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obvious purpose of enhancing his statement, or the proof by which he was supporting it; and in both he is wrong. We have sometimes to correct & reader for laying the emphasis on wrong words. The reviewer has laid his emphasis on wrong things."

But these are general averments: let us come to particulars.

Let us return once more to Scotland; and lest the argument, either of special manufactures, or of midway transitions from one state to another, should be alleged, in opposition to all our former instances we shall now offer a brief view of the circumstances of our agricultural population, at the beginning of this century, and in the present day-assuming that the variation which has taken place in one of its counties, (Peebleshire,) is a fair average specimen of the change, if any, which the condition of our peasantry has undergone, over the whole length and breadth of the land. We, on purpose, keep clear of 1800 and 1801, as having been two years of severe scarcity, amounting to famine; so that the comparison, strictly speaking, is between the rate of wages now, and the mean rate of wages from 1802 to 1812 or 1814.

74

The wages of married farm-servants-in as far as they are paid in kind, consisting of meal, potatoes, the keep of a cow, and driving of their fuel have suffered no variation. The money wages at the former period were £16 a year; they are now £10. We are aware that the price of the first necessaries of life has fallen to a greater proportion than this; but the money part of this wages goes to the purchase of second necessaries; and their price has not fallen in so great a proportion. So that the labourers of this description are somewhat worse off at the latter than the former period."

"The wages of unmarried farm-servants were then £18, with their victuals, and are now £12, with victuals; they having suffered a descent too, though less by 13s. 4d. than that of the former class of labourers."

dergo at piece work, when, to eke out a sufficiency for their families, they are known to labour from four in the morning to eight at night; and it is the distinct testimony of the masters who employ them, that this is what these daysmen will do now, and would not have done twenty-five years ago. We might further state, that the services of a man, with two horses and single horse carts, could only be had at that time for 10s. or 12s. a day-but now for 5s. or 6s. 6d. Wrights and masons, in short, all country artisans, with the exception of blacksmiths, have experienced a similar decline in wages; and a decline not countervailed by the greater cheapness of the second, and still greater cheapness of the first necessaries of life. By the general consent of practical and intelligent men, the peasantry of Scotland have not, at this moment, the same command over the vari. ous articles which enter substantially into the maintenance of families, that they had during the first ten years of the present century."

"Two causes may be assigned for the glowing exaggerations of the reviewer, respecting the progress which he affirms to have taken place in the economic state of our people. It may be right that we advert, though briefly, to both of themas they not only seem to have misled him, but are fitted to mislead many others, who are satisfied to make up their minds on a rapid and cursory view of the subject. The sketch which he has drawn of the internal state and history of Scotland, is one of great plausibility-yet it will not be difficult, we are persuaded, to evolve the actual state of the case, the sober reality of the question, from underneath that mantle of speciousness wherewith he hath garnished and overlaid it."

"The first great error of the reviewer, then, lies in this that he has generalized workmen of all sorts and varieties into but one object of contemplation. He has viewed them only en masse, without having adverted to the momentous distinction which obtains between one class of them and another,-between the men, for example, of "But there is still another class, of inferior con-high wages, in virtue of the control which they dition to the two former, and who also, as appears have over their employer, because they can at any from the comparison of their wages at the two dis- time bring his large and expensive machinery to tinct periods, have sustained a greater descent than a stand; and the men who often have not a third either of them-we mean the day labourers, the part of the wages of the others, because they posjob-men of England, or the orry men of our own sess no such power-as weavers, all whose capital country parishes, employed in the construction is a handloom, which is their own; or ground laand repairs of roads, and all the other varieties of bourers, all whose capital is a spade, which is ground labour. About twenty or twenty-four their own also. He reasons, as if the foundation years ago, their allowance was from 10s. to 12s. aon which society rested, was throughout of howeek, with victuals, or from 16s, even to 18s..and mogeneous materials; and then tells us, what a 20s a week, without victuals. Their allowance at substantial foundation it is, and how it is consolipresent is 6s. a week with, and 10s. without vic- | dating every year into greater strength and firmtuals. But these numbers exhibit in both cases the ness than before. We reason, as if that foundafull summer allowance; and, to estimate their yearly tion was made up of successive strata; and express income, we must take into account the reduction our apprehension that the lowest stratum of all of 1s, and 2s. a-week, when the days become shorter, might become every year more putrid and unas also the average of about two winter months, sound, and so endanger the stability of the whole when they are totally without employment. A fabric. The work recognises a gradation in the good practical test of the felt straitness in their branches of regular industry; and takes account circumstances, is the extreme fatigue they will un-of a large and ever-increasing body of supernume

