was worse, the steward was going to turn us out of our cabin, because I had not worked out the rent with him as usual, and not a potatoe had I for the children; besides finding my wife and two boys in a fever: the boys got well, but my poor wife has been decaying away ever since; so I was fain to sell my poor Driminduath here, which was left me by my gossip, in order to pay my rent and get some nourishment for my poor woman, who I believe is just weak at heart for the want of it; and so, as I was after telling your Honour, I left home yesterday for a fair twenty-five good miles off, but my poor Driminduath has got such bad usage of late, and was in such sad plight, that nobody would bid nothing for her, and so we are both returning home as we went, with full hearts and empty stomachs.”      

      * It is well known that within these last thirty years the Connaught peasant laboured for threepence a day and two meals of potatoes and milk, and four pence when he maintained himself; while in Leinster the harvest hire rose from eight pence to a shilling. Riding out one day near the village of Castletown Delvin, in Westmeath, in company with the younger branches of the respectable family of the F——ns, of that county, we observed two young men lying at a little distance from each other in a dry ditch, with some lighted turf burning near them; they both seemed on the verge of eternity, and we learned from a peasant who was passing, that they were Connaught men who had come to Leinster to work; that they had been disappointed, and owing to want and fatigue, had been first attacked with ague and then with fevers of so fatal a nature, that no one would suffer them to remain in their cabins: owing to the benevolent exertions of my young friends, we however found an asylum for these unfortunates, and had the happiness of seeing them return comparatively well and happy to their native province. 

       This was uttered with an air of despondency that touched my very soul, and I involuntarily presented him some sea biscuit I had in my pocket. He thanked me, and carelessly added, “that it was the first morsel he had tasted for twenty-four hours; * not,” said he, “but I can fast with any one, and well it is for me I can.” He continued brushing an intrusive tear from his eye; and the next moment whistling a lively air, he advanced to his cow, talking to her in Irish, in a soothing tone, and presenting her with such wild flowers and blades of grass as the scanty 

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