Part 2

"I had thought, among a people so imaginative as the Irish, to have seen some touch of fancy in dress, if ever so poor--a bit of ribbon on the women's caps, or a jaunty cock of the 'boy's' tile, or his jacket or coat worn shapely and with an air. But dirty cloaks, ribbonless caps, uncombed hair, and not even a little straw taken from the cart and put under them when they sat on the dirty side-walk, were universal symptoms that left no room for belief in the existence of any vanity whatsoever in the women; many of them of an age, too, when such fancies are supposed to be universal to the sex. The men could scarce be less ornamental in their exteriors; but the dirty sugar-loaf hat, with a shapeless rim, and a twine around it to hold a pipe; the coat thrown over the shoulders, with the sleeves hanging behind; the shoes mended by a wisp of straw stuffed into the holes, and their faces and bare breasts nearly as dirty as their feet, were alike the uniform of old and young. Still those who were not bargaining were laughing, and even in our flourishing canter through the market I had time to make up my mind, that if they had taken a farewell of vanity, they had not of fun."

Again we say, men of Belfast, what think you of that? Did you ever see yourselves in this manner? If so, we must say that it is more than we ever did, though we have spent many a gay week in your noble, thriving, and most industrious town. "Neither a bit of ribbon on the women's caps, nor a jaunty cock of the boy's tile;" no, "but the dirty sugar-loaf hat, with a shapeless rim, and a twine round it to hold a pipe; and the shoes mended by a wisp of straw stuffed into the holes," &c. This certainly flogs; and we must look more attentively to the Belfastians in future.

Mr Willis proceeds to the hotel called the Donegal Arms, which he allows is a handsome house, in a broad and handsome street; and then he adds, "But I could not help pointing out to my companion the line of soiled polish at the height of a man's shoulder on every wall and doorpost within sight, showing, with the plainness of a high-water mark, the average height as well as the prevailing habit of the people. We certainly have not yet found time to acquire _that_ polish in America [most civilized people!]; and if we must wait till the working classes find time to lean, it will be a century or two at least before we can show as polished an hotel as the Donegal Arms at Belfast, or (at that particular line above the side walk) as polished a city altogether." Such is Mr Willis's description of the Gresham's Hotel of Belfast, a house which we had foolishly thought was remarkable for its cleanliness, order, and good accommodation. Of course he got a miserable dinner of "unornamented chops and potatoes," after which he proceeded to visit the lions of Belfast. But we cannot follow him in all his wanderings, though he tells us many things that are not a little amusing, as, for instance, that the houses have a _noseless_ and flattened aspect; that he saw Dubufe's pictures of Adam and Eve, and sagaciously remarks how curious it is to observe how particularly clean they are (that is, Adam and Eve) before they sinned, and how very dingy after--being dirtied by their fall; and, what was very agreeable to him, the exhibitor of the pictures actually called him by name, having remembered seeing the great penciller in America! After having read the advertisements stuck on every wall, of "vessels bound to New York," and having "_done_ that end of the town," he returned towards the inn. He then sallied out again to _do_ the other end, and tells us with great satisfaction of a successful petty larceny of a very sentimental kind which he achieved in the Botanical Gardens--namely, plucking a _heart's-ease_, as an expressive remembrance of his visit--"in spite of a cautionary placard, and the keeper standing under the porch and looking on." After this feat he returned to the inn, and very wisely went to bed. "A bare-footed damsel, with very pink heels"--recollect, reader, that this was in the Donegal Arms--"was

'My grim chamberlain, Who lighted me to bed:'

and in some fear of oversleeping the hour for the coach in the morning, I reiterated, and 'sealed with a silver token,' my request to be waked at six. Fortunately for a person who possesses Sancho's 'alacrity at sleep,' the noise of a coach rattling over the pavement woke me just in time to save my coffee and my place. I returned to my chamber the moment before mounting the coach for something I had forgotten, and as the clock was striking _eight_, the faithful damsel knocked at my door and informed me that it was _past six_."

Mr Willis is a fortunate traveller. Often as we have stopped at the Donegal Arms, we never had the good fortune to see the pink heels or bare legs of a chambermaid; and the moral economy of the house must be greatly changed also, when they allow the gentlemen to be called by the said bare-legged damsels; a duty which, in our visits at it and all other respectable hotels, always devolved on that useful personage called Boots. We do not think, however, that this change of the system--leaving the calling of the gentlemen to the chambermaids--would work well, except in the case of American travellers. Still, however, as he says, he was in time, and started off--no longer in St Patrick's track, but on King William's route to the battle of the Boyne--and arrives in Drogheda to dinner. He tells us that the country is very bare of wood, and then proceeds in the following words to describe the habitations.

