SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Tusv

Ireland. Dublin, the Shannon, Limerick. Cork and Kilkenny Races, the Round Towers. the Lakes of Killarney. the County of Wicklow; O'Connell and the Re- leg Association; Belfast and the Gianrs Causeway. By J. G. Kohl. (Foreign

Cliainsais aad Hall.

Greece under the Romans. A Historical view of the Condition of the Greek Nation, from the time of its Conquest by the Romans until the Extinction of the Roman Empire in the Rost. B.C. 146—A.D. 717. By George Finley, K.R.G., Member of the American Antiquarian Society, and Corresponding Member of the Aram°. logical Institute at Rome Blackwood. Brottnassrr,

Memoirs of Joseph Shepherd Menden, Comedian. By his Sou Perm:. Studies of Sensation and Event ; Poems. By Ebenezer Jones Beatky.

For, KOHL'S IRELAND.

NOTWITHSTANDING the number of works that have been published upon Ireland, this tour of M. KOHL'S may be read with pleasure, and even advantage. It is not perhaps that there are any facts absolutely new ; but M. Kota. exhibits many things in a new light, especially those which relate to the social state of Ireland or those external appearances that indicate the condition of the people. His character as a foreigner serves him in this ; for he brings to the task of judgment a mind less prejudiced by political or national feelings than an Englishman, while he is less affected by mere differences of appearance, which by neighbours are often more regarded than greater differences. He enjoys a further advan- tage in his experience : he is acquainted with all the people of Middle and Northern Europe, and can bring the Irish to a wider test than the generality of tourists are able to do. In a literary sense, Ireland has not the minuteness and minia- ture-like finish of St. Petersburg, nor perhaps the fulness of this writer's other travels ; but it is more rapid, with more point and vivacity in the narrative and descriptions. It is also a more at- tractive book : but this may arise from the attraction of the sub- ject, which comes more home to us, especially just now, than ac- counts of remoter places.

The period of M. Kottes journey was the autumn of last year;

and his route was through the centre and the South-west of Ire- land, returning along the whole of the Eastern coast to the Giant's Causeway. Starting from Dublin, he first paid a visit to Miss EDGEWORTH, at Edgeworthstown ; of the management of which he speaks in high terms, but is scrupulously silent respecting the authoress and her domestic life. He then made his way across the country to Athlone; whence be descended the Shannon to Lime- rick ; and after some excursions in that vicinity, proceeded back to Dublin, by the Lakes of Killarney, Cork, Waterford, and the Vale of Avoca. After seeing and hearing O'CoNNELL, he proceeded Northward from the capital to Belfast, and thence to the wonder of the Causeway ; completing his tour in October. In this line there is nothing but what was common enough. Connaught was scarcely entered ; all its wilder scenes and people left unexplored, and many of the inner portions of the country passed by. Yet, to a stranger pressed for time, the points of the land were well- selected,—the rarest and completest beauties of nature, the most extraordinary natural curiosities, the leading towns for society, commerce, or manufactures, and the two great contrasts in the Irish people, the Protestants of the North and the Catholics of the West and South.

The general conclusions to be drawn from M. KOHL'S tour are to this effect. So far as he can form a judgment from statistics, reports, and such indications as met his eye, in new buildings, public accommodations in the larger towns, and so forth, the com- merce of Ireland and the condition of the middle classes have improved of late years, whilst the bulk of the people have remained stationary or retrograded—he deems it an impossibility that they could get worse than they are. He has seen what are held to be the most degraded classes in Europe—the serfs of Livonia and Russia, the Esthonians, Servians, and Bosnians ; but neither these nor the Tartars of the Crimea equal in rags and wretchedness, in the squalidness of their persons, the paucity of food, or the miser- able outcast character of their habitations, the "finest peasantry in the world." Some of this misery M. Korn, attributes to the English domination—to the devastations and misgovernment of seven hundred years ; some to the conduct of the landlords, and to the practice of absenteeism ; but much to the people themselves. The judgment in both cases may be true ; but there is this difference between the conclusions : those who have nothing but the book must take the first opinion on trust—the latter seems to prove itself. Clothes cannot be procured, but torn garments may be stitched together— the most barbarous serfs patch their sheep-skin garments, but the indolence of the Irish makes them go in rags a hovel must be erected of what materials can be procured, but even a mud hovel can be made water. tight by stopping up holes; the floor might be raised and beaten hard with a little labour ; the dirt and dirt- heaps removed from it with a little industry ; a little care might drain it dry, or at least drier : food cannot be gotten without means of purchase, but, looking at the soil and the state of cul- tivation, our German traveller seems to think that, in spite of laws and bad government, much more food might at all events be pro- duced, were it not for "the natural indolence of the Irish them- selves." And these opinions have more weight as coming from a foreigner without English prejudices, though he probably may have some " Saxon " blood.

