women, and children. I had just retired to my berth, and was in my first pangs, when I heard the loud, goodnatured, vulgar voice of a raw-boned Scotch lad, asking the cabin-boy, for information only, if "ony body was seek yet?" I cannot say that I had not some satisfaction for a moment, when I heard this bumpkin, about an hour afterwards, expressing himself in very different tones, as if he was about to render up his very entrails. For all this, however, I was fully compensated by the view of the bay of Dublin, as we sailed into it; it is very deep and broad, the coast all round appears lined with woods, great houses or villages, and the Wicklow mountains, which rise on the left hand, have quite a Highland form and character.

We spent the best part of two days in Dublin. It is rather a handsome town; the quay along the Liffey, with the bridges one after another, four or five of them, gives a fine town view; and there is one point, where several public buildings are assembled together, the College, the Parliament House, and some others, to which I should be at a loss to say what there is in London that is equal; Whitehall I think is not. The public offices in Dublin are all very ornamental buildings; the Custom House is most talked of, but I would praise the Parliament House, now the Bank, more highly. We went a few miles out of Dublin, to see the Phoenix Park, and a gentleman's seat called Luttrel's Town; the last is always recommended to strangers, but is hardly worth their while; we were much more pleased with the grounds of the Duke of Leinster, a little farther on, and with the situation of the village of Leixlip.

From Dublin we went to Limerick by the mail-coach; through a tame country, level the greater part of the way, all (except where there is bog) under cultivation,

and passing (in the county of Tipperary particularly) some wild villages. The cultivation of every thing but potatoes seemed to be sorry; but its extent is so great, as to give the idea of an immense produce, even if we did not see the multitudes who crowd the whole country. All that I had heard in description of the numbers of the Irish, and of their dirt, rags, and beggary, seems to me now to have been short of the truth. The streets of Limerick were like a great fair; though it was not even market day; and this from morning to night. It seemed as if every house had poured out its inhabitants; yet every cellar we looked into seemed full. It was more or less the same in all the towns and villages we came through; and we never went a mile upon the highway, without seeing a great many persons. None of them seem to have any thing to do; through all that we should call the working hours of the day, we saw large lasses, and lads six feet high, lounging round the cabin doors. It is literally true, that the only appearance of industry we saw, was in the number of schools that we observed on this side of Limerick; schools for the ragged children of those same cabins: and we two or three times passed a little swarm of them sitting on the outside, to all appearance because it was quite full of them within, reading, writing, and ciphering. Murray got into conversation with one of the schoolmasters, in a village where there was not a hovel better than a hog-sty, who was a young man, and who told him that Telemachus was one of the books he read with the children. All this, when one sees the idleness of the people and the backwardness of the country, is a little puzzling. With this idleness, and dirt, and nakedness, they look a much happier people than I have seen in any part of England or Scotland; the English peasant

is a torpid animal, and the Scotch one eaten with care, compared with the light-hearted cheerful people of this country. They seem for ever talking, and in a high tide of spirits; their volubility is somewhat distressing, and their language is more full of submission than is pleasant, because it reminds one how they have been taught it by oppression; but among themselves, they seem to have a great deal of merriment and enjoyment. They have all of them a real share of sharp drollery and imagery; enough to mark them as entirely a different race of people from those on our side of the Channel. I have seen but very little in the course of these few days; but all this, I think, I have observed distinctly. It is very likely they have not the same steadiness of understanding, which makes the Englishman always a master of his own particular profession, and which makes the Scotchman (who seldom knows one profession thoroughly) ready to turn his hand to almost any one, and to get through it well enough to thrive by it; but the Irish have a quickness, readiness, and sharpness, which the others seldom possess.

Nothing has surprised me so much in Ireland as the excellence of the roads; all the way from Dublin, even into this unfrequented country, they are most admirable, and must have been made at a great expense. Probably, there has been particular attention paid to this since the rebellion, from political considerations; it is a care well bestowed, and must assist very rapidly the civilisation of the country. We came from Limerick by Adair, Newbridge, Glyn, Tarbet, Listowel, and Tralee. The views we had of the Shannon going down to Glyn, and of the mountains at Tralee, were very fine. We have spent this day upon the lower and middle lakes here; I must write another letter about this place: we

have the best of it yet to see, but I would say already, that it exceeds greatly all the scenery with which I have been hitherto acquainted.

With kindest love to my father and my sisters,

I am, my dear mother,

Most affectionately yours,

FRA. HORNER.

LETTER CLX.* TO THE REV. T. R. MALTHUS.

My dear Malthus,

Killarney, 15th September, 1810.

I received last night your letter of the 7th instant, in which you so very kindly invite me to spend some time with you at Haileybury; as soon after my return as I have some days of leisure, it will afford me a real enjoyment, to have an opportunity of passing some days with you in the country.

I am glad you are satisfied with the Bullion Report, so far as it goes. There are still in the Theory of the subject some points which give me difficulty, particularly in what relates to exchange, and which I should like to try if they could be cleared up by a little more thinking about them. In the Report, of course, we give the slip to all such problems, as, for the useful and necessary purposes of the practical conclusion, there is a plain road upon the principles that have been long well settled. As it is, the Report has more the air of a dissertation than was desirable; and any savour of novel speculation, how just soever it might have been, would have tainted it to all true born Englishmen. All the hopes I have of immediate success with the House of Commons, and those are but very faint, are built upon what seems to be our strong-hold of former experience and former doctrines, in opposition to what we have

called the Theory of the Bank Directors.

It will be

very pleasant to prevail by raising that cry. I have no doubt that at no distant time, the evils, proceeding from the want of responsibility in the Bank, will get to such a pitch, as to force upon parliament a recurrence to the old systems. I am only afraid that some mischief may be done, in the mean time, by interfering unwisely with the country banks, and with that diffused and subdivided credit, afforded by their means, to the enterprises of small capitalists in remote parts of the country. I have had no time to make political inquiries of any sort in this country; but the little I have learned about the state of currency and credit at Dublin for the last few months, makes me expect to receive an ample commentary from that quarter, upon all the doctrines of our Report. I beg you will make my kindest respects to Mrs. Malthus, and believe me

Ever most sincerely yours,

FRA. HORNER.

LETTER CLX.** TO THE DUKE OF SOMERSET.

My dear Lord,

Lincoln's Inn, 2d November, 1810.

I was too short a time in Ireland to learn much more about the state of the lower orders in that country, than that it is very different from the condition of the people in either of the other two kingdoms, and that it is a subject of great curiosity, and which strongly invites speculation. Their immense numbers, their rags and dirt, excel in reality all the descriptions which I formerly believed to be exaggerated; and so does their gaiety of manner, their cheerfulness in the midst of all this show of indigence and misery, and their education. The only appearance of industry I saw was in the village