BOOKS.

ROLLICKING IRELAND.*

IT is a pity that Sir Jonah Barrington's Personal Sketches of his Own Times has become a rare book, for nowhere else can

be found so vivid a sketch of Irish life and character. The book is well worth reprinting, and perhaps some enterprising publisher may be encouraged to bring out a new edition by some samples of its contents.

" The convivial circles of the higher orders of Irish society down to the year 1800, in point of wit, pleasantry, good tem►er, and friendly feeling, were pre-eminent ; while the plentiful luxuries of the table and rich furniture of the wine-cellar were never surpassed, if equalled, among the gentry of any country. But everything is now changed ; that class of society is no more ; neither men nor manners are the same ; and even the looking back at those times affords a man who participated in their pleasures higher gratification than do the actual enjoyments of the passing era."

This is a quotation from the third volume of the Personal Sketches ; and the author adds that his contemporaries " who lived in the same circles with himself " were " unanimously

of his opinion." " I had very lately," he says, " an oppor- tunity of seeing this powerfully exemplified by a noble Lord at my own house. Good fortune had attended him

throughout life ; always respected and beloved, he had at length become wealthy. When we talked over the days we had spent in our own country, his eyes filled, and he confessed to me his bitter repentance as to the Union." Here we have a typical illustration of the

radical difference between the Irish and English charac- ters. Imagine an Englishman, on whom fortune smiled, bitterly repenting of a legislative change under which " he had at length become wealthy." But material comfort did not compensate the Irishman, noble or peasant, for the days that were no more. The late Frederick Robert- son, of Brighton, illustrates our point in another way. He entered one day a miserable cabin, where he found an Irish- man lying ill on a wretched truckle-bed, with a number of holes in the roof over his head. " You must find those holes very uncomfortable in bad weather," said Robertson. " Ah ! sure, and I like them," said the sick man ; " for I can count the stars through them as they go shining over the roof." An Englishman would have complained of the rain pattering through the holes, but the Irishman saw only the poetical side of the picture, and he forgot his misery in the vision of beauty which filled his imagination. Is it not possible that the Irish Question would long ago have been a matter of history if English rulers, while doing the Irishman strict

justice, had appealed to the imaginative element in his character F The Celt everywhere, and the Irishman by no

means the least, desires a King, a visible emblem of power and pageantry, whom he can look up to and obey. Is it surprising that a people so imaginative, so enthusiastic and impulsive, should have occasionally rendered to an uncrowned King that loyalty which they would gladly have lavished on a crowned one, if he had ever been anything to them but the shadow of a name? The lament of Sir Jonah Barrington and of his Unionist contemporaries over the decadence of the old order of things—a regret which went so far as to express itself in "bitter repentance as to the Union "—helps us also to understand the indomitable buoyancy with which the Irish endured wrongs and cruelties that would have broken the spirit of almost any other people. Their keen sense of humour, perhaps even more than their innate piety, enabled them to bear with a sort of gay fortitude the long tragedy of Irish history. Here is a sample of the humorous vein which runs unconsciously through the Irish character even on sacred subjects. Sir Jonah Barrington relates a conversation which

he once had with one of his father's servants on the subject of • Personal Sketches of his Own Times. By Sir Jonah Barrington, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty in Ireland. $ yola. London ; Colburn. 1827. profane swearing. Sir Jonah began by apologising for the habit, on the ground that it " betrayed no radical or intentional vice." But the faithful retainer, Michael Heney by name, declared boldly that the Irish people "could not do without it." " Not a man or labourer would do a farthing's-worth of wark, for want of being forced to do it in the ould way." Still, argued Barrington, it was surely extraordinary that a number of labourers working together should find it necessary to garnish every other word with an oath. " Sure, it's their only way of talking English," replied Michael. " They can speak very good Irish without either cursing or swearing, because it's their own tongue. Besides, all their forefathers used to be cursing the English day and night for many a hundred years so that they never used the Sassanach's tongue without mixing curses along with it; and now it's grown a custom, and they say that the devil himself could not break them of it—poor crethurs." When asked why the .school- master did not teach the children to avoid swearing, Michael answered, that to do so " would encourage disobedience to parents," because " the fathers and mothers of the childer generally curse and swear their own full share every day, at any rate; and if the master tould the childer it was a great sin, they would consider their fathers and mothers wicked people, and so despise and fly in their faces." And what a pathos there is in Michael's defence of the too common Irish habit of swearing by the name of Jesus! " It's well for the erethurs they have that same name to use ; pronouncing the glorified name puts them in mind every minute of the only friend any poor Irish boy can depend upon." Pathetic also, with the usual dash of humour, is Barrington's grave assertion that " the only three kinds of death the Irish consider as natural are, dying quietly in their own cabins, being hanged about the assize-time, or starving when the potato crop is deficient. All these they regard as matters of course." This reflection is suggested by the story of an Irish reaper " decapitating himself by mistake,"—a story for which Barrington vouches, and "which even now," he says, "affords me as much amusement as such a circumstance can possibly admit of." Two reapers, walking along the bank of a river, observed a salmon half-concealed under the bank. " 0 Ned, dear !" said one of them ; " look at that big fellow there ; isn't it a pity we han't no spear ?" " Maybe," said Ned, " we could be after piking the lad with the scythe- handle." No sooner said than done. Ned bent over the bank, poised the scythe, forgetting the blade, and brought the handle down upon the fish with all his might. But instead of killing the salmon, poor Ned cut off his own head, which dropped into the river, together with one of his companion's ears, which the descending scythe had also severed from its owner. The head and ear were picked up by a horror-struck miller down-stream, who declared that " whoever owned the head had three ears." Barrington tells some touching anec- dotes in illustration of the devoted attachment of the Irish peasantry to the gentry,—an attachment, however, which sometimes became embarrassing, as when a faithful game- keeper, hearing his mistress say of a gentlemen she disliked, " I wish the fellow's ears were cut off !" " took a few boys with him, and brought back Dennis Bodkin's ears in a large snuff-box," which, "with joy in his eye," he placed in the hands of his mistress.

