attained, and in the depth of judgment which is perhaps their characteristic. Possibly it is to this circumstance, more than any other, that the present difference in political situations between the inhabitants of our two islands is owing. It is usual in England to attach to the inferior Irish a ferocious disposition amounting to barbarity; but this, with other calumnies, of national indolence and obstinate ignorance, of want of principle and want of faith, is unfounded and illiberal. They have many customs which discover uncommon gentleness, kindness, and affection; they are so far from possessing national indolence, that they are constitutionally of an active nature, and capable of the greatest exertions; and of as good dispositions as any nation in the same state of improvement; their generosity, hospitality, and bravery, are proverbial; intelligence and zeal in whatever they do undertake will never be wanting: but it has been the fashion to judge of them by their outcasts. It is certain, that there is not, generally speaking, that active spirit of industry among the inferior orders here which distinguishes the same rank in England. But neither have they, by any means, the same encouragement to awaken their exertions. Were endeavours used for their improvement, and their respective duties obviously made clear, their true interests fully represented by reason and common sense, and their unhappy situations ameliorated by justice and humauity, they would be a people as happy, contented, and prosperous, in a political sense, as in a natural and a national one. They are brave, hospitable, liberal, and ingenious. In this class of society a stranger will see a perfect picture of nature. Pat stands before him, thanks to those who ought long since to have cherished and instructed him "in mudders uakedness." His wit and warmth of heart are his own, his errors and their consequences will not be registered against him. I speak of him in his quiescent state. Ingenious, docile, and of quick conception: It is curious to see with what scanty materials they will work, build their own cabins; and make bridles, stirrups, cruppers, and ropes for almost every domestic purpose, of hay. That they make brave and hardy soldiers is well known. The instruction of the common people is in the lowest state of degradation.-Ditch schools. With an uncommon intellect, more exercised than cultivated, the peasantry have been kept in a state of degradation. Their native urbanity to each other is very pleasing. The poorest cottier is no stranger to the generous feelings of hospitality; his plate of potatoes, his jug of milk, are charitably offered alike to the errand-boy and the mendicant who appears before his door, the stranger has a thousand welcomes: in short, charity throughout the whole island supplies the want of poor laws. The needy traveller sojourns from town to town heedless of his empty pockets. At the different hours of rest, he presents himself at the nearest cabin. He is received with a "caith miel a faltroth" (hundred thousand welcomes), and the largest potatoe in the dish is offered to the stranger by his warm-hearted host and family. What refinements of hospitality can exceed this genuine effusion of the soul? Is it thus among the polished lower English, who scrupulously measure every feature of a traveller with the eye of suspicion, and who have not even civility to offer till they are assured it will not be given away. Without being slaves, in fact, their condition is little better than vassalage, in its most oppressive form. Potatoes aud butter-milk, the food of English hogs, form the degrading repast of the Irish peasant; a little oatmeal is a delicacy; a Sunday bit of pork a great and very rare luxury. Depressed to an equality with the beasts of the field, be shares his sorry meal with his cow, his dog, and his pig, who feed frequently with him, as his equal associates out of the same bowl. This sense of degradation, and a conviction that his wretchedness bas scarcely any thing below it in the scale of human penury, frequently led the unhappy peasant to mingle in those unfortunate tumults which have so frequently and fatally retarded the improvement of his country. With few materials for ingenuity to work on, the peasantry of Ireland are most ingenious, and with adequate inducements laboriously indefatigable. In general their features are good, and frame vigorous; they have wit and sensibility, although all the avenues to useful knowledge are shut against them; they are capable of forgiving injuries, and are generous even to their op pressors; they are sensible of superior merit, and are submissive to it Urbanity in rags and penury-cordially hospitable-ardent for informationsocial and kind-gay and humorous— warm and constant in attachmentsfaithful and incorruptible in their engagements-tenacious of respect-sensible, and easily won by kindness. Such is the peasantry of Ireland.Lord Chesterfield, when Viceroy, said, "God has done every thing for this country, man nothing." Without consulting the arcana of physiognomy, the most inattentive observer of human nature will soon remark, that the Irishman is a very different being from either the Englishman, or his neighbour the Welshman; he will see a hardy race of people, active, civil, and willing to oblige the stranger, and ardently serve him in whatever he