pull at the decanter, he was nothing at The more he thought of it, the more His reverence knew what was meant, and, making an excuse to the arch- Crofton, if it wasn't that I can't disoblige the editor, who asked me as a favour to praise you, I could not go on after this. And this, he gravely informs us, was sung with great applause at a temperance society, by a man named Egan. Without stopping to inquire further of the habits of such low, contemptible associations, what, let us ask, does he mean by " applause?" A great jingling of tea-cups and rattling of pewter spoons, doubtless; but for a hearty, full, soul-filling chorus of warm hearts and merry voices, the poor, pale, sickly, dyspectic devils hadn't it in them. Long would it have been ere Maginn, or Mahony, or Maxwell would have included such a whine among the "Popular Songs of Ireland." In his note upon Barney of Macroom," Croker remarks, "it is difficult to form a correct estimate of the quantity of whiskey punch which may be comfortably discussed at a sitting." We sincerely trust it is. At least, we should they were all under the table, except be sorry to sit down twice with the some of his best stories, and the duke his Well, at a little after two o'clock grace and the rector. "Now, Mr. T," said the duke, you know the ways of the house. Could we have a little of something warm ?" T body else about him was suffering from the late hours and hard drinking. T- -, you're a wonderful man," his grace. says Upon my conscience you ought to be a bishop." "Ah, I don't know, your grace," said T-, timidly. "But you ought, though. Do you know, you're the only man that ever drank me down. And ye have a beautiful voice. We must see about ye. But mind, you must not go on, this way: no health, no constitution could stand it." "Mine is getting very used to it by this time, my lord." "But are you never the worse for any thing you take ?” "Never, my lord." Think, now, for a moment-never is a strong word, and you must have had some stiff bouts of it in your time. Pray, now, which do you reckon the hardest night you ever had ?" "Let me see. Well, then, the severest drink I ever took was with his lordship's mother there, rest her sowl, for she's in glory." "With my mother," said Lord Blayney, starting up. Why, Twhat are you at now? Do you know what you're saying?" Perfectly well, my lord, and I repeat it, that was the hardest night I ever got through." By Jove, this is good," said the duke. "Now, T-, give us the account of that same evening, for I'm rather curious about it." room, found myself, after some serpentining, in Lady Blayney's boudoir, as she used to call it. There she was, all alone, drinking tea at a little table, as comfortable as might be. 66 6 Oh, how kind of you, Mr. T-’ said she, as I came in ; you've left the dining-room early. May I offer you a cup of tea ?' "I never, someway or other, could refuse any thing like drink. If it was an apothecary, I believe, himself, who asked me, I'd pledge him in senna mixture-out of habit, I suppose. So I said with the greatest pleasure, and down I sat; and sure enough, we both set at it in right earnest. I never drank fairer in my life; filling up and clearing off, just as if I was in the dinner-room. Sixteen cups of tea my lady finished that evening; and when I saw that she was hard aground, I called for the seventeenth, and took it off in a bumper. But, will you believe it, that night's hard drink I never recovered for three months; but then I have a safe conscience about it, for I always drank fair.” Now, Crofton, there was a picture of a pleasant man, and a good; that was a real Biblical, and liked his tipple; and not one of your modern, whey-faced, thin-nosed generation, that pray for the end of the world, and petition for the "bitther observance of the Sabbath.” Rest his soul, he's gone now. I hope and trust they put up the monument to him they promised in Armagh cathedral, which, after enumerating his titles, virtues, &c. concluded in the beautiful language of Giles Dackson, "Ye might drink with him in a coal-hole, with your face to the slack." But to come back to Croker; he gives us next a very Maudline chapter upon what he calls "local songs" quoting one from Dr. Brennan, of whom we did not believe so tame a thing was extant. Brennan was a droll dog, and could himself, if he were not more than half-drunk, have written a far better book upon the Popular Songs of Ireland-ay, and sung them, toothan our small friend Crofty: "A Connaught man But bully and batter; "A Munster man Is civil by plan, Again and again he'll entreat you; "My teeth so sharp, I here bequeath His wife has a tongue that will match them well, song The last thing we heard from the doctor, was one day we met him in Where is that sweet and melting little Sackville-street, a short time before his death. A very well-known Dublin' shopkeeper, with his very tawdry spouse, were passing at the moment, neither looking