,
Ribs of beef both fat and full fine.
A fair cloth they 'gan for to spread,
But wanting money I might not then speed.

IX.

Then unto London I did me hie,

Of all the land it beareth the price;
"Hot peascods," one began to cry,

"Strawberry ripe," and "Cherries in the rise;"
One bad me come near and buy some spice;
Pepper and saffron they 'gan me bid;
But for lack of money I might not speed.

X.

Then to the Cheap I began me drawn,
Where much people I saw for to stand;
One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn ;

Another he taketh me by the hand,

"Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land;" I never was used to such things indeed, And wanting money I might not speed.

XI.

Then went I forth by London Stone,
Throughout all Canwick-street;

Drapers much cloth offered me anon;

Then comes me one cried, "Hot sheep's feet."
One cried, "Mackarell;"" Ryster green," another
'gan greet;

One bad me buy a hood to cover my head,
But for want of money I might not be sped.

XII.

Then I hied me into Eastcheap;

One cries, "Ribs of beef," and many a pie; Pewter pots they clattered on a heap;

There was harp, pipe, and minstrelsy;

"Yea by cock!""Nay by cock!" some began cry; Some sung of Julian and Jenkin for their need, But for lack of money I might not speed.

XIII.

Then into Cornhill anon I yode,

Where was much stolen gear among;

I saw where hung mine own hood,

That I had lost among the throng:

To buy my own hood I thought it wrong;
I knew it as well as I did my creed,
But for lack of money I could not speed.

XIV.

The taverner took me by the sleeve,

"Sir," quoth he, "will you our wine assay?"
I answered that cannot much me grieve,
A penny can do no more than it may;
I drank a pint and for it did pay;

Yet soon a hungered from thence I yede (went),
And wanting money I could not speed.

XV.

Then hied I me to Billingsgate;

And one cried, "Hoo! go we hence?"

I prayed a bargeman, for God's sake,

That he would spare me my expense.

(we think) to follow the 12th, which describes the Eastcheap taverns, and not the 13th, which paints the old clothes-shops of Cornhill. It evidently was not in Cornhill, but in Eastcheap, that the taverner took him by the sleeve. The stanza relating to Cornhill, and numbered 13, ought to stand after the 11th stanza. It is clear that Mr. Lackpenny, after going along Westcheap, or Cheapside, went through the Poultry to the end of Cornhill, where, frightened by the resurrection of his "hood," he turned to the right down St. Swithin's-lane, at the end of which, by St. Swithin's Church in Cannon (Candlewick or Canwick) street, is London Stone. His course is then clear along Cannon-street and Eastcheap, and so down to Billingsgate.

TERRY ALT.-No. I.

Terry Alt had a short reign of two years or so, but it was a merry one. From 1829 to 1832 his name was formidable in the parts of Ireland to which he confined himself. His sway was not very extensive as to space any more than as to duration, but, while it lasted and within its territorial bounds, it was as transcendant as that of Doe or Dreadnought or any other midnight monarch of other years. His jurisdiction embraced a good portion of Connaught and Thomond, but his main quarters were the borders of Roscommon and Galway counties. South, north, east, or west of his proper abode he claimed no supremacy. Not all the schemes of hungry informers and aspiring magistrates in the other three provinces, ingeniously dispersing abroad the Terry Alt notices they had forged for the purpose of tempting his love of power, ever drew down the real Terry Alt from his fastnesses into their traps. Terry Alt was only occupied with the affairs of his own locality. Provided that he settled these upon an equitable and lasting basis, it was of little consequence to him how the troubles of places where he was unknown got settled, or whether they got settled at all. Nothing is more idle than to attempt to connect him with the contemporaneous doings of other nocturnal potentates, or to make them responsible for his. There never was such a thing as a wide-spread agrarian conspiracy of Irishmen. Conspiracies there were and are, but all independent of each other. The animus of such combinations is essentially local, not national, nor even provincial. If his brogue galls him, the peasant tries to ease the smart without shifting his frieze coat or changing his battered old hat. Terry Alt, in his own counties, meddled not nor made with Captain Rock in Tipperary, nor he with him. If they were of no hindrance, they were of no assistance to each other. Each stood upon his own ground and dealt with his own peculiar grievances. It was just the same with their predecessors the Whiteboys.