Those who wish to see the various data from which these con- clusions are deduced, must peruse the volume. But we will take a few of the more forc.ibIe passages descriptive of Ireland and the Irish as seen by a German eye.

APPEA.RANCE OP THE BEST PART OP CATHOLIC IRELAND.

The counties I have just mentioned, [Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, and Longford,] and which lie immediately West from Dublin, are the most fertile of Ireland, are celebrated for their good cultivation and are looked upon as a sort of Land of Promise by the poor people of Clare, Kerry, and others of the Western districts. Nowhere else except in Wexford, is there so small a portion of the land lying waste in bog or moor ; nowhere else is the cattle so bne, the corn so good and abundant ; and nowhere else have English improve- ments made more progress. Thew counties were always advantageously situated for the reception of English settlers, and for the introduction of the English language: the language, superstition, and customs of Ireland have therefore been nearly extirpated, and an English character has been substi- tuted. These are historical and undeniable facts ; and yet the traveller who eieits these happy regions for the first time is apt to receive quite a contrary impression, and to imagine himself in the most wretched part of the country. Till he has seen the West of Ireland, he has no idea that human beings can live in a state of greater misery than in the fertile environs of Dublin, or that a peopled and cultivated land can look wilder than the corn-abounding plains of Meath, Kildare, and Westmeath. In the West of Ireland, there are dis- tricts where a man may imagine himself in a wilderness abandoned by man- kind ; where nothing is to be seen but rocks, bogs, and brushwood, and where wild besets alone may be supposed capable of housing. All at once, however, on closer inspection, little green patches, like potato-fields, are seen scattered here and there amid the rocks, and a stranger is tempted to go nearer and ex- amine them. Let him look where he is going, however, or he may make a false step; the earth may give way under his feet, and he may fall into—What ! into an abyss, a cavern, a hog ?—No; into a hut, into a human dwelling- place, whose existence he had overlooked, because the roof on one side was level with the ground, and nearly of the same consistency. Perhaps my tra- veller may draw back his foot just in time ; and then let him look around, and be will find the place filled with a multitude of similar huts, all swarming with life and potatoes.

It is not so bad certainly in the happy regions of the East ; but even these can scarcely be said to have the appearance of a cultivated country—a well- cultivated country is out of the question.

There is a very forcible passage on Irish ruins ; but we must leave it for one still more forcible on

IRISH RAGS.

The rags of Ireland are quite as remarkable a pliwnomena as the ruins. As an Irishman seems to live in a house as long as it remains habitable, and then abandons it to its fate, so he drags the same suit of clothes about with him as long as the threads will hold together. In other countries there are poor people enough, who can but seldom exchange their old habiliments for new ; but then they endeavour to keep their garments, old as they are, in a wearable condition. The poor Russian peasant, compelled to do so by his climate, sews patch upon patch to his sheepskin jacket; and even the poorest will not allow his nakedness to peer through the apertures of his vestment, as is frequently seen in Ireland among those who are far above the class of beggars. In no country is it held disgraceful to wear a coat of a coarse texture; but to go about

i in rags s nowhere allowed but in Ireland, except to those whom the extreme of misery has plunged so deeply into despair, that they lose all thought of de- corum. In Ireland no one appears to feel Offended or surprised at the sight of a naked elbow or a bare leg.

