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moroseness, In Ireland every man seems to be more or less a man of pleasure. We see few persons wedded to and delighting in one occupation as with us at home. There is a large body, the Prebyterian settlers in the north, to whom these observations apply with less force; but there is no question that the original Scottish character has been much mellowed by transplanting into the Irish soil. We are apt to confound the various descriptions of Irish, but the distinctions are worth remarking. In Dublin a judicious cicerone may point out the dissipated and refined southern, the primitive Milesian of the west, and the more sober and stern inhabitant of the north, all strongly contrasted to an observing eye, and the brogue of each varying in character and richness. In England many a wealthy manufacturer or factor would prefer to hear himself termed tradesman to gentleman; but on the other side of the water it is not so. Every man is there a gentle. man. We cannot better illustrate this fact than by mentioning that the term esquire is almost universally applied. There is no middle class in Ireland; there are no individuals who can be content with being well fed and clothed, and remaining in their original grade in society. As soon as an Irish trader makes a little money, he extends his domestic, not his mercantile establishment. He applies the surplus not to augmentation of his capital, but to increase of his pleasures. There is a great want of proper pride, and a great prevalence of vanity. People retire from trade in Ireland with such means as in England they would begin upon.

This, however, all tends to make the people, if not respectable, at least pleasant, which the Irish may be said emphatically to be. In society there is less coldness and reserve and hauteur than in England. Let us here be understood to speak of the middle classes; among which in every country the national character and peculiarities are most visible. The upper ranks in Ireland, the great proprietors and nobles, are much the same as individuals holding the same station amongst us. On entering society in Dublin, a stranger will be much struck by the animation of the party; the absence of we were going to write, mauvais-honte; the haste which individuals make to commit themselves, as it is termed; the freedom with which every man gives his sentiments; and, to speak the truth, the real ability and powers of elocution with which he defends and explains them.

The politics of the inhabitants of Dublin are very much provincial; indeed questions immediately affecting the country are sufficiently numerous and important to occupy attention. But what may be called imperial policy is as little heeded or thought of as the approximation of two planets; an event probably affecting us, but in a degree so minute, and so remotely, as to occasion us scarce a passing thought. There does not prevail in Dublin that general acquaintance with the characters of public men, or with the state of parties, which we find in this city. The press of Dublin is a subject too delicate and too much open to controversy, for us to enlarge upon; but we will remark, that the sweeping, slapdash, discursive, colloquial style common in the newspapers, is very characteristic. The writing is, in point of literary merit, greatly inferior to that of the London journals. Though newspapers are cheaper in Ireland than here, they have small circulation among the lower classes in Dublin; nor have we remarked in any of

the alehouses any newspaper 'taken in here,' as is frequent in London. These people have certainly, as their superiors seem to think they too have, lost all political weight and consideration. The mechanics and tradesmen all unite, however else they may differ, in bewailing the Union, which they deem to have been fatal to Ireland, because injurious to them immediately, and to their city. It is certain, however, that since that measure, Dublin has been most considerably enlarged and improved. It is not easy to explain the cause of this enlargement and improvement; there is no question that the trade of the city has declined. Belfast and Cork have possessed themselves of a part of what did once belong to the capital; and minor sea-ports now correspond directly with London and Liverpool, and the foreign ports, with all of which they used formerly to have nothing to do, but to get commodities from the Dublin merchant. This is not a consequence of the Union, but of the progress of trade, and general advancement of the country. There are in Dublin no houses vacant-none of the mansions of the nobility have gone to ruin; some have fallen into the plebeian hands of opulent lawyers and merchants; many are converted into public institutions and schools, and a great proportion into hotels. By this transition the inhabitants of Dublin are naturally much affected, and with many a bitter expression of sorrow they point out to the stranger the former residences of the various noble families. The Irish are a vain people, and impressed with a reverence for lords and ladies of high degree, very different from honest blunt John Bull's sentiments on that score; and it may be fairly presumed that the loss of so much good company is felt as a considerable aggravation of the solid and substantial injury which the Union occasioned the citizens of the Irish metropolis.

