vegetation of the bog afforded, turned round to me with a smile of self-satisfaction and said, “One can better suffer themselves a thousand times over, than see one’s poor dumb beast want: it is next, please your Honour, to seeing one’s child in want—God help him who has witnessed both!”      

      * The temperance of an Irish peasant in this respect is almost incredible; many of them are satisfied with one meal a day—none of them exceed two—breakfast and supper; which invariably consists of potatoes, sometimes with, sometimes without milk. One of the rules observed by the Finian Band, an ancient militia of Ireland, was to eat but once in the twenty-four hours.—See Keating’s History of Ireland. 

       “And art thou then (I mentally exclaimed) that intemperate, cruel, idle savage, an Irish peasant? with a heart thus tenderly alive to the finest feelings of humanity; patiently labouring with daily exertion for what can scarcely afford thee a bare subsistence; sustaining the unsatisfied wants of nature without a murmur; nurtured in the hope (the disappointed hope)       of procuring nourishment for her, dearer to thee than thyself, tender of thy animal as thy child, and suffering the consciousness of their wants to absorb all consideration of thy own; and resignation smooths the furrow which affliction has traced upon thy brow, and the national exility of thy character cheers and supports the natural susceptibility of thy heart.” In fact, he was at this moment humming an Irish song by my side.     

       I need not tell you that the first village we arrived at, I furnished him with the means of procuring him a comfortable dinner for himself and Driminduath, and advice and medicine from the village apothecary for his wife. Poor fellow! his surprise and gratitude was expressed in the true       hyperbola of Irish emotion.     

       Meantime I walked on to examine the ruins of an abbey, where in about half an hour I was joined by Murtoch and his patient companion, whom he assured me he had regaled with some hay, as he had himself with a glass of whisky.—What a dinner for a famishing man!     

       “It is a dreadful habit, Murtoch,” said I.     

       “It is so, please your Honour,” replied he, “but then it is meat, drink, and clothes to us, for we forget we have but little of one and less of the other, when 

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