filthy creatures crept from beneath the dark roofs of their earthy dwellings, to solicit the charity of those who passed above them. One from among the number, who had been less alert in picking up some scattered small change, flung among them by the gentlemen, continued to run beside them, begging for an "halfpenny to buy bread." It was a little shivering, halfnaked girl, pretty, but filthy and emaciated. As the guide came up, she retreated, and a significant glance passed between them, which drove her at once back to her den; but not before she had picked up a silver sixpence flung after her. "God bless your honor," said the guide, in a tremulous voice: "that's a greater charity than you think, Sir." "This is all very bad," said Mr. De Vere, "disgustingly bad. Short of actual offensive disgust, affecting the health and organs, I have, myself, no positive objection to suburbian wretchedness. There is sometimes a sort of poetical misery in such scenes, very affective to contemplate; not altogether so coarse and squalid as Crabbe's Borough Scenery, but a species of picturesque wretchedness, that has its merit-rags well draped, misery well chiselled, affording a study for the painter's pencil, or a model to the poet's eye." "But who," asked the Commodore with emphasis, 66 can see such wretchedness as this, with a man's eye, and not feel it with a man's heart. The mind starts beyond the mere impulse of sympathy here; it rushes at once from the effect to the cause. Indignation usurps the seat of pity, and the spirit rests upon those who have afflicted, not on those who suffer." "Yes, but even so, you go but half-way. All is evil in political institutes; because all is bad in moral, as all is disgusting in physical nature. All realities are evil, and the whole system, as we know it, but a fortuitous combination of corrupting particles : the brightest specks, the most lucent points, but the shining glitter of putrescency, and even "The brave o'erhanging firmament, The majestic roof, fretted with golden fires, "This is Merrion Square, plaze your honor," interrupted the guide, coming forward, "where the quality lives. And there's* Sir John's fountain, your honor. So beautiful! and cost a power! and would'nt get lave to build a taste Sir J., afterwards Lord de B-. It is curious to observe, that the lowest classes of the population of Dublin are perfectly ac quainted with the jobbing systems, under, which all public transactions are effected in that me. tropolis: they also discuss them with a mixture of humour and anger that is extremely characteristic. of them, only he declared to God, and upon his honour, he never would allow a thimblefull of water to come out of them, in respect of a sup never going in. And there they are to this day, a great job, by Jagers; why would'nt they?" The gentlemen, in their way to their hotel, in Sackville Street, now passed through that line of the Irish metropolis, which brings within the compass of a coup d'œil some of the noblest public edifices and spacious streets to be found in the most leading cities of Europe. All, however, was still, silent, and void. The guide, walking parallel to the travellers, with his eye furtively glancing on them, evidently watched the effect which the beauty of his native city (a beauty of which he was singularly proud) made upon their minds: and when they had reached that imposing area, which includes so much of the architectural elegance and social bustle of Dublin, the area flanked by its silent senate-house, and commanded by its venerable university, he paused, as if from weariness, leaned his burthen against the college ballustrade, and drew upon the attention of the strangers (who also voluntarily halted to look around them), by observing, as he pointed to the right, "That's the ould parliament-house, Sir. Why, then, there was grate work going on there oncet, quiet and aisy as it stands now, the cratur! grate work shure enough! and there's the very lamp-post I climbed up the night of the UNION. Och! then you'd think the murther of the world was in it; and so it was, shure enough, -that's of Ireland, your honor; God help her. And there we were, from light to light, and long after, watching, aye, and praying too, and grate pelting, shurely, when they came out, the thieves that sould us fairly. And troth, if we'd have known as much |