The number of hotels in Dublin is prodigious. All the members of parliament, going and returning, pass a few days in Dublin: it was formerly a great capital, the seat of legislation; it is now a great place of passage. Dublin is now as great as it was at the Union; not as great as it would have been, had that Union not taken place. The aversion to the Union, as a measure of policy, has augmented and maintained that dislike of England, which was once so strong in Ireland, but which is rapidly vanishing. The highest sense of the value and merit of English sobriety, prudence, industry, and exactness, is general; but the coldness and reserve of the character is objected to. There is no doubt that the Irish are emulous of our virtues; and it would be well did we resolve to adopt the excellencies of their temper and good nature. There is one article, the improvement in respect of which we may condescend to notice, as (see Lord Londonderry's speech on the State of the Nation) one of his Majesty's ministers vouchsafed to make it the subject of grave congratulation to the legislature. With such an authority, we run no risk of derogating from our dignity by adverting to it. We have the happiness of stating, that within the last fifty years the habits of the Irish people have improved, in point of cleanliness, in a degree almost inconceivable. They are still far from that martinet purity which we boast; but except in minor and trivial particulars, the inhabitants of Dublin are little less cleanly than those of London. Most of the hotels are kept in as good order as any here. It is true we do not see the outer steps and window stones of that dazzling and Cretan

whiteness they exhibit in England; but it will be found, that wherever comfort demands that the brush and the scrubbing-block should be, they have been. In the north of Ireland, strange as it will sound to English ears, may be found a perfect pattern of cleanliness: the houses of the people engaged in the linen manufacture, are many of them as scrupulously and fastidiously neat and pure as possible. These remarks, however, must be confined to the more comfortable and happy classes of the community. We will not speak of the peasantry; but directing ourselves alone to the population of Dublin, we must say, that it contains a large mass of human beings in the most squalid and wretched condition. An establishment for the relief and reception of mendicants does exist in Dublin: it is maintained by voluntary subscriptions, there being, as our readers are aware, no poor-laws in Ireland. But we mean to refer to a description of individuals who do not fall properly under the description of paupers, or constitute a fit object for alms, we speak of the inferior orders of tradespeople and mechanics. There is a part of Dublin called the Liberty, almost wholly inhabited by these persons. St. Giles's, or the most wretched lane of London, is splendid compared with it. We were informed that the Earl of Meath, whose property it is, actually gets no rent: and that the old law doctrine of General Occupancy prevails. The houses are most of them ruinous, but having been originally well built and of good materials, they hold together. The languishing state of the woollen and silk trades in Ireland has had its effect, but the evil is mainly attributable to the great mischief under which that country suffers, the smallness of the recompense of labour. In London, too, there is much squalid misery, but it is more out of sight and out of the way than in Dublin. Keeping to the west end of the town here, nothing but opulence presents itself: penury hides itself in remote retreats. But in Dublin he must step warily who desires to avoid the view of wretchedness. It is not possible to walk in any direction half an hour without getting among the loathsome habitations of the poor. In traversing Dublin, the stranger will feel with peculiar force the poet's emotion, when, contrasting a rural retreat with the city, he says of the former

"Here was not mingled in the city's pomp,

Of life's extremes, the grandeur and the gloom!"

The first view of Dublin is prepossessing; Sackville-street, by which the traveller from Howth enters, is one of the finest streets in Europe; and as he passes through it, and over Carlisle-bridge, the Post-office and the Custom-house are seen, a glimpse of the Courts is obtained, and the Bank and College lie immediately in the way. But these are almost all that are to be seen; and the consequence is, that the first emotion of a stranger arriving in Dublin, is admiration; and that disappointment succeeds. The Bank was formerly the House of Parliament. It is of Grecian architecture, and for purity and elegance, stands, we believe, unrivalled in these isles. Its beauty has been somewhat impaired since it fell into the hands of the monied gentry. It was surrounded by a series of porticos, the apt resort of Eloquence and the Muses; but the worthy Dir dave "rected in the interstices between the columns, a stout rampart of stone and mortar, thus

adding to the security of their coffers and the spaciousness of the building, however they may have detracted from the beauty of the architecture. The Exchange is a handsome building, but unhappily stands at the head of a street of which it does not occupy the centre. A precisely similar fault, in the site, it may be remarked, injures the effect of the Exchange at Liverpool. Dublin Castle, the town residence of the Viceroy, is situated upon an hill: it is well built, chiefly of stone, and has a very lordly and imposing appearance. The servant is better lodged than his master at St. James's. There are two large and handsome quadrangles, in the upper of which a stand of colours is always displayed. The entire of the building is not appropriated to the use of the Lord Lieutenant; much of it is occupied by the Public Offices, the Treasury, the Ordnance Office, the Chief Secretary's Office, the Council Chamber, &c. &c. The apartments are handsome, and the audience and presence chambers sufficiently spacious. The whole is surrounded by a wall of great height and strength. Some parts of the edifice are old. The Birmingham Tower, where the records are kept, derives its name from Sir William de Birmingham, one of the early settlers and deputies.