To understand Terry Alt and his family, we must go back a little in our narrative, and trust ourselves for a time to the guidance of the author whose "Philosophical Survey" we shall often rely on. So long ago as the last century the disparity of condition between Irish and English tenants had already made itself remarked. In England the occupier was supposed to have a tenant-right. He was allowed to make three times what he paid for his land: one share for his rent, another for the support of his family, and

"Thou scap'st not here," quoth he, "under two pence; a third for contingencies. In Ireland no such allowance

I list not yet bestow any alm's deed:"

Thus lacking money I could not speed.

XVI.

Then I conveyed me into Kent;

For of the law would I meddle no more;

Because no man to me took intent,

I dight me to do as I did before.

Now Jesus, that in Bethlem was bore,
Save London, and send true lawyers their meed;
For whoso wants money with them shall not speed.

The reader cannot fail to have remarked the picture given in the 12th stanza of Eastcheap-its taverns and pewter pots-the scene of Falstaff's jovialities and irregularities. There seems to be some inaccuracy in the arrangement of the stanzas. Thus the 14th, in which the taverner takes Mr. Lackpenny by the sleeve, ought

was made: "for if the tenant can pay his rent," remarks
our author, "and exists upon potatoes and butter-milk, his
"landlord thinks he has a good enough bargain." In some
parts of the country, he adds, the rents were of the same
amount as they are in England, while the produce out of
which they are paid was not half the English amount. "The
"tenant starves, and the landlord has almost the whole
"value." Hence it was that long leases were regarded very
differently by Irish and English tenants.*
The people
began to tire of this system. Until the war of American In-
dependence, they migrated in such numbers from Ireland,
as we learn from the same authority, that the price of lands
fell one-third of their former rate. The war having stopped
this outlet, lands had begun to rise again at the date of the
"A Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland," &c., p.
315. Dublin, 1778.

work before us; for the people found themselves obliged to short years, from seed time to harvest. If he wants it for resume their unprofitable tenancies, where the rent was potatoes, he pays something more than for oats. High as made not by the land, but by their own industry and the this rent is, he is able to live upon it and to support those spinning of their wives and families. Without manufactures about him; but still in a self-denying fashion. or other means of employ, land was to the poor man a Still the cupidity of the middleman is far from being necessary of life. To secure a spot for his potatoes and his satisfied. Next year he raises the conacre rent to ten cow, he gave whatever the middleman chose to ask. Some-guineas for potatoes, and eight guineas for oats. Paddy times the middleman was not at the trouble of asking. He finds, in due season, that he cannot pay at this rate and set up his land to the best bidder. Written tenders were live, far less support a family. Moreover, his family is sent in by the competitors for a few months of shelter from increasing, and he wants double the quantity of land that the elements and respite from destitution, and the highest would have sufficed a few years back. He tells his case to bidder got it. Long possession giving him no preference, the middleman, who waxes warm, and says he will not the wretched tenant, outbidden by a stranger, was driven increase the conacres, either for Paddy or any other tenant, from his acres and home. The few improvements he and will not hear of reducing the rent of what he has already. had the means and the courage to make served but to en- Words pass between them, and at last the land Paddy had hance the bidding, and consequently the difficulty of his the year before is set upon the raised rent to a new man, renewing the lease. In the parts of Ireland where all the too hungry and cold just now to scruple at conditions which, tenants were Catholic, this grievance was especially severe. after all, leave him a few months' longer respite. Paddy In Protestant Ulster it had existed, but neither with great goes away in despair. Ugly thoughts, that long have been intensity nor long continuance. In the other provinces the his tempters, now assume the mastery of him, body and cause of complaint was permanent, and so was its effect. soul. Terry Alt is abroad, and says he will reform all these The poor Catholics were without even the appearance of iniquitous doings. It was for no other purpose than to redress. Deprived of their right of commonage by the reform them that he first came into the parish. Paddy will illegal inclosure of wastes, driven from the good grounds, go find Terry Alt, and tell him all about it; ay, and help obliged to pay five or six guineas an acre for their potato- Terry Alt with others, if Terry Alt will only see him plots, and not having the resource of the Ulster men-manu- righted in this. That night the agrarian disturbers meet factures, "they become," says our author,* "constant to welcome a new comrade and swear him in-it is the "enemies to the state-the state not being their friend, nor unhappy Paddy, "the state's law."

