good old fairy, who is supposed to wander in the dusk, scattering an invisible powder on the sleepy eyes of children. Blake's cradle-song is very pretty, but rather too long, and not too grammatical in the later verses:

Sweet dreams, form a shade,
O'er my lovely infant's head;
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams
By happy, silent, moony beams.

Sweet sleep, with soft down
Weave thy brows an infant crown ;
Sweet sleep, angel mild,

Hover o'er my happy child.

There is something of the disconnected coherence of the visions of the night in Beddoe's "Dream Pedlary," which reads like a memory of a poem heard in sleep :

If there were dreams to sell,

What would you buy?

Some cost a passing bell;

Some a light sigh,

That shakes from Life's fresh crown

Only a rose-leaf down.

If there were dreams to sell,

Merry and sad to tell,

And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?

But a sleepier and more soothing song than this is Sydney Dobell's chief success in verse, a passage of drowsy and monotonous music that rings

64

'Lotus Eaters," should not be omitted. Shelley's poem, The Magnetic Lady to her Patient,

Sleep on, sleep on! Forget thy pain,
My hand is on thy brow,

would try the force of its mesmeric spell. Shelley's poem on Night, too, might claim a place in a volume of lullabies for grown-up children by virtue of its lines,

Thy brother Death came and cried,
"Wouldst thou me?"

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
"Shall I nestle near thy side?
Would'st thou me ?" and I replied,
No, not thee !"

Filicaja's ode must not be forgotten, nor Cowley's, nor Denman's song in "The Sophy." But Keat's sonnet may close the list of invocations which Homer made Hera begin :

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!

Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleased eyes embower'd from the

light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:

O soothest Sleep, if so it please thee, close, In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,

Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws

Around my bed its lulling charities; Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;

Save me from curious conscience, that still lords

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a

mole ;

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

In spite of Keats, and of the proverb about the sleep of the just, we fancy that conscience keeps few people awake. Coffee, and overwork, and tobacco, and the noises of the night may demand Men have chloral, but not conscience.

lain awake, and the night has fretted. them, but not for conscience.-Saturday Review.

among the Irish tenantry. The latest epoch of famine was in the years 1846 to 1849. To understand the movement of to-day, it is necessary to understand the meaning of the events in these

years; for it was the lessons of 1847 and 1848 which taught the agitators of 1879 and 1880; their judgments were formed, their proposals were regulated, their acts must be judged, by the occurrences in that period. It was that epoch which showed to them the meaning of a famine in Ireland; from that epoch they also learned what, in a period of famine, the action of Irish landlords might be expected to be; from that epoch also they could forecast the fate of Irish tenants, should a similar catastrophe place the tenants in similar

circumstances.

The Land Leaguers, therefore, in asking the consideration of their case, have a right to make it a primary demand that their judges shall be possessed of the events and lessons of the Great Famine. I cannot within the space at my disposal attempt to give anything like a complete picture of that time; and I must therefore attempt, by the mention of some statistics, and of a certain number of characteristic incidents, to bring something like a conception of the calamity to the English mind. The first great fact as to that period is the diminution in the population. In 1841 the inhabitants of Ireland numbered 8,175,124; in 1851 the population was 6,552.385; that is to say, the population had in this period diminished by about a million and a half. Even these figures do not, however, represent the full extent of the carnage. The famine did not begin till 1846; the population accordingly had gone on with the natural increase until 1846; and when the famine began the population would be about 8,750,000. Again, with but the intervention of the famine, and allowing for natural increase, the population in 1851 would have been something above nine millions. The work of the famine then was that a country which should have had a population of nine millions in 1851, had in reality a population of six millions and a half. The loss in population was two millions and a half. Let us take another great and guiding fact-the number of innabited houses. The total in 1841 was 1,328,839; and in 1851, 1,046,223.