The neighbourhood of Dublin is very delightful. Both sides of the Bay are crowded with handsome villas. The mountains of Wicklow occupy the south: the Phoenix Park lies to the West, and beyond it opens the rich county of Kildare. The Glen of the Downs, the Dargle, the Devil's Glen, the vale of Obrea, Luggelaw, all the most charming scenery of Wicklow, is within a morning's drive of Dublin: on the other side, beyond the park, only a few miles from town, lies Lucan and Celbridge. Their vicinity to all these places leads the inhabitants of Dublin to make frequent country excursions; and each Sunday, every jaded citizen who can muster a horse and car, has his wife and children apparelled in their gayest attire, and sallies forth to enjoy the pure fresh air, and cheer his sight with the view of the delicious country around him. Every house is deserted immediately after breakfast-the service of the Catholic Church is brief; it stays the eager citizen but a short time, and the roads about the metropolis present, early on the Sunday morning, a concourse of all sexes, ages, and conditions, hurrying to enjoy themselves. The Irish are particularly fortunate in the possession of their jaunting-car, as it is called. It is a vehicle drawn by one horse; the carriage of it is like that of a gig; the driver sits on a small raised seat behind the horse, and on each side, their feet supported by footboards covering the wheels, sit two, or sometimes three persons, those on one side having their backs to those on the other. Thus may five, or six, or seven people be carried with little more inconvenience to a horse than a gig would occasion. This sort of vehicle is cheap; it enables people of humble fortune to move about; it places them nearly on a level with the wealthy, in respect of that sole remaining article in which the latter enjoy a real and substantial superiority in the goods of life; and it is perhaps the only instance in which the middle class possess, in Ireland, a comfort which does not belong to the same class in England. We are surprised that the jaunting-car has not been introduced into use in England. It is not well suited to a great town; but for the country it is admirably adapted.

In regard to the travelling between Dublin and London, the Holy

head road is a perfect pattern; and the great bridge now erecting over the Menai at Bangor, must not be passed by without a word. It is a work of the most magnificent description. The span of the arch is three hundred and sixty feet! It is scarcely possible to persuade oneself that the passage will be safe: and we cannot answer for what might not have been our vulgar scepticism on that point, had we not been, in a most piteous voice, assured by our host, whose little inn at the Ferry will be deserted when the avenue to the bridge shall be opened, that there is not the remotest fear (hope he would have said) of a failure in the project. Camden, in his Britannia, takes notice of an attempt made by Edward the First to throw a bridge over the straits, that his army might pass by it into Anglesey. The monarch was unsuccessful. How would he wonder at the feats of Mr. Wyatt, the engineer! Not, certainly, more, however, than would the mariner of his day at a voyage of six hours and a half from Holyhead to Howth. What a contrast does the expedition and celerity of the passage of the steam. boat present to the doubt and difficulty of the seaman of early times, anxiously straining his eyes to discover, in the dark horizon, the summit of some headland, by which to conjecture his course!-If the homeliness and common-sense nature of these remarks on the route to Holyhead through North Wales, should give umbrage to any sentimental reader, who expected to hear of peaks lost in the clouds, of horrific precipices, of eternal snows, of sequestered vales, of goats perched on fearful crags, of the screaming of eagles, or the flight of wild geese, with all the addenda of torrents, and caves, we can only recommend, that he visit the place in his proper person, and content ourselves with referring him to the narrative of a journey to Brundusium, given by the first lyric poet of the Augustan age. He will find, that strong as is the precedent afforded by Horace's notice of the "gritty bread" and bad water, we have not condescended to drop a single hint, that even in Wales, small mutton is not necessarily delicious, inasmuch as it is often young: and that a Welsh rabbit, even in Wales, is sometimes made of bad cheese. S. M. T.

SONNET.-POMPEII.

CITY of ancient time! in midst of thee
Once dwelt the mighty of the world, and thou
Wast wanton in thy pride, and round thy brow
Didst twine the wreath of immortality,

And sat'st a queen beside earth's loveliest sea.
The fatal fire-shower fell-thy ardent vow
To Isis, Venus, nought avails thee now-

That red rain fell, and thou didst cease to be!-
Full seventeen centuries fled, and thy lost walls

Still lived within their grave, though where they stood
Strange men knew not!-Once more the lizard crawls

O'er temples late discover'd;-in rapt mood,

I trod on desolate streets, where the foot falls
And echo answers through the solitude!

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