A NORSE DANCE.-It happened that an Englishman, on his travels last year, being tired of his own company, and being anxious to see what the aborigines were like, as the best mode of collecting them together, ventured on the experiment of getting up a ball. One single bad fiddle collected them in swarms, and he was more pleased than if he had seen all the bears in Norway, which Mr. Lloyd did not shoot. The performers, on their side, were enraptured, and the evening has become "a bright spot in memory's waste" for them to look back upon. This year, learning that another Englishman was in these parts, and having associated the idea of a free

The rent was so computed as rather to exceed than to fall short of the annual value of the land. The middlemen kept the best spots in their own hands, and let the worst pieces and the outskirts to the peasants to clear and cultivate for themselves. Yet the rent these poor people had to pay, when they had succeeded in bringing their patches into tillage, was, as has been intimated, a very heavy rack-rent. Thus, a patch that ought to have produced no more to the middleman than five shillings a year, under this skilful but not honourable management, brought him, and at once, more than four times that amount. This was better to the middleman than his proper avocation, grazing, was calcu-born Britain with a fiddle, just as the French do with a rostlated to prove. By letting all his lands on the same terms among the fast-multiplying peasantry, he could increase his yearly gains without subjecting himself to tithe more than he then was; that immunity of his from tithe was at this time absolute: tithe was not paid at all. His chief revenues were raised from pasturage; and the Commons of Ireland had declared a public enemy, the lawyer who should assert that tithe could be demanded upon pasturage. But by breaking up his pastures and letting them out for tillage, to the great increase of his own revenues, he brought the old burthen of the tithe back upon them, and still kept his own personal exemption from that liability. Not having to pay it himself, for he was the landlord, it fell heavily upon the tenant, and still no deduction was made from the already excessive rack-rent. The swell of population and the growth of demand for holdings, combined to keep up the rents in spite of these circumstances. Pastures vanished one after another, and small cottiers increased. Political causes favoured the progress. It was the day of forty-shilling freeholders, and some years before the Union; the Catholics had even wrested from the law their share in the franchise. We have lived to see the consequence. The middleman, now no longer a grazier, has become a mere regrater of his absentee lord's lands. The lands themselves are glutted with wretched and beggared occupiers, unable to support their miserable existence upon the produce of their holdings-barely sufficient, as they too often are, to defray their yearly rents. Some other expedient besides the farm must be resorted to, if they would not see their families die of hunger before their eyes. The middleman keeps the good uplands, for the most part, in his own hands. He says he will let those that have other holdings of his small patches upon conacre, where they may grow their corn and potatoes. The bargain is struck.-Paddy takes some of the uplands at six guineas the acre, upon what is called conacre; that is, for the

* Page 313.

him to give them a little dance, for the sake of charity. He
bif de mouton, they sent a deputation to the stranger, to beg
was nothing loth, and accordingly one evening there as-
sembled some twenty couples, and two crazy fiddles. The
fair Helen of Fossland was the decided belle; and, whatever
might be the judgment of Paris, her pirouettes were the ad-
mired of all admirers on this occasion. Some of her fair
companions were as innocent of shoes and stockings as the
daucing hours in the Aurora of Guido of the Rospigliosi
Palace at Rome, but they had equally pretty feet, and
knew how to use them; and how much more picturesque is
the real unsophisticated foot, the work of nature, than the
slipper, be it even a Cinderella's, which is but the work
of nature's journeyman. These unshod figurantes excelled
particularly in the waltz, and circled round the humble saloon,
the greatest ease, and the women display a grace and elegance
revolving like sparkling stars. The merest child waltzes with
in this apparently national dance, which could not have been
surpassed even at Almack's. They keep the most perfect cir-
cle; and, even in a small room, so regular was the order they
observed, that not a single concussion took place during the
whole evening. When a couple have completed their gyra-
tions, instead of retiring, they step forward into the centre,
and all that are dancing waltz round them, which is a far bet-
ter plan than retiring behind the dancers, as with us.
Norse belles are particularly decorous in their behaviour; and
after you danced with one of them, she shakes you by the
hand, by way of expressing her thanks; as they all likewise
did after partaking of the refreshment with which they were
supplied, and which they stood much in need of after all their
exertions; for they dance with the greatest spirit, not only
the waltz, but also a variety of reels. They are extremely
quick in learning new dances, and upon the present occasion
were taught Sir Roger de Coverley, which they managed re-
markably well.-Mitford's Norway.

The

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