of that admirable book, for the use of the members in their labours for improving the breed of cattle."

After escaping from what he calls oddly enough, "that consummation of human misery, a cabin after a short voyage," he reaches Dublin, and frisks round a considerable part of the city before dinner, admiring, as every stranger will admire, several of the streets and squares, which are allowed to be among the noblest in Europe. His extensive previous travels enabled him to form a comparative judgment with great advantage. But these proud exhibitions of wealth and taste cease to please a humane traveller, as soon as he beholds the hideous contrast between them and the dwellings and entire condition of the poor. It is melancholy to see in the immediate neighbourhood of all this splendour, the ample proofs how little the prosperous and powerful part of mankind care for the miserable. We do not pretend to believe that the resources of the rich, and the power of the state, could banish poverty, and the whole of its attendant and consequent evils, from a great city; but it is impossible to see such sinks of filth, such a multitude of wretched, ragged, and half-famished creatures, crowded into alleys and cellars, and such a prodigious number of mendicants, without pronouncing the severest condemnation on the idle and luxurious opulence, and the strange state policy, which can preserve, year after year, a cool indifference to all this misery.

Mr. Carr visited the beautiful scenes in the county of Wicklow, and we should have thought meanly of his taste, if he had adopted, in describing them, a language of less animated admiration. We should have required this language from a man the most parsimonious of strong epithets; but from our author we have a special claim to emphatical terms superlatively magnified, when speaking of grand subjects, because he sometimes applies emphatical terms, especially the word infinite, to very little ones. We have hinted before that brilliant expressions are elicited from him with wonderful facility and copiousness, whenever he comes within the precincts or the apartments of an opulent villa. In page 200, he

describes a visit to such a villa, the lady of which patronises a school of industry for girls. This school it seems is in its nature a losing concern, and costs her some inconsiderable sum every year. In the contemplation of this generosity, Mr. Carr is so affected, that his thoughts are transported for once to the joys of heaven, as the unquestionable reversion awaiting such transcendant goodness. We were half inclined to take exception to this language, as somewhat too strong for the occasion; but we stood corrected for this feeling, on reading the paragraphs immediately following, which describe a magnificent and most extravagantly expensive luxury in the appendages of this mansion. That after such a consumption of money, any small sum should have been reserved for a school of industry, and that amidst such a "voluptuous" paradise, there should have been any recollection of so humble a concern, appeared to us an excess of bounty and condescension, which Mr. Carr's panegyric had too feebly applauded. But though the traveller's amiable propensity to celebrate good actions becomes peculiarly strong in the genial neighbourhood of rank and elegance, it would be unjust to deny that he is capable of discerning excellence in subordinate stations of life. A little earlier in his book he gives an example, which we will transcribe, and we cannot help it if any reader should deem this a specimen of much more rare and costly virtue, than that which we have joined the author in admiring.

"The following little anecdote will prove that magnanimity is also an inmate of an Irish cabin. During the march of a regiment, the Honourable Captain P. who had the command of the artillery baggage, observing that one of the peasants, whose car and horse had been pressed for the regiment, did not drive as fast as he ought, went up to him and struck him; the poor fellow shrugged up his shoulders, and observed there was no occasion for a blow, and immediately quickened the pace of his animal. Some time afterwards, the artillery officer having been out shooting all the morning, entered a cabin for the purpose of resting himself, when he found the very peasant whom he had struck, at dinner with his wife and family: the man who was very large and powerfully made, and whose abode was solitary, might have taken fatal revenge upon the officer, instead of which, immediately recognizing him, he chose the best potatoe out of his bowl, and presenting it to his guest,

said, 'There your honour, oblige me by tasting a potatoe, and I hope it is a good one, but you should not have struck me, a blow is hard to bear."-Pp. 150, 151.

By means of a wide diversity of narrative and anecdote, Mr. Carr furnishes a striking picture of the Irish character, as it appears in the lower ranks throughout the middle and southern parts of the country. His manner of exhibiting the national character, by means of a great assortment of well-chosen facts, and short conversations, gives a much more lively representation than any formal philosophic work, composed chiefly of general observations. At the same time, it will not be unjust to remark, that only a very small portion of toil and reflection is necessary for executing such a work. Writing travelling memoranda was a pleasant employment of many intervals and evenings, which would otherwise have been unoccupied and tedious; and, to form a volume, the author had not much more to do than to revise these memoranda, and add certain extracts from old and new books, with a few calculations and general statements. The book is such an enumeration of particulars, and series of short sketches, as a philosopher would wish to obtain in order to deduce, by abstracting the essence of the whole mixture, a comprehensive character of the people and the country. It is like an irregular heap of materials which the artist must melt together, in order to cast one complete and well proportioned figure.

