are heavy, and the large park, eight miles around, seems to smile derisively at the poverty of the people. Land owners live in England, and their agents remain here to rob both them and the tenants. Here is the capital defect of the social system. It needs an axe at the root.

We took but a glance of Northern Ireland, and this portion of the isle is almost a Paradise, compared to the southern portion, where starvation ever cowers and shivers. And yet no part of any land that we have seen, reveals so much destitution, rags and beggary, as the north of Ireland. Of Belfast I can but say, that no American city of the same size presents so much activity and commercial life; while, at the same time, it is laid out with an elegance which betokens foresight and grace. Belfast is the seat of the linen manufacture. The fields in and around it were snow white with linen blanching in the sun; while the country between Drogheda and Belfast waved with the flax, some of which was in process of pulling. But the towns between Dublin and Belfast, including Drogheda-what a picture of poverty did they present! The women, in tatters, hung around our vehicle, and when it drove off, boys by the dozen ran after us, turning somersets, and using every insinuation which native Irish wit could suggest, to obtain alms. "Will you! will you!-gentlemon, throw me a ha'penny?" and with other exclamations, they followed until the ha'penny was thrown, when a young Irish melée occurred in a scramble for the copper, which generally issued in some bloody noses, that required additional coppers to stanch. It was no better, if bread was thrown. A company of famished wolves could not dart with more singleness, or less ferocity of purpose, after the bread. And yet in this depth of poverty the gleams of an invincible humor flashed from the laughing lips of the little starveling imps; as it were, gleams of sunshine in bright cheerful bars, irradiating a dungeon's dark

ness.

How kindly is that Providence distributed, which thus lightens the fetters of circumstance. Who knows what genius

lives, waiting development, in these elfish urchins, that emit such sparkles of fun, as they run after the traveller for the penny? The atmosphere of gross earthliness encircles and taints the clear beams of that soul which God has created with such subtle yet latent apprehension. It is solid truth, that there are hidden energies under the clouds of ignorance. This is the seminal principle of our educational systems the germ of that hopeful ness, from which the stability of the future, as well as the pro gressiveness of the race, spring. Would that these young blos soming energies, only blooming to be nipped by "the eager air" of poverty and crime, could be early transplanted to a more genial soil!

The country looks as if already deserted by its working people. Houses are empty, fields look neglected, and hedges are untrimmed. True, there is a heavy harvest; but it is gathered by hands that work slowly, and that lack the impulse which proprietorship and enjoyment ever bestow. We understood that those who were gathering the crop of wheat, and of flax, received but a ha'penny per day! To be sure they were found—but a cent a day for harvest hands! Some index of the prevailing destitution may be found in the signs so common, "Licensed to sell spirits," and the crowd of idlers which such signs always collect. This may, in part, account for the mud-houses, where filth and poverty are the presiding Penates. But where are the gilded flies that fatten on this corruption? Where are the landlords who dole out their ha'pennies per diem to these images of God, for the use of their muscles and energies? Oh! living in England most sumptuously. They heed not the shriek of penury for bread. They affect to believe that no faces are sallow, that no sunken eyes peer out of their tenant mud-houses. The curses of the destitute muttered in secret, give them a sullen joy, that their lot is not like that of the ungovernable, untractable, and whiskey-drinking Irish.

Even Belfast, so beautiful and prosperous, is not wanting

in illustrations of Irish destitution. They crowd around the hotels, and besiege the landings. The heart grows sad and heavy to see so much of the same wretchedness. Would to God that some relief could be discerned for Ireland! England will only learn how to treat her, when she finds the green isle depopulated by emigration.

HO

XXXV.

Scotch Scenery and Genins.

"Rear high thy bleak majestic hills,

Thy sheltered valleys proudly spread,

And, Scotia, pour thy thousand rills,

And wave thy heaths with blossoms red."

Roscoe.

OW different is Scotland in its social appearance from impoverished Ireland! We hear the same peculiar intonations of voice, called the brogue, and this, with the peat beds, is about all that resembles Ireland. You may remember, however, that the north of Ireland was originally settled by the Scotch. This will account for the similarity of brogue.

We left Belfast at sundown, and arrived at Ayr, not very far from the mouth of bonnie Doon, by sunrise. Here, where Burns used to walk and sing, we met the first genuine Scotchmen on their native heaths, and heard the musical cadences of

"That tongue which Godlike heroes spoke,
Which Oram, Ullin, Ossian, sung;

The tongue which spurned the Roman yoke,
When thraldom o'er the world was flung."

But since we landed at Ayr, we have heard it in the Highlands, where Sandy spoke the unquestioned Gaelic drawn from an undefiled well, and where scawns and oaten-meal cakes were eaten, and the descendants of the clans prided themselves upon their brave ancestry.

Our ride to Glasgow by rail from Ayr upon a rainy morning, was without incident. The great commercial metropolis of Scot

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land, I had almost said of Great Britain, for it is the third city of the realm, has a noble history, as well as numerous points of local interest. The reader of Scotch history and literature will need no refreshing, as to the scenes here enacted, when the Covenant was a matter of life and death; or when Bailie Nichol Jarvie here lived and gossipped. The Clyde has formed many associations with the minds of the gifted in its ebbing and flowing; and none stronger than that with the poet Campbell, who was born at Glasgow; and who, after a long absence from his native stream and city, found the nineteenth century at work, with its coal and iron elements, destroying much of the poetry of the spot. He found it improved as we in America would say; and lamented in verse,

That it no more through pastoral scenes should glide,

My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic Clyde."

On going up the Clyde, we found it full of craft. Iron steamers were plying up and down its muddy waters. Thousands of workmen were repairing and building other iron steamers. The clink of hammers resounded on every side. Energy never lags or slackens here. No wonder, with such calls as the world makes for Scotch iron and Scotch machinery.

Material prosperity walks abreast with charity and education in Glasgow. You may see this, without examining statistics, in the bright benevolent faces which pass you on the pave. My time will not permit me to speak of the monuments, edifices and institutions of this city. I would love to do so, for there is a close similitude between the American and Scotch character in all its developments, which is worthy of a Plutarch's parallel. The "perfervidum ingenium Scotorum" or, as the French term it, "Fier comme Ecossais," by which they manage to accumulate— to "get along" in the world, is so peculiarly Yankee, as to have attracted the attention of writers and travellers very frequently. There is no stupidity or slowness in a Scotchman's look or movement.

Besides, the Scotch have the logic-the intellect. of