It made the proportionate values of parishes and townlands, pending the baronial survey and the baronial valuation, to bind after revision and publication in some newspaper circulating in the county; but within three years there was to be a second revision, after which they were to be published in the Dublin Gazette, etc., and be final as to the proportions of all parish or grand jury rates to be paid by all baronies, parishes, and townlands. It also directed the annexation of detached bits to the counties respectively surrounding them, and it likewise provided for the use of the valuation maps and field books in applotting the grand jury cess charged on the holders of lands, but such valuation to be merely a guide and not final. From the varying size and value of holdings this caution was essential.

Under this last Act the valuation has been continued, as every reader of the country papers must have seen by Mr. Griffith's Notices, and is now complete in twenty counties, forward in six, begun in two, and not yet begun in Cork, Kerry, Limerick, or Dublin.

Mr. Griffith's instructions are clear and full, and we strongly recommend the study of them, and an adherence to their forms and classifications, to valuators of all private and public properties, so far as they go. He appointed two classes of valuators—Ordinary Valuators to make the first valuation all over each county, and Check Valuators to re-value patches in every district, to test the accuracy of the ordinary valuators.

The ordinary valuator was to have two copies of the Townland (or 6-inch) Survey. Taking a sheet with him into the district represented on it, he was to examine the quality of the soil in lots of from fifty to thirty acres, or still smaller bits, to mark the bounds of each lot on the survey map, and to enter in his field book the value thereof, with all the special circumstances specially stated. The examination was to include digging to ascertain the depth of the soil and the nature of the subsoil. All land was to be valued at its agricultural worth, supposing it liberally set, leaving out the value of timber, turf, etc. Reductions were to be made for elevation above the sea, steepness, exposure to bad winds, patchiness of soil, bad fences, and bad roads. Additions were to be made for neighbourhood of limestone, turf, sea, or other manure, roads, good climate and shelter, nearness to towns.

The following classification of soils was recommended:—

"ARRANGEMENT OF SOILS.

All soils may be arranged under four heads, each representing the characteristic ingredients, as—1. Argillaceous, or clayey; 2. Silicious, or sandy; 3. Calcareous, or limy; 4. Peaty.

For practical purposes it will be desirable to sub-divide each of these classes:—

Thus argillaceous soils may be divided into three varieties, viz.—clay, clay loam, and argillaceous alluvial.

Of silicious soils there are four varieties, viz.—sandy, gravelly, slaty, and rocky.

Of calcareous soils we have three varieties, viz.—limestone, limestone gravel, and marl.

Of peat soils two varieties, viz.—moor, and peat or bog.

In describing in the field book the different qualities of soils, the following explanatory words may be used as occasion may require:—

Stiff—Where a soil contains a large proportion, say one-half, or even more, of tenacious clay, it is called stiff. In dry weather this kind of soil cracks and opens, and has a tendency to form into large and hard lumps, particularly if ploughed in wet weather.

Friable—Where the soil is loose and open, as is generally the case in sandy, gravelly, and moory lands.

Strong—Where a soil contains a considerable portion of clay, and has some tendency to form into clods or lumps, it may be called strong.

Deep—Where the soil exceeds ten inches in depth the term deep may be applied.

Shallow—Where the depth of the soil is less than eight inches.

Dry—Where the soil is friable, and the subsoil porous (if there be no springs), the term dry should be used.

Wet—Where the soil or subsoil is very tenacious, or where springs are numerous.

Sharp—Where there is a moderate proportion of gravel, or small stones.

Fine or Soft—Where the soil contains no gravel, but is chiefly composed of very fine sand, or soft, light earth without gravel.

Cold—Where the soil rests on a tenacious clay subsoil, and has a tendency when in pasture to produce rushes and other aquatic plants.

Sandy or Gravelly—Where there is a large proportion of sand or gravel through the soil.

Slaty—Where the slaty substratum is much intermixed with the soil.

Worn—Where the soil has been a long time under cultivation, without rest or manure.

Poor—Where the land is naturally of bad quality.

Hungry—Where the soil contains a considerable portion of gravel, or coarse sand, resting on a gravelly subsoil; on such land manure does not produce the usual effect.

The colours of soils may also be introduced, as brown, yellow, blue, grey, red, black, etc.

Also, where applicable, the words steep, level, shrubby, rocky, exposed, etc., may be used."

Lists of market prices were sent with the field books, and the amounts then reduced to a uniform rate, which Mr. Griffith fixed at 2s. 6d. per pound over the prices of produce mentioned in the Act.

Rules were also given for valuation of houses, but we must refer to Mr. Griffith's work for them.



COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF IRELAND.

While the Irish were excluded from English law and intercourse, England imposed no restrictions on our trade. The Pale spent its time tilling and fighting, and it was more sure of its bellyful of blows than of bread. It had nothing to sell; why tax its trade? The slight commerce of Dublin was needful to the comforts of the Norman Court in Dublin Castle. Why should it be taxed? The market of Kilkenny was guarded by the spears of the Butlers, and from Sligo to Cork the chiefs and towns of Munster and Connaught—the Burkes, O'Loghlens, O'Sullivans, Galway, Dingle, and Dunboy—carried on a trade with Spain, and piracy of war against England. How could they be taxed?

Commercial taxes, too, in those days were hard to be enforced, and more resembled toll to a robber than contribution to the state. Every great river and pass in Europe, from the Rhine and the Alps to Berwick and the Blackwater, was affectionately watched by royal and noble castles at their narrowest points, and the barge anchored and the caravan halted to be robbed, or, as the receivers called it, to be taxed.

At last the Pale was stretched round Ireland by art and force. Solitude and peace were in our plains; but the armed colonist settled in it, and the native came down from his hills as a tenant or a squatter, and a kind of prosperity arose.

Protestant and Catholic, native and colonist, had the same interest—namely, to turn this waste into a garden. They had not, nor could they have had, other things to export than Sydney or Canada have now—cattle, butter, hides, and wool. They had hardly corn enough for themselves; but pasture was plenty, and cows and their hides, sheep and their fleeces, were equally so. The natives had always been obliged to prepare their own clothing, and therefore every creaght and digger knew how to dress wool and skins, and they had found out, or preserved from a more civilised time, dyes which, to this day, are superior to any others. Small quantities of woollen goods were exported, but our assertion holds good that in our war-times there was no manufacture for export worth naming.

Black Tom Wentworth, the ablest of despots, came here 210 years ago, and found "small beginnings towards a clothing trade." He at once resolved to discourage it. He wrote so to the king on July 25th, 1636, and he was a man true to his enmities. "But," said he, "I'll give them a linen manufacture instead." Now, the Irish had raised flax and made and dyed linen from time immemorial. The saffron-coloured linen shirt was as national as the cloak and birred; so that Strafford rather introduced the linen manufacture among the new settlers than among the Irish. Certainly he encouraged it, by sending Irishmen to learn in Brabant, and by bringing French and Flemings to work in Ireland.

Charles the Second, doubtless to punish us for our most unwise loyalty to him and his father, assented to a series of Acts prohibiting the export of Irish wool, cattle, etc., to England or her colonies, and prohibiting the direct importation of several colonial products into Ireland. The chief Acts are 12 Charles, c. 4; 15 Charles, c. 7; and 22 and 23 Charles, c. 26. Thus were the value of land in Ireland, the revenue, and trade, and manufactures of Ireland—Protestant and Catholic—stricken by England.

Perhaps we ought to be grateful, though not to England, for these Acts. They plundered our pockets, but they guarded our souls from being anglicised. To France and Spain the produce was sent, and the woollen manufacture continued to increase.

England got alarmed, for Ireland was getting rich. The English lords addressed King William, stating that "the growth and increase of the woollen manufacture in Ireland had long been, and would be ever, looked upon with great jealousy by his English subjects, and praying him, by very strict laws, totally to prohibit and suppress the same." The Commons said likewise; and William answered comfortably:—"I shall do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen manufacture in Ireland, and to encourage the linen manufacture there, and to promote the trade of England."

He was as good as his word, and even whipped and humbugged the unfortunate Irish Parliament to pass an Act, putting twenty per cent. duty on broad and ten per cent. on narrow cloths—

"But it did not satisfy the English parliament, where a perpetual law was made, prohibiting from the 20th of June, 1699, the exportation from Ireland of all goods made or mixed with wool, except to England and Wales, and with the licence of the commissioners of the revenue; duties had been before laid on the importation into England equal to a prohibition, therefore this Act has operated as a total prohibition of the exportation."