There is something quite peculiar in Irish rags. So thoroughly warn away, SO Completely reduced to dust upon a human body, no rags are elsewhere to be seen. At the elbows and at all the other corners of the body the clothes bang like the drooping petals of a faded rose; the edges of the coat are formed into a sort of fringe ; and often it is quite impossible to distinguish the inside from the outside of a coat, nor the sleeves from the body. The legs and arms are at last unable to find their accustomed way in and out, so that the drapery is every morning disposed after a new fashion ; and it might appear a wonder how

so many varied fragments are held together by their various threads, were it not perfectly a matter of indifference whether the coat be made to serve for breeches or the breeches for coat.

What in the eyes of a stranger gives so ludicrous an effect to the rags of an Irish peasant, is the circumstance that his national costume is cut after the fashion of our gala dress, of the coats worn among us at balls and on state oc- casions The humbler classes with us wear either straight frock-coats, or, when at work, short round jackets. In Belgium, France, and some other countries, the working-men have a very suitable costume in their blouses ; and a very similar garment, the smock-frock, is worn in most of the rural dis- tricts of England. Paddy, on the other hand, seems to have thought the blouse, or the short jacket, not elegant enough for him; so he has selected for his national costume the French company dress-coat, with its high useless collar, its swallow-tail hanging down behind, and the breast open in front. With this coat be wears short knee-breeches, with stockings and shoes; so that, as far as the cut of his clothes is concerned, be appears always in full dress like a role gentleman. Now, it is impossible that a working-man could select a costume more unsuitable to him, or more absurd to look upon. It affords no protection against the weather, and is a constant hindrance to him in his work ; yet it is generally prevalent throughout the island. It is said that a mass of old dress-coats are constantly imported from England, where the working-classes never wear them. If Bo, the lowness of the price at which they are sold may have induced the Irish peasants to purchase these cast-off habili- ments, and laying aside their original costume, which cannot but have been more suitable, to mount the dunghill in a coarse and tattered French ball cos- tume. The fact, however, is, that most of these coats are not imported, but sze made in the country, of a coarse grey cloth called "frieze," from which the Coats themselves derive the name of "frieze-coats."

IRISH HOUSE-BUILDDSG.

Though our view was confined to one side of the road, I saw enough to amuse and instruct me. In one village we saw the national process of house- building. A house of some length had fallen in, probably without any volcanic agency, but simply by the effect of its own weight ; and the proprietor was re- pairing the injury sustained by his mansion ; but being either too poor or too indolent to reestablish the tenement in its former extent, be had contented himself with cutting away as much of the broken wall as was necessary to make it smooth, and was running up a new wall at the place where the old one remained. In this way, he was abandoning one-half of his old house, and was about to reduce his family, his pigs, his dogs, and his poultry, to one-half of their previous accommodation. The manner of building the wall, too, was charac- teristic. The father brought the mould to the spot in a wheelbarrow, the eldest sou with a shovel fashioned the material into the shape of a wall, and a younger boy stood upon the top to stamp it into something like consistency. A pair of swallows would have expended more care and skill upon the construction of their nest.

The difference between Ulster and the other provinces has been noticed before—it seems, indeed, too staring to escape attention ; but we will quote our foreigner's account of the contrast.

THE NORTH AND THE ROOTH.

OR the other side of these miserable hills, whose inhabitants are years befcre they can afford to get the holes mended in. their potato-kettles—the most in- dispensable and important article of furniture in au Irish cabin—the territory of Leinster ends and that of Ulster begins. The coach rattled over the boun- dary-line, and all at once we seemed to have entered a new world. I am not in the slightest degree exaggerating, when I say that every thing was as suddenly changed as if 'truck by a magician's wand. The dirty cabins by the road-aide were succeeded by neat, pretty, cheerful-looking cottages. Regular plantations, well-cultivated fields, pleasant little cottage-gardens, and shady lines of trees, met the eye on every side. At first I could scarcely believe my own eyes, and thought that at all events the change must be merely local and temporary, caused by the better management of that particular estate. No counterchangla however, appeared; the improvement lasted the whole way to Newry; sad from Newry to Belfast every thin' g still continued to show me that I had entered the country of a totally different people,—namely, the district of the Scottish settlers, the active and industrious Presbyterians. I do not mean to say that the whole province of Ulster wears this delightful appearance ; nor is the whole province of Ulster inhabited by Scottish colonist* It contains many districts, as I shall hereafter show, inhabited by the genuine Celtic-Irish race ; and of those districts the aspect is as wild and desolate as that of any other part of Ireland : but on crossing the border, the contrast between Irish Leinster and Scottish Ulster is most striking.