"But what shall I say of the _human habitations_ in this (so called) most thriving and best-conditioned quarter of Ireland? If I had not seen every second face at a hovel-door with a smile on it, and heard laughing and begging in the same breath everywhere, I should think here were human beings abandoned by their Maker. Many of the dwellings I saw upon the roadside looked to me like the abodes of extinguished hope--forgotten instincts--grovelling, despairing, nay, almost idiotic wretchedness. I did not know there were such sights in the world. I did not know that men and women, upright, and made in God's image, could live in styes, like swine, _with_ swine--sitting, lying down, cooking and eating in such filth as all brute animals, save the one 'unclean,' revolt from and avoid. The extraordinary part of it, too, is, that it seems almost altogether the result of choice. I scarce saw one hovel, the mud-floor of which was not excavated several inches _below_ the ground-level without; and as there is no sill, or raised threshold, there is no bar, I will not say to the water, but to the liquid filth that oozes to its lower reservoir within. A few miles from Drogheda, I pointed out to my companions a woman sitting in a hovel at work, with the muddy water up to her ancles, and an enormous hog scratching himself against her knee. These disgusting animals were everywhere walking in and out of the hovels at pleasure, jostling aside the half-naked children, or wallowing in the wash, outside or in--the best-conditioned and most privileged inmates, indeed, of every habitation. All this, of course, is matter of choice, and so is the offal-heap, situated, in almost every instance, directly before the door, and draining its putrid mass into the hollow, under the peasant's table. Yet mirth _does_ live in these places--people _do_ smile on you from these squalid abodes of wretchedness--the rose of health _does_ show itself upon the cheeks of children, whose cradle is a dung-heap, and whose play-fellows are hogs! And of the beings who live thus, courage, wit, and quenchless love of liberty, are the undenied and universal characteristics. Truly, that mysterious law of nature by which corruption paints the rose and feeds the fragrant cup of the lily, is not without its similitude! Who shall say what is clean, when the back of the most loathsome of reptiles turns out, on examination, more beautiful than the butterfly? Who shall say what extremes may not meet, when, amid the filth of an Irish hovel, spring, like flowers, out of ordure, the graces of a prince in his palace?"

All this, the reader will remark, was seen from the top of a stage-coach on a drenching wet day! What wonderful powers of observation he must have! The penciller next treats us to a song, descriptive of an Irish cabin, which he tells us was sung for him by one of the most beautiful women he saw in Ireland. His memorable arrival in Drogheda is thus described:--

"As we drove into Drogheda, we entered a crowd, which I can only describe as suggesting the idea of a miraculous advent of rags. It was market-day, and the streets were so thronged that you could scarce see the pavement, except under the feet of the horses; and the public square was a sea of tatters. Here and all over Ireland I could but wonder where and how these rent and frittered habiliments had gone through the preparatory stages of wear and tear. There were no degrees--nothing above rags to be seen in coat or petticoat, waistcoat or breeches, cloak or shirt. Even the hats and shoes were in rags; not a whole covering, even of the coarsest material, was to be detected on a thousand backs about us: nothing shabby, nothing threadbare, nothing mended, except here and there a hole in a beggar's coat, stuffed with straw. Who can give me the genealogy of Irish rags? Who took the gloss from these coats, once broadcloth? who wore them? who tore them? who sold them to the Jews? (for, by the way, Irish rags are fine rags, seldom frieze or fustian). How came the tatters of the entire world, in short, assembled in Ireland? for if, as it would seem, they have all descended from the backs of gentlemen, the entire world must contribute to maintain the supply."

Readers, such of you as have been in Drogheda, did you ever see any thing like this? People of Drogheda, do you recognise yourselves in this picture here drawn of you? We are sure you cannot. But he is not done with you yet. He had been rather unlucky in the pursuit of his favourite subjects for study in Belfast--namely, the beggars; but this disappointment was atoned for in Drogheda. He describes them thus:--

"I had been rather surprised at the scarcity of beggars in Belfast, but the beggary of Drogheda fully came up to the travellers' descriptions. They were of every possible variety. At the first turn the coach made in the town, we were very near running over a blind man, who knelt in the liquid mud of the gutter (the calves of his legs quite covered by the pool, and only his heels appearing above), and held up in his hands the naked and footless stumps of a boy's legs. The child sat in a wooden box, with his back against the man's breast, and ate away very unconcernedly at a loaf of bread, while the blind exhibitor turned his face up to the sky, and, waving the stumps slightly from side to side, kept up a vociferation for charity that was heard above all the turmoil of the market place. When we stopped to change horses, the entire population, as deep as they could stand, at least with any chance of being heard, held out their hands, and in every conceivable tone and mode of arresting the attention, implored charity. The sight was awful: old age in shapes so hideous, I should think the most horrible nightmare never had conceived. The rain poured down upon their tangled and uncovered heads, seaming, with its cleansing torrents, faces so hollow, so degraded in expression, and, withal, so clotted with filth and neglect, that they seemed like features of which the very owners had long lost, not only care, but consciousness and remembrance; as if, in the horrors of want and idiotcy, they had anticipated the corrupting apathy of the grave, and abandoned every thing except the hunger which gnawed them into memory of existence. The feeble blows and palsied fighting of these hag-like spectres for the pence thrown to them from the coach, and the howling, harsh, and unnatural voices in which they imprecated curses on each other in the fury of the struggle, have left a remembrance in my mind, which deepens immeasurably my fancied _nadir_ of human abandonment and degradation. God's image so blasted, so defiled, so sunk below the beasts that perish, I would not have believed was to be found in the same world with _hope_."