can : he will see that nature has not been sparing in the endowments of his abilities, though poverty has denied him the power of improving them by education. A stranger will be struck with the naiveté, and the propriety and singularity of many expressions made use of even by the mendicants. The Irish language is sharp and scutentious (says Stanihurst), and offereth great occasion to quick apothegms, and proper allusions. The Irish are a nation of wits-prompt and poignant-whether from educated or unsophisticated minds; the only difference is the garb it assumes. In short, the stuff is good, and requires only the skill and management of an able hand to form and fashion it-The Welshman, from a deep-rooted jealousy and antipathy to the English, gives the stranger a reluctant answer on the most trivial occasions; whilst the more ingenuous Irishman, with a blessing in his mouth, will run from one part of the king. dom to the other "to serve his honour." Let it be remembered by the philanthropist, that, as long as the ambition of an Irish peasant is continually restricted to a mud cabin-as long as a man, his wife, and a dozen children, can eat, drink, and sleep, in the same miserable hovel with their pigs and their cow, when rich enough to have them as long as these miserable cottiers are fated to live on potatoes all the year round, strangers, mostly, to the indulgence of a bit of staggering bob (slink calf) when in season, or the comforts of a glass of whiskey to keep out the cold, while toiling in the bogs from morning to night-as long as the rights of human beings are denied to this hardy miserable race-Ignorance will lead them into error, aud Bigotry maintain the cause with bloodshed. Like a rough diamond, however, an Irishman conceals beneath this rough exterior, brilliant and valuable qualities. He is by nature endowed with wit, promptitude, and ingenuity—while his heart is open, warm, and generous. Courteous even to servility-with those who treat him kindly-desperate to madness in resenting an injury-hospitable and humane. I found, during the whole of my tour, the Irish peasant, though talkative and curious, yet always civil. Nothing opens their heart more than being free, communicative, and attentive to them; and nothing obliges them so much as giving them an opportunity of serving you. The light of truth guides us by the simplest path to the source of national misery, or national vice; it is with her we trace them to natural or moral causes, to the fatality of climate, or to the errors of legislation. It is by her pure beam we discover, whether the distractions in which nations are so frequently involved, are the physical results of feverish constitutions and maniac brains, or the moral effects of that impulsive principle in human nature, which, sooner or later, inevitably opposes itself to the infringement of those rights which hold their sacred charter froin the voice of Nature's God. Surely it requires no new light to discover, that the happiness of a people constitutes the prosperity of a nation; that neither the improved beauty of her animals, nor the partial luxury of her soil, can secure her internal felicity, or add lustre to her reputation, while circumstances of a peculiar nature, but not irretrievable, repress the energy and limit the faculties of her children; while poverty sallows the cheek of her sons, and discontent sits lowering on their brows; while the bold hand of religious distinction flings its ice upon the ardent feelings of national confederacy; and the baneful influence of party spirit severs those hearts, whose unanimous coalition would form round the green shores of their native island a barrier impregnable to the force of foreign invasion, invulnerable to the arts of foreign seduction. To him, then, whose every energy tends to the promotion of that great end, be the prize of national bonour adjudged round his heart, whose strongest feelings is his country's good, be that medal suspended, which, warm from the mint of national gratitude, bis country's hand presents. For such is the man to whom monarchs should decree their honours; such is the man to whom nations should erect their statues. The great object of interest and attention in Ireland, is the present condition of that vast proportion of the population comprising the lower orders of its community. Education, travel, and intercourse, render the higher pretty much the same in all countries. The middle classes of society in Ireland are much improved. With the progress of refinement the lower orders have undoubtedly advanced, though not pari passu: this is manifested by a derilection of some of their customs, which had a strong tendency to imbrute the observers of them, and many of those superstitious habits which belonged to the darkest ages of bigotry. The Roman Catholics of Ireland are a liberal and enlightened people; nor is it possible they will be now amused with fictitious legends, or pay their adoration to ideal personages. The night of ignorance and superstition is passed, and with it the rustic undiscerning piety of dark ages. A scriptural, rational, and manly religion, is alone calculated for their present improvements in science and manners: this alone will establish an empire in the heart of every thinking and well-disposed man, which no revolution will be able to shake. Without guidance, that native