There was nothing left but to send the wool raw to England; to smuggle it and cloths to France and Spain, or to leave the land unstocked. The first was worst. The export to England declined, smuggling prospered, "wild geese" for the Brigade and woollen goods were run in exchange for claret, brandy, and silks; but not much land was left waste. Our silks, cottons, malt, beer, and almost every other article was similarly prohibited. Striped linens were taxed thirty per cent., many other kinds of linen were also interfered with, and twenty-four embargoes in nineteen years straitened our foreign provision trade. Thus England kept her pledge of wrath, and broke her promise of service to Ireland.

A vigorous system of smuggling induced her to relax in some points, and the cannon of the Volunteers blew away the code.

By the Union we were so drained of money, and absentee rents and taxes, and of spirit in every way, that she no longer needs a prohibitory code to prevent our competing with her in any market, Irish or foreign. The Union is prohibition enough, and that England says she will maintain.

Whether it be now possible to create home manufactures, in the old sense of the word—that is, manufactures made in the homes of the workers—is doubted.

In favour of such a thing, if it be possible, the arguments are numberless. Such work is a source of ingenuity and enjoyment in the cabin of the peasant; it rather fills up time that would be otherwise idled than takes from other work. Our peasants' wives and daughters could clothe themselves and their families by the winter night work, even as those of Norway do, if the peasants possessed the little estates that Norway's peasants do. Clothes manufactured by hand-work are more lasting, comfortable, and handsome, and are more natural and national than factory goods. Besides, there is the strongest of all reasons in this, that the factory system seems everywhere a poison to virtue and happiness.

Some invention, which should bring the might of machinery in a wholesome and cheap form to the cabin, seems the only solution of the difficulty.

The hazards of the factory system, however, should be encountered, were it sure to feed our starving millions; but this is dubious.

A Native Parliament can alone judge or act usefully on this momentous subject. An absentee tax and a resident government, and the progress of public industry and education, would enable an Irish Parliament to create vast manufactures here by protecting duties in the first instance, and to maintain them by our general prosperity, or it could rely on its own adjustment of landed property as sufficient to put the people above the need of hazarding purity or content by embarking in great manufactures.

A peasant proprietary could have wealth enough to import wrought goods, or taste and firmness enough to prefer home-made manufactures.

But these are questions for other years. We wish the reader to take our word for nothing, but to consult the writers on Irish trade:—Laurence's Interest of Ireland (1682); Browne's Tracts (1728); Dobbs on "Trade" (1729); Hutchinson's Commercial Restraints (1779); Sheffield on "Irish Trade" (1785); Wallace on "Irish Trade" (1798); the various "Parliamentary Reports," and the very able articles on the same subject in the Citizen.

Do not be alarmed at the list, reader; a month's study would carry you through all but the Reports, and it would be well spent. But if you still shrink, you can ease your conscience by reading Mr. John O'Connell's Report on "The Commercial Injustices," just issued by the Repeal Association. It is an elaborate, learned, and most useful tract.



NATIONAL ART.

No one doubts that if he sees a place or an action he knows more of it than if it had been described to him by a witness. The dullest man, who "put on his best attire" to welcome Caesar, had a better notion of life in Rome than our ablest artist or antiquary.

Were painting, then, but a coloured chronicle, telling us facts by the eye instead of the ear, it would demand the Statesman's care and the People's love. It would preserve for us faces we worshipped, and the forms of men who led and instructed us. It would remind us, and teach our children, not only how these men looked, but, to some extent, what they were, for nature is consistent, and she has indexed her labours. It would carry down a pictorial history of our houses, arts, costume, and manners to other times, and show the dweller in a remote isle the appearance of countries and races of his cotemporaries.

As a register of _facts—as a portrayer of men, singly, or assembled—and as a depicter of actual scenery, art is biography, history, and topography taught through the eye.

So far as it can express facts, it is superior to writing; and nothing but the scarcity of faithful artists, or the stupidity of the public, prevents us from having our pictorial libraries of men and places. There are some classes of scenes—as where continuous action is to be expressed—in which sculpture quite fails, and painting is but a shadowy narrator.

But this, after all, though the most obvious and easy use of Painting and Sculpture, is far indeed from being their highest end.

Art is a regenerator as well as a copyist. As the historian, who composes a history out of various materials, differs from a newspaper reporter, who sets down what he sees—as Plutarch differs from Mr. Grant, and the Abbe Barthelemy from the last traveller in India—so do the Historical Painter, the Landscape composer (such as Claude or Poussin) differ from the most faithful Portrait, Landscape, or Scene Drawer.

The Painter who is a master of composition makes his pencil cotemporary with all times and ubiquitous. Keeping strictly to nature and fact, Romulus sits for him and Paul preaches. He makes Attila charge, and Mohammed exhort, and Ephesus blaze when he likes. He tries not rashly, but by years of study of men's character, and dress, and deeds, to make them and their acts come as in a vision before him. Having thus got a design, he attempts to realise the vision on his canvas. He pays the most minute attention to truth in his drawing, shading, and colouring, and by imitating the force of nature in his composition, all the clouds that ever floated by him, "the lights of other days," and the forms of the dead, or the stranger, hover over him.

But Art in its higher stage is more than this. It is a creator. Great as Herodotus and Thierry are, Homer and Beranger are greater. The ideal has resources beyond the actual. It is infinite, and Art is indefinitely powerful. The Apollo is more than noble, and the Hercules mightier than man. The Moses of Michael Angelo is no likeness of the inspired law-giver, nor of any other that ever lived, and Raphael's Madonnas are not the faces of women. As Reynolds says, "the effect of the capital works of Michael Angelo is that the observer feels his whole frame enlarged." It is creation, it is representing beings and things different from our nature, but true to their own. In this self-consistency is the only nature requisite in works purely imaginative. Lear is true to his nature, and so are Mephistopheles, and Prometheus, and Achilles; but they are not true to human nature; they are beings created by the poets' minds, and true to their laws of being. There is no commoner blunder in men, who are themselves mere critics, never creators, than to require consistency to the nature of us and our world in the works of poet or painter.

To create a mass of great pictures, statues, and buildings is of the same sort of ennoblement to a people as to create great poems or histories, or make great codes, or win great battles. The next best, though far inferior, blessing and power is to inherit such works and achievements. The lowest stage of all is neither to possess nor to create them.

Ireland has had some great Painters—Barry and Forde, for example, and many of inferior but great excellence; and now she boasts high names—Maclise, Hogan, and Mulready. But their works were seldom done for Ireland, and are rarely known in it. Our portrait and landscape Painters paint foreign men and scenes; and, at all events, the Irish people do not see, possess, nor receive knowledge from their works. Irish history has supplied no subjects for our greatest Artists; and though, as we repeat, Ireland possessed a Forde and Barry, creative Painters of the highest order, the pictures of the latter are mostly abroad; those of the former unseen and unknown. Alas! that they are so few.

To collect into, and make known, and publish in Ireland the best works of our living and dead Artists is one of the steps towards procuring for Ireland a recognised National Art. And this is essential to our civilisation and renown. The other is by giving education to students and rewards to Artists, to make many of this generation true representers, some of them great illustrators and composers, and, perchance, to facilitate the creation of some great spirit.

Something has been done—more remains.

There are schools in Dublin and Cork. But why are those so neglected and imperfect? and why are not similar or better institutions in Belfast, Derry, Galway, Waterford, and Kilkenny? Why is there not a decent collection of casts anywhere but in Cork, and why are they in a garret there? And why have we no gallery of Irishmen's, or any other men's, pictures in Ireland?

The Art Union has done a great deal. It has helped to support in Ireland artists who should otherwise have starved or emigrated; it has dispersed one (when, oh when, will it disperse another?) fine print of a fine Irish picture through the country, and to some extent interested as well as instructed thousands. Yet it could, and we believe will, do much more. It ought to have Corresponding Committees in the principal towns to preserve and rub up old schools of art and foster new ones, and it might by art and historical libraries, and by other ways, help the cause. We speak as friends, and suggest not as critics, for it has done good service.

The Repeal Association, too, in offering prizes for pictures and sculptures of Irish historical subjects, has taken its proper place as the patron of nationality in art; and its rewards for Building Designs may promote the comfort and taste of the people, and the reputation of the country. If artists will examine the rules by which the pictures, statues, and plates remain their property, they will find the prizes not so small as they might at first appear. Nor should they, from interest or just pride, be indifferent to the popularity and fame of success on national subjects, and with a People's Prizes to be contended for. If those who are not Repealers will treat the Association's design kindly and candidly, and if the Repealers will act in art upon principles of justice and conciliation, we shall not only advance national art, but gain another field of common exertion.

The Cork School of Art owes its existence to many causes.

The intense, genial, and Irish character of the people, the southern warmth and variety of clime, with its effects on animal and vegetable beings, are the natural causes.