to Brennan's eyes at least, very remarkable for neatness or propriety. at K "Look at K- -," said he, "look and his wife, with the Liffey before their door, and their shop full of soap, and they're the dirtiest pair in Dublin." Brennan was a hard-tongued fellow, but never severe without being witty. It was he that called his colleague Dr. Ireland-from a certain laudatory tendency he indulged towards his own acts "Erin go brag." But one of his best hits was observing of another practitioner, not too famed for unlimited hospitality, Do you see that fellow there-well, now, the cat would get the rheumatism any day in the year in his kitchen grate." Brennan, they say, was educated for the priesthood; but we can't answer for the truth of it. The story goes, that old Bishop Plunket pronounced unfavourably upon him in these words "I have probed him in teology, and found him mighty dewicient." Talking of local songs, where is that first-rate one, "Oh! Kilmurray, Mac Mahon's a place you night bless, Where whiskey costs nothing, and buttermilk less ?" We have been looking for it in vain this half hour, and stumbled upon nothing better than the " Kilruddery Hunt," which, after all, is the only hunt alluded to in the entire volume. The " Queen's County Hunt," that beautiful old song, is never mentioned; and we wager a keg of Cork whiskey the author never heard of Mudderidero "Adieu, ye shining daisies, I've loved ye well and long ?" Where, in fact, are the thousands and tens of thousands of popular songs illustrating the habits of the people, their feelings, and their affectionswhich every country road and every mountain "boreen" ring and re-echo with. Every striking and prominent feature of the land seems to be passed over in his selection, and the whole body of the priesthood has not one ode in their commemoration. We wish we had him for a week at Carrigaholt, before his second edition be called for, and we'd try and read him' a few. Did he ever hear of 2. LADY CHATTERTON'S RAMBLES IN THE SOUTH OF IRELAND.* * We now come to Lady Chatterton, whom, owing to our libation, we have neglected all this time. There are few things we like better-" priest though we be❞—than a tour by a lady. There is a freshness, an originality, a delicate observance of all the smaller and finer traits of human nature in woman, which no man ever possesses-besides that, from a higher toue of moral feeling and that abstraction from the conflicting influences of society, they come to the consideration of their subject with fewer prejudices, and those of a far better and more exalted character. We exclude from our present dictum all such people as Frances Trollope, (who we hear, is a man,) Miss Martineau, &c., and speak only of what the late Mr. Coyle called "female women. " "Rambles in the South of Ireland" -well, Lady Chatterton, here's your very sincere good health, and long life, and many very rosy-cheeked, curlyheaded little Chattertons to ye, for even the title of your volume, "Rambles in the South of Ireland!" It is no small praise to you that you have had courage to break through the absurd routine of the travelling mob, who are seen on every day of the week from May till October, througing the Tower Stairs, with a consul's passport and John Murray's hand-book, on a crusade up the Rhine, or down the Danube, to be cheated by Jew money-changers, laquais de places, hotel-keepers, and guides, and come back pennyless, with a smuggled lace on your night-cap, and a French dancing master for a son-in-law. We are far, very far, from underrating the advan tages of foreign travel: we rambled a little ourselves, and liked it. We give every credit to the increased powers of observation, the greater tact in society, the more liberalised views of those who have seen and lived in other lands; but for the mere purposes of summer recreation-for the simple intention of passing a few summer months with pleasure and improvement, we would humbly suggest that the map of Ireland should occasionally be had recourse to as well as the "Guide to Switzerland," and that the traveller who possesses no facilities of foreign language (and there are a few such) should at least weigh the advantages on the side of an excursion where human intercourse and converse are attainable, with that where he is led about by a cheating commissionaire, like a muzzled bear, to stare and be stared at, and whose most solid results are in the fact, that he sees what his guide-books set down for him, and believes his laquais de place. But to return to Ireland. If the traveller's object be scenery, where, let us ask, can he find finer or more varied? He must be, indeed, fastidious who cannot rest content with the calm and serene beauty of Killarney, the awful and stupendous grandeur of form of our coast from the Causeway Connemara, or the wild and fantastic to Fair Head. Hear Lady Chatterton upon this head :- "I am particularly struck with the Ireland: when the sun shines after one rich and vivid colouring of the scenery in of the frequent showers, the whole landscape resembles a highly-finished and freshly varnished picture, not by any well • Rambles in the South of Ireland during the year 1838. By Lady Chatterton. London: Saunders and Ottley. 