But we, and our readers too, have probably had enough of Mr Willis's "Pencillings by the Way" in Ireland--pencillings which would seem to have been sketched with a material to which he is apparently very partial, namely, dirt. And now, in return for the favour which this gentleman and his coadjutor have conferred upon us, by their exertions to enable us to improve our acquaintance with ourselves, we shall communicate our own opinion of them, and hope they will be equally benefited by the knowledge. We think, then, that they are a pair of gentlemen who must have a wonderfully good opinion of themselves, and that not altogether without reason, inasmuch as they possess in common one quality, which shall be nameless, but in which not even we, natives of the Emerald Isle as we are, can pretend to compete with them. We do not think that there are any two Irishmen living, who would travel into a foreign country to represent its scenery like the one, or sketch the manners and characteristics of its inhabitants like the other, and expect that they should be rewarded by the purchase of their works by that people or in that country. Mr Bartlett is but an indifferent artist, unacquainted even with some of the rudiments of his art, who has acquired the trade-knack of making pretty pictures by imitating the works of others, and by a total disregard of the real features of the scenes which he undertakes to depict. Mr Willis is a more accomplished sketcher in his line; and his delineations might be of value, if his conceited ambition to produce effect did not continually mar whatever intrinsic worth they might otherwise possess; but as it is, he is little better than a pert and flippant caricaturist. Neither one nor the other of these gentlemen, in short, would seem qualified for the task which they have so daringly undertaken; and we think it would have been well, if, before they resolved upon going through with it, they had been mindful of the Eastern proverb, "A lie, though it promise good, will do thee harm, and truth will do thee good at the last." Applying this to ourselves as critics, we feel in conclusion bound to acknowledge that the prints in this work, considered as engravings, are deserving of the highest praise.

X. Y.

SUNRISE.

The night is past, And the mists are fast Receding before the morning blast; But still the light Of the Moon is bright, As reluctant she yields to the Sun his right; And the morning star Appears, afar, To announce the approach of Aurora's car.

The silver sea Yet seems to be As calm as the rest of infancy; And the mountain steep Is still in the deep Profound repose of a giant's sleep; And the gurgling rill, That is never still, Seems to double its noise to arouse the hill.

The Moon in the west Now sinks to rest, And the night-bird withdraws to its ivied nest In yon antique tower, Which shows how the power And pride of man pass away in an hour; And the carol--hark! Of the early lark, Proclaims the Sun to the dell still dark.

A yellow ray, As if from the spray Of the ocean, springs with the stars to play; But they shrink away, As afraid to stay, And leave the rude beam to disport as it may; And, one by one, They all have gone, And the sky is bright where they lately shone.

The surges roar On the sounding shore, As if to awaken the mountain hoar; But the morning light Has just touched the height Of his topmost crag, and awaked his sight, And twitched away, In mirthful play, His dew-soaked nightcap of misty grey.

See yon green wood That o'erhangs the flood Of that beautiful river; it seems as it would Fain stoop to greet The water sweet, Which coquettishly glides away, as fleet As a mountain fay, In fairy play, And to the great ocean runs away.

Now the zenith is white With a doubtful light, That is dulled with the dregs of the recent night; But 'tis fast giving way To the saffron ray, That can only be seen at dawn of day; And this is pushed on By the golden one Which precedes the car of the glorious Sun.

Now, the fearful pride Of the mountain's side, Rocks and chasms and cliffs one by one are descried; And the brightening light Descends the height, With majestic step, to the plain now bright; And the golden vest Which adorns the east, Sends its searching rays to the dark, sullen west.

The carpet of gold O'er his path's now unrolled, And all Nature's expectant its king to behold-- And see! the first gem, The most brilliant of them That flash in the front of his diadem; And--majestic--slow, He uprises now, O'er rejoicing worlds, his radiant brow!

OLD PROVERBS.

"THERE'S LUCK IN LEISURE."

"DELAYS ARE DANGEROUS."

"James Scanlan wants to see you, sir. I told him you were hardly done dinner, but he begged me to let you know he is waiting."

"Dear me," said my father, "what can he want? Show him in, Carey.--Well, James, what is the matter?"