The accident of Barry's birth there, and his great fame, excited the ambition of the young artists. An Irishman and a Corkman had gone out from them, and amazed men by the grandeur and originality of his works of art. He had thrown the whole of the English painters into insignificance, for who would compare the luscious commonplace of the Stuart painters, or the melodramatic reality of Hogarth, or the imitative beauty of Reynolds, or the clumsy strength of West, with the overbearing grandeur of his works?

But the present glories of Cork, Maclise and Hogan, the greater, but buried might of Forde, and the rich promise which we know is springing there now, are mainly owing to another cause; and that is, that Cork possesses a gallery of the finest casts in the world.

These casts are not very many—117 only; but they are perfect, they are the first from Canova's moulds, and embrace the greatest works of Greek art. They are ill-placed in a dim and dirty room—more shame to the rich men of Cork for leaving them so—but there they are, and there studied Forde, and Maclise, and the rest, until they learned to draw better than any moderns, except Cornelius and his living brethren.

In the countries where art is permanent there are great collections—Tuscany and Rome, for example. But, as we have said before, the highest service done by success in art is not in the possession but in the creation of great works, the spirit, labour, sagacity, and instruction needed by the artists to succeed, and flung out by them on their country like rain from sunny clouds.

Indeed, there is some danger of a traditionary mediocrity following after a great epoch in art. Superstition of style, technical rules in composition, and all the pedantry of art, too often fill up the ranks vacated by veteran genius, and of this there are examples enough in Flanders, Spain, and even Italy. The schools may, and often do, make men scholastic and ungenial, and art remains an instructor and refiner, but creates no more.

Ireland, fortunately or unfortunately, has everything to do yet. We have had great artists—we have not their works—we own the nativity of great living artists—they live on the Tiber and the Thames. Our capital has no school of art—no facilities for acquiring it.

To be sure, there are rooms open in the Dublin Society, and they have not been useless, that is all. But a student here cannot learn anatomy, save at the same expense as a surgical student. He has no great works of art before him, no Pantheon, no Valhalla, not even a good museum or gallery.

We think it may be laid down as unalterably true that a student should never draw from a flat surface. He learns nothing by drawing from the lines of another man—he only mimics. Better for him to draw chairs and tables, bottles and glasses, rubbish, potatoes, cabins, or kitchen utensils, than draw from the lines laid down by other men.

Of those forms of nature which the student can originally consult—the sea, the sky, the earth—we would counsel him to draw from them in the first learning; for though he ought afterwards to analyse and mature his style by the study of works of art, from the first sketches to the finished picture, yet, by beginning with nature and his own suggestions, he will acquire a genuine and original style, superior to the finest imitation; and it is hard to acquire a master's skill without his manner.

Were all men cast in a divine mould of strength and straightness and gallant bearing, and all women proportioned, graceful, and fair, the artist would need no gallery, at least to begin his studies with. He would have to persuade or snatch his models in daily life. Even then, as art creates greater and simpler combinations than ever exist in fact, he should finally study before the superhuman works of his predecessors.

But he has about him here an indifferently-made, ordinary, not very clean, nor picturesquely-clad people; though, doubtless, if they had the feeding, the dress, and the education (for mind beautifies the body) of the Greeks, they would not be inferior, for the Irish structure is of the noblest order.

To give him a multitude of fine natural models, to say nothing of ideal works, it is necessary to make a gallery of statues or casts. The statues will come in good time, and we hope, and are sure, that Ireland, a nation, will have a national gallery, combining the greatest works of the Celtic and Teutonic races. But at present the most that can be done is to form a gallery.

Our readers will be glad to hear that this great boon is about to be given to Irish Art. A society for the formation of a gallery of casts in Dublin has been founded.

It embraces men of every rank, class, creed, politics, and calling, thus forming another of those sanctuaries, now multiplying in Ireland, where one is safe from the polemic and the partisan.

Its purpose is to purchase casts of all the greatest works of Greece, Egypt, Etruria, ancient Rome, and Europe in the middle ages. This will embrace a sufficient variety of types, both natural and ideal, to prevent imitation, and will avoid the debateable ground of modern art. Wherever they can afford it the society will buy moulds, in order to assist provincial galleries, and therefore the provinces are immediately interested in its support.

When a few of these casts are got together, and a proper gallery procured, the public will be admitted to see, and artists to study, them without any charge. The annual subscription is but ten shillings, the object being to interest as many as possible in its support.

It has been suggested to us by an artist that Trinity College ought to establish a gallery and museum containing casts of all the ancient statues, models of their buildings, civil and military, and a collection of their implements of art, trade, and domestic life. A nobler institution, a more vivid and productive commentary on the classics, could not be. But if the Board will not do this of themselves, we trust they will see the propriety of assisting this public gallery, and procuring, therefore, special privileges for the students in using it.

But no matter what persons in authority may do or neglect, we trust the public—for the sake of their own pleasure, their children's profit, and Ireland's honour—will give it their instant and full support.



HINTS FOR IRISH HISTORICAL PAINTINGS.

National art is conversant with national subjects. We have Irish artists, but no Irish, no national art. This ought not to continue; it is injurious to the artists, and disgraceful to the country. The following historical subjects were loosely jotted down by a friend. Doubtless, a more just selection could be made by students noting down fit subjects for painting and sculpture, as they read. We shall be happy to print any suggestions on the subject—our own are, as we call them, mere hints with loose references to the authors or books which suggested them. For any good painting, the marked figures must be few, the action obvious, the costume, arms, architecture, postures historically exact, and the manners, appearance, and rank of the characters strictly studied and observed. The grouping and drawing require great truth and vigour. A similar set of subjects illustrating social life could be got from the Poor Report, Carleton's, Banim's, or Griffin's stories, or, better still, from observation.

The references are vague, but perhaps sufficient.

The Landing of the Milesians.—Keating, Moore's Melodies.

Ollamh Fodhla Presenting his Laws to his People. Keating's, Moore's, and O'Halloran's Histories of Ireland.—Walker's Irish Dress and Arms, and Vallancey's Collectanea.

Nial and his Nine Hostages.—Moore, Keating.

A Druid's Augury.—Moore, O'Halloran, Keating.

A Chief Riding out of his Fort.—Griffin's Invasion, Walker, Moore.

The Oak of Kildare.—Moore.

The Burial of King Dathy in the Alps, his thinned troops laying stones on his grave.—M'Geoghegan, "Histoire de l'Irlande" (French edition), Invasion, Walker, Moore.

St. Patrick brought before the Druids at Tara.—Moore and his Authorities.

The First Landing of the Danes.—See Invasion, Moore, etc.

The Death of Turgesius.—Keating, Moore.

Ceallachan tied to the Mast.—Keating.

Murkertach Returning to Aileach.—Archaeological Society's Tracts.

Brian Reconnoitring the Danes before Clontarf.

The Last of the Danes Escaping to his Ship.

O'Ruare's Return.—Keating, Moore's Melodies.

Raymond Le Gros Leaving his Bride.—Moore.

Roderick in Conference with the Normans.—Moore, M'Geoghegan.

Donald O'Brien Setting Fire to Limerick.—M'Geoghegan.

Donald O'Brien Visiting Holycross.—M'Geoghegan.

O'Brien, O'Connor, and M'Carthy making Peace to attack the Normans.—M'Geoghegan, Moore.

The Same Three Victorious at the Battle of Thurles.—Moore and O'Conor's Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores.

Irish Chiefs leaving Prince John.—Moore, etc.

M'Murrough and Gloster.—Harris's Hibernica, p. 53.

Crowning of Edward Bruce.—Leland, Grace's Annals, etc.

Edgecombe Vainly Trying to Overawe Kildare.—Harris's Hibernica.

Kildare "On the Necks of the Butlers."—Leland.

Shane O'Neill at Elizabeth's Court.—Leland.

Lord Sydney Entertained by Shane O'Neill.

The Battle of the Red Coats.—O'Sullivan's Catholic History.

Hugh O'Neill Victor in Single Combat at Clontibret.—Fynes Moryson, O'Sullivan, M'Geoghegan.

The Corleius.—Dymmok's Treatise, Archaeological Society's Tracts.

Maguire and St. Leger in Single Combat.—M'Geoghegan.

O'Sullivan Crossing the Shannon.—Pacata Hibernia.

O'Dogherty Receiving the Insolent Message of the Governor of Derry.—M'Geoghegan.

The Brehon before the English Judges.—Davis's Letter to Lord Salisbury.

Ormond Refusing to give up his Sword.—Carte's Life of Ormond.

Good Lookers-on.—Strafford's Letters.

Owen Conolly before the Privy Council, 1641.—Carey's Vindiciae.

The Battle of Julianstown.—Temple's Rebellion, and Tichbourne's Drogheda.

