their stools, and as if bit to merry madness by a tarantula, set to dancing jigs with all their hearts and all their strength into the bargain. Murtoch appeared not less skilled in the dance than song; and every one (according to the just description of Goldsmith, who was a native of this province,) seemed

"to seek renown,

By holding out to tire each other down."

Although much amused by this novel style of devotion at the shrine of Terpsichore, yet as the night was now calm, and an unclouded moon dispersed the gloom of twilight obscurity, I arose to pursue my journey. Murtoch would accompany me, though our hospitable friends did their utmost to prevail on both to remain for the night.

When I insisted on my host receiving a trifle, I observed poverty struggling with pride, and gratitude superior to both he at last reluctantly consented to be prevailed on, by my assurance of forgetting to call on them again when I passed that way, if I were now denied. I was followed for several paces by the whole family, who parted with as they received me, with blessings ;--for their courtesy upon all occasions, seems interwoven with their religion, and not to be pious in their forms of etiquette, is not to be polite.

Benevolent and generous beings! whose hard la

bour

"Just gives what life requires, but gives no more ;" yet who, with the ever ready smile of heart-felt welcome, are ready to share that hard-earned little with the weary traveller whom chance conducts to your threshold, or the solitary wanderer whom necessity throws upon your bounty. How did my heart smite me, while I received the cordial rites of hospitality from your hands, for the prejudices I had hitherto nurtured against your characters. But your smiling welcome and parting benediction, retributed my errour-in the feeling of remorse they awakened.

It was late when I reached Bally, a large, ugly, irregular town, near the sea-coast; but fortunately meeting with a chaise, I threw myself into it, gave Murtoch my address, (who was all amazement at discovering I was son to the lord of the manor) and arrived without further adventure at this antique chateau, more gratified by the result of my little pedestrian tour, than if (at least in the present state of my feelings) I had performed it Sesostris-like, in a triumphal chariot, drawn by kings; for "so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable," appear to me the tasteless pleasures of the world I have left, that every sense, every feeling, is in a state of revolt against its sickening joys, and their concomitant sufferings.

Adieu! I am sending this off by a courier extraordinary, to the next post town, in the hope of receiving one from you by the same hand.

H. M.

LETTER III.

TO J. D. ESQ. M. P. Book

I PERCEIVE my father emulates the policy of the British legislature, and delegates English ministers to govern his Irish domains. Who, do you think, is his fac totum here? The rascally son of his cunning Leicestershire steward, who unites all his father's artifice to a proportionable share of roguery of his own. I have had some reason to know the fellow; but his servility of manner, and apparent rigid discharge of his duties, has imposed on my father; who, with all his superior mind, is to be imposed on by those who know how to find the clue to his point of fallibility: his noble soul can never stoop to dive into the minute vices of a rascal of this description.

Mr. Clendinning was absent from M- house when I arrived, but attended me the next morning at breakfast, with that fawning civility of manner I abhor, and

E

which, contrasted with the manly courteousness of my late companion, never appeared more grossly obvious. He endeavoured to amuse me with a detail of the ferocity, cruelty and uncivilized state of those among whom (as he hinted) I was banished for my sins. He had now, he said, been nearly five years among them, and had never met with an individual of the lower order who did not deserve a halter at least; for his part, he had kept a tight hand over them, and he was justified in so doing, for his lord would be the sufferer; for few of them would pay their rents till their cattle were driven, or some such measure was taken with them. And as for the labourers and workmen, a slave-driver was the only man fit to deal with them; they were all rebellious, idle, cruel and treacherous; and for his part, he never expected to leave the country with his life.

