Wanderings in the Highlands and Islands, with sketches taken on the Scottish Border, being a sequel to 'Wild Sports of the West.'

Front matter

WANDERINGS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDOS : K. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. •> WANDERINGS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS WITH _sbkctc|)es tafecn on fyt gorier ; BEING A SEQUEL TO "WILD SPORTS OF THE WEST." BY W. H. MAXWELL, ESQ. AUTHOR OF "STORIES OF WATERLOO," ETC " For the loud bugle, pealing high, The blackbird whistles down the vale, And sunk in ivied ruins lie The banner'd towers of Evandale." — Scott. IN TWO VOLUMES.— VOL. I. LONDON: A. H. BAILY & CO. CORNHILL. 1844. CONTENTS. PAGE Introductory Epistle 1

Chapter I

A first Visit to Scotland — My Friend's Yacht — Run across Channel — Kilbrenan Sound — Loch Fyne — Evening — A Highland Gentleman — Night on Loch Fyne — Rose of Allandale — Inverary — Yacht-Fleet — Morning Preparations — Scene from the high Ground — Gunpowder — A Blow-up — Hoisting of the Commodore's Swallow-tail — Dinner — Anecdote — Cath sleibh an t' Shiora — the Ball — Highland Costume — the Ladies — An Invitation — A Scottish Sabbath — Singular Incident — A Highland Home 29

Chapter II

Departure from Loch Fyne — Bute — The Cumbrays and Clyde — Dumbarton — Inn of Ballock — The Album — Loch Lomond — Character of its beauty — Rowandennan — The Stout Gentleman — Ben Lomond — Expansive View — Descent and Dinner 50

Chapter III

The Story of the Stout Gentleman , CONTENTS. VI PAGE 145

Chapter IV

Route to Loch Katrine — Inversnaid— Rob Roy Macgregor — Ruins of the Fort Wolfe— The Highland Girl— The Hostelrie —Highland Boatmen — Loch Katrine— The Trosachs— Ardkenachrochan — Clachan of Aberfoil — Town and Castle of Doune — Reappearance of the Stout Gentleman— Church and Castle— View from the Ramparts— Historic Recollections — The Town Treasurer 100

Chapter V

Edinburgh — The Auld Town — New Year's Day — Unlucky Number — Necrological Reminiscences — The Senior Major — Napoleon and the Empress — Murty Donovan — Gazetted out — Otium cum dignitate — Battle of the Bellows — Ensign Rogers — An Alarm — The Catastrophe 116

Chapter VI

Castle of Edinburgh — The Regalia — Dunnottar — A Law Opinion — Castle besieged — Regalia preserved — Dunnottar surrenders — Denouement — The Sixty-sixth — An affectionate Relative — The Grass-market — The High-street — Holyrood — Royal A ccommodation 131

Chapter VII

An old Town Hostelrie — Proposed Excursion — The Chevalier's Descent — Highland Clans — Royal Army — Artillery and Cavalry — Singular Panic — Royal Infantry — Cope's Misconduct — Edinburgh Volunteers — The City surprised — Battle-field...

Chapter VIII

Welcome of an Inn — Fashionable Hotels — A City Episode — Fancy for Portrait Painting — The Sea Captain — Lady Portraits — A Pictorial Abomination — Our young Governor — Master Dick — In with the Fish CONTENTS. VII

Chapter IX. Page

Embarkation in a Shetland Steamer — Literary Ladies — Firth of Forth — May Island — Bad becomes worse — Arbroath — The Bell-Rock — Symptoms of Sea-sickness — TheCompanion — The Laird of Craigdarragh* — Highland Housekeeping — My Cook Mattie — After Dinner — Nothing like Leather 167

Chapter X

Bar of Aberdeen — Hotels — A Highland Assize — Judicial Procession — Aberdeen — Royal Visits — Anecdote — Miscellaneous Property — Colleges — Old Aberdeen — Monumental Inscriptions — Criminal Statistics — Dinner spoiled — Further Delay — Secret of Scotch Success — Set out for Peterhead — Coast Scenery 181