Owen Roe Organising the Creaghts.—Carte, and also Belling and O'Neill in the Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica.

The Council of Kilkenny.—Carte.

The Breach of Clonmel.—Do.

Smoking Out the Irish.—Ludlow's Memoirs.

Burning Them.—Castlehaven's Memoirs.

Nagle before the Privy Council.—Harris's William.

James's Entry into Dublin.—Dublin Magazine for March, 1843.

The Bridge of Athlone.—Green Book and Authorities.

St. Ruth's Death.—Do.

The Embarkation from Limerick.—Do.

Cremona.—Cox's Magazine.

Fontenoy.—Do.

Sir S. Rice Pleading against the Violation of the Treaty of Limerick.—Staunton's Collection of Tracts on Ireland.

Molyneux's Book burned.

Liberty Boys Reading a Drapier's Letter.—Mason's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Lucas Surrounded by Dublin Citizens in his Shop.

Grattan Moving Liberty.—Memoirs.

Flood Apostrophising Corruption.—Barrington.

Dungannon Convention.—Wilson, Barrington.

Curran Cross-Examining Armstrong.—Memoirs.

Curran Pleading before the Council in Alderman James's Case.

Tone's First Society.—See his Memoirs.

The Belfast Club.—Madden's U. I., Second Series, vol. i.

Tone, Emmet, and Keogh in the Rathfarnham Garden.

Tone and Carnot.—Tone's Memoirs.

Battle of Oulart.—Hay, Teeling, etc.

First Meeting of the Catholic Association.

O'Connell Speaking in a Munster Chapel.—Wyse's Association.

The Clare Hustings.—Proposal of O'Connell.

The Dublin Corporation Speech.

Father Mathew Administering the Pledge in a Munster County.

Conciliation.—Orange and Green.

The Lifting of the Irish Flags of a National Fleet and Army.



OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE.

Men are ever valued most for peculiar and original qualities. A man who can only talk commonplace, and act according to routine, has little weight. To speak, look, and do what your own soul from its depths orders you are credentials of greatness which all men understand and acknowledge. Such a man's dictum has more influence than the reasoning of an imitative or commonplace man. He fills his circle with confidence. He is self-possessed, firm, accurate, and daring. Such men are the pioneers of civilisation and the rulers of the human heart.

Why should not nations be judged thus? Is not a full indulgence of its natural tendencies essential to a people's greatness? Force the manners, dress, language, and constitution of Russia, or Italy, or Norway, or America, and you instantly stunt and distort the whole mind of either people.

The language, which grows up with a people, is conformed to their organs, descriptive of their climate, constitution, and manners, mingled inseparably with their history and their soil, fitted beyond any other language to express their prevalent thoughts in the most natural and efficient way.

To impose another language on such a people is to send their history adrift among the accidents of translation—'tis to tear their identity from all places—'tis to substitute arbitrary signs for picturesque and suggestive names—'tis to cut off the entail of feeling, and separate the people from their forefathers by a deep gulf—'tis to corrupt their very organs, and abridge their power of expression.

The language of a nation's youth is the only easy and full speech for its manhood and for its age. And when the language of its cradle goes, itself craves a tomb.

What business has a Russian for the rippling language of Italy or India? How could a Greek distort his organs and his soul to speak Dutch upon the sides of the Hymettus, or the beach of Salamis, or on the waste where once was Sparta? And is it befitting the fiery, delicate-organed Celt to abandon his beautiful tongue, docile and spirited as an Arab, "sweet as music, strong as the wave"—is it befitting in him to abandon this wild, liquid speech for the mongrel of a hundred breeds called English, which, powerful though it be, creaks and bangs about the Celt who tries to use it?

We lately met a glorious thought in the "Triads of Mochmed," printed in one of the Welsh codes by the Record Commission: "There are three things without which there is no country—common language, common judicature, and co-tillage land—for without these a country cannot support itself in peace and social union."

A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories—'tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river.

And in good times it has ever been thought so. Who had dared to propose the adoption of Persian or Egyptian in Greece—how had Pericles thundered at the barbarian? How had Cato scourged from the forum him who would have given the Attic or Gallic speech to men of Rome? How proudly and how nobly Germany stopped "the incipient creeping" progress of French! And no sooner had she succeeded than her genius, which had tossed in a hot trance, sprung up fresh and triumphant.

Had Pyrrhus quelled Italy, or Xerxes subdued Greece for a time long enough to impose new languages, where had been the literature which gives a pedigree to human genius? Even liberty recovered had been sickly and insecure without the language with which it had hunted in the woods, worshipped at the fruit-strewn altar, debated on the council-hill, and shouted in the battle-charge.

There is a fine song of the Fusians, which describes

"Language linked to liberty."

To lose your native tongue, and learn that of an alien, is the worst badge of conquest—it is the chain on the soul. To have lost entirely the national language is death; the fetter has worn through. So long as the Saxon held to his German speech he could hope to resume his land from the Norman; now, if he is to be free and locally governed, he must build himself a new home. There is hope for Scotland—strong hope for Wales—sure hope for Hungary. The speech of the alien is not universal in the one; is gallantly held at bay in the other; is nearly expelled from the third.

How unnatural—how corrupting 'tis for us, three-fourths of whom are of Celtic blood, to speak a medley of Teutonic dialects! If we add the Celtic Scots, who came back here from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and the Celtic Welsh, who colonised many parts of Wexford and other Leinster counties, to the Celts who never left Ireland, probably five-sixths, or more, of us are Celts. What business have we with the Norman-Sassenagh?

Nor let any doubt these proportions because of the number of English names in Ireland. With a politic cruelty the English of the Pale passed an Act (3 Edw. IV., c. 3) compelling every Irishman within English jurisdiction "to go like to one Englishman in apparel, and shaving off his beard above the mouth," "and shall take to him an English sirname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale; or colour, as White, Blacke, Browne; or art or science, as Smith or Carpenter; or office, as Cook, Butler; and that he and his issue shall use this name, under pain of forfeiting his goods yearly."

And just as this Parliament before the Reformation, so did another after the Reformation. By the 28th Henry VIII., c. 15, the dress and language of the Irish were insolently described as barbarous by the minions of that ruffian king, and were utterly forbidden and abolished under many penalties and incapacities. These laws are still in force; but whether the Archaeological Society, including Peel and O'Connell, will be prosecuted seems doubtful.

There was, also, 'tis to be feared, an adoption of English names, during some periods, from fashion, fear, or meanness. Some of our best Irish names, too, have been so mangled as to require some scholarship to identify them. For these and many more reasons the members of the Celtic race here are immensely greater than at first appears.

But this is not all; for even the Saxon and Norman colonists, notwithstanding these laws, melted down into the Irish, and adopted all their ways and language. For centuries upon centuries Irish was spoken by men of all bloods in Ireland, and English was unknown, save to a few citizens and nobles of the Pale. 'Tis only within a very late period that the majority of the people learned English.

But, it will be asked, how can the language be restored now?

We shall answer this partly by saying that, through the labours of the Archaeological and many lesser societies, it is being revived rapidly.

We shall consider this question of the possibility of reviving it more at length some other day.

Nothing can make us believe that it is natural or honourable for the Irish to speak the speech of the alien, the invader, the Sassenagh tyrant, and to abandon the language of our kings and heroes. What! give up the tongue of Ollamh Fodhla and Brian Boru, the tongue of M'Carty, and the O'Nials, the tongue of Sarsfield's, Curran's, Mathew's, and O'Connell's boyhood, for that of Strafford and Poynings, Sussex, Kirk, and Cromwell!

No! oh, no! the "brighter days shall surely come," and the green flag shall wave on our towers, and the sweet old language be heard once more in college, mart, and senate.

But even should the effort to save it as the national language fail, by the attempt we will rescue its old literature, and hand down to our descendants proofs that we had a language as fit for love, and war, and business, and pleasure, as the world ever knew, and that we had not the spirit and nationality to preserve it!

Had Swift known Irish he would have sowed its seed by the side of that nationality which he planted, and the close of the last century would have seen the one as flourishing as the other. Had Ireland used Irish in 1782, would it not have impeded England's re-conquest of us? But 'tis not yet too late.

For you, if the mixed speech called English was laid with sweetmeats on your child's tongue, English is the best speech of manhood. And yet, rather, in that case you are unfortunate. The hills, and lakes, and rivers, the forts and castles, the churches and parishes, the baronies and counties around you, have all Irish names—names which describe the nature of the scenery or ground, the name of founder, or chief, or priest, or the leading fact in the history of the place. To you these are names hard to pronounce, and without meaning.