generosity, warmth of heart, and fire of imagination, are liable, upon being agitated, to break out into impetuosity and excesses, as they unfortunately did in those scenes, which now it may be confidently expected will have no return. That guidance is education. Education has never beamed upon the poor Irishman; sentiments of honour have never been in stilled into him; and a spirit of just and social pride, improvement and enterprize, have never opened upon him. The poor Irishman looks around him, and sees a frightful void between him and those who, in well regulated communities, ought to be separated from each other only by those gentle shades of colouring that unite the brown russet to the imperial purple. But what good, it will be asked, can arise, uay by how much the more do you not increase his wretchedness, if you improve his mind without improving his condition? To this the history of mankind furnishes a prompt and powerful answer—that situation is subservient to mind. If his mind were cultivated, it would lead to his exploring the means of improving the soil, of practising trade, or pursuing with additional zeal and increased knowledge some occupation by which society is to be benefitted: he would combine, compare, he would raise himself in the scale of society; he would be proud and confident in, and would enjoy the situation he might attain; his children would be enlightened more, and more valuable to community. Upon the subject of ameliorating the condition of the poor in Ireland much has been said, much written, and but little done. The project is pregnant with difficulty, but is so interwoven with our best feelings, and wishes for the welfare of our kindred and our country, that he who can offer but one serviceable thought upon such a subject, or excite others to consider it, is powerfully impelled to produce the result of his observation or reflection; and will, at least, be heard with attention. The following brief remarks arise from what I saw, and have in part described, and what I heard from accurate and intelligent sources of information in Ireland, where I had the pleasure of mingling with many distinguished men, who were more agreed in paying those courteous attentious to a stranger, which so eminently distinguish Irishmen, than in their opinions respecting the interests of their own country. I particularly sought the society of opposite parties, because the collision of opinion fre quently elicits a spark by which a subject is afterwards more or less illuminated. One party was for repressing the Catholics, and comparing them to nettles, which never sting but when they are gently touched; the other was favourable to every mild indulgence, and was anxious to ameliorate the condition of the poor, by detaching the rising generation from the faith of their fathers, each aimed, I am confident, at the good of their country; and neither ought to be the object of animadversion. If I were not naturally, as well as upon principle, an enemy to coercion and intolerance as reforming instruments, the mere circumstance of their having been tried with success would remove me from the side of their partizans. Many are the instances in the history of the lower orders of the Irish people, when prompted by that sensibility which Providence has, either in its bounty or anger (for to me it is questionable), largely bestowed upon them, and by a rude notion of retributive justice, they have assumed the law into their own hands, and carved out the measure of their own justice. Hence those restless insurrectional associations, denominated white boys, oak boys, steel boys, peep-o'-day boys, and others, and the occasional attempts which have been made, by the summary process of force, to regain possession of estates which, if they had not been confiscated about a century or two back, would have belonged by hereditary right to those who sought these means to repossess them. What but deplorabic ignorance, or desperate rashness, could have urged men to act in this manner, and could have veiled from their sight the hopeless folly and madness of such an enterprize. The ill-conducted police in many of the country towns in Ireland is much to be regretted. Casual bounty, to the numberless miserable wretches who go about the streets, can afford but a transient redress. The sight of them shocks the feelings, and is a stain on national humanity. It lies in the jurisdiction of the magistracy to render that grievous sight, and that inefficient bounty, unnecessary, by examining into the causes of that wretchedness which so frequently appeals to it; and by either endeavouring to redress the grievance, or punish the imposition, which equally fling an odium on the character of that country whose negligent police has so long slumbered over both. The establishment of manufactories in the remote parts of Ireland, would undoubtedly be the most effectual check to the progress of mendicancy; but can there be no means adopted as a medium between the great extreme of idle and most filthy poverty, and affluent industry. Heaven never committed to any go. verament the care of a country upon which she has been more prodigally bountiful for independent of the ge nius of the people, Ireland throughout rests upon a bed of the richest manure : towards the sea, she has sand, shells, and weed: inland she abounds with lime-stone