PUBLIC CARRIAGES IN BRITAIN. PROPRIETORS of coaches have at length found outthough they were a long time before they did discover ithorse market. They have, therefore, one horse in four althat the hay and corn market is not so expensive as the

profit, leads so easy and so comfortable a life as the Eng
if he do suffer a little in his work, he has twenty-three hours
lish coach-horse; he is sumptuously fed, kindly treated, and
in the twenty-four of luxurious ease. He is now almost a
stranger to the lash; nor do we ever see him with a broken
skin; but we often see him kick up his heels when taken
from his coach, after having performed his stage of ten
miles in five minutes under the hour. So much for condi-
tion. No horse lives so high as a coach-horse. In the
language of the road, his stomach is the measure of his
corn; he is fed ad libitum. The effect of this is visible in
two ways; first, it is surprising to see how soon horses
gather flesh in this severe work, for there is none more se
vere while it lasts; and, secondly, proprietors find that good
flesh is no obstacle to their speed, but, on the contrary, ope
rates to their advantage. Horses draw by their weight,
and not by the force of their muscles, which merely assist
the application of their weight: the heavier a horse is,
the weight of the animal which produces the draught, and
then, the more powerful he is in his harness; in short, it is
the play and force of his muscles serve to continue it. Light
horses, therefore, how good soever their action, ought not
to be put to draw a heavy load, as muscular force cannot
horses for fast coaches may be about £23. Fancy teams,
act against it for any length of time. The average price of
and those working out of London, may be rated consider-
ably higher than this; but taking a hundred miles of
ground, well horsed, this is about the mark. The average
period of each horse's service does not exceed four years in
may allow seven; but in both cases we are alluding to
a fast coach; perhaps scarcely so much; in a slow one we
horses put to the work at five or six years' old. The price
we have named as the average may appear a low one; but
blemished horses find their way into coaches, as do those
whose tempers are bad; neither is a blind horse, with good
level.
courage, altogether objectionable, now the roads are so

raries at the bottom of the scale. The dashing generality of the reviewer does not admit of such discrimination. It confounds the cotton-spinner of 288. with the poor weaver of 5s. a-week. It takes so distant a view of the object, that it comes ways at rest; or, in other words, each horse lies still on not within sight of details and distinctions the fourth day, thus having the advantage of man. lu though, in the instance on hand, of vital import-practice, perhaps, no animal toiling for man, solely for his ance to all correct reasoning on the present state and future prospects of society. Like an unobservant by-passer through some plebeian district of a city, who never once dreams of the mighty gradation from the highest to the lowest of its house.. holders-though intermingled with, or even contiguous to each other, the artisan or manufacturing operative, of from 20s. to as much as 50s. a-week, may be found in close juxta-position with the weaver or the labourer, who but realizes an humble fraction of his gains. He overlooks this, and lumps or amalgamates them all, under the one denomination of the common people. And so, whatever comes from that quarter to the savings banks; or whosoever, out of the mighty hosts who congregate there, shall attend a mechanics' institute he puts it all down to the general, or rather the universal elevation, that has taken place in the habits and comforts of those who overspread the ground-floor or basement of society. It is thus, that, in very proportion to the rapidity, the reckless, but withal confident, rapidity of those slight and transient regards which our reviewer has cast upon the subject-does he overrate, and that prodigiously, not the improvement of the lower, but the improvement of the lowest orders. He exults in the fifteen millions of deposits to the provident banks of the country; but reflects not on that multitude of mere labourers-the hundreds of thousands, who compose a distinct and inferior class, that are every year multiplying upon our hands, and who contribute not so much as one farthing to them, He has not entered at all into the depths or statistics of his subject; he has but looked on the upper surface of it-or, if reasoning on a sort of general average between the most comfortable and the most degraded of the industrious classes, reflects not, that beneath that average there is a gathering mischief, the inevitable tendency of which is to undermine the stablest community on earth, and to bring down the prosperity of all its orders.*"