There are many passages of clever description, many judicious remarks, and a good deal of information on the methods and details of some leading businesses ; but we will confine the rest of our space to O'CONNELL and the Repeal Association, which at the time in question was only preparing for its grand move.

O'CONNELLISM.

To travel in Ireland and ignore O'Connell, is impossible. He is himself an ethnographical phsenomenon ; partly because, during thirty years, he has ex- ercised so extraordinary an influence over the character and circumstances of his countrymen ; partly because he and his influence form in themselves a Our- nomenon to be explained only by reference to Irish nationality.

The Irish are a people after the old cut, a people to whom we nowhere else see any thing similar. With us, people have become too reasonable, too en- lightened, and much too self-dependent, to make it possible for an individual to step from among us and grow up into such overwhelming dimensions. We deride those who announce themselves as prophets ; but among the Irish the old faith in saints and miracles is as fresh as ever. They are patriotic, blind, credulous, childlike, and enthusiastic enough, to abandon themselves to the most entire admiration of an individual ; and, in their eagerness to be relieved from the many real grievances under which they suffer, they are ready to over- load with applause every one who shows sympathy in their eufferings or a de- votion to their cause.

In a well-regulated state, and with an intelligent well-informed peoplm among whom all, or nearly all, have the means of subsistence, the apparition and success of a popular tribune like O'Connell would be impossible. It was only in proportion as the infima plebs of Rome sunk to a lower and more de- graded condition, that the tribunes became more prominent. Ireland is a country in which there are a larger number of individuals without rights or pro- perty than in any other in the world : this it is that makes it the Boil in which talented, active, and eloquent men like O'Connell, are sure to thrive.

A CORN EXCHANGE MEETING.

It was one of the ordinary Repeal meetings, and was held in a large hall of a place called the Corn Exchange. I arrived before the hour indicated; but the room was already crowded to suffocation. To judge from their outward appearance, the assembly was almost wholly composed of such Kerry and county of Clare men as I had seen in the national costume in the interior at the land. To my great astonishment, I found that very few of those present had whole coats to their backs, and that the number of those whom we should look upon as reputable citizens was very small indeed. They sat or stood on benches ranged in an amphitheatrical form around the walls; and in the centre stood a table, at which were sitting some secretaries and newspaper-reporters. A gallery overhead was filled with women and children.

Observing there was still some room at the table, I endeavoured to make my way thither, and found plenty of willing arms to assist use forward over the railing. I was then enabled to take up a more central position at the table. Everywhere from the railing hung rags ; for torn clothes it was evident con- stituted the general uniform of the Emerald Legion. I do not mean to say any thing offensive in making this remark, but simply state it as a fact that most of O'Connell's Repeal friends were arrayed in rags. On the following morning, to be sure, I found it stated in the several Dublin papers that the meeting in question had been "very respectably attended." The whole assem- bly, on the contrary, bore an appearance such as could have been presented in France and Germany only after the lowest strata of society had been thrown to the surface by the agitation of a political hurricane.

Ireland is published in the "Foreign Library " ; and it contains about twice the quantity of a common volume, at little more than half the price. The object of this serial is to furnish translations of popular foreign works. The book before us seems to have been originally written for the German public ; but the composition is so easy and racy, that but for some corrective notes to which " Translator " is appended, (and of which more might have been added with advantage,) it might have been thought that KOFIL had written two editions of his tour, one in German and one in English.