RUINS.

PART II.

THE STORY OF CLOONEY BLANEY.

IT has been said, that the complacency with which we dwell upon the miseries of our fellowcreatures is a strong proof of the evil tendency of our nature. This may be, in some degree, true; but even the snarling French cynic tells us that, "Les vices entrent dans la composition des vertus, comme les poisons entrent dans la composition des remèdes. La prudence les assemble et les tempère, et elle s'en sert utilement contre les maux de la vie." Rochefoucault gives to our feelings, in this instance, a better interpretation than could be expected from him. I assure those who peruse these pages that if

I return to the subject of Irish ruins, like the bird which repeats its one melancholy note until it is incapable of giving voice to any other, it is because my heart pants to excite sympathy for my poor country, and that I would fain draw the feelings of the English toward them in the time of their sore trouble.

There is in Ireland misery enough for gatherers of its records, without being confined to one subject. Misery is the refrain of Irish affairs; if we escape Scylla, we fall in with Charybdis. The change of a Lord Lieutenant -the misrepresentations of an agitator-the cold denunciations of the opposite party, and the bitterness of each against the other,―have comparatively little to do with the real state of Irish distress. There is positively nothing known, nothing imagined, of the utter, hopeless, degrading poverty endured by the peasants in the southern and wilder parts of Ireland.

As I write while you read, there are hundreds of creatures, gifted, unhappily gifted, with feeling and intelligence, yet having no prospect but starvation, no refuge but the grave!

"I have worked, lady," said a worn-down peasant to me in the neighbourhood of Cork, "I have worked from six o'clock in the

morning till six at night, to support a bedridden mother, a wife, and seven childre, two of them (the childre I mean) are-God break hard fortune to you and yours, lady!born naturals. I have slaved these twelve hours upon pratees, and a drink of could water to wash them and the throuble down together, and the pay I get is tenpence a-day."

"But," I replied, "though you work in that manner, and at that small rate of wages, you have six acres of land, and your wife and sons cultivate it."

"We had six acres, we are only able to keep three now; it takes my eldest boy and myself the year round to work out the rent of them. The minister has his tithe, the priest his thrifle; the bit o' land is not rightly managed; the woman and childre hasn't the strength in 'em to manage land which the devil has trampled rough-shod over so many times. The baste was seized and sould for the last gale, and so we've nothing to draw mendin': and what heart have we to mend it, houlding it, as we do, at a rack-rent, and maybe turn out' for the first fool that thinks he can pay more for it than we do?"

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* Horse.

6

"It is certainly very hard," I said, mournfully; "but, unfortunately, there are many in the same situation."

"And worse!" he replied; "there are some who haven't a broken roof even over their heads, nor the comfort of a loving face to look into; nor a child left with the feaver; nor a pratee to the ditch-wather they're forced to drink. But, ma'am, honey-that's no comfort! Sure, the craythurs, when they're poorer than ourselves, must have what little help we can give them."

Poor generous Paddy! Here the "craythurs poorer than ourselves" are sent to the workhouse; but in Ireland the half-starved cottager works for the half-starved beggar! We may and we must condemn the system which makes the poor man poorer, by letting loose upon him a population of paupers; but we cannot avoid sympathising with the disinterested generosity of the peasant, who gives voluntarily, and without the prospect of return.

Since the first portion of this subject was written, our feelings have been both dismayed and saddened by the fatal affray at Rathcormac that it has been and will be made the instrument of much evil cannot be denied; I

have no desire to trace the causes of the dreadful event; but I cannot avoid dwelling upon one circumstance connected with it.

Never was there given to England a more touching picture of Irish desolation than that which reached us from the widow Ryan, in whose "haggart" the dreadful tragedy was enacted. After describing the commencement of the slaughter, the old woman unconsciously draws as affecting a picture of filial piety as can be conceived.

"With that I turned back, and I met my daughter in the bohreen; and she went with me, guarding me with her arms round my neck."

After describing how she went to the dead bodies, turning them over in her agonising anxiety, to see if she could discover her son, she found him, poor woman! at last." I staggered down to him and I caught his pulse, and he had no pulse; I put my mouth to his mouth, and he had no breath. I then began to shut his eyes and close his lips; and Dick Willis cried out to me, 'Don't me, Don't stop his breath;' 'Oh! Dick,' says I, he has no breath to stop.' With that I caught his head, and my daughter caught his feet, and we stretched him in his blood where he lay. And though my