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It may not be uninteresting to the uninitiated to learn how a coach is worked. We will then assume A, B, C, and D enter into a contract to horse a coach eighty miles, each proprietor having twenty miles; in which case he is said to piration of twenty-eight days, a settlement takes place, and cover both sides of the ground, or to and fro. At the exif the gross earnings of the coach should be £10 per mile, there will be £800 to divide between the four proprietors, after the following charges have been deducted, viz tolls, coach-makers,) two coachmen's wages, porter's wages, rent, duty to government, mileage (or hire of the coach to the or charge of booking-offices at each end, and washing the coaches. These charges may amount to £150, which leaves £650 to keep eighty horses, and to pay the horse-keepers Let the Reviewers, Useful Knowledge propaga-proprietor for the expense of his twenty horses, being £2 for a period of twenty-eight days; or nearly £160 to each tors, or any other person or class of persons in- per week per horse. Thus it appears that a fast coach, proterested in concealing the truth, do as they will perly appointed, cannot pay, unless its gross receipts amount with Dr. Chalmers' economical doctrines, we defy to 10 per double mile; and that even then the proprie them to impugn these statements. tors' profits depend on the luck he has with his stock.

* It is of importance to keep in mind, that the worst paid of our manufacturing labourers in Glasgow are the most numerous. The number of workers, of all ages and both sexes, in the cotton and weaving mills of that city and neighbourhood, was 10,897, in April 1832. We wish that we could state the number of hand-loom weavers at the same period. But as far back as 1820, the number of hand-looms was upwards of eighteen thousand.

In the present age, the art of mechanism is eminently re duced to the practical purposes of life, and the modern form combines prodigious strength with almost incredible lightof the stage-coach seems to have arrived at perfection. It ness, not weighing more than about 18 cwt., and being kept so much nearer the ground than formerly, is of course considerably safer. Accidents, no doubt, occur, and a great many more than meet the public eye; but how should this be otherwise, when we take into account the immense number of coaches on the road, a great portion of which travel through the night, and have all the varieties of our climate to contend with? No one will assert that the proprietors

guard against accidents to the utmost of their power; but the great competition they have to encounter is a strong stimulant to their exertions on this score. Indeed, in some respects, the increase of pace has become the traveller's security. Coaches and harness must be of the best quality; horses must be fresh and sound, and coachmen of science and respectability can alone be employed; in fact, to the increased pace of their coaches is the improvement in these men's moral character to be attributed. They have not time now for drinking; and they come in collision with a class of persons superior to those who formerly were stage-is, but for the encouragement they gave, by their notice and coach passengers, by whose example it has been impossible for them not to profit in all respects. A coachman drunk on his box is now a rarity; a coachman quite sober was, even within our memory, still more so.

The worst of accidents, and one which, with the present structure of coaches, can never be entirely provided against, arises from broken axletrees, and the wheels coming off on the road. On the whole, however, travelling by public conveyances was never so secure as it is at the present time. Nothing can be more favourable to it than the build of the modern coaches. The boots being let down between the springs, keep the load, conseqently the centre of gravity, low; the wheels of many of them are secured by patent boxes; and in every part of them the best materials are used. The cost of coaches of this description is from £130 to £150, but they are generally hired from the maker at 24d. to 3d. per mile. Cicero laments the want] of postoffices, and well he might. Nothing can excel that depart. ment in our country, as it has been long administered by, perhaps, the only universally-approved public servant in our generation, Sir Francis Freeling; but we fear in this, as in more important matters, we are now about to lose sight of the good old rule, of "letting well alone." It is said to be the intention of government to substitute light | carriages, with two horses, for the present mail-coaches, drawn by four; but we have many suspicions as to the result of such a change. It is true that persons who horse the mail cry out lustily against the government for not remunerating them better for the increased speed at which they are now required to travel-the maximum price being ten-pence a-mile. The mail-coaches are excellently adapted for quick travelling. When the mail-coach of the present day starts from London for Edinburgh, a man may safely bet a hundred to one that she arrives to her time: but let a light two-horse vehicle set out on the same errand and the betting would strangely alter. It is quite a mistaken notion, that a carriage is less liable to accidents for being light. On the contrary, she is more liable to them than one that is well laden in proportion to her sustaining powers. In the latter case she runs steadily along, and is but little disturbed by any obstacle or jerk she may meet on the road; in the former, she is constantly on " the jump," as coachmen call it, and her iron parts are very liable to snap. Our present mail-coach work reflects the highest credit on the state of our roads, and every thing connected with them. The hills on our great roads are now cut triangular, so that coachmen ascend nearly all of them in a trot. Indeed, coachmen have found out that they are gainers here, as in the trot every horse does his share, whereas, very few teams are all at work together when walking. · A wonderful change has taken place in the English coach-horse. Fifty years ago the idea of putting a thorough-bred horse into harness would have been deemed preposterous. In the carriages of our noblemen and gentlemen, the long-tailed black or Cleveland bay-each one remove from the cart horse-was the prevailing sort, and six miles an hour the extent of his pace, and he cost from L.30 to L.50. A few years back a nobleman gave seven hundred guineas for a horse to draw his cabriolet; two hundred guineas is now an every-day price for a horse of this description; and a hundred and fifty guineas for a gentleman's coach-horse. Indeed a pair of handsome coach-horses, fit for London and well broken and bitted, cannot be purchased under two hundred guineas, and even jobmasters often give much more for them to let out to their customers. In harness also, we think we have arrived at perfection, to which the invention of the patent shining

leather has mainly contributed. A handsome horse, well harnessed, is a noble sight; and is it not extraordinary, that in no country but England is the art of putting a horse into harness at all understood? Independently of the workmanship of the harness-maker, if our road-horses were put to their coaches in the loose awkward fashion of the Continent, we could never travel at the rate we do. It is the command given over the coach-horse that alone enables us to do it. Our amateur or gentlemen coachmen have done much good: the road would never have been what it now support, to all persons connected with it. Would the Holyhead; road have been what it is, had there been no such persons as the honourable Thomas Kennyon, Sir Henry Parnell, and Mr. Maddox? Would the Oxford coachmen have set so good an example to their brethren of "the bench," had there been no such men on the road as Sir Henry Peyton, Lord Clonmell, the late Sir Thomas Mostyn, that Nestor of coachmen, Mr. Annesley, and Mr. Harrison? Would not the unhappy coachman of five-andtwenty years back have gone on wearing out their breeches with the bumping of the coach-box, and their stomachs with brandy, had not Mr. Warde, of Squerries, after many a weary endeavour, persuaded the proprietors to place their boxes upon springs? What would the Devonshire have been, but for the late Sir Charles Bamfylde, Sir John Rogers, Colonel Prouse, Sir Lawrence Palk, and others? Have the advice and the practice of such experienced men as Mr. Charles Buxton, Mr. Henry Villelois, Mr. Okeover, Sir Bellingham Graham, Mr. John Walker, Lord Sefton, Sir Felix Agar, Mr. Ackers, Mr. Maxse, Hon. Fitzroy Stanhope, Colonel Spicer, Colonel Sibthorpe, &c., been thrown away upon persons who looked upon them as protectors ? Certainly not. Neither would the improvement in carriages-stage-coaches more especially-have arrived at its present height, but for the attention and suggestions of such persons as we have been speaking of. Gentlemancoaching, however, has received a check, and in more ways than one. "Tampering with the currency," and low prices, have taken off the leaders; and the bars and four-bone whips are hung up for the present-very few four-in-hands being visible. The B. D. C., or Benson Driving Club, which now holds its rendezvous at the Black Dog, Bedfont, is the only survivor of those numerous driving associations whose processions used, some twenty years ago, to be among the most imposing, as well as peculiar spectacles in and about the Metropolis. Hyde Park Corner, on any fine afternoon, in the height of the London season, is more than enough to confound any foreigner, from whatever part of the world he may come. He may there see what no other country under the heavens can show him, and what is more, what no other country ever will show him. Let him only sit on the rail, near our Great Captain's statue, with his watch in his hand, and in the space of two hours he will see a thousand well-appointed equipages pass before him to the mall, in all the pomp of aristocratic pride, and in which the very horses themselves appear to partake. The stream of equipages, of all calibres, barouches, chariots, cabriolets, &c. &c., and almost all got up, as Mr. Robinson's advertisements say, " Regardless of expense," flows on unbroken until it is half-past seven, and people at last begin to think of what they still call dinner. Old Seneca tells us that such a blaze of splendour was once to be seen on the Appian Way. It might be so-it is now to be seen no where but in London.-Quarterly Review.

[The Quarterly concludes this article with a prophecy, that after the second year of the Reform Bill no such sight of splendour will again be beheld in England. Even for this falling off we shall console ourselves, if "the peasantry" and "coster-mongers" are more tidily fitted in harness, and better mounted on shoe leather.]