Sir Jonah has many merry stories of the carousals which he missed in England, and for the restoration of which he would apparently dissolve the Legislative Union. He was one of a party invited by a relative of his own to a house-warming. Two of the guests, after their potations, slept soundly all night in the aiming-room with their heads against the wall. When breakfast was announced, " the twain immediately started and roared in unison." " Come, boys ! " said the host, " giving Joe a pull." " Oh ! murder I' says Joe, 'I can't.' Murder ! murder I' echoed Peter." " I have in my lifetime laughed," says Barrington, "till I nearly became spasmodic; but never were my risible muscles put to greater tension than upon this occasion." The fact was, the two unfortunate men had slept against a wall that " had only that day received a coat of mortar," which closed round their heads during the night, and held them fast in the morning. Barrington gives a most comical account of the release of the captives (one of them a wit, the other a dandy), with the loss of most of their hair and part of their scalps.

Sir Jonah knew Sir Boyle Roche " intimately," and gives a

description of his personal appearance and character. The story is well known of Sir Boyle asking in the Irish Parlia- ment, "Why we should put ourselves out of the way to do anything for posterity ; for what has posterity done for us P" But the sequel is not equally well known. Supposing, from the roar of laughter which greeted this question, that the House had misunderstood him, he explained " that by posterity he did not at all mean our ancestors, but those who were to come immediately after them." Upon hearing this explana- tion, " it was impossible," Barrington assures us, " to do any serious business for half-an-hour." Sir Boyle was an ardent supporter of the Union, and excited one day a general titter by his florid picture of the happiness which was to ensue from that event. " Gentlemen," retorted Sir Boyle, who had a lisp, " may titther, and titther, and titther, and may think it a bad measure; but their heads at present are hot, and will so remain till they grow cool again ; and so they can't decide right now ; but when the Day of Judgment comes, then honourable gentlemen will be satisfied at this most excellent Union. Sir, there is no Levitical degrees between nations, and on this occasion I can see no sin nor shame in marrying our own sister." Arguing on. another occasion in favour of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, "It would be better, Mr. Speaker," said he, " to give up not only a part, but, if necessary, even the whole of our Constitution, to pre- serve the remainder." " Bulls" are supposed to be indigenous to the soil of Ireland. But the most typical " bull "-makers, like Sir Boyle Roche, do not belong to the Irish race. We once heard a witty Irish prelate declare that " bulls" were more common in England than in Ireland, and he added that he had that very day received an application from an English clergyman for a subscription towards the purchase of a burial-ground for his parish, which had grown to the dimensions of a small town with 30,000 inhabitants. " It is deplorable to think," said this clergyman, " of a parish where there are 30,000 people living without Christian burial." No ex- haustive analysis has ever been given of the origin and genesis of " bulls; " but we believe they very often come from extreme quickness of apprehension, the mind leaping to its conclusion without passing through the intermediate stages of the process ; like the Judge who, in passing sentence on a burglar, said

Y ou ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sir, you, a strong, sturdy fellow, instead of which you go and break into people's houses." Sir Jonah Barrington himself was no mean hand in the manufacture of "bulls," and of sayings which, all uncon- sciously for him, bad a double meaning. Wishing to be civil to a gentleman whom he met for the first time, he said to him on parting : " My dear Sir, if ever you should find yourself within ten miles of my house, mind you stay there."

Mr. Disraeli once suggested that the discontent of the Irish people was due to their " contiguity to a melancholy ocean." A. hopeless view, truly, since the assigned cause is irremovable ; and an absurd view as, well, for not only are there people in plenty who live' content by the shores of melancholy oceans, but the Irish disposition is by nature anything but melancholy. Indeed, we believe that our failure in governing the Irish is partly due to our lack of sympathy with the imaginative and humorous side of their character. We would gladly see Mr. Balfour now and then exchanging his characteristic irony for some gleams of humour, nor should we be sorry if he occasionally sent a "bull" among the Irish Members. Colonel Saunderson is, in spite of his boisterous aggressiveness, a favourite with them, because he succeeds in making them laugh against their will.