I see the daily proofs of a fixed determination to conciliate the destroyers of God's heritage, at the expence of all which they are bound to uphold: and therefore I wish the country a happy deliverance from their mischievous rule.

LETTER VIII.

COUNTY DOWN.

Tollymore Park, July.

You desire me to give you a minute description of all that I should see here: in how many volumes? A plan so well worthy describing, I never before saw; but when I take up the pen, and would transfer to paper the bare outline of what the eye and the mind, even at this moment, can take in together, I am lost in a labyrinth of ideas. We left Newry in a post-chaise, and advanced into a region of grandeur, surpassing all that I had conceived from the expressions of my friends. The road winds at first through unequal grounds, ascending and descending considerable swells; then the banks on the right hand rise to what you would call mountains, did not the distance present you with towering forms, which leave you doubtful whether your near neighbours can be termed any thing more than moderate hills. Picturesque, however, they are in the

highest degree: a succession of almost perpendicular sweeps, often wooded, always gay with wild flowers, and, whenever the slope will admit of it, fine ridges of potatoes, the white and purple blossoms always appearing in distinct plantations, and wearing the fashionable aspect of flowers en masse. With us a potato field is a very homely affair: our straggling ridges, the single rows of plants placed length-wise, and the flat confusion of the whole thing defy all idea of the ornamental. But Paddy knows better: he separates a rising ground into parcels of about two or three yards in width: digging between them a very deep trench, say two feet over, running in as straight a line as the eye of mathematical precision could desire. Across the beds thus divided, he sets the root; so that the ridges do not appear on a front view; and thus a long, wide, highly raised bed of very rich plants stretches from the road-side up the hill, well defined by the separating trenches, and these again supplying a singular ornament to the scene; for the prevailing weed, which bears a bright flower of the deepest yellow, is carefully eradicated from the beds, but allowed to grow on either edge, which it does most thickly; and so beautiful is this belt of rich gold exactly bordering the spacious slips of emerald green, with its uniform tufts of pure white, or else of pure purple, that I am in

doubt whether it is not the effect of design.

In

short, I must take leave to repeat the assertion which has more than once offended your nationality, that an Englishman knows neither how to grow, how to boil, or how to relish a potato.

After this well merited eulogium on the staff of life in Ireland, I return to the distant landscape, the dark mass of mountains that rose and looked forth, as if watching to bestow the universal greeting, the hundred thousand welcomes of the land on a friendly guest. Just as their bold outlines became more defined, we encountered one of those untoward events to which all travellers are exposed -a regular fall of rain. Not one of those little pattering concerns that you are accustomed to, but a real energetic Irish torrent, coming down in sincere earnest. The poor postilion, with his broken hat and thin linen jacket, became an object of much sympathy to us; and as I have always experienced the truth of the homely adage,Where there is a will there is a way,' our concern proved of some avail to him. Opening a front window sufficiently far for our purpose, we managed to hold a large umbrella over his head, so as neither to impede his view of the horses and road, nor to direct a dripping stream upon his ill-clad person. Frequent practice has rendered us very expert at this operation; and to judge by the

earnestness of the poor people's acknowledgments, I should suppose that it is not a common attention. I cannot, however, persuade myself that any person possessed of a tolerable share of humanity would sit with a folded umbrella in a weather proof carriage, while a fellow-creature endured the pelting of a storm from which he might be screened at so very trifling an expense of trouble and condescension. Our Irishman repaid to the best of his power the little kindness conferred, by taxing his memory for every particle of information there stored: and I think where that failed, he sometimes drew upon his invention, particularly in furnishing a name for every hill we passed.

The rain, though violent, was not very persevering; two or three discharges from the frowning sky seemed to expend its liquid ammunition, and the remaining clouds rolled off, just as we fairly reached the foot of that magnificent chain, the Mourne mountains. Bare and undiversified as regards their surface, which is of a brownish green, or rather a greenish brown, and exceedingly rocky, imagination could not picture a finer variety of outline than they in their changing positions exhibited as we wound along. You must imagine, on your right hand, a good black bog, sometimes interspersed with a patch of cultivation, and on its farther edge, seldom removed