And now for a few of the incidents of the time. There were 174 deaths in Cork Workhouse in a single week, being

at the rate of more than one death an hour.* Mr. James H. Tuke tells of an inspector of roads who caused no less than 140 bodies to be buried, which he found scattered along the highway in Clifden, County Galway. Deaths by famine had become so common by the end of February, in 1847, that at a meeting of coroners in Cork it was resolved to hold no more starvation inquests. It was quite an usual thing to find entire families swept away, and the dead and the dying often lay together for days in the same cabin. At a place called Cooldorahey a young fellow named Manley was found dying, with his brother and sister lying close beside him, the last of a large family; the sister had been dead for five, the brother for three days.§ Lord George Bentinck, in a speech in the House of Commons, mentioned a case in which in one cabin ten corpses were found out of a family of eleven; and another case in which seven putrid corpses were found in the same hovel. The supply of coffins proved utterly unequal to the demand. In Roscommon, where whole families retiring to rest at night alive. were found all dead in the morning, sixty bodies were within a short time buried without coffins. A newspaper correspondent, writing from Dingle, in Kerry, speaks of a parish of three thousand souls, of whom five hundred had perished in six months. Three fourths of them were interred coffinless;

66

scores of them thrown beside the neareast ditch, and there left to the mercy of the dogs, which have nothing else to feed on.”** In other parts of the country the difficulty was met by a singular expedient: coffins were made with a slide or hinged bottom, and so did duty for several corpses in succession.tt

These few incidents, selected out of many thousands, are sufficient to give the reader an idea of what the great famine in Ireland meant to the Irish tenants; the next point to be considered

is the action of the landlords during that period. In the year 1847, according to a report drawn up by Captain Larcom, afterward Under-Secretary for Ireland, 70,000 occupiers were evicted-that is to say, about 300,000 persons.* In 1849 there were, according to the late Mr. Kaye,† 50,000 evictions; and in the four years following the famine-from 1849 to 1852-there were, according to a table in Mr. J. C. Morison's excellent pamphlet, "Irish Grievances, 221,845 evictions. Sir Charles Wood, in a speech in the House of Commons, called attention to the circumstance that the landlords in Mayo were evicting as they never evicted before, in proof of which he announced the fact that out of 6400 processes at the Quarter Sessions in Ballina, 4000 were at the suit of landlords for arrears of rent. These proceedings had almost depopulated whole districts, and town lands which had been held by 400 or 500 persons were then uninhabited. Mr. O'Rorke quotes a placard, posted in the town of Cahir, in April, 1846, to the effect that if "all rent and arrears of rent due to the 25th of March" were not paid on the 12th of May, "the most summary steps will be taken to recover the same." This is signed by John Chaytor," agent to the Earl of Glengall. "Symptoms of a widespread systematic extermination," says another athority," are just beginning to exhibit themselves. The potato cultivation being extinguished, at least for a time, the peasant cultivators can pay no rents; sheep and horned cattle can pay rents, and smart rents too; therefore the sheep and cattle shall have the lands, and the peasants shall be ousted from them; a very simple and most inevitable conclusion, as you will see.

I repeat it, a universal system of ousting the peasantry is about to set in. The number of civil bills served by landlords for the approaching Sessions of this town will treble those sent out for the last ten years."|| Father

*Quoted in Mitchel's "History of Ireland,"

vol. ii. pp. 451-2.

"Free Trade in Land," p. 305.

Irish Grievances," p. 55.

Quoted in O'Rorke, p. 355.

O'Rorke, having quoted his authority, goes on to tell that he visited the districts described twenty years after. "I had a conversation," he writes relative to the famine, "with a gentleman who knew the midland counties, and portions of the west, well. I asked him what was the effect of the famine in his district. 'My district,' he answered, was by no means regarded as a poor one, but the famine swept away more than half its population. The census of 1841 gave the families residing in it as 2200; the census of 1851 gave them at 1000. 'Did the landlords,' I inquired, come forward liberally to save the lives of the people?' Only one landlord,' he replied, in the whole locality with which I am connected did anything to save the people, F-- O'B——. He asked no rent for two years, and he never afterward insisted on the rent of these two years, although, I must say, he was paid it by many of his tenants of their own free will; but, for the rest, he cancelled those two years' rent and opened a new account with them, as with men owing nothing.' 'And what,' 1 further asked, were the feelings of the landlords with regard to their tenants dying of starvation?' He answered, with solemn emphasis, Delighted to be rid of them!'"*

