TOUR IN CONNAUGHT.
A SUMMER excursion through one province of Ireland, having per- haps no more than its due share of wild and picturesque scenery, antiquities, and legends, would not seem to promise a supply of ma- terials for a portly duodecimo calculated to interest Sussenach readers : but, while your commonplace, vulgar sight-hunter, scam- pers half over the world, and is only able to expose his own blind- ness and shallowness after all, a quick-sighted, well-informed observer of men and things, may find matter for our amusement and information in traversing a single county. Such is the ease with the author of this Tour in Connaught —a Protestant divine, as we gather in the course of the volume. Nothing escapes hint that indicates a characteristic feature of the locality, or the country- generally ; and without spinning out his topics, or seeming to say more than he would to a companion, his gossip overflows with read- able and entertaining matter. Ile gleans information and fin from the stories of the " gassoon " that is his guide to some wilderness- spot ; and comical legends, anecdotes of the residents, private his- tories, and traits of character in peer and peasant, landlord and tenant, not only to enliven the day's adventures, but serve the graver purpose of incidentally developing the characteristics of the Irish people.
So multifarious are the subjects on which the reverend tourist touches with the light yet firm and graphic pencil of a master hand, that we cannot attempt to follow him ; but take a couple of extracts at random.
TRAITS OF YOUNG WELLINGTON.
The Boyne flows lazily hem amidst sedge and reeds, appearing but the dark drain of an immense morass—the discharge of the waste watery of the Bog of Allen. A strong position in time of war—Lord Wellington knows it well; he has often had his soldier eye upon it, his paternal mansion, Dangan, being not far off to the right, near Trim. How different was the young, tun-loving, comical, quizzing, gallanting Captain Arthur Wellesley, when residing in his shooting-lodge between Summerlull and Dangan, from the stern, cautious, care- worn Fabius of the Peninsular war ; the trifling, provoking, capricious sprig of nobility—half-dreaded, half-doated on by the women, hated by the men—the dry joker, the practical wit, the ne'er do well—despaired of as good for nothing by his own tinnily, from the redoubtable warrior of Waterloo—the great Prime Minister of England ; like Julius Cesar, a roue converted into a hero.
A POWEEN SMUGGLER'S DAIILINT.
A man who was known to have a large mountain farm and extensive home- stead in these hills, was observed very frequently to ride into the town of B—, and he never made his appearance without a woman, supposed to be his wife, jogging steadily and uprightly on a pillion behind him. He was tall and gaunt in look ; she large and rotund, and encumbered, as is the mode of all country wives, with a multitude of petticoats : they always rode into the yard of a man who kept a public-house, and before they alighted off their horse, the gate was carefully shut. It was known, moreover, that this publican acted as factor for this fanner in the sale of his butter, and so for a length of time things went on in a quiet and easy way, until one day it so happened. (as indeed it is very common for idlers in a very idle country town to stand making re- marks on the people as they came by,) that the gauger, the innkeeper, and a spines. were lounging away their day, when the tanner slowly paced by, with Ins everlasting wife -behind him. " ell," says the squirm', "of all the women I ever saw bumping on a pillion, that lump of a woman sits the awkwardest ; she don't sit like a nathural born (within• at all ; and do you see how modest she is, what with her flapped down beaver lint, and all the frills and fidlals about her, not an inch of her sweet face is to be seen, no more than an owl from out the ivy. I have a great mind to run up alongside of her and give her a pinch in the toe, to make old buckram look about her for once. "Oh, let her alone," says the innkeeper, "they're a docent couple from Joyce country. I'll be bound, what makes her sit so stiff is all the eggs she is bringin' in to Mrs. 0'3lealey, who hectors the butter for them." There was while he said this a cunning leer about the innkeeper's mouth, as much as to denote that there was, to his knowledge, however he came by it, something mysterious about this said couple ; this was not lost on the subtle gauger, and he thought it no harm just to try more about the matter; and so he says in a frolicsome way, " Why then, for cur'osity sake. I will just run tip to them and give the mistress a pinch— somewhere ; she won't notice me at all in the crowd, and maybe then she'll look up, and we'll see her own party face." Accordingly, no sooner said than done; he rau over to where the farmer was getting on slowly throe hi the milt crowd; and on the side of the pillion to which the woman's back was Wm, attempted to give a sly pinch, but he might as well have pinched a pitcher; ae, did the woman even lift up her head, or ask who is it that's hurting me. 1'6i3 emboldened him to give another knock with his knuckles, and this assault he found not opposed as it should be by petticoats and flesh, but by what he felt to be petticoats and metal. This is queer, thought the gauger : he now ins more bold, and with the hut-end of his walking stick he hit what was b, hard a hang which sounded as if he had struck a tin pot ; " Stop here, honest man," cried the gauger. " Let my wife alone, will you, before the people; cried the farmer. " Not till I see what this honest woman is made of," rosna the gauger. So he pulled, and the farmer dug his heels into his colt to get on but all would not do ; in the struggle down came the wife into the street ; Bei as she fell on the pavement, the whole street rang with the squash, and in& moment there is a gurgling as from a burst barrel, and a strong smelling water conies flowing all about ; and flat poor Norah lies, there being au irruption of all her intestines, which flowed down the gutter as like potteen whiskey as egg, are like eggs.
The fact was, that our friend from the land of Joyce hail got made, by some tinker, a tin vessel with head and body the shape of a woman, and dressed it out as a proper country dame ; in this way lie carried his darlint behind his and made much of her.
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