"Oh! your honour, sir, won't you come see my poor father? He'll speak to you, but we can't get a word from him. He's dying of grief, my mother is so bad."

"Your mother, James!--what has happened her?"

"She took a heavy cold, sir, on Friday last, from a wetting she got going to Cashel; and when she came home, she took to her bed, and it's worse and worse she has got ever since, and at last she began to rave this morning; and as Dr M'Carthy was going past to the dispensary, Pat called him in; and when he looked at her, he just shook his head and said he'd send her something, but that we must be prepared for any thing that might happen. Well, sir, when my father heard that, he went and sat down by the bedside, and taking my mother's hand in his, says he, 'Ah, then, Mary, a-cushla-machree, am I going to lose you? Are you going from me? Did I ever think I'd see this day? Ah, Mary, avourneen, sure you won't leave me?' And from that to this he has never stirred, nor spoken, nor taken the least notice of any one--not even of me--not even of me."

The poor fellow burst into a flood of tears.

In a few minutes I was standing with my father by the bedside of Mrs Scanlan. She was quite unconscious of what was passing around. Her husband, who was my father's principal tenant, and a substantial farmer, sat as his eldest and favourite son had described; and although the object of my father's visit was to rouse him from his lethargy, it was long ere he addressed himself to the task. It seemed almost sacrilegious to disturb such hallowed grief.

At length he laid his hand upon Scanlan's shoulder. "Come, James," said he, "look up, man; don't be so utterly cast down. You know the old saying, 'Whilst there's life, there's hope.'"

"It's kind of your honour to try and comfort me; but yours was always the good heart, and the kind one, and you never made the sight of your sunny face a compliment. But it's no use--there's no hope. The death's on her handsome countenance."

He groaned deeply, and rocked himself backwards and forwards.

"James," said my father, "we must be resigned to the will of God, but we need not make ourselves miserable by anticipating evils."

"Your honour was but a slip of a gossoon when you danced at the bright girl's wedding, and you're come now in time to see the last of the old woman--the old woman, the old woman," repeated he, as if something struck him in the sound of the words as strange. "Two-and-forty is not old, but they called her 'the old woman' since the boys began to grow up. But she never grew old to me; she's the same now that she was the first evening I told her, that she was the only treasure on the face of the earth that my heart coveted. Only, much as I loved her then, I love her more now. Oh! Mary, Mary, pulse of my heart, would to God I could die before you!"

The younger son Pat, his mother's favourite, now entered the room in a state of pitiable excitement. He had been at the dispensary to procure the medicine prescribed by the doctor, and to his imagination every person and every thing seemed to have conspired to delay him, whilst the lookers on deemed his haste almost superhuman.

He immediately attempted to administer the draught he had brought, but his mother could not be made to understand what was wanted of her; and at length, as if teased by his importunities, she suddenly dashed the cup of medicine from her.

The look of unutterable anguish with which he regarded her, as she rejected and destroyed that upon the taking of which depended the last hope, was indescribable.

The almost fierceness of his haste, which he now saw had been utterly useless, had flushed his cheek and lighted up his countenance, and he stood with his hands clasped, and raised as if in prayer, with firmly shut lips, and his eyes, in which you could view the transition from eager hope to utter despair, fixed upon her face, like a being that was changing into stone.

At the other side of the bed was his father, who had resumed his former attitude, and beside him stood his eldest son, whose utterly wretched countenance, alternating from one parent to the other, showed that he suffered that lowest state of misery, which anticipates still further and greater woe as a consequence from that which overwhelms at present.

My father left the room. I looked upon the group one instant. I felt that I could have resigned the possession of worlds to be permitted the luxury of raising the load of grief from those afflicted hearts; but it could not be, and I retired to relieve my surcharged feelings in solitude.

Ere morning dawned, nature had received another instalment of her debt.

My father and I attended the funeral, and were surprised at the apparent fortitude of Mr Scanlan. We wished to bring him with us to the Hall after the sad ceremony, but he would not come. We then accompanied him to his own house. As we entered, I glanced at him: he was ghastly pale. He looked slowly round, fixed his eyes one moment on the countenance of his younger son, another on the elder, and sank upon a chair.

Since the period of which I now write, I have often witnessed the closing scene of mortality, and various are the opinions I have heard, as to which point of time, between the moment of death and the first appearance abroad of the survivors in their mourning apparel, is the saddest, the most afflicting, or the most trying--whether the moment of dissolution, the first appearance of the undertaker, the laying out in the apparel of death, the bringing of the coffin, the last frantic kiss and look, the screwing down, the carrying out, the dull thud of the clay upon the coffin lid. Oh! think not that I am coolly writing this, that I am probing with the surgeon's calmness the deep, the sensitive (with many bleeding) wounds that death has given.