And yet it were well for you to know them. That knowledge would be a topography, and a history, and romance, walking by your side, and helping your discourse. Meath tells it flatness, Clonmel the abundant riches of its valley, Fermanagh is the land of the Lakes, Tyrone the country of Owen, Kilkenny the Church of St. Canice, Dunmore the great fort, Athenry the Ford of the Kings, Dunleary the Fort of O'Leary; and the Phoenix Park, instead of taking its name from a fable, recognises as christener the "sweet water" which yet springs near the east gate.[43]

All the names of our airs and songs are Irish, and we every day are as puzzled and ingeniously wrong about them as the man who, when asked for the air, "I am asleep, and don't waken me," called it "Tommy M'Cullagh made boots for me."

The bulk of our history and poetry are written in Irish, and shall we, who learn Italian, and Latin, and Greek, to read Dante, Livy, and Homer in the original—shall we be content with ignorance or a translation of Irish?

The want of modern scientific words in Irish is undeniable, and doubtless we should adopt the existing names into our language. The Germans have done the same thing, and no one calls German mongrel on that account. Most of these names are clumsy and extravagant; and are almost all derived from Greek or Latin, and cut as foreign a figure in French and English as they would in Irish. Once Irish was recognised as a language to be learned as much as French or Italian, our dictionaries would fill up and our vocabularies ramify, to suit all the wants of life and conversation.

These objections are ingenious refinements, however, rarely thought of till after the other and great objection has been answered.

The usual objection to attempting the revival of Irish is, that it could not succeed.

If an attempt were made to introduce Irish, either through the national schools, or the courts of law, into the eastern side of the island, it would certainly fail, and the reaction might extinguish it altogether. But no one contemplates this save as a dream of what may happen a hundred years hence. It is quite another thing to say, as we do, that the Irish language should be cherished, taught, and esteemed, and that it can be preserved and gradually extended.

What we seek is, that the people of the upper classes should have their children taught the language which explains our names of persons or places, our older history, and our music, and which is spoken in the majority of our counties, rather than Italian, German, or French. It would be more useful in life, more serviceable to the taste and genius of young people, and a more flexible accomplishment for an Irish man or woman to speak, sign, and write Irish than French.

At present the middle classes think it a sign of vulgarity to speak Irish—the children are everywhere taught English, and English alone in schools—and, what is worse, they are urged by rewards and punishments to speak it at home, for English is the language of their masters. Now, we think the example and exertions of the upper classes would be sufficient to set the opposite and better fashion of preferring Irish; and, even as a matter of taste, we think them bound to do so. And we ask it of the pride, the patriotism, and the hearts of our farmers and shopkeepers, will they try to drive out of their children's minds the native language of almost every great man we had, from Brian Boru to O'Connell—will they meanly sacrifice the language which names their hills, and towns, and music, to the tongue of the stranger?

About half the people west of a line drawn from Derry to Waterford speak Irish habitually, and in some of the mountain tracts east of that line it is still common. Simply requiring the teachers of the national schools in these Irish-speaking districts to know Irish, and supplying them with Irish translations of the school books, would guard the language where it now exists, and prevent it from being swept away by the English tongue, as the Red Americans have been by the English race from New York to New Orleans.

The example of the upper classes would extend and develop a modern Irish literature, and the hearty support they have given to the Archaeological Society makes us hope that they will have sense and spirit to do so.

But the establishment of a newspaper partly or wholly Irish would be the most rapid and sure way of serving the language. The Irish-speaking man would find, in his native tongue, the political news and general information he has now to seek in English; and the English-speaking man, having Irish frequently before him in so attractive a form, would be tempted to learn its characters, and, by-and-by, its meaning.

These newspapers in many languages are now to be found everywhere but here. In South America many of these papers are Spanish and English, or French; in North America, French and English; in Northern Italy, German and Italian; in Denmark and Holland, German is used in addition to the native tongue; in Alsace and Switzerland, French and German; in Poland, German, French, and Sclavonic; in Turkey, French and Turkish; in Hungary, Magyar, Sclavonic, and German; and the little Canton of Grison uses three languages in its press. With the exception of Hungary, the secondary language is, in all cases, spoken by fewer persons than the Irish-speaking people of Ireland, and while they everywhere tolerate and use one language as a medium of commerce, they cherish the other as the vehicle of history, the wings of song, the soil of their genius, and a mark and guard of nationality.

———————————————————————————————- [43] 'Bright water' is the true rendering: Could Davis have been thinking of binn uisge, and supposing that binn meant sweet in taste as well as in sound?—[Ed.]



INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN.

Judged by the Directory, Dublin is nobly supplied with institutions for the promotion of Literature, Science, and Art; and, judged by its men, there is mind enough here to make these institutions prosper, and instruct and raise the country. Yet their performances are far short of these promises, and the causes for ill-success are easily found. We believe these causes could be almost as easily removed.

In the first place, we have too many of these institutions. Stingy grants from Government and the general poverty of the people render economy a matter of the first consequence; yet we find these societies maintaining a number of separate establishments, at a great expense of rent and salaries.

The consequence, of course, is that none of them flourish as they ought—museums, meetings, lectures, libraries, and exhibitions are all frittered away, and nothing is done so well as it might be. Moreover, from the want of any arrangement and order, the same men are dragged from one society to another—few men do much, because all are forced to attempt so many things.

But 'tis better to examine this in detail, and in doing so we may as well give some leading facts as to the chief of these bodies. Take, for example, as a beginning, the

INSTITUTIONS FOR THE PROMOTION OF FINE ARTS.

And first there is the Hibernian Academy. It was founded in 1823, received a present of its house in Abbey Street, and some books and casts, from Francis Johnston, a Dublin architect, and has the miserable income of L300 a year from the Treasury. It has a drawing-school, with a few casts, no pictures, bad accommodation, and professors whose pay is nearly nominal.

It undoubtedly has some men of great ability and attainments, and some who have neither; but what can be done without funds, statues, or pictures? To aggravate its difficulties, the Dublin Society has another art school, still worse off as to casts, and equally deficient in pictures. As a place of instruction in the designing of patterns for manufactures and the like, the Dublin Society school has worked well; and many of the best-paid controllers of design in the English manufactories were educated there; but as a school of fine arts it does little; and no wonder. Another branch of the Hibernian Academy's operations is its annual exhibition of pictures. These exhibitions attract crowds who would never otherwise see a painting, promote thought on art, and procure patronage for artists. In this, too, the Hibernian Academy has recently found a rival in the Society of Irish Artists, established in 1842, which has an annual exhibition in College Street, and pays the expenses of the exhibition out of the admission fees, as does the Hibernian Academy. We are not attaching blame to the Society of Irish Artists in noticing the fact of its rivalry.

There are three other bodies devoted to the encouragement of art. One of these is the Art Union, founded in 1840, and maintained entirely by subscriptions to its lottery. It distributes fine engravings from Irish pictures among all its members, and pictures and statues, bought in the exhibitions of the Hibernian Academy, and of the Society of Irish Artists, among its prize-holders; and it gives premiums for the works of native or resident artists. Its operation is as a patron of art; and, in order to get funds for this purpose, and also to secure superior works and a higher competition, it extends its purchases to the best foreign works exhibited here. It has no collection, and has merely an office in College Street—in fact, its best permanent possession is its unwearied secretary. The Society of Ancient Art was established last year for the formation of a public gallery of casts from classical and mediaeval statues, and ultimately for purposes of direct teaching by lectures, etc. It obtained some funds by subscription; but under the expectation, 'tis said, of a public grant, has done nothing. Lastly, there is the "Institute of Irish Architects," founded in 1839 "for the general advancement of civil architecture, for promoting and facilitating the acquirement of a knowledge of the various arts and sciences connected therewith, for the formation of a library and museum," etc.

To us it is very plain that here are too many institutions, and that the efficiency of all suffers materially from their want of connection and arrangement. Some, at least, might be amalgamated with great advantage, or rather all, except the Art Union. That is only a club of purchasers, and any attempt materially to change its nature would peril its funds. Some such plan as the following would accomplish all that is vainly attempted now. Let the Government be pressed to give L2,000 a year, if the public supply L1,000 a year. Let this income go to a new Hibernian Academy—the present Hibernian Academy, Artists' Society, Society of Ancient Art, the Art Schools of the Dublin Society, and the Institute of Irish Architects being merged in it. This merger could be easily secured through the inducements secured by the charter, and by accommodation, salaries, and utility of the new body. The present property of these bodies, with some moderate grant, would suffice for the purchase of a space of ground ample for the schools, museums, library, lecture-room, and yards of such an institution.