It is not possible a better defence for the imputed turbulence of the Irish peasantry could be made, than that which lurked in the unprovoked accusations of this narrow-minded sordid steward, who, it is evident, wished to forestall the complaints of those on whom he had exercised the native tyranny of his disposition (even according to his own account) by every species of harassing oppression within the compass of his ability. For if power is a dangerous gift even in the regulated mind of elevated rank, what does it become in the delegated authority of ignorance, meanness, and illiberality?❤

My father, however, by frequent visitations to his Irish estates (within these few years at least) must afford to his suffering tenantry an opportunity of re

* "A horde of tyrants exist in Ireland, in a class of men that are unknown in England, in the multitude of agents of absentees, small proprietors, who are the pure Irish 'squires, middle men who take large farms, and squeeze out a forced kind of profit by letting them in small parcels; lastly, the little farmers themselves, who exercise the same insolence they receive from their superiors, on those unfortunate beings who are placed at the extremity of the scale of degradation the Irish peasantry !"-An enquiry into the causes of popu- lar discontents in Ireland, &c. &c.

dress; for who that ever approached him with a tear of suffering, but left his presence with a tear of gratitude! But many, very many of the English nobility who hold immense tracts of land in this country, and draw from hence in part the suppliance of their luxuries, have never visited their estates, since conquest first put them in the possession of their ancestors. Ours, you know, fell to us in the Cromwellian wars, but since the time of general M-, who earned them by the sword, my father, his lineal descendant, is the first of the family who ever visited them. And certainly, a wish to conciliate the affections of his tenantry, could alone induce him to spend so much of his time here as he has done; for the situation of this place is bleak and solitary, and the old mansion, like the old manor houses of England, has neither the architectural character of an antique structure, nor the accommodation of a modern one.

· Ayant l'air dilabri, sans l'air antique." ·

On inquiring for the key of the library, Mr. Clendinning informed me his lord always took it with him, but that a box of books had come from England a few days before my arrival.

As I suspected, they were all law books-well, be it so; there are few sufferings more acute than those which forbid complaint, because they are self-created.

Four days have elapsed since I began this letter, and I have been prevented from continuing it merely for want of something to say.

I cannot now sit down, as I once did, and give you a history of my ideas or sensations, in the deficiency of fact or incident; for I have survived my sensations, and my ideas are dry and exhausted.

The

I cannot now trace my joys to their source, or my sorrows to their spring, for I am destitute of their present, and insensible of their former existence. energy of youthful feeling is subdued, and the vivacity of warm emotion worn out by its own violence. I have lived too fast, in a moral as well as a physical and the principles of my intellectual as well as my natural constitution are, I fear, fast hastening to de

sense,

cay. I live the tomb of my expiring mind, and preserve only the consciousness of my wretched state without the power, and almost without the wish to be otherwise than what I am. And yet, God knows, I am nothing less than contented.

Would you hear my journal? I rise late to my solitary breakfast, because it is solitary; then to study, or rather to yawn over Giles versus Haystack, until (to check the creeping effects of lethargy) I rise from my reading-desk, and lounge to a window, which commands a boundless view of a boundless bog; then "with what appetite I may,” sit down to a joyless dinner. Sometimes, when seduced by the blandishments of an evening singularly beautiful, I quit my den and prowl down to the sea-shore where, throwing myself at the foot of some cliff that "battles o'er the deep," I fix my vacant eye on the stealing waves that

"Idly swell against the rocky coast,

And break-as break those glittering shadows,
Human joys."

Then wet with the ocean spray and evening dew, te turn to bead, merely to avoid the intrusive civilities of Mr. Clendinning. "Thus wear the hours away."

I had heard that the neighbourhood about M—house was good; I can answer for its being populous. Although I took every precaution to prevent my arrival being known, yet the natives have come down on me in hords, and this in all the form of haut ton, as the innumerable cards of the clans of Os and Macs evince. I have, however, neither been visible to the visitants, nor accepted their invitations; for "man delights me not, nor woman either." Nor woman either! Oh! uncertainty of all human propensities! Yet so it is, that every letter that composes the word woman! seems cabalistical, and rouses every principle of aversion and disgust within me; while I often ask myself with Tasso,

"Se pur ve nelle amor alcun diletto."

It is certain, that the diminutive body of our worthy