Here is another case. The Rev. B. Durcan, P. P., of Swinford, writing on November 16, 1846, on the condition of his parish, says:

"One word as to the landlords. There are several owners of land in this parish (Kilconduft), but not one of them resident. We made an effort to create by subscription a fund for the purpose of keeping a supply of provisions in Swinford, to be sold in small quantities. The non-resident landlords were applied to, but not one of them responded to the call. They are not, however, idle. Their bailiffs are on the alert distraining for rent, and the pounds are full." +

In County Sligo Father O'Rorke tells of a case where thirty families were evicted by one landlord-one hundred and fifty individuals in all. In the second year of the famine corn was distrained in October for rent which fell due in the following May.§

There was one case of eviction, how

* Father O'Rorke (p. 389) himself emphaO'Rrke, p. 265. Ibid.

quoted by O'Rorke, p. 386.

Ibid.

ever, which exceeded all the rest in the harshness of its circumstances, and which excited the greatest attention. This was the eviction in the village of Ballinglass, County Galway. The landlords were a Mr. and Mrs. Gerard. In this case no rent at all was actually due, and the tenants had over and over again offered to come to terms. Fixed in their determination to be rid of the villagers, Mr. and Mrs. Gerard refused all offers; and on Friday, the 13th of March, the sheriff, accompanied by a large force of the 49th Regiment, and by a heavy body of police, carried out the decree. Sixty houses were destroyed; one was left standing in which were lying a man and woman who were ill of the fever, and they shortly afterward were served with notice to leave the place within fifteen days, or the house would be tumbled on top of them."* Only a portion of the walls were pulled down in the first instance; and the villagers, pitching a few poles slantwise against these walls, took shelter there. The next day the bailiffs came, pulled down all the walls, and rooted up the foundations. The tenants then took refuge in the ditches, "where they slept in parties from ten to fifteen each, huddled together before a fire, for the two succeeding nights." One other incident. A tenant-he was nearly eighty years of age, and had lived in the village of Ballinglass for over sixty-eight years-was, to use a modern word, “interviewed;" and two questions, with their answers, will sufficiently indicate the nature of this old man's story:

"Is it true,' asked the correspondent of the Freeman's Journal, that the remainder of the walls were ordered to be thrown down to prevent the people sheltering themselves at night?' 'In troth it is, sir; they would not let any one go near the place; we slept in the ditches for two nights, and I got pains in my poor old bones after it.'Did the women sleep in the ditches?' 'They did, sir, and I saw one of the women with a child on her breast hunted by the bailiffs from three places, the night after they threw down the houses, when we were under the walls, and they came to put out the fires, and they put out the fires in the road ditches on us too.'

One other point must be noticed.* The emigration between the years 1842 and 1851, both inclusive, amounted to 1,436,862. Quoting the "Irish Crisis,” by Sir Charles Trevelyan, Father O'Rorke calculates that the deaths on the voyage to Canada rose from five in the thousand (the ordinary rate) to about sixty in the thousand, and while the ships were in quarantine they rose from one to forty in the thousand; so that, instead of six emigrants in the thousand dying on the voyage and during quarantine, one hundred died, "besides still larger numbers who died at Quebec, Montreal, and elsewhere in the interior."t Out of 89,738 emigrants who embarked for Canada in 1847, Father O'Rorke calculates that 15,330 died on the voyage or afterward in hospital.‡ Of 493 passengers who sailed in the Erin Queen, 136 died on the voyage; of 552 in the Avon, 246 died; of

*Since writing the preceding paragraph in reference to the Ballinglass eviction, I have come across accounts of cases of equal atrocity. One of these attracted considerable attention in Parliament, and even excited the disgust of so staunch a friend of the landlords as Sir Robert Peel. The hero of this eviction

of which County Galway was also the scene -was a Mr. Blake, a magistrate. Sir R. Peel quotes the following account of the proceeding from Major McKie, an official employed by the Poor Law Commissioners :