At the head of it should be a small body governing and accounting for its finances, but no person should be a governing member of more than one of its sections. These sections should be for Statuary, Painting, Architecture, and Design Drawing. Each of these sections should have its own Gallery and its own Practice Rooms; but one Library and one public Lecture Room would suffice for the entire. The architectural section would also need some open space for its experiments and its larger specimens. A present of copies of the British Museum casts, along with the fund of the Ancient Art Society, would originate a Cast Gallery, and a few good pictures could be bought as a commencement of a National Gallery of Painting, leaving the economy of the managers and the liberality of the public gradually to fill up. Collections of native works in canvas and marble, and architectural models, could be soon and cheaply procured. The Art Library of the Dublin Society added to that of the Hibernian Academy would need few additions to make it sufficient for the new body.

Such an Institute ought not to employ any but the best teachers and lecturers. It should encourage proficiency by rewards that would instruct the proficient; it should apply itself to cataloguing, preserving, and making known all the works of art in the country; give prizes for artistical works; publish its lectures and transactions; issue engravings of the most instructive works of art; and hold evening meetings, to which ladies would be admitted. It should allow at least L400 a year for the support of free pupils. In connection with its drawing and modelling schools should be a professorship of anatomy, or, what were better, some arrangement might be made with the College of Surgeons, or some such body, for courses of instruction for its pupils. The training for its pupils in sculpture, painting, and design should include the study of ancient and modern costumes, zoology, and of vegetable and geological forms. For this purpose books should not be so much relied on as lectures in gardens, museums, and during student excursions. Of course the architectural pupils should be required to answer at a preliminary examination in mathematics, and should receive special instruction in the building materials, action of climate, etc., in Ireland.

Were the buildings standing, and the society chartered judiciously, the sum we have mentioned would be sufficient. Four professors at from L200 to L300 a year each, four assistants at L100 a year each, a librarian at the same rate, with payments for extra instruction in anatomy, etc., etc., and for porters, premiums, and so forth, would not exceed L2,000 a year. So that if L400 were expended on free pupils, there would remain L600 a year for the purchase of works for the galleries.

At present there is much waste of money, great annoyance and loss of time to the supporters of these institutions, and marvellously little benefit to art. The plan we have proposed would be economical both of time and money; but, what is of more worth, it would give us, what we have not now, a National Gallery of Statuary and Painting—good Exhibition Rooms for works of art—business-like Lecturers and Lectures—great public excitement about art—and, finally, a great National Academy.

If anyone has a better plan, let him say it; we have told ours. At all events, some great change is needed, and there can be no fitter time than this for it.

In any community it is desirable to have Literary Institutions, as well classified as legal offices, and as free from counteraction; but it is especially desirable here now. Our literary class is small, and its duties measureless. The diseased suction of London—the absence of gentry, offices, and Legislature—the heart-sickness that is on every thoughtful man without a country—the want of a large, educated, and therefore book-buying class—and (it must be confessed) the depression and distrust produced by rash experiments and paltry failure, have left us with few men for a great work. Probably the great remedy is the restoration of our Parliament—bringing back, as it would, the aristocracy and the public offices, giving society and support to Writers and Artists, and giving them a country's praise to move and a country's glory to reward them.

But one of the very means of attaining nationality is securing some portion of that literary force which would gush abundantly from it; and, therefore, consider it how you will, it is important to increase and economise the exertions of the literary class in Ireland. Yet the reverse is done. Institutions are multiplied instead of those being made efficient which exist; and men talk as proudly of the new "Teach-'em-everything-in-no-time-Society" as if its natty laws were a library, its desk a laboratory and a museum, and its members fresh labourers, when all they have done is to waste the time of persons who had business, and to delude those who had none, into the belief that they were doing good. Ephemeral things! which die not without mischief—they have wasted hours and days of strong men in spinning sand, and leave depression growing from their tombs.

It is a really useful deed to rescue from dissipation, or from idle reading, or from mammon-hunting, one strong, passionate man or boy, and to set him to work investigating, arranging, teaching. It is an honest task to shame the 'broidered youth from meditation on waistcoats and the display of polka steps into manly pursuits. It is an angel's mission (oftenest the work of love) to startle a sleeping and unconscious genius into the spring and victory of a roused lion. But it is worse than useless to establish new associations and orders without well considering first whether the same machinery do not already exist and rust for want of the very energy and skill which you need too. There is a bridge in a field near Blarney Castle where water never ran. It was built "at the expense of the county." These men build their mills close as houses in a capital, taking no thought for the stream to turn them.

We have already censured this in some detail with reference to societies for the promotion of the Fine Arts, and have urged the formation, out of all these fiddling, clashing bodies, of some one great institution for the promotion of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, with a Museum, a Library, a Gallery, and Lecturers, governed by professional minds, great enough to be known and regarded by the people, and popular and strong enough to secure Government support.

Similar defects exist everywhere. Take the Dublin Society for example. Nothing can be more heterogeneous than its objects. We are far from denying its utility. That utility is immense, the institution is native, of old standing (it was founded in 1731), national, and, when it wanted support, our pen was not idle in its behalf.

But we believe its utility greatly diminished by its attempting too many things, and especially by including objects more fitly belonging to other institutions; and on the opposite side it is maimed, by the interference of other bodies, in its natural functions. The Dublin Society was founded for the promotion of husbandry and other useful arts. Its labours to serve agriculture have been repeated and extensive, though not always judicious. It has also endeavoured to promote manufactures. It has gardens and museums fitter for scientific than practical instruction, admirable lecturers, a library most generously opened, a drawing-school of the largest purposes and of equivocal success, and various minor branches.

The Irish Academy has some of this fault. It endeavours to unite antiquarianism and abstract science. Its meetings are alternately entertained with mathematics and history, and its transactions are equally comprehensive. We yield to none in anxiety for the promotion of antiquarian studies; we think the public and the government disgraced by the slight support given to the Academy. We are not a little proud of the honour and strength given to our country by the science of MacCullagh, Hamilton, and Lloyd; but we protest against the attempt to mix the armoury of the ancient Irish, or the Celtic dialects, or the essay on Round Towers, with trigonometry and the calculus, whether in a lecture-room or a book.

Let us just set down, as we find them, some of the Literary and Scientific Institutions. There are the Royal Dublin Society, the Royal Irish Academy (we wish these royalties were dropped—no one minds them), the Irish Archaeological Society, the Royal Zoological Society, the Geological Society, the Dublin Natural History Society, the Dublin Philosophical Society, the Royal Agricultural Society, etc., etc. Now, we take it that these bodies might be usefully reduced to three, and if three moderate government grants were made under conditions rewarding such a classification, we doubt not it would instantly be made.

In the first place, we would divorce from the Irish Academy the scientific department, requiring Trinity College to form some voluntary organisation for the purpose. To this non-collegiate philosophers should be admitted, and, thus disencumbered, we would devote the Academy to antiquities and literature—incorporate with it the Archaeological Society—transfer to it all the antiques (of which it had not duplicates) in Trinity College, the Dublin Society, etc., and enlarge its museums and meeting-room. Its section of "polite literature" has long been a name—it should be made real. There would be nothing inconvenient or strange in finding in its lecture-rooms or transactions the antiquities and literature of Ireland, diversified by general historical, critical, and aesthetical researches.

The Dublin Society would reasonably divide into two sections. One, for the promotion of husbandry, might be aggrandised by tempting the Agricultural Society to join it, and should have a permanent museum, an extensive farm, premiums, shows, publications, and special lecturers. The second section, for the encouragement of manufactures, should have its museum, workshops, and experiment ground (the last, perhaps, as the agricultural farm), and its special lecturers. The library might well be joint, and managed by a joint committee, having separate funds. The general lecturers on chemistry and other such subjects might be paid in common. The drawing school (save that for pattern and machine drawing) might be transferred to the Art Institution; and the botanic garden and museum of minerals to a third body we propose.

This third body we would form from a union of the Zoological, the Geological, the Natural History, and all other such societies, and endow it with the Botanic and Zoological Gardens—give it rooms for a general and for a specially Irish museum, and for lecture-rooms in town, and supply it with a small fund to pay lecturers, who should go through the provinces.

We are firmly convinced that this re-arrangement of the Institutions of Dublin is quite practicable, would diminish unproductive expenses, economise the time, and condense the purposes of our literary, scientific, and artistical men, and increase enormously the use of the institutions to the public.

Of course the whole plan will be laughed at as fanciful and improbable; we think it easy, and we think it will be done.



IRELAND'S PEOPLE, LORDS, GENTRY, COMMONALTY.

When we are considering a country's resources and its fitness for a peculiar destiny, its people are not to be overlooked. How much they think, how much they work, what are their passions, as well as their habits, what are their hopes and what their history, suggest inquiries as well worth envious investigation as even the inside of a refugee's letter.

And there is much in Ireland of that character—much that makes her superior to slavery, and much that renders her inferior to freedom.

