tration. Protestant magistrates, Protestant landlords, Protestant masters, to bow down to, to flatter and to obey. To bow down to those who had injured them, to flatter those they hated. Dreadful condition! which Homer, whose knowledge of human nature will not be doubted, makes in a special manner the wretchedness even of the wretched Priam himself.

"Prostrate his children's murderer to implore,

And kiss those hands, yet reeking with their gore."

And if to these mountains, in poverty and depression, some of their descendants continue to cling, when a brighter sky and warmer sun, and happier land, invite them from the other side of the Atlantic, because religion teaches them to view in the storms which shake the earth, the judgments of an avenging God, would it be thought wonderful or strange? But on this ungracious subject I will not dwell. It would be worse than ungracious in me.

Simple and warm-hearted people! becaue I had in a light work written a few lines in your favour-because I had done you a faint kind of justice, how expressive were your feelings, how warm was your gratitude, and how sincere were your thanks.

Oh, how repeated must have been the injuries which deadened those feelings of kindness, how

deep the sense of the injustice, which shut up those kind and glowing hearts-which plucked the damask rose of love, and turned its opening leaves to livid barrenness! Oh, how it is to be la mented, that of late years, feeling, rather than calculation, has not predominated in the councils of England-the soul of generosity, rather than the measure of policy, and that the great and god-like statesman was not spared, whose spirit might have moved dove-like on the waters, and hushed them into quietness.

CHAPTER XXIX.

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THE Comparative merits of high and low civi lization is a question which has been often discussed. I shall not enter into it. I shall only mention one advantage of the latter, which coun terbalances many advantages of the former. I mean its greater freedom from disease. Of health may be truly, what is fancifully said of liberty, that

"It makes the gloomy face of nature gay,

Gives beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day."

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When disease stretches the sons of affluence listless and wakeful on their couches of down, health gives peaceful slumbers and pleasing dreams to the rude inhabitant of the mountain on his bed of straw.

To enumerate the diseases of civilization would be a task as wearisome as disgusting. I shall say all that is necessary on the subject, when I mention that, according to Doctor Cullen's Nosology, they amount to thirteen hundred and eighty-seven -the single class of nervous diseases furnishes six hundred and twelve of that number. So tremendous are the evils which gluttony, sensuality, pride, avarice, and ambition, have inflicted upon man. The diseases of these mountains are few in number, and are mostly fevers, consumptions, cutaneous eruptions, and convulsions.

Nothing can be more simple than the general treatment of those fevers. The patient is left entirely to nature, which seldom fails to recover him. He swallows no medicine. He takes no nourishment, because he has no desire for it. He drinks plenty of cold water, because he has an ardent longing for it. When the disease proves fatal, it is almost always in consequence of the interference of some person pretending to medical skill. A sweat, as it is called, is the remedy most commonly recommended, which is attempted to be forced out in some preposterous

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manner. The poor patient then dies as the rich one often does, not of the disease, but of the doctor.

Diseases, like fashions, change. The cutaneous eruptions of these mountains, are the lingering remains of the leprosy, a disorder now happily almost unknown. How much it prevailed in the middle ages may be conceived, when I mention that there were nineteen thousand hospitals for lepers only, in Christendom. Lewis the eighth king of France, in the thirteenth century, bequeathed legacies to two thousand leprous hospitals in his own kingdom. Consumptions are very prevalent, not only in these mountains, but among all ranks and descriptions of people in every part of Ireland. I hardly know a family that has not lost a member by this afflicting dis order. The most promising and beautiful member, it mournfully relates. It is the nature of man, while he undervalues what he possesses, to exagge rate the value of what he has lost. But consumption in reality is most apt to attack young people of the sanguine temperament, of great liveliness of imagination, and if it does not find them beautiful, it almost ever makes them so. I can hardly conceive a more interesting object than a lovely young woman, decked with the en chantress flowers of this disorder, like an unconscious victim moving to her own early funeral.

And when I gaze on her ærial form, on the deep hectic of her cheek, and the soft blue of her transparent veins, through which the blood scarcely circulates, she seems an angel of whom the earth is unworthy, and who is about to return to her native skies.

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It was my fortune once to see a very young lady die of this disorder. She was perfectly aware of her approaching dissolution, and perfectly resigned. Yet she had some reasons to wish to live, for she loved, and the object for whom she had renounced all her friends was at her side. She consoled him, comforted him, and (as he was afterwards told) gave up her

last breath in ejaculations for him. I remember the scene as if it were yesterday, for it made a strong impression on me.

Tshould attribute the prevalence of consumption in Ireland, as much to the variableness of its climate, as to the dampness of its soil. Women are more subject to it than men, as well from their going more lightly clad, as from the greater delicacy of their organization. It is the law in England, that every person must be buried in woollen. There never was a law to compel the living to wear flannel, yet it would be a more useful one.

Tha I have said above, that convulsive diseases are common in these mountains. As there is no