Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

"Yes, because he is MAN. But in following the natural order of things, you at least make him all he is capable of being. Nature is the great legislator. In creating man free, she commanded him to remain so; and re-action, sooner or later, follows the violation of this her first great edict."

[ocr errors]

"This is Naas, your honour,” observed the postillion, addressing himself to the Commodore, at the end of more than an hour's silence, interrupted only by occasional questions, addressed to the driver, relative to the surrounding objects" and there is more barracks, Sir;" and he pointed to a handsome square building, in itself almost a town: "and there's the jail, Sir, an iligant fine building, and a croppy's head spiked on the top of it. I'll engage," he added, opening the door (for Naas was their first stage); -"I'll engage he'll rue the day he saw Vinegar-hill, any how, wherever he is, poor lad."

The Commodore, as he alighted, raised his eyes to the point at which the postillion's whip was directed, and beheld a human head, bleached and shining in the noon-day sun-beam. Such are the objects still exhibited in Ireland, as monuments of times of terror, to feed the vindictive spirit of an irritated people; announcing triumph to one party, and subjection to another. The Commodore turned

away his eyes in disgust, and passed under the fine arch of a ruined monastery of Dominicans; as if it were relief to his feelings to associate with less frightful images of death in its retired cemetery, than to behold them connected with such horrific associations, exposed in the high road of a public thoroughfare, a frightful land-mark for an unfortunate country.

The travellers proceeded on their journey towards the province of Munster, a province peculiarly interesting for its historical recollections, and for

those scenes, alternately wild and pic-. turesque,which attract to its site the footsteps of taste and curiosity, and furnish to foreign artists so many combinations of scenic loveliness. Conversation had been frequently dropped and renewed; and the travellers had remained silent for some miles, when they overtook a chaise, from which Mrs. Magillicuddy formally saluted them. The elder stranger recognizing the green spectacles and chitterling (the most conspicuous parts of her figure) answered her salutation with a bow; the younger turned away his head in disgust.

"An ounce of civet would not sweeten my imagination," he observed, "from the infection communicated to it by that horrible old Irishwoman. Shut up in this chaise with her and her magpie!!-Do you know, this image has haunted me ever since she made the frightful proposal."

The smile of his companion indicated

his consciousness of this avowed prejudice; and the attention of the travellers became again engaged with the passing scene. The various objects which presented themselves to their view, both moral and physical, were seen by each through such mediums as their respective peculiarity of character, taste, and temperament, were likely to produce. The one, rapid in perception, instinctively just in inference, quick, curious, active, inquiring, directed the whole force of his acute, prompt observation, to the people and their localities, as both appeared upon the surface. He turned his eyes to the peasant's hut: it was the model of the "mere Irishman's" hovel, as it rose amidst scenes of desolation during the civil wars of Elizabeth's reign. It was the same described by William Lithgow, the Scotch pilgrim, the noted traveller of that remote day. fabrick erected in a single frame of

"A

'

smoke-torn straw, green, long-pricked turf, and rain-dropping wattles; where, in foul weather, its master can scarcely find a dry part to repose his sky-baptized head upon."

[ocr errors]

He beheld the tenant of this miserable dwelling working on the roads, toiling, in the ditches, labouring in the fields; with an expression of lifeless activity marking his exertions, the result of their deep-felt inadequacy: his gaunt athletic frame was meagre and fleshless, his colour livid, his features sharpened his countenance, readily brightening into smiles of gaiety or derision, expressed the habitual influence of strong dark passions. The quick intelligence of his careless glances mingled with the lurking slyness of distrust, the instinctive self-defence of conscious degradation. He beheld multitudes of half-naked children, the loveliness of their age disfigured by squalid want, and the filthy drapery of extreme

« ZurückWeiter »