Chapter XII

Bullers of Buchan — Peterhead — Its Trade — Polite Statistics — Fraserburgh — 'Wick — Profile of the Iron Duke — Pentland Firth — Dunnet Head — Frightful Accident — John o'Groat — Pentland Skerries — Run ambng the Islands — Kirkwall — Orcadian Islands — Tomb of a Giant — Fair Island 210

Chapter XIII

Roost of Sumburgh — My Companions — The Captain's Yarn— The Chase — -A Yankee Skipper — Lerwick — Local Sketch — Governor of Fort Charlotte — Criminal Statistics — Castle of Sealloway— Earl Patrick the Wicked — The Minister's Motto... 225

Chapter XIV

Lions of Shetland — Pictish Remains — Humbug — The Hougomont Stick— The Wellington Tree— Military Relics— The Waterloo Snuff-Box — Holm of Noss — Rock-Fowling — Anecdote—A Situation — Superlative Scoundrel — Flying Bridge — Death of an Adventurer CONTENTS. FAOE

Chapter XV

Shetland Character — Morals and Religion — Social Intercourse — Upper Order of Society — Shetland Scenery — A Cave Adventure — Seal-Hunting — Shetlanders' Resources — The Haas- Banks — Life of a Shetland Fisher — Lithe and Seath-Fishing — Sillocks — Piscatorial Conclusions — Lithe and Mackerel — Voracity of Pikes — Anecdotes — Swallowing a Black-Hag — The Salmon — Anecdotes of the Fish 255

Chapter XVI

Private Life in Shetland — Domicile of a Udaller — A Shetland Beauty — Duncan the Islesman — An Orcadian Ministry — ■ Anecdote — Shetland Boatmen — Sad Calamity — An Unexpected Return — Shetland Husbandry 278

Chapter XVII

The Stout Gentleman disabled — -Farewell to the Orcades — General Occurrences — Epistles from the Stout Gentleman — Another and another — Bound for the Highlands 295 A tpen dix

Introduction

. Many things in life arise out of accidental circumstances ; and books are no exception. A very solitary location — in Kentucky parlance — with *' winter and bad weather," produced the Wild Sports of the West ; and to letters addressed to a kinsman, as an inducement to visit the far north, the '• Sketches" now given to the world must date their origin. It is astonishing that the best resources which Britain possesses for the artist, the sportsman and the idler, are little known, and lightly estimated. Within the four seas of Britain, and to the full scope of his bent, the man of science, and the man of pleasure, may indulge himself; and the same corner of the island which affords marvellous enjoyment to the sportsman, be he ornithor, auceps, or piscator, will also enrapture the painter, and puzzle the antiquary unto death. b X

INTRODUCTION.

. " A truant disposition" led the author of these Sketches into the scenes which have produced them. To trace out half-forgotten battle-fields, and view the remnant of a feudal-keep or Border peel-house — sit among ruins where once " the bells were rung, and the mass was sung," — or, in evening gray, throw moth or minnow on a stream which once the ruthless moss-trooper has crossed at midnight, the blazing beacon in his rear urging him onward to some wild fast ness, wherein to secure his spoil, or shelter from the vengeance some deed of violence had just provoked. Travellers and tourists are variously influenced. One will insist upon authenticated certificates of well-aired sheets ; another—" ut mos" — alas ! I must spoil the quotation, and add "suit," as far as the quotation applies— requires nothing beyond a roof to shelter, and a rug to stretch upon.

One " southern gentleman" loves to dream the hour away where the poet has framed his song, or the mighty remnants of monastic beauty attest, the art that designed, and the royal enthusiasm which erected these princely dwellings of an order, who, professing humility, obliged the sceptre to bend to the crozier, and laid the sandal of the tonsured monk on the mailed neck of the high-born crusader. Another — the humble disciple of old Izaak — who has dabbled in pond,

INTRODUCTION.

. XI canal, and " well-stocked water" — hears acci dentally of the Tweed and Tay — and sets out upon a visit to the Border. To view one saltