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morning he ventured back to the house, and as he approached the hospitable mansion the doors were flung wide and a most extraordinary procession issued forth. Such of the company as were still able to walk had procured an old Irish low-backed car, on which they had laid the bodies of those who were insensible and thrown a white sheet over them. One or two of the guests had taken their places in the shafts, others pushed behind, whilst some walked on either side carrying lighted candles in imitation of an Irish wake, and the whole number raised the best imitation of the keen the Irish funeral-cry- that they were capable of. In this fashion the victims of the night's debauch were conducted back to their respective homes by the survivors. When those who had been thus prematurely waked regained their senses, they forthwith challenges to their mourners, and a goodly crop of duels were fought as the outcome of this practical joke.

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Richard Twiss, who visited Ireland some years later than the author of Hibernia Curiosa,' does not animadvert upon the drinking and duelling propensities of Irish society, but upon another custom even more reprehensible. He asserts that the accomplishment most cultivated by Irish ladies of that day was the forging of franks. It will be remembered that at that date, when postage was a very costly item, any letter which bore the

signature of a peer or member of Parliament was carried free. In answer to Twiss's strictures some laughed the practice off as trivial and harmless, and declared there was no law against it. He was obliged to point out that so far from this being the case there was a penalty of no less than seven years' transportation decreed against all who indulged in this trick. Others averred that they had leave from the member in question to counterfeit his name; and Twiss was told that some of the Irish members were so obliging as to give all the inhabitants of some favoured town permission to frank letters in their name. There were still others who assumed an air of conscious rectitude, and insisted that the revenues of the Post Office were so scandalously misapplied that it was a meritorious act to lessen them. Twiss assures us that he had seen more than one lady of rank, with her own dainty fingers, forge any signature she desired to copy so perfectly as to defy detection. No other writer mentions such a practice; and we can but hope that Twiss was unlucky in his choice of acquaintances, both titled and untitled. must also be said that his book when it appeared aroused a storm of indignation throughout Ireland which was allayed for many years, and other travellers who came over, intending to write their experiences, found themselves received with scant favour.

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Twiss found two coinages

the English and the Irishcurrent in Ireland. Irish coins consisted of fivepennies, tenpennies, and six-shilling pieces. The common people called an English shilling a hog and an English sixpence a pig; but why these terms of opprobrium were given them he could not discover. The value of the currencies differed to the extent of a penny in the shilling, so that an English guinea was worth £1, 2s. 6d. Irish moneya difference that must have been somewhat confusing in everyday life, one would imagine.

Unhappily Twiss and all other travellers were painfully impressed by the wretched poverty of the peasantry. Scarce one cabin in twenty boasted of a chimney, and in many of them the smoke curled up from every inch of the rotten roof; whilst here and there a pole projecting through the thatch, with a sod of turf at the end of it, proclaimed to those of understanding that native - brewed potheen was to be had within. In the summer and early autumn, as soon as the turfcutting and potato - planting were ended, the roads were covered with barefooted, halfclad wayfarers, bound for England or else for the cornlands about Dublin, to aid in the harvesting. They were known as spalpeens, and in general had no other possessions than a few oatcakes brought from home as sustenance for the journey, and the half-crown for which a passage was to be had in the hold of one of the crowded packet - boats

VOL. CLXXXVI.-NO. MCXXVII.

which plied between Dublin and Liverpool, or Parkgate, hard by Chester. Their wives and children generally locked up the family cabin and maintained themselves by begging through the countryside till the potatoes were fit for digging. Yet, poor as they were, the Irish peasantry were a happy and light hearted people. In the evenings, when their work was done, instead of glowering by their own firesides, they gathered together: the old gossipped, and passed the same pipe from hand to hand, each enjoying a whiff in turn; whilst the young danced, either to the sound of their own voices, or to that of a bagpipe, if such could be procured.

By far the most vivid and humorous picture which which we get of Ireland in the pre-Union days, however, is contained in the writings of an emigré, the Sieur de Latoonaye. Latocnaye was a Breton noble who had taken part in the disastrous rising of La Vendée, but had had the good luck to escape across the frontier into Flanders. When, however, after the battle of Fleurus, the hordes of the victorious Republican army overran the Netherlands, Latocnaye became alarmed as to what his fate would be if he were captured, and, deeming a further flight advisable, he crossed over into England. Here he found himself with more leisure time on his hands than he well knew how to dispose of, and he determined to spend some of it in making a walking-tour

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through Ireland, which if not the first altogether of such enterprises is certainly the first of which we have such a detailed description.

Our traveller crossed from Cardiff to the Suir in the packet-boat, and was charged a guinea and a half for his passage, which he deemed extremely dear, as the cabin was neither clean nor comfortable. He contrasted it very unfavourably with his voyage in the trading-smack which had brought him to England. The charge there had been only fifteen shillings, and for this sum, though they had been detained some days by contrary winds, he had been provided with food whilst on board and had been regaled twice a-day with tea.

Arrived at Waterford, he put himself and his luggage on one of the low-backed Irish cars, the only vehicle procurable, and for which he had to pay as much as he would have done for a post - chaise anywhere else. It was raining heavily, and the carman stopped at every wayside alehouse to drink and gossip, leaving the young French noble to sit outside in the wet. Irish rain seemed to him more icy and penetrating than any he had encountered before. At first he civilly requested the carman to proceed upon his journey, but finding this of no avail, he had recourse to some of the expletives which he had picked up from the sailors on board ship and from the loungers about the wharves and landing - stages.

