now,

ing firm; "not as you see me now, but lying on my back in my bed in a fever. When I got up I was not able to make my rent out of my land. Besides myself, I had my five children to support. I sold my clothes, and have never been able to buy any since but such as a recruit could sell, who was in haste to get into regimentals-such clothes as these," said he, looking down at his black rags. "Soon I had nothing to eat but that's not all. I am a weaver, sir: for my rent they seized my two looms; then I had nothing to do. But of all this I do not complain. There was an election some time ago in this county, and a man rode up to me in this garden as you do and asked me for my vote, but I refused him, for I was steady to my landlord. The gentleman observed I was a poor man, and asked if I wanted for nothing? but all did not signify; so he rode on gently, and at the corner of the road, within view of my garden, I saw him drop a purse, and I knew, by his looking at me, it was on purpose for me to pick it up. After a while he came back, thinking, to be sure, I had taken up the purse, and had changed my mind, but he found his purse where he left it. My landlord knew all this, and he promised to see justice done me, but he forgot. Then, as for the candidate's lady, before the election nothing was too fair-speaking for me; but afterward, in my distress, when I applied to her to get me a loom, which she could have had from the Linen Board by only asking for it, her answer to me was, I don't know that I shall ever want a vote again in the county,'

"Now, sir," continued he," when justice is done to me (and no sooner), I shall be glad to assist my landlord or his friend. I know who you are, sir, very well: you bear a good character: success to you! but I have no vote to give to you or any man.”

"If I were to attempt to make you any amends for what you have suffered," replied the candidate, "I should do you an injury; it would be said that I had bribed you; but I will repeat your story where it will meet with attention. I cannot, however, tell it so well as you have told it.”

66

No, sir," was his answer,

as I do."

"for you cannot feel it

This is almost in terms the conclusion of Pope's epistle from Eloisa to Abelard :—

"He best can paint them who shall feel them most."

In objurgation and pathetic remonstrancing eloquence, the females of the lower class in Ireland are not inferior to the men. A thin tall woman wrapped in a long cloak, the hood of which was drawn over her head, and shaded her pale face, came to a gentleman to complain of the cruelty of her landlord.

"He is the most hard-hearted man alive, so he is, sir," said she; "he has just seized all I have, which, God knows, is little enough! and has driven my cow to pound, the only cow I have, and only dependance I have for a drop of milk to drink; and the cow itself too standing there starving in the pound, for ot a wisp of hay would he give to cow or Christian

to save their lives, if it was ever so! And the rent for which he is driving me, please your honour, has not been due but one week: a hard master he is; but these middle men are all so, one and all. Oh! if it had been but my lot to be a tenant to a gentleman born, like your honour, who is the poor man's friend, and the orphan's, and the widow's-the friend of them that have none other. Long life to you! and long may you live to reign over us! Would you but speak three words to my landlord, to let my cow out of pound, and give me a fortnight's time, that I might see and fatten her to sell against the fair, I could pay him then all honestly, and not be racked entirely, and he would be ashamed to refuse your honour, and afraid to disoblige the like of you, or get your ill-will. May the blessing of Heaven be upon you, if you'll just send and speak to him three words for the poor woman and widow, that has none other to speak for her in the wide world."

Moved by this lamentable story, the effect of which the woman's whole miserable appearance corroborated and heightened, the gentleman sent immediately for her hard-hearted landlord. The landlord appeared; not a gentleman, not a rich man, as the term landlord might denote, but a stout, square, stubbed, thicklimbed, gray-eyed man, who seemed to have come smoking hot from hard labour. The gentleman repeated the charge made against him by the poor widow, and mildly remonstrated on his cruelty: the. man heard all that was said with a calm but unmoved countenance.

"And now have you done?" said he, turning to the woman, you had recommenced her lamentations, "Look at her standing there, sir. It's easy for her to put on her long cloak, and to tell her long story, and to make her poor mouth to your honour; but if you are willing to hear, I'll tell you what she is, and what I am. She is one that has none but herself in this world to provide for; she is one that is able to afford herself a glass of whiskey when she pleases, and she pleases it often; she is one that never denies herself the bit of staggering bob* when in season; she is one that has a snug house well thatched to live in all the year round, and nothing to do or nothing that she does; and this is the way of her life, and this is what she is. And what am I? I am the father of eight children, and I have a wife and myself to provide for. I am a man that is at hard labour of one kind or another from sunrise to sunset. The straw that thatched the house she lives in I brought two miles on my back; the walls of the house she lives in I built with my own hands; I did the same by five other houses, and they are all sound and dry, and good to live in, summer or winter. I set them for rent to put bread into my children's mouth, and after all I cannot get it! And to support my eight children, and my wife, and myself, what have I in this world," cried he, striding suddenly with colossal firmness upon his sturdy legs, and raising to heaven arms which looked like fore

• Slink calf.

shortenings of the limbs of Hercules; "what have I in this wide world but these four bones ?

No provocation could have worked up a phlegmatic English countryman to this pitch of eloquence. He never suffers his anger to evaporate in idle figures of speech: it is always concentrated in a few words, which he repeats in reply to every argument, persuasive, or invective, that can be employed to irritate or to assuage his wrath. We recollect having once been present at a scene between an English gentleman and a churchwarden, whose feelings were grievously hurt by the disturbance that had been given to certain bones in levelling a wall which separated the churchyard from the pleasure ground of the lord of the manor. The bones belonged, as the churchwarden believed or averred, to his great great grandmother, though how they were identified it might be difficult to explain to an indifferent judge; yet we are to suppose that the confirmation of the suspicion was strong and satisfactory to the party concerned. The pious great great grandson's feelings were all in arms, but indignation did not inspire him with a single poetic idea or expression. In his eloquence, indeed, there was the principal requisite, action: in reply to all that could be said, he repeatedly struck his long oak stick perpendicularly upon the floor, and reiterated these words

"It's death, sir! death by the law! It's sacrilege,

* This was written down a few minutes after it had been spoken.