high civilization (we should be unworthy of any one of them if we did not acknowledge them to be the greatest blessings), are not as frankly accepted by those who have the guidance of Ireland's warm-hearted peasantry as they are honestly proffered.

I have given no prominent place to the lower considerations of monied interest, so well and so tersely put by the eloquent Mr. Wyndham, who, on a doubt being expressed as to whether Ireland would accept the Union, observed, "Did you ever hear of a poor man refusing to enter into partnership with a banker of established reputation;" but I look to that interchange of charities and good will which neighbourhood should, and now is engendering for the commencement of a happier jubilee for Ireland than history has yet recorded.

A picture, feelingly drawn by a farmer, of the acme of misery another failure of the potato crop would bring with it, occupied

my interest till I bethought me of the necessity of changing an English note before the Galway car started for Clifden. A frank offer of Irish notes, to our reciprocal convenience, from one who had not joined in conversation, relieved me very pleasantly, by showing confidence in an English stranger.

CHAPTER II.

EXPECTATION OF TRANSATLANTIC TRAFFIC. -SALE OF ENCUMBERED ESTATES.-REFLECTIONS ON FAMINE.-IRISH REPARTEE. -CLIFDEN WORKHOUSE AND CHURCH.

ENGLISH SETTLEKILLARIES.-MELWREA.

I WAS long enough in Galway to see among a motley crowd round the car, one woman with a decidedly Spanish cast of countenance, and admire the proportions and workmanship of the new hotel to be opened when the double line of rail is completed, showing how large and how confident are the expectations of transAtlantic traffic.

For a few miles out of Galway the sides of the road are well-planted, and the seats

seem well-cared for. Loughcorrib occupied the middle distance, bordered by a petræan tract, on which the stones seem to have been hailed down.*

A purchaser of some lots of the O'Neil estate was on the car, and in a glow of anticipated enjoyment of a visit to his bargain, but he gradually lost much of his vivacity as the gardens showed the increasing ravages of the dread disease. The prospect of income from his new tenantry seemed to dissolve into a sombre vision of subscriptions, rates, rates in aid,

* A traveller on an Irish car, with luggage piled up in the middle, has but a one-sided view of the country. I was on the favoured side, looking inland. The country on the left hand is well described by Mr. Inglis, except that at present there are neither herds nor herdsmen.

"Five or six miles from Galway I found myself leaving the flat country and getting among hills, low, however, and with no character but that of bleakness. These hills extend on the left as far as the sea bays, and are entirely uncultivated and uninhabited, except at particular seasons, when cattle from the low grounds are sent there to graze, under the charge of herds, who make their temporary homes among the hills."

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and other out-goings. The thought of his fisheries, a green potato-bed, and a vague idea of supplying Billingsgate seemed to revive him. I had not the malice to show his hopes to be forlorn, by referring to the proceedings in Galway Bay, whereby it has been put to the proof that the Irish will not be made to fish, except in troubled

waters.

With the famine fresh in my memory and its cause in active operation before my eyes, an instinctive sense of self-preservation turned my thoughts to the weak points of my own individual position as an Englishman, living in a peaceful and plentiful land of windmills. A horrid picture grew up before my mind's eye of what England, what the civilized world would become were it ever to be the will of Providence to visit the cereal crops as universally and severely. How sudden would be the relapse into barbarism! how infernal the transition! It