trust to the charity of good Christians, or die, as it should please God. How I have ived so long, he only knows, and his will be done." 145 CHAP. X, Irish Wit and Eloquence. "WILD wit, invention ever new"-appear in high perfection amongst even the youngest inhabitants of an Irish cottage. The word wit, amongst the lower classes in Ireland, means not only quickness of repartèe, but cleverness in action; it implies invention and address, with no slight mixture of cunning; all which is expressed in their dialect by the single word 'cuteness (acuteness). Examples will give a better notion of this than can be conveyed by any definition. An Irish boy (a 'cute lad,) saw a train of his companions leading their cars load. ed with kishes* of turf coming towards * Baskets. his father's cabin; his father had no turf, and the question was how some should be obtained. To beg he was ashamed; to dig he was unwilling-but his head went to work directly: he took up a turf which had fallen from one of the cars the preceding day, and stuck it on the top of a pole near the cabin. When the cars were passing, he appeared throwing turf at the mark-" Boys! cried he, "which of ye will hit?" Each leader of the car, as he passed, could not forbear to fling a turf at the mark; the turf fell at the foot of the pole, and when all the cars had passed there was a heap left sufficient to reward the ingenuity of our little Spar tan. The same 'cuteness which appears in youth continues and improves in old age. When general V was quartered in a small town in Ireland, he and his lady were regularly besieged, whenever they got into their carriage, by an old beggar woman, who kept, her post at the door, assailing them daily with fresh importunities and fresh tales of distress. At last the lady's charity, and the general's patience, were nearly exhausted, but their petitioner's wit was still in it's pristine vigour. One morning, at the accustomed hour, when the lady was getting into her carriage, the old woman began-" Agh! my lady; success to your ladyship, and success to your honour's honour, this morning, of all days in the year; for sure didn't I dream last night, that her ladyship gave me a pound of tea and that your honour gave me a pound of tobacco?" "But, my good woman," said the general," do not you know, that dreams always go by the rule of contrary?" "Do they so, plase your honour," rejoined the old woman. "Then it must be your honour that will give me the tea, and her ladyship that will give me the tobacco." The general being of Sterne's opinion, that a bon mot is always worth more than a pinch of snuff, gave the ingenious dreamer the value of her dream, Innumerable instances might be quoted, of the hibernian genius, not merely for repartee, but for what the Italians call pasquinade. We shall cite only one, which is already so well known in Ireland, that we cannot be found guilty of publishing a Ifbel. Over the ostentations front of a nobleman's house in Dublin, the owner had this motto cut in stone: Otium cum dignitate.-Leisure with dignity. In process of time his lordship changed his residence, or, since we must descend to plebeian language, was committed to Newgate, and immediately there appeared over the front of his apartment his chosen motto, as large as the life, in white chalk, Otium cum dignitate. Mixed with keen satire, the Irish often |