1839. 2 vols. VOL. XIV. H known master, for the composition, to speak technically, is totally different, though I think quite as fine, as any ideal imagery of Claude, Hobbima, or Poussin. The varieties of green are particularly lovely; yet there is never too much: the eye is always relieved by masses of rock of a dark purple or reddish brown, which harmonise perfectly with the light green tender moss or darker coloured grass." Not that we entirely subscribe to the whole of the passage. We have seen features and figures in Irish landscapes that might have been, either for colour, grouping, or effect, the subject of Sal the vator Rosa; and we well remember a sunset on the Shannon, below Kilrush, where the dim mistiness of the Kerry shore-the long golden light upon sea-the clear reflection of the green island of Scattery, perfectly brought to our mind the great Claude of the Dresden gallery. Where, then, to the shrewd observer of human nature is there such a field? Where is the book of the human heart laid so open before him as in Ireland ? Where do passion, feelings, prejudices lie so much on the surface? and where is the mystery which wraps her anomalous condition more worthy of study? Where, amid poverty and hardship, are such happiness and contentment to be met with? Where the natural and ever-ready courtesy-the kind and polite attention the freely-offered hospitality, as in the Irish peasant? in a word, where is self most forgotten, in all this wide and weary world? answer fearlessly, in the cabin of the poor Irishman. We have travelled in most countries of the old continent, and much of the new, and we say it advisedly, we know of nothing either for qualities of heart or head, to call their equal. We "I wonder," says Lady Chatterton, "that those who like to see and study something very original and strange do not visit Ireland;" and so do we join in the surprise. But still more are we amazed, that those whose time, purses, and pursuits would permit such a visit, do not in many cases prefer such a pleasing recreation to their profitless summer ramble on the continent. We particularly address ourselves to that portion of the travelling world who limit their conversation abroad by the vernacular, and ask them-though Killarney sound not as imposing as Chamouni, nor Croagh Patrick as Mont Blanc-do you not think that there is something in the fact, that you understand and fully comprehend all around aud about you in the one case, and that you are a very ungifted and helpless creature in the other? know, and know thoroughly, that, setting aside the prospective enjoyment of recounting to their friends on their return their adventures on the "Pyrenean or the river Po," that their foreign tour is any thing but a pleasant one to half of them. They detest the cookerythey abuse the travelling-they grumble at the cheating-they rail at the coinage, and are dissatisfied with every thing; yet they return the following year to the scene of their miseries and mishaps, impelled but by one impulse-to say they were at Venice or Vienna, at Paris or Naples; and this consoles them for all. They refuse to eat of the roast sirloin that they like, and which suits their tastes and constitution, and call for the "omelette soufflé" that they abhor, but which they hear is fashionable. Such is exactly the practice of those who turn their backs upon the nearer beauties of Ireland and Scotland to explore the well-travelled Simplon and the Bartholomew fair of Lausanne. As we intend to return to this subject at greater length and in another form hereafter, we shall now proceed to notice the volumes before us, which abound in useful illustrations in support of our argument. We pass over most of the early part: we detest legends as we do weak punch. They always remind us of the annuals, and the Court Journal, and those slip-slop publications, where fairy tales, told in bad English and worse "Irish," are esteemed true pictures of manners and feelings; and the names of Brian Oge, O'Donoghue, &c. bring a cold perspiration over us. In what age the great O'Donoghue flourished, says Mr. Weld, (whom, by-the-bye, her ladyship writes Wild,") is not easily determined. We are sincerely glad of it, and the man that gives himself any pains to make it out will have no thanks of ours. We would far rather hear something of the times we live in. For instance, the following picture of Tralee is amusing "Tralee is a large, and apparently a thriving town-although I observed a most beggarly set of idlers about the inn, who seem to exist upon the amusement afforded by the constant arrival and departure of jaunting cars and coaches. |