21 CHAPTER II. Irish Newspapers. WE presume that we have successfully disputed the claims imposed upon the public, in behalf of certain spurious, alien blunders, pretending to be native, ori ginal irish bulls; and we shall now with pleasure proceed to examine those which have better titles to notice. Even nonceases to be worthy of attention and public favour, unless it be original. "Dear lady Emily," says miss Allscrip, in the excellent comedy of the Heiress"Dear lady Émily, don't you doat upon sense folly ?" "To ecstacy!" replies her ladyship, “I only despair of seeing it well kept up. We flatter ourselves "there is no great danger of that," for we have the irish we shall find a fresh harvest of indigenous absurdity ripe for the sickle. The first advertisement that meets our eye is promising. It is the late proclamation of an irish mayor, in which we are informed, that certain business is to be transacted in that city every Monday, (Easter Sunday only excepted)." This seems rather an unneces sary exception; but it is not an inadver tency, caused by any hurry of business in his worship, it is deliberately copied from a precedent set in England, by a baronet formerly well known in parliament, who, in the preamble to a bill, proposed, that certain regulations should take place "on every Monday (Tuesday excepted.)" We fear also, that an english mayor has been known to blunder.-Some years ago the mayor of a capital english city published a proclamation and advertisement, previous to the races, "that no gentleman will be allowed to ride on the course, but the horses that are to run." A mayor's blundering proclamation is not, however, worth half so much in the eye of ridicule, as a lord lieutenant's. "A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn." A bull on the throne is worth twice as much as a bull in the chair. 66 By the lord lieutenant and council of Ireland. **** "A proclamation. "Whereas the greatest economy is necessary in the consumption of all species of grain, and, especially, in the consump tion of potatoes, &c. "Given at the council chamber in Dublin." This is the first time we have been informed, by authority, that potatoes are a species of grain; but we must accede to this new botanical arrangement, when published under such splendid auspices.. The assertion, certainly, is not made in the construction of language must imply the conclusion, that we draw from these premises. A general position is in the first member of the sentence laid down, that the greatest economy is necessary in the consumption of all species of grain." A particular exemplification of the principle is made in the next clause-“ especially in the consumption of potatoes.” The inference is as plain as can made. can be The next article in our newspaper is an advertisement of lands to be let to an improving tenant :-"A few miles from Cork, in a most sporting country, bounded by an uncommon fine turf bog, on the verge of which there are a number of fine lime kilns, where that manure may be had on very moderate terms, the distance for carriage not being many hundred yards. The whole lands being now in great heart, and completely laid down, entirely surrounded and divided by impenetrable furze ditches, made of quarried stone, laid edgeways.” It will be a matter of difficulty to the untravelled english reader, to comprehend how furze ditches can be made of quarried stones laid edgeways, or any way; and we fear that we should only puzzle his intellects still more, if we should attempt to explain to him the mysteries of irish ditching in the technical terms of the country. With the face of a ditch he may be acquainted, but to the back and gripe, and bottom of the gripe, and top of the back of a ditch, we fear he is still to be introduced. We can never suficiently admire these furze ditches made of quarried stones, they can, indeed, be found only in Ireland: but we have heard in England of things almost as extraordinary. Dr. Grey, in his erudite and entertaining notes on Hudibras, records the deposition of a lawyer, who in an action of battery told the judge, |