"It would appear, from the evidence recorded, that the forcible ejectments were ille

gal; that previous notices had not been served; and that the ejectments were perpetrated under circumstances of great cruelty. The time chosen was for the greater part nightfall, on the eve of the new year. The Occupiers were forced out of their houses, with their helpless children, and left exposed to the cold on a bleak western shore in a stormy winter's night; that some of the children were sick; that the parents implored that they might not be exposed, and their houses left till the morning; that their prayers for mercy were vain; and that many of them have since died. I have visited the ruins of these huts (not at any great distance from Mr. Blake's residence); I found that living within the ruins of those huts, endeav many of these unfortunate people were still oring to shelter themselves under a few sticks and sods, all in the most wretched state of destitution; many were so weak that they could scarcely stand when giving their evidence. The site of these ruins is a rocky, wild spot, fit for nothing but a sheep walk."-Han

+ Ibid.

+ Irish Crisis," quoted by O'Rorke, p. O'Rorke, p. 497.

Ibid

497.

476 in the Virginius, 267 died on the voyage; and Mr. William Henry Smith, C.E., an English gentleman, in a pamphlet entitled "Twelve Months' Residence in Ireland During the Famine and the Public Works," states that of 600 who emigrated in one vessel, not 100 survived.* Lord Lansdowne, grandfather of the present peer, was one of the most ardent supporters of the system of forced emigration. So many of his tenants whom he sent abroad in these times perished, that a portion of a hospital in America was known by the name of the Lansdowne Ward.

One fact, finally, by way of showing the combined results of famine, pestilence, and evicting landlords during the famine years. The number of peasant cabins in 1841 was 491,278, in 1851 the number was 135,589. In Connaught, where famine, pestilence, and eviction raged most severely, the number of cabins fell from 121,346 in 1841 to 31,586 in 1851.t

With these facts before them, the Land Leaguers were entitled to draw three conclusions: (1) That the failure of the potato crop in Ireland was likely to lead to a famine, and that the proportions of a famine must in Ireland be gigantic; (2) That famine would lead to equally destructive pestilence; and (3) That the landlords would take advantage of the famine and pestilence to push the most extreme assertion of their rights.

The first thing the Land Leaguers are bound to show is that, at the moment they began their operations, there was reasonable ground for anticipating a famine. The following official statistics supply the best answer to this ques

tion :

Relief Committee, which teem with descriptions of a state of destitution which may be well called appalling; but I can safely rest the case on the figures with regard to the potato crop.

What do those figures show? That in three years there was a loss in the potato crop alone of £10,000,000; and the annual tenement valuation of Ireland is but one million more—namely, £11,o00,000. Further, this table shows that the potato crop of the year 1879 was but one third of what it was in the year 1876. It must be remarked that in some districts the potato crop was not even one third; it was totally destroyed. As the potato is the chief, if not the only food of the Irish tenants, it follows that in parts of Ireland the tenants were left absolutely without food. These facts justify the anticipation of the Land Leaguers that a famine was imminent.

The next proposition the Land Leaguers have to prove is that the landlords of 1877 to 1879 were animated by the same spirit as the landlords in the years between 1846 and 1849. Again, official statistics supply the answer to this question :

Year.

1876.. 1877. 1878..

No. of Ejectment Processes. 1269

1880 (Estimated Number in)

.1323

.1749 3893*

This table speaks for itself: as in the years of the Great Famine, so in the present epoch of distress, the landlords increased the number of evictions in exact proportion to the increase of distress among the tenants.

This extraordinary fact was one of the chief reasons, as they themselves avowed, why the Government introduced the Disturbance Bill, and it was made the subject of frequent comment in the ministerial speeches. Thus, Mr. Gladstone, speaking on the second reading, sued these words:

"The two bad harvests of 1877 and 1878 were succeeded in 1879 by a harvest which in parts of Ireland was the very worst known since the Great Irish Famine. With these

bad harvests the number of evictions increased. In truth, the act of God in the failure of the crops had replaced the Irish occupier in

*There are some later statistics, I believe, with regard to 1879, but I have not been able to obtain them.