It will be obvious to the readers of this volume, that the Irish people have a national character widely different from that of the English. And it will be the utmost want of candour, we think, to deny that they are equal to any nation on the earth, in point of both physical and intellectual capability. A liberal system of A liberal system of government, and a high state of mental cultivation, would make them the Athenians of the British empire. By what mystery of iniquity, or infatuation of policy, has it come to pass, that they have been doomed to unalterable ignorance, poverty, and misery, and reminded one age after another of their dependence on a protestant power, sometimes by disdainful neglect, and sometimes by the infliction of

plagues. The temper of our traveller is totally the reverse of any thing like querulousness or faction; but he occasionally avows, both in sorrow and in anger, the irresistible impression made, by what he witnessed, on an honest, and we believe we may say, generous mind. He clearly sees that the lower order of the people, whatever might be their disposition, have in the present state of things absolutely no power to redeem themselves from their deplorable degradation. Without some great, and as yet unattempted, and perhaps unprojected, plan for the relief of their pressing physical wants, they may remain another century in a situation, which a Christian and a philanthropist cannot contemplate without a grief approaching to horror. Their popery and their vice will be alleged against them; if the punishment is to be that they shall be left in that condition wherein they will inevitably continue popish and vicious still, their fate is indeed mournful; vengeance could hardly prompt a severer retribution. Mr. Carr approves of the Union, and faintly expresses his hope that great benefits may yet result from it; but plainly acknowledges that a very different system of practical administration must be adopted, before Ireland can have any material cause to be grateful for this important measure.

It is a particular excellence of the book before us, that the diversified facts are so well exhibited, as to enable the reader to delineate for himself, without any further assistance of the author, the principal features of the Irish character; insomuch that were he to visit Ireland, he would find that the previous reading of the book had made him completely at home in that country. The author however was willing to give a short abstract of his scattered estimates of Irish qualities, in the following summary. Allowing that the national character does really comprise these properties, we must however think that impartial justice would more strongly have marked some of the vices, which considerably shade this constellation of fine qualities.

"With few materials for ingenuity to work with, the peasantry of Ireland are most ingenious, and with adequate inducements, laboriously

indefatigable: they possess, in general, personal beauty and vigour of frame they abound with wit and sensibility, though all the avenues to useful knowledge are closed against them; they are capable of forgiving injuries, and are generous even to their oppressors; they are sensible of superior merit, and submissive to it: they display natural urbanity in rags and penury, are cordially hospitable, ardent for information, social in their habits, kind in their disposition, in gaiety of heart and genuine humour unrivalled, even in their superstition presenting an union of pleasantry and tenderness; warm and constant in their attachments, faithful and incorruptible in their engagements, innocent, with the power of sensual enjoyment perpetually within their reach; observant of sexual modesty, though crowded within the narrow limits of a cabin; strangers to a crime which reddens the cheek of manhood with horror; tenacious of respect; acutely sensible of, and easily won by kindnesses. Such is the peasantry of Ireland: I appeal not to the affections or the humanity, but to the justice of every one to whom chance may direct these pages, whether men so constituted present no character which a wise government can mould to the great purpose of augmenting the prosperity of the country, and the happiness of society. Well might Lord Chesterfield, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, exclaim, God has done every thing for this country, man nothing.'"-Pp. 292, 293.

The author gives plenty of specimens of the ignorance, the fanaticism, the legends, and the superstition, of the lowest rank of the people; and while we read them, we are indignant at the insinuation which occurs, we think more than once, against the wisdom or necessity of a proselyting spirit on the part of the protestants. The view of such a state of the human mind ought to incite all pious protestants to move heaven and earth, if it were possible, to annihilate that monster of error and corruption which produces and sanctions, and will perpetuate in every country where it continues to prevail, that degradation of which the ignorant Irish are an example. But we cannot help perceiving, in several passages of the present volume, that our sprightly traveller is disposed to regard Revelation itself as rather a light matter; we cannot wonder, therefore, at his being unconscious how important is the difference between an erroneous faith and worship, and the true. One of these passages is in page 33: "In God's name let the Peruvians derive themselves from the sun; let the Chinese boast of the existence of their empire eight thousand years before the creation of the world, according to our calculation, &c." If a man really holds the opinion