Her inhabitants are composed of Irish nobles, Irish gentry, and the Irish people. Each has an interest in the independence of their country, each a share in her disgrace. Upon each, too, there devolves a separate duty in this crisis of her fate. They all have responsibilities; but the infamy of failing in them is not alike in all.

The nobles are the highest class. They have most to guard. In every other country they are the champions of patriotism. They feel there is no honour for them separate from their fatherland. Its freedom, its dignity, its integrity, are as their own. They strive for it, legislate for it, guard it, fight for it. Their names, their titles, their very pride are of it.

In Ireland they are its disgrace. They were first to sell and would be last to redeem it. Treachery to it is daubed on many an escutcheon in its heraldry. It is the only nation where slaves have been ennobled for contributing to its degradation.

It is a foul thing this—dignity emanating from the throne to gild the filthy mass of national treason that forms the man's part of many an Irish lord.

We do not include in this the whole Irish peerage. God forbid. There are several of them not thus ignoble. Many of them worked, struggled, sacrificed for Ireland. Many of them were true to her in the darkest times.

They were her chiefs, her ornaments, her sentinels, her safeguards. Alas! that they, too, should have shrunk from their position, and left their duties to humbler, but bolder and better men.

Look at their station in the State. Is it not one of unequivocal shame? They enjoy the half-mendicant privilege of voting for a representative of their order, in the House of Lords, some twice or thrice in their lives. One Irish peer represents about a dozen others of his class, and thus, in his multiplex capacity, he is admitted into fellowship with the English nobility. The borrowed plumes, the delegated authority of so many of his equals, raise him to a half-admitted equality with an English nobleman. And, although thus deprived of their inheritance of dignity, they are not allowed even the privilege of a commoner. An Irish lord cannot sit in the House of Commons for an Irish county or city, nor can he vote for an Irish member.

But an Irish lord can represent an English constituency. The distinction is a strange one—unintelligible to us in any sense but one of national humiliation. We understand it thus—an Irish lord is too mean in his own person, and by virtue of his Irish title, to rank with the British peerage. He can only qualify for that honour by uniting in his the suffrages and titles of ten or twelve others. But—flattering distinction!—he is above the rank of an Irish commoner, nor is he permitted to sully his name with the privileges of that order. And—unspeakable dignity!—he may take his stand with a British mob.

There is no position to match this in shame. There is no guilt so despicable as dozing in it without a blush or an effort, or even a dream for independence. When all else are alive to indignity, and working in the way of honour and liberty, they alone, whom it would best become to be earliest and most earnest in the strife, sink back replete with dishonour.

Of those, or their descendants, who, at the time of the Union, sold their country and the high places they filled in her councils and in her glory, for the promise of a foreign title, which has not been redeemed, the shame and the mortification have been perhaps too great to admit of any hope in regard to them. Their trust was sacred—their honour unsuspected. The stake they guarded above life they betrayed then for a false bauble; and it is no wonder if they think their infamy irredeemable and eternal.

We know not but it is. There are many, however, not in that category. They struggled at fearful odds, and every risk, against the fate of their country. They strove when hope had left them. Wherefore do they stand apart now, when she is again erect, and righteous, and daring? Have they despaired for her greatness, because of the infidelity of those to whom she had too blindly trusted?

The time is gone when she could be betrayed. This one result is already guaranteed by recent teaching. We may not be yet thoroughly instructed in the wisdom and the virtue necessary for the independent maintenance of self-government; but we have mastered thus much of national knowledge that we cannot be betrayed. There is no assurance every nation gave which we have not given, or may not give, that our present struggle shall end in triumph or in national death.

The writers of The Nation have never concealed the defects or flattered the good qualities of their countrymen. They have told them in good faith that they wanted many an attribute of a free people, and that the true way to command happiness and liberty was by learning the arts and practising the culture that fitted men for their enjoyment. Nor was it until we saw them thus learning and thus practising that our faith became perfect, and that we felt entitled to say to all men, here is a strife in which it will be stainless glory to be even defeated. It is one in which the Irish nobility have the first interest and the first stake in their individual capacities.

As they would be the most honoured and benefited by national success, they are the guiltiest in opposing or being indifferent to national patriotism.

Of the Irish gentry there is not much to be said. They are divisible into two classes—the one consists of the old Norman race commingled with the Catholic gentlemen who either have been able to maintain their patrimonies, or who have risen into affluence by their own industry; the other, the descendants of Cromwell's or William's successful soldiery.

This last is the most anti-Irish of all. They feel no personal debasement in the dishonour of the country. Old prejudices, a barbarous law, a sense of insecurity in the possessions they know were obtained by plunder, combine to sink them into the mischievous and unholy belief that it is their interest as well as their duty to degrade, and wrong, and beggar the Irish people.

There are among them men fired by enthusiasm, men fed by fanaticism, men influenced by sordidness; but, as a whole, they are earnest thinkers and stern actors. There is a virtue in their unscrupulousness. They speak, and act, and dare as men. There is a principle in their unprincipledness. Their belief is a harsh and turbulent one, but they profess it in a manly fashion.

We like them better than the other section of the same class. These last are but sneaking echoes of the other's views. They are coward patriots and criminal dandies. But they ought to be different from what they are. We wish them so. We want their aid now—for the country, for themselves, for all. Would that they understood the truth, that they thought justly, and acted uprightly. They are wanted, one and all. Why conceal it—they are obstacles in our way, shadows on our path.

These are called the representatives of the property of the country. They are against the national cause, and therefore it is said that all the wealth of Ireland is opposed to the Repeal of the Union.

It is an ignorant and a false boast.

The people of the country are its wealth. They till its soil, raise its produce, ply its trade. They serve, sustain, support, save it. They supply its armies—they are its farmers, its merchants, its tradesmen, its artists, all that enrich and adorn it.

And, after all, each of them has a patrimony to spend, the honourable earning of his sweat, or his intellect, or his industry, or his genius. Taking them on an average, they must, to live, spend at least L5 each by the year. Multiply it by seven millions, and see what it comes to.

Thirty-five millions annually—compare with that the rental of Ireland; compare with it the wealth of the aristocracy spent in Ireland, and are they not as nothing?

But a more important comparison may be made of the strength, the fortitude, the patience, the bravery of those, the enrichers of the country, with the meanness in mind and courage of those who are opposed to them.

It is the last we shall suggest. It is sufficient for our purpose. To those who do not think it of the highest value we have nothing to say.



THE STATE OF THE PEASANTRY.

In a climate soft as a mother's smile, on a soil fruitful as God's love, the Irish peasant mourns.

He is not unconsoled. Faith in the joys of another world, heightened by his woe in this, give him hours when he serenely looks down on the torments that encircle him—the moon on a troubled sky. Domestic love, almost morbid from external suffering, prevents him from becoming a fanatic or a misanthrope, and reconciles him to life. Sometimes he forgets all, and springs into a desperate glee or a scathing anger; and latterly another feeling—the hope of better days—and another exertion—the effort for redress—have shared his soul with religion, love, mirth, and vengeance.

His consolations are those of a spirit—his misery includes all physical sufferings, and many that strike the soul, not the senses.

Consider his griefs! They begin in the cradle—they end in the grave.

Suckled by a breast that is supplied from unwholesome or insufficient food, and that is fevered with anxiety—reeking with the smoke of an almost chimneyless cabin—assailed by wind and rain when the weather rages—breathing, when it is calm, the exhalations of a rotten roof, of clay walls, and of manure, which gives his only chance of food—he is apt to perish in his infancy.

Or he survives all this (happy if he have escaped from gnawing scrofula or familiar fever), and in the same cabin, with rags instead of his mother's breast, and lumpers instead of his mother's milk, he spends his childhood.

Advancing youth brings him labour, and manhood increases it; but youth and manhood leave his roof rotten, his chimney one hole, his window another, his clothes rags (at best muffled by a holiday cotamore)—his furniture, a pot, a table, a few hay chairs and rickety stools—his food, lumpers and water—his bedding, straw and a coverlet—his enemies, the landlord, the tax-gatherer, and the law—his consolation, the priest and his wife—his hope on earth, agitation—his hope hereafter, the Lord God!

For such an existence his toil is hard—and so much the better—it calms and occupies his mind; but bitter is his feeling that the toil which gains for him this nauseous and scanty livelihood heaps dainties and gay wines on the table of his distant landlord, clothes his children or his harem in satin, lodges them in marble halls, and brings all the arts of luxury to solicit their senses—bitter to him to feel that this green land, which he loves and his landlord scorns, is ravished by him of her fruits to pamper that landlord; twice bitter for him to see his wife, with weariness in her breast of love, to see half his little brood torn by the claws of want to undeserved graves, and to know that to those who survive him he can only leave the inheritance to which he was heir; and thrice bitter to him that even his hovel has not the security of the wild beast's den—that Squalidness, and Hunger, and Disease are insufficient guardians of his home—and that the puff of the landlord's or the agent's breath may blow him off the land where he has lived, and send him and his to a dyke, or to prolong wretchedness in some desperate kennel in the next town, till the strong wings of Death—unopposed lord of such suburb—bear them away.