This proved much more effectual, and he had the satisfaction of hearing his driver say, in taking a hasty leave of his friends, "By I'm sure

he's a gintleman, for he swears confoundedly." At Athy he very gladly bade good-bye to the jolting vehicle and its jehu, and transferred himself to a barge upon the canal, which had been opened for traffic about a year previously, and in this fashion he came on to Dublin.

Of Dublin itself Latocnaye did not form a very high opinion, at least as far as its social aspect was concerned. The only entertainments, he tells us, were what were called routs that is to say, where a house could contain twenty persons comfortably sixty were invited, and so on in proportion. He was present at one such festivity where, from street - door to garret, every room was so crowded with handsome and well-dressed ladies that they could scarcely stir, and were obliged to speak through their fans. His inborn vivacity and natural good spirits, the exile informs us, were the only possessions which ill-fate had not been able to rob him of, but of those he seems to have had an unusually large share. Upon the present occasion, while fully sensible of all the beauty around him, he could not but think regretfully how much more agreeable it would have been to have spent the evening in a room with a few of the many charming women present, rather than upon a stair

case amidst such a multitude park of artillery planted upon of them.

Shortly before Latocnaye's arrival in the Irish metropolis the passenger packet - service upon the Grand Canal had been inaugurated. Two very handsome boats, we are told, of which the one was named the Camden in honour of the viceroy, and the other the Pelham, started simultaneously, at nine o'clock in the morning, the one from Dublin, the other from Kilcock, some twelve miles distant. They passed along amidst the cheers of the crowds gathered along the banks, and the acclamations were redoubled when at noon the boats met and passed each other half way at Lucan Harbour. "The construction of the boats," said a newspaper of the day sententiously, "is such as to remove all fear of their oversetting." A gratifying assurance truly to those who purposed travelling by them.

Our Frenchman was, however, present at a more imposing ceremonial connected with the inland navigation of Ireland. This was the opening upon St George's Day 1796 of the floating and graving dock which united the Irish canals with the Liffey, and so with the sea. So important was the occasion deemed that even the Bench and the Bar forsook the law courts to witness the great sight. At eleven o'clock the viceroy, the Earl of Camden, sailed into the dock in the viceregal yacht, commanded by Sir Alexander Schomberg. A fleet of craft of all sorts and sizes pressed in astern, and a

the bank thundered a royal salute. Arrived in the middle of the basin the yacht cast anchor and returned the salute, whilst the Royal Standard was broken at the masthead. The Lord - Lieutenant immediately went ashore, and was received upon the wharf by the chairman and directors of the Grand Canal Company. Having knighted the chairman, the Lord-Lieutenant sat down to a sumptuous breakfast in a tent by the waterside, where covers were laid for a thousand persons. Our author was not amongst this favoured throng. Together with an English acquaintance of his, he formed part of the crowd which lined the edges of the dock, and which was computed to have numbered some hundred and fifty thousand. So great was the enthusiasm exhibited by this concourse that Latocnaye was much alarmed lest some of them should fall into the water, and still more apprehensive that he might be pushed in himself.

Two young ladies, separated from their friends in the press and terrified by the pushing and swaying of the crowd, clung to him and his companion for protection. The Frenchman looked at the girl who had caught hold of him, and seeing that she was very pretty he immediately kissed her; the Englishman with equal promptitude clasped his pockets tightly,-this seemed to the former to be typical of the two nations.

In Dublin Latocnaye completed his preparations for the

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undertaking which he had in hand-or perhaps it might be more accurately said on foot, and these, for their ingenious simplicity, deserve to be recorded. He out the feet off a pair of silk stockings, and stuffed into them the entire outfit for his journey. This consisted of a pair of breeches, fine enough to be rolled up as small as a man's fist, two very fine shirts-the era of starched and glazed shirt - fronts was not yet, three cravats, two pair of white silk stockings, three handkerchiefs, a powderbag made of a lady's glove, scissors, needle and thread, and a comb and razor. A pair of dancing pumps was carried as a separate parcel. Upon the road our tourist tied his three bundles up in a handkerchief, and slung them on his sword-cane, to the end of which he had affixed an umbrella. This last article created much astonishment, and even merriment, amongst the country people as he walked along, being apparently an entire novelty to them. Upon approaching any house to which he had an introduction, he put his bundles into his pockets, and stepped out jauntily with only his sword-cane in his hand. The owner of the house, seeing him arrive thus unencumbered, made haste to offer him clean linen and a change of clothes, proffers which were invariably declined. It was the young man's great delight to witness his host's astonishment when he made his appearance at a later hour in the drawing-room, dapper and dainty as only a

Frenchman of the old régime could be, and looking with his elaborately powdered hair, white silk stockings, and evening shoes as if he had arrived in a travelling carriage with several trunks, instead of coming on foot without visible luggage.

So great was the hospitality that he met with-his host of the previous night invariably furnishing him with an introduction which secured him a warm welcome at the next big house upon his line of marchthat during the eight or nine months that his tour lasted our friend only slept at his own charges some half-dozen times. On one of these occasions, a day or two after his quitting Dublin, he lodged at the inn in Kilbeggan, and had the unusual experience of being waited on by a titled host. Some score of years before, Lord Townshend, the wild and dissolute viceroy-who signalised himself once by bringing his pack of foxhounds with him into the council chamber in Dublin Castle,whilst on a a progress to the West, was compelled by the breaking down of his equipage to spend the night in Kilbeggan. Much to his surprise and gratification he was served with an excellent meal and with claret of most choice bouquet and flavour, for in those days most innkeepers, even of the smaller country inns, had a store of good wine laid by for special occasions. Lord Townshend, according to his wont, did full justice to the vintage, and flushed with what

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