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silent. Some people were once speaking of the Sphinx. "Who's that?" said an Irishman present. "It's a monster, man," said the person addressed. "A Munster man?" said the other; "I thought he must be from Connaught, for I think I have heard of the family there!" The Irish generally speak as they act, upon the first impulse. They begin to express a thought the moment it strikes them, and often before they fully understand it. "Look ere you leap," is a proverb which they reverse in practice. "Think twice and speak once," they also follow by the rule of contrary. Their mind is a mirror, and the ready tongue freely discloses all the figures, either confused or distinct, that may pass before it.

To our list of shadows assigned to the portrait of the Irish character, it is our duty to notice one more. The Irish are accused of being faithless to their trusts; and we, who have frequent occasion to deal with them, often imagine that we see displays of this national characteristic. It may, indeed, be true that a long-continued state of servitude and oppression has degraded some of the Irish. When, indeed, was the slave high-minded, heroic, or pure? The weight of the fetter may, at last, wither away the

very nerve of virtue. The air of the dungeon may become stamped upon the features. The perpetual presence of tyranny must teach the perpetual subterfuges of deceit. If this process has brought these consequences upon the Irish, the same has happened in Greece. The living descendants of Lycurgus and Leonidas have shown themselves corrupt, profligate, unsteady to their obligations, treacherous in the council and the field. But history furnishes both explanation and apology. The same may be said in extenuation of this frailty of the lower Irish. Faithlessness is, however, an adventitious attribute, and is seldom exercised but toward those whom they consider as adversaries. Fidelity to each other is, in fact, a conspicuous trait in the Irish character. In the several rebellions which have taken place, instances have occurred in which individuals have gone to the gibbet rather than betray their associates.

Among the mountains of Wicklow, Dwyer, a celebrated rebel chieftain, contrived to elude the pursuits of justice for a period almost unexampled. The remuneration offered by the government for the discovery of this daring chief, who so long hovered near the capital, after his followers had been routed and reduced, was very

great, and presented a temptation to betray, which in another country would scarcely have been resisted; but wherever he avowed himself, and claimed the protection of hospitality, his person was held sacred; and, in the midst of rags and penury, a bribe which would have secured independence to the betrayer, was rejected with scorn.

In Waller's time, the secrecy and fidelity of the Irish, in all their engagements, were remarkable; that poet, when the Sophy appeared, said of the author, that “he broke out like the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when nobody expected it." In no country in the world is treachery held more in detestation than in Ireland; because in no region can be found a higher spirit of frankness and generosity. Upon the door of every cabin might be justly inscribed,

"Mistake me not so much,

To think my poverty is treacherous."

"The lower orders," says a traveller in Ireland, "will occasionally lie, and so will the lower orders of any other country, unless they are instructed better; and so should we all, had we not been corrected in our childhood for

doing it. It has been asserted that the low Irish are addicted to pilfering; I met with no instance of it personally. An intelligent friend of mine, one of the largest linen manufacturers in the north of Ireland, in whose house there is seldom less than twelve or fifteen hundred pounds in cash, surrounded with two or three hundred poor peasants, retires at night to his bed without bolting a door or fastening a window.

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During Lady Cathcart's imprisonment in her own house in Ireland, for twenty years, by the orders of her husband, an affair which made a great noise some years since, her ladyship wished to remove some remarkably fine and valuable diamonds, which she had concealed from her husband, out of the house; but, having no friend or servant whom she could trust, she spoke to a beggar woman who used to come to the house, from the window of the room in which she was confined. The woman promised to take care of the jewels, and Lady Cathcart accordingly threw the parcel containing them to her out of the window. The poor mendicant conveyed them to the person to whom they were addressed; and when Lady Cathcart recovered her liberty, some years afterwards, her diamonds were safely restored to her."

But let us now turn from these drawbacks in the Irish character, to the consideration of more grateful traits. Who, for instance, has not been struck with the natural eloquence of these people? We need not go to Grattan, Curran, or Burke, for specimens of this gift of genius. The rudest Irish laborer among us seems to be endowed with it. If an Irishman really sets about persuading you of a thing, he seldom fails of his object, unless, indeed, it be to prove that black is white. It is curious to see how an Irishman can embellish the most naked idea, and amplify the commonest topic. There is a picture of a beggar, belonging to the Athenæum of Boston, painted by an artist of New York. It is the portrait of an Irishman, who presented himself one day at the artist's door, and begged for alms. "Walk in," said the painter, " and tell me your name." "My name, sir," said the beggar, "is Patrick McGruger, and it's true what I tell ye." "But," said the artist, "why don't you go to work, instead of begging about the streets in this fashion?" 66 Why don't I go to work, your honor? and is it that ye'd like to know? When ye're threescore years and ten, like myself, ye'll be more ready to answer such a question, than to ask it." "Well, well, my good fellow,"

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