Aristocracy of Ireland, will ye do nothing?—will ye do nothing for fear? The body who best know Ireland—the body that keep Ireland within the law—the Repeal Committee—declare that unless some great change take place an agrarian war may ensue! Do ye know what that is, and how it would come? The rapid multiplication of outrages, increased violence by magistrates, collisions between the people and the police, coercive laws and military force, the violation of houses, the suspension of industry—the conflux of discontent, pillage, massacre, war—the gentry shattered, the peasantry conquered and decimated, or victorious and ruined (for who could rule them?)—there is an agrarian insurrection! May Heaven guard us from it!—may the fear be vain!

We set aside the fear! Forget it! Think of the long, long patience of the people—their toils supporting you—their virtues shaming you—their huts, their hunger, their disease.

To whomsoever God had given a heart less cold than stone, these truths must cry day and night. Oh! how they cross us like _Banshees when we would range free on the mountain—how, as we walk in the evening light amid flowers, they startle us from rest of mind! Ye nobles! whose houses are as gorgeous as the mote's (who dwelleth in the sunbeam)—ye strong and haughty squires—ye dames exuberant with tingling blood—ye maidens, whom not splendour has yet spoiled, will ye not think of the poor?—will ye not shudder in your couches to think how rain, wind, and smoke dwell with the blanketless peasant?—will ye not turn from the sumptuous board to look at those hard-won meals of black and slimy roots on which man, woman, and child feed year after year?—will ye never try to banish wringing hunger and ghastly disease from the home of such piety and love?—will ye not give back its dance to the village—its mountain play to boyhood—its serene hopes to manhood?

Will ye do nothing for pity—nothing for love? Will ye leave a foreign Parliament to mitigate—will ye leave a native Parliament, gained in your despite, to redress these miseries—will ye for ever abdicate the duty and the joy of making the poor comfortable, and the peasant attached and happy? Do—if so you prefer; but know that if you do, you are a doomed race. Once more, Aristocracy of Ireland, we warn and entreat you to consider the State of the Peasantry, and to save them with your own hands.



HABITS AND CHARACTER OF THE PEASANTRY.[44]

There are (thank God!) four hundred thousand Irish children in the National Schools. A few years, and they will be the People of Ireland—the farmers of its lands, the conductors of its traffic, the adepts in its arts. How utterly unlike that Ireland will be to the Ireland of the Penal Laws, of the Volunteers, of the Union, or of the Emancipation?

Well may Carleton say that we are in a transition state. The knowledge, the customs, the superstitions, the hopes of the People are entirely changing. There is neither use nor reason in lamenting what we must infallibly lose. Our course is an open and a great one, and will try us severely; but, be it well or ill, we cannot resemble our fathers. No conceivable effort will get the people, twenty years hence, to regard the Fairies but as a beautiful fiction to be cherished, not believed in, and not a few real and human characters are perishing as fast as the Fairies.

Let us be content to have the past chronicled wherever it cannot be preserved.

Much may be saved—the Gaelic language and the music of the past may be handed uncorrupted to the future; but whatever may be the substitutes, the Fairies and the Banshees, the Poor Scholar and the Ribbonman, the Orange Lodge, the Illicit Still, and the Faction Fight are vanishing into history, and unless this generation paints them no other will know what they were.

It is chiefly in this way we value the work before us. In it Carleton is the historian of the peasantry rather than a dramatist. The fiddler and piper, the seanachie and seer, the match-maker and dancing-master, and a hundred characters beside are here brought before you, moving, acting, playing, plotting, and gossiping! You are never wearied by an inventory of wardrobes, as in short English descriptive fictions; yet you see how every one is dressed; you hear the honey brogue of the maiden, and the downy voice of the child, the managed accents of flattery or traffic, the shrill tones of woman's fretting, and the troubled gush of man's anger. The moory upland and the corn slopes, the glen where the rocks jut through mantling heather, and bright brooks gurgle amid the scented banks of wild herbs, the shivering cabin and the rudely-lighted farm-house are as plain in Carleton's pages as if he used canvas and colours with a skill varying from Wilson and Poussin to Teniers and Wilkie.

But even in these sketches his power of external description is not his greatest merit. Born and bred among the people—full of their animal vehemence—skilled in their sports—as credulous and headlong in boyhood, and as fitful and varied in manhood, as the wildest—he had felt with them, and must ever sympathise with them. Endowed with the highest dramatic genius, he has represented their love and generosity, their wrath and negligence, their crimes and virtues, as a hearty peasant—not a note-taking critic.

In others of his works he has created ideal characters that give him a higher rank as a poet (some of them not surpassed by even Shakespeare for originality, grandeur, and distinctness); but here he is a genuine Seanachie, and brings you to dance and wake, to wedding and christening—makes you romp with the girls, and race with the boys—tremble at the ghosts, and frolic with the fairies of the whole parish.

Come what change there may over Ireland, in these Tales and Sketches the peasantry of the past hundred years can be for ever lived with.

———————————————————————————————- [44] Tales and Sketches illustrating the Irish Peasantry. By William Carleton. James Duffy, Dublin, 1845. 1 vol., 8vo., pp. 393.



IRISH SCENERY.

We no more see why Irish people should not visit the Continent than why Germans or Frenchmen ought not to visit Ireland; but there is a difference between them. A German rarely comes here who has not trampled the heath of Tyrol, studied the museums of Dresden and the frescoes of Munich, and shouted defiance on the bank of the Rhine; and what Frenchman who has not seen the vineyards of Provence and the bocages of Brittany, and the snows of Jura and the Pyrenees, ever drove on an Irish jingle? But our nobles and country gentlemen, our merchants, lawyers, and doctors—and what's worse, their wives and daughters—penetrate Britain and the Continent without ever trying whether they could not defy in Ireland the ennui before which they run over seas and mountains.

The cause of this, as of most of our grievances, was misgovernment, producing poverty, discomfort, ignorance, and misrepresentation. The people were ignorant and in rags, their houses miserable, the roads and hotels shocking; we had no banks, few coaches, and, to crown all, the English declared the people to be rude and turbulent, which they were not, as well as drunken and poor, which they assuredly were. An Irish landlord who had ill-treated his own tenants felt a conscientious dread of all frieze-coats; others adopted his prejudices, and a people who never were rude or unjust to strangers were considered unsafe to travel amongst.

Most of these causes are removed. The people are sober, and are rapidly advancing to knowledge, their political exertions and dignity have broken away much of the prejudices against them, and a man passing through any part of Ireland expects to find woeful poverty and strong discontent, but he does not fear the abduction of his wife, or attempts to assassinate him on every lonely road. The coaches, cars, and roads, too, have become excellent, and the hotels are sufficient for any reasonable traveller. One very marked discouragement to travelling was the want of information; the maps were little daubs, and the guide-books were few and inaccurate. As to maps we are now splendidly off. The Railway Commissioners' Map of Ireland, aided by the Ordnance Index Map of any county where a visitor makes a long stay, are ample. We have got a good general guide-book in Fraser, but it could not hold a twentieth of the information necessary to a leisurely tourist; nor, till the Ordnance Memoir is out, shall we have thorough hand-books to our counties. Meantime, let us not burn the little guides to Antrim, Wicklow, and Killarney, though they are desperately dull and inexact—let us not altogether prohibit Mrs. Hall's gossip, though she knows less about our Celtic people than the Malays; and let us be even thankful for Mr. O'Flanagan's volume of the Munster Blackwater (though it is printed in London) for his valuable stories, for his minute, picturesque, and full topography, for his antiquarian and historic details, though he blunders into making Alaster M'Donnell a Scotchman, and for his hearty love of the scenery and people he has undertaken to guide us through.

And now, reader, in this fine soft summer, when the heather is blooming, and the sky laughing and crying like a hysterical bride, full of love, where will ye go—through your own land or a stranger's? If you stay at home you can choose your own scenery, and have something to see in the summer, and talk of in the winter, that will make your friends from the Alps and Apennines respectful to you.

Did you propose to study economies among the metayers of Tuscany or the artisans of Belgium, postpone the trip till the summer of '45 or '46, when you may have the passport of an Irish office to get you a welcome, and seek for the state of the linen weavers in the soft hamlets of Ulster—compare the cattle herds of Meath with the safe little holdings of Down and the well-found farms of Tipperary, or investigate the statistics of our fisheries along the rivers and lakes and shores of our island.