PURITY OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE.

323

on the introduction of Christianity, so did the oldest Irish Christianity and its monuments on the subsequent introduction of Romanism; and so, likewise, did the Roman Catholic churches and institutions wear away in the presence of Protestantism. Catholicism is now zealously striving again to raise itself. Should

it succeed in this, then the independent Irish Christianity may again work itself forth from under the domination of Roman Catholicism, and separate from Italy. Druidism and bardism alone are buried irrestorably beneath the ruins of centuries, and can scarcely be born again.

My Irish friend assured me, that it is a peculiarity of the old Irish language, that it has no jargon or vulgar dialect. Every one, even the lowest and most ignorant, speaks it as purely and grammatically as the best Irish scholar. With the English language this cannot be the case; because this Norman-Saxon mixture has been forced upon a number of subjugated and conquered races. The Irish, the Welsh, the Cornish, the Highlanders of Scotland, all must learn English and speak it with their own peculiar dialect. The English dialects are therefore of quite a different character from our German dialects. They are nothing more than corruptions and perversions of a language in the mouths of foreigners; whilst our German dialects are original offshoots of the same language, each of which had, and still has, its own organic life, its own literature and popular poetry, its own strength and beauty.

One of the company assured me that he possessed hundreds of beautiful old songs and poems in manuscript, which had long been hereditary in his family, and not a single one of which had ever been printed. He, like all Irishmen with whom one speaks on this subject, was of opinion that the specimen of old Irish or Ossianic poetry which Macpherson has given us, is partly a very perverted, and partly a very insufficient one, and that his poems give no correct idea of the great beauty and the extraordinary richness of the national well-springs from which they were drawn. I believe all this quite readily; nay, it is more than probable: but then the question presents itself why does not some genuine, sincere, and truth-loving Irish Macpherson arise, to collect these beautiful emanations of Irish poesy, and translate them into one of the well-known European languages, in order in this way to save at least whatever can be saved of them in another language? The manuscripts, carefully as families preserve them as precious heir-looms, are daily becoming less numerous. The memory of the people, faithful and strong as it may be, without doubt loses every year more and more of the beautiful old verses. And besides,

the number of those who can value these verses, enjoy, and learn them, is visibly growing smaller; for the English language is spreading with strides ever increasing in rapidity, while the Irish is retiring before it into the more remote wilds.

The Irish continually assert that their poems are untranslatable, and that all their beauty would be destroyed by translation, —just as a beautiful flower would lose its distinctive character by being painted a different colour. It is, no doubt, difficult to transfer all the fragrance of poetry that lies in verses and words into another language; but Macpherson has shown how the world can be delighted with an imitation, which yet retains much of the original. They should be at least collected and printed in the Irish language.

Social pleasures, such as those with which my Irish friends adorned our evening, are the most delightful which a traveller can enjoy. In by-gone times they were much the custom, but have now long died away. Our pleasures of more recent invention are also here, in this part of the world, on the decrease, partly no doubt to the delight of the friends of intellectual refinement and cultivation. Thus, public balls are every day becoming more and more out of fashion. The race balls are almost the only ones now known; and a quadrille, to the simple music of the pianoforte, satisfies all. In like manner, cards are getting more and more into disuse. No longer than ten years ago, a card-table was regularly provided for the company; but now cards are almost entirely confined to the common people. These are really remarkable, and, at least as to cards, pretty general phenomena throughout Europe. Conversation is every where taking the place of card-playing, so destructive both to mind and pleasure; and should an historian ever write the history of their extension and decline, they can never be sufficiently chastised by him.

CHAPTER XXXII

FROM DROGHEDA TO BELFAST.

SCHOOL OF THE MORAVIAN BRETHREN-"A NOBLE PURSUIT "-DECLINE OF THE NOBLE PURSUIT-STAGE-COACH HORSES-IRISH CLIMATE-THE COUNTY OF LOUTH-IRISH TINKERS-CONTRASTS-ULSTER AND CROMWELL-BORDERS OF ULSTER-ERIN'S INTERCOURSE WITH ALBION NEWRY-FLAX AND LINEN TRADE-ADVANTAGES OF THE LINEN TRADE -CONTEST BETWEEN THE IRISH AND ENGLISH LINEN MANUFACTURES -LITTLE NORTHERN TOWNS-ARRIVAL AT BELFAST.

My kind friend in Drogheda, to whom I am indebted for most of what I saw there, was the proprietor of an excellent private school, which I took an opportunity of visiting. The same friend told me of another distinguished school, which was founded at Grace Hill, not far from Drogheda, by the Moravian brethren, and is said to be one of the largest and best establishments of the kind in Ireland. Unfortunately I had no time to devote any attention to this interesting institution; and on the following day I took my usual seat on a stage-coach-namely, an outside one, beside the coachman.