MARCH OF STEAM.-The Champlain, a steam boat recently built in America, lately made the voyage from New York to Albany, a distance of 160 miles, in nine hours and 45 minutes, including a loss of time occasioned by fourteen stoppages, reducing the actual time to eight hours and 13 minutes, which gives nearly 20 miles an hour.

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base to be composed of gneiss and its summit of porphyry ? or will he be less impressed by the rugged magnificence of Coruisk, because he perceives that its frightful rocks are composed of hypersthene, and knows the constitution of that atmosphere which bears the clouds in murky masses sullenly alone its sublime peaks? We, who understand somewhat of geology, and have waved our bonnet on the proudest summits of the mountain masses of our native land, have never known our enthusiasm borne down by the weight of our science, nor felt our veneration of the author of nature diminished by being permitted to know somewhat of the operations of his wonder-working power. On the contrary, we assert, and will undertake at any time to prove, that the ignorant tourist, whether rhymster or canvass-dauber, or hunter of the picturesque, or to whatever other denomination he belongs, can have but just as little true perception of the sublimities or beauties of nature, as a short-sighted man can have of the shadings of a mountain landscape, as the varied tints of evening creep slowly over it. Let the painter study nature, and he will cease to excite ridicule by his miserable apings of it; let him know that the rock which he has dashed out with his pencil, possesses none of the characteristic features of any rock on this side the moon; that the trees which he has stuck into his landscape he will find in no country of the globe; that the forms of his clouds are not those of the atmosphere of our planet. Let the poet study nature, and he will better succeed in displaying her charms; and let him who fancies every thing of which he is ignorant altogether beneath his notice, learn that, what has exercised the contrivance and wisdom of the divine mind, is well worthy of the exercise of the highest faculties of a far nobler than his puny intellect. Few districts in Britain are much more interesting, in a geological point of view, than that in our own neigh

ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT.

AFTER having last week given some account of what Geology is considered in certain quarters, it may not be amiss to tell what it is. Geology, then, is the science which has for its object the investigation of the nature and constitution of the earth. It therefore presents a wide field. In the remote ages, to which we are wont to look back as the depositories of the rudiments of all our knowledge, it had no existence. In fact, among the Greeks and Romans, Natural History was little better than a collection of old wives' fables. In times not very remote, geology was looked upon merely as a speculative study, which led aen to invent poetical theories of the formation of the earth, but took little cognizance of the actual constitution of things. Hence the world-makers of those days, were very little acquainted with the rocks and mountains whose origin and structure they professed to explain; and we will venture to say, most of them were unable to perceive any difference between granite and grey. wacke. As knowledge increased, the cosmogenies diminished; and at the present day, men examine rocks, and study their relations, collect and describe the fossil remains contained in them, more in the hope that some rational theory of the earth will naturally develop itself from among the accumulated facts which they treasure up, than with any urgent desire to accommodate appearances to a favourite theory. Werner, in respect to the order of the rock formations, and their mineralogical nature; and Cuvier, in respect to the remains of extinct animals contained in them, stand forth among the cultivators of this science, as the great leaders who have directed the motions of numerous followers, zealous and indefatigable in their exertions. To our countryman Hutton, who, it would appear, was more of a world-maker than world-examiner, we are so far indebted, that his adherents, labouring for the pur-bourhood.-Literary Gazette. pose of supporting their favourite scheme, increased the knowledge of facts, while the Wernerians, anxious to refute their arguments, also searched every nook and crevice. At present, we have neither Wernerians nor Huttonians. We have a race of genuine geologists; although there are still in all countries, men who cherish peculiar views, and strive to support them. Thus with some, the centre of the earth is red hot, while with others it is a metallic nucleus; some supose certain strata to have been formed by suecessive irruptions and retreats of the sea, others attribute their origin to a single deluge. But, be this as it lists, the strata and masses of which the crust of our globe is composed are becoming better known; and from the Himalayan Mountains to Melville Island, there are not wanting investigators of their qualities and relations. Now, what study can be much more interesting than that of the earth on which we tread? Surely, before going to foreign lands for knowledge, we should first make ourselves acquainted with what our own furnishes :-before launching into the ocean of space, to circumnavigate the wondrous but unapproachable islands floating in it, we should first be familiar with that which forms our home. The uses of geological research need hardly now be insisted upon. As an object of rational inquiry, there is no science mose calculated to gratify every intellectual prospensity; and with reference to the arts, commerce, and domestic economy, surely the strata from which we obtain our metals, our building-nufactures, arising with the country whose cheaper produce stones, and our fuel, cannot be deemed unworthy of being is now prohibited by she delegates of the slave-holders in investigated and known, even by the narrow mind of the the House of Commons; -with the single reservation, that artisan and trader. In Scotland, we believe geology occu- places should be lacking in the world from which the same pies a very unimportant place in the system of education. supply would be procured. But this reservation_can have In none of our schools is it taught, and in most of our no bearing on the effects of removing from us the present universities it is sadly neglected. In the metropolis, how- slavery-tax on sugar. Either such removal will cause the ever, we are more favourably dealt with in this respect; and whole supply of sugar to be increased, or it will not. If he who is desirous of being introduced to this important it does not, the public will be where it is, and will be under study, possesses the means of gratifying his inclination in the necessity of giving the same prices for sugars of all the prelections of our celebrated professor of Natural His-kinds as at present; and so the West Indians will go on. tory, and in the inspection of the valuable and extensive The pretence, therefore, that the public would lack a sup collection of rocks and minerals in the muscum of the ply of sugar, is only for knaves to frighten children with. University. People have an idea that science destroys the The truth is, the government has loved slavery and the natural feelings with which men contemplate the objects of support of slave-holders; and for this predilection of the nature. No idea can be more false. Is any geologist less government, we, the slaves at second-hand, must pay.-sensible of the grandeur of Ben Nevis, because he knows its Westminster Review.

SLAVERY. A people that pays a poll-tax for the support of slavery is manifestly but a remove from slavery itself; it is therefore nothing surprising, that a government whose basis was the public wrong, should have supported the outposts of slavery in the colonies at all hazards. For all that is thus given to the slave-holders, it is clear the people of England pay twice; once in the loss to the consumers, and once more in the loss to the traders on which the difference in a state of freedom would be spent. It is not a proposition to be minced, but one to be brought forward with the gravity of a theorem in Euclid--that if the West Indies were by a convulsion of nature to sink into the sea, the commercial and political advantages to the British community would be enormous, incalculable; and the gain in a moral and domestic point of view would be that of the cessation of a tribute, in comparison of which any that was ever paid by a nation to a conqueror was honour aud positive renown. No man has a right to demand of another that he shall degrade himself by pretending ignorance, that if such a consumption should be in the page of destiny, all the employment to trade, navigation, or manufactures of any kind, which might thereby be caused to cease, would be replaced by a greater extent of trade, navigation, or ma

THE STORY-TELLER,

WE'LL SEE ABOUT IT.

BY MRS. S. C. HALL.

"WE'LL see about it!"—from that simple sentence has arisen more evil to Ireland, than any person, ignorant of the strange union of impetuosity and procrastination my countrymen exhibit, could well believe. They are sufficient-morrow." ly prompt and energetic where their feelings are concerned, but, in matters of business, they almost invariably perfer aceing about to DOING.

I shall not find it difficult to illustrate this observation: —from the many examples of its truth, in high and in low life, I select Philip Garraty.

threatening to step down to Mickey Bow, the smith, to ask him to see about it.""I hear you've had a fine crop of wheat, Philip." Thank God for all things! You may say that; we had, my lady, a fine crop-but I have always the hight of ill-luck somehow; upon my sowkins (and that's the hardest oath I swear) the turkeys have had the most of it; but I mean to see about setting it up safe to"But Philip, I thought you sold the wheat, standing, to the Steward at the big house." "It was all as one as sould, only it's a bad world, Madam dear, and I've no luck. Says the Stewart to me, says he, I like to do things like a man of business, so, Mister Garraty, just draw up a bit of an agreement, that you deliver over the wheat field to me, on sich a day, standing as it is, for sich a sum, and I'll sign it for ye, and thin there can be no mistake, only let me have it by this day-week. Well, to be sure I came home full o' my good luck, and I tould the wife; and on the strength of it she must have a new gown. And sure, says she, Miss Hennessy is just come from Dublin, wid a