gravel, limestone marl, and other natural mauures: her rivers and surrounding seas are all propitious to commerce, and are open to all quarters of the world. The Shannon, the Liffey,. the Lee, the Suir, the Bann, the Boyne, the Blackwater, and other rivers; her creeks, her numerous, vast, and beautiful lakes, abound with fish of various descriptions, and with little assistance from the hands of man can be formed into canals, which might easily unite the centre with the extremities of the kingdom; upon the seas which surround her, vessels from the most distant regions can approach her coasts in the most tempestuous weather with safety: within a circuit of seven hundred and fifty miles, it has been estimated she possesses sixty-six secure harbours. The fertility of the coun try, with a slender exception, is uncommonly luxuriant; her climate is soft and salubrious; her bogs demonstrate her former consequence, and can be, and are, rapidly reclaiming an inexhaustible stratum of coal is ready to supply its turf: aud her peasantry, without having tasted much of happiness and prosperity, possess all the es sential qualities by which both are de served, and can be enjoyed and pro moted. (To be continued.) FRAGMENTA. BEING THOUGHTS, OBSERVATIONS, REFLECTIONS, AND CRITICISMS, WITH ANECDOTES AND CHARACTERS ANCIENT AND MODERN. No. XXV. WOMEN. HE ladies were no great favourites THE of the Greek comic poets - Will they pardon a translation of an extract from a comedy of Eubulus, not very remarkable for its gallantry. May Jove confound me, if my mind It appears from Seneca, that the ancient Egyptians, in the disposition which they allotted to the genders of their nouns, paid a singular and delicate compliment to the fair sex. In the four elements, beginning with water: they appointed the ocean, as a rough boisterous existence, to the male sex; but streams and fountains they left to the more gentle females. As to earth, they made rocks and stones male, but arable and meadow lands female. Air they divided thus: to the masculine geuder, rough winds and hurricanes of every kind; to the female, the sky and the zephyrs. Fire, when of a consuming nature, they made male, but artificial and harmless flames they consigned to the feminine class. Not so the Romans. They made a most awkward, and, in some instances, peculiarly ridiculous, distribution of genders. Indeed, even the poets of that celebrated nation seem to have been little disposed to shew any species of gallantry to a sex, an attachment to which, probably, caused the rise and existence of their art. The women of Plautus are almost uniformly bad. Those in Terence are little better; and the only one among them who had done a good action, begs pardon of her husband, as being convinced of her own criminality in doing it. "Mi Chreme, peccavi! Fateor Vincor."* TERENT. HEAUT. Virgil, far from shewing the least respect to the female sex, has treated them (even according to his panegyrist Dryden) in an unjust unmanly style. He has falsified both the era and the character of Dido, in order to render her odious and contemptible. He makes Queen Amata turbulent and tipling and the Princess Lavinia undutiful and unbelieving. Dryden adds, "that she looks a little flicking after Turnus." His goddesses are no better than his mortals: Juno is always in a passion; and surely (as Dryden ob serves) Venus is too impudently presuming in expecting that her husband should make armour for his wife's bastard. Camilla is the only female of whom the poet begins to speak well, but soon dashes down her character, by calling her, "Aspera," and "Horrenda Virgo;" which, like Bojardo's, "Gatta, fiera, cruda, dispiettata," applied to Marfisa, conveys a meaning as distant from any thing amiable as words can paint. As to Horace, it would puzzle any one to find one woman of character* spoken of in any part of his poems. His ladies are all Chloes, Lydes, Lydias, and Cynaras: their characters appear to have been equally light, and most of them seem to have added the worship of Bacchus to that of Cupid. He treats them accordingly, and recommends it to one of them to take care lest her keeper, in a fit of jealousy, should spoil her fashionable cap. One tolerably modest woman, indeed, Neobule, he seems to have known: but his idea of her delicacy does not prevent him from condoling with her on the severity of her uncle, who will neither permit her to entertain a lover, nor to wash away her cares with rosy wine. Juvenal need not be mentioned; he avows himself scarcely to have even heard of a modest woman since the golden age. The prose writers of the Augustan era seem to have favoured the sex no more than the poets; and Seneca's account of the ladies of his time is at least as bitter as the sixth satire of Juvenal. There was published at Leyden (about the year 1754) æSyriac translation, with a Latin version, of two epistles, said to be written by St. Clement of Rome, the disciple of St. Peter the Apostle, but much more probably the production of some bigotted monk of the early ages, than of an almost immediate successor of Jesus Christ. As a specimen of his work, the following extract will probably be thought sufficient. He speaks to his brethren as to the pro The compliment paid to Livia, the wife of Augustus, excepted, whom he calls, "Unico, gaudens mulier marito :" "The lady contented with one husband." |