This place beside the coachman is always the most comfortable, and consequently the most sought after, of all outside places on English coaches, the coachman being a much more important personage than a passenger, and, of course, far better taken care of. Besides, it is generally provided with a cushion, while the other outside places are only bare wooden benches. Then the coachman has a leather apron, which he buckles before him as a protection against rain and cold, and usually shares with the passenger beside him. The other outside passengers may put their legs in their pockets, to keep them from the rain, if they have not brought leather aprons of their own. And then there are the four spirited and beautiful English horses always before you, the sight of which alone affords great pleasure; and, lastly, there is the coachman beside you, who knows every thing along the road, and every one who resides there, as well as his right hand, since he has probably driven backwards and forwards on this road some thousands of times. Then, should he happen to be silent, which is seldom the case, and not very communicative to the inquisitive stranger, the latter may make the coachman himself the object of his attention and observation.

The trade or art of horse-driving is, in the eyes of the English, one of the noblest of arts, and most worthy of a man,-" a very

noble pursuit," as an Englishman said to me. Should an English Homer ever write an Iliad, the charioteers of his heroes will play a far more important part in it than those of the Grecian Homer. The charioteers of Hector and Achilles but rarely join in the contests of their masters, and punctually fulfil their commands; while the English "driver" sits on his box so broad and commanding, and behaves with so dignified and lordly an air towards his outside passengers, all of whom are doubtless heroes, that it looks as if he were the chief of the great hero-laden carriage. The public holds in no small estimation the man who can drive four horses with such dexterity, ease, and art: therefore it is, that very respectable and comfortable fellows devote themselves to the exercise of this, the nation's favourite pursuit. As he is very well paid, and is able to lay by no small sums out of the many and good fees which he receives from the passengers, he is generally very respectably dressed, usually enveloped from head to foot in light-coloured waterproof top-coat, closely buttoned up, and never without white gloves. The reins are handed up to him by the stable boys, and he demands his fee from the passengers in quite a gentlemanly manner. It has even happened that persons, who were neither compelled to do so by birth nor by their pecuniary circumstances, have devoted themselves to the stage-coach, through mere passion for the noble pursuit of driving horses. A lord is said not to have been ashamed to receive his sixpence reward for many years on a public coach. Every thing belonging to his business the coachman understands most perfectly, and all his proceedings go on with a regularity which is astonishing, and unequalled in any other country. The four horses are always of the very best quality, the harness is of the simplest construction, and in the finest order. To see the entire equipage rattle away with this unsurpassable punctuality and quickness, as if winged and animated with reason and reflection by the two hands of the coachman, whose motions are imperceptible, though certain and sure, affords an inexhaustible source of pleasure to the outside passenger, and will make him join and sympathise with the driver, and all friends of the "noble pursuit," in their lamentations over the present decline of this art, and every thing connected with it.

Since the construction of railways the famous "crack coaches" have vanished. As opposition is no longer so great, nor coaches so numerous, fame is no longer to be derived from the pursuit ; consequently, few lords will in future be found to rival the coachThe occupation is losing its honourable character, and persons of an inferior grade are devoting themselves to it in a word, the whole art is on the decline, nay, is already fallen, and

men.

CLIMATE OF IRELAND.

327

deeply affecting are the lamentations of all admirers and partisans of the old state of things. In Ireland, however, this is less the case than in England, because Ireland as yet possesses but few miles of railway; and here, therefore, with the improvements of the roads, and the increase of internal traffic, stage-coaches are becoming more numerous. I do not, however, wish it to be understood that the arrangements of the Irish coaches are so perfect as those of England, even though the latter are on the decline,

The friends of animals, and the foes of cruelty to animals, will rejoice at the progress of railways, for to them the rapid driving of the English coachmen, who treated their horses as mere machines, was a revolting cruelty. According to one system, it was, and still is, considered most advantageous to drive the horses for five years; according to another it is deemed better to drive them for four years only; that is, those who adopt the former think that it is more to their interest to feed the horses well, and work them so little as to make them last for five years; whilst the advocates of the latter system consider it more profitable to feed a horse with a diet barely sufficient, and to subject him to such excessive work and speed that he will be knocked up after three or four years, when he is declared useless, and either killed, or har

nessed to a cart.

The driver with whom I deposited myself at Drogheda, was, unfortunately, of a very taciturn and morose nature, and I was left altogether to these reflections on English coachmen, and to my own observation of the country through which we were passing. He did not even offer me (what properly and of right belongs to the box-passenger, who usually pays something more for the advantages he enjoys,) half of his apron, to protect me against the extremely temperate climate of Ireland, which alternately greeted us with rain, hail, and snow, intermixed with wind and occasional glimpses of sunshine, in order the better to dry us again. For the linen bleach-grounds, in the north of Ireland, this species of mild climate must be very welcome; but we found it not at all agreeable that our linen should be subjected to this bleaching process on our own bodies. One cannot help remarking, when he hears so much of the extraordinary mildness of the Irish climate, that to man it is of extremely little advantage. To the arbutus, the ivy, and other plants, it may be very beneficial; but man desires something more than such a mixture of sunshine and cold rain,of a tepid and moist cold atmosphere all through the year, notwithstanding the thermometer may declare it mild and temperate. To be regularly warm once in the year, one would willingly submit to be once cold also; but to be frozen the whole