Philip, and Philip's wife, and Philip's children, and all of the house of Garraty, are employed from morning till night in seeing about every thing, and, consequently, in doing nothing. There is Philip-a tall, handsome, goodhumoured fellow, of about five-and-thirty, with broad, lazylooking shoulders, and a smile perpetually lurking about his mouth, or in his bright hazel eyes the picture of in-shop full o' goods, and on account that she's my brother's sister-in-law's first cousin, she'll let me have the first sight dolence and kindly feeling. There he is, leaning over what o' the things, and I can take my pick-and ye'll have plinty was once a five-barred gate, and leads to the haggart; his of time to see about the agreement to-morrow. Well, I blue worsted stockings full of holes, which the suggan, don't know how it was, but the next day we had no paper, twisted half way up the well-formed leg, fails to conceal ; nor ink, nor pens in the house; I meant to send the gossoon while his brogues, (to use his own words,) if they do let to Miss Hennessy's for all-but forgot the pens. So when the water in, let it out again. With what unstudied eleI was seeing about the 'greement, I bethought of the ould gander, and while I was pulling as beautiful a pen as ever ye laid ye'r two eyes upon, out of his wing, he tattered my hand with his bill in sich a manner, that sorra' a pen I could hould for three days. Well, one thing or another put it off for ever so long, and at last I wrote it out like

print, and takes it myself to the steward. Good evening to you Mr. Garraty, says he; good evening kindly, sir, says I, and I hope the woman that owns ye, and all ye'er good family's well: all well thank ye, Mr. Garraty, says he; I've got the 'greement here sir, says I, pulling it out as I thought-but behould ye-I only cotcht the paper it was

gance does he roll that knotted twine and then unrol it; varying his occupation, at times, by kicking the stones that once formed a wall, into the stagnant pool, scarcely large enough for full grown ducks to sail in. But let us first take a survey of the premises. The dwelling-house is a long rambling abode, much larger than the generality of those that fall to the lot of small Irish farmers; but the fact is, that Philip rents one of the most extensive farms in the neighbourhood, and ought to be "well to do in the world." The dwelling looks very comfortless, notwithstanding: part of the thatch is much decayed, and the rank weeds and damp moss nearly cover it; the door posts are wrapt in, to keep it from the dirt of the tobacco, that was only united to the wall by a few scattered portions of clay loose in my pocket for want of a box-(saving ye'r preand stone, and the door itself is hanging but by one hinge, sence ;) so I turned what little bits o' things I had in it the window frames shake in the passing wind, and some of out, and there was a great hole that ye might drive all the the compartments are stuffed with the crown of a hat, or a parish rats through, at the bottom-which the wife pro“lock of straw"--very unsightly objects. At the opposite mised to see about mending, as good as six months before. side of the swamp is the haggart gate, where a broken line Well, I saw the sneer on his ugly mouth (for he's an Engof alternate palings and wall, exhibit proof that it had for-lishman,) and I turned it off with a laugh, and said air merly been fenced in; the commodious barn is almost roof-holes were comfortable in hot weather, and sich like jokes less, and the other sheds pretty much in the same condition; the pig-stye is deserted by the grubbing lady and her grunting progeny, who are too fond of an occasional repast in the once-cultivated garden to remain in their proper abode; the listless turkeys, and contented half-fatted geese, live at large on the public; but the turkeys, with all their shyness and modesty, have the best of it for they mount the ill-built stacks, and select the grain, a plaisir.

and that I'd go home and make another 'greement. 'Greement for what? says he, laying down his grate outlandish pipe. Whew! may-be ye don't know, says I. Not I, says he.. The wheat field, says I. Why, says he; did'nt I tell you then, that you must bring the 'greement to me by that day-week and that was by the same token, (pulling a red memorandum book out of his pocket,) let me see exactly this day three weeks. Do you think, Mister Garraty, he goes on, that when ye didn't care to look after ye'r own interests, and I offering so fair for the field, I was going to wait upon you? I don't lose my papers in the Irish fashion. Well that last set me up-and so I axed him if it was the pattern of his English breeding, and

"Give you good morrow, Mr. Philip; we have had showery weather lately." "Och, all manner o' joy to ye, my lady, and sure ye'll walk in, and sit down; my woman will be proud to see ye. I'm sartin we'll have the rain soon agin, for it's every where, like bad luck; and my throat's sore wid hurishing thim pigs out o' the garden-one word brought on another; and all the blood in my sorra, a thing can I do all day for watching thim." "Why do you not mend the door of the stye ?" "True, for ye, Ma'am dear, so I would, if I had the nails-and I've been

body rushed into my fist-and I had the ill luck to knock him down-and, the coward, what does he do but takes the law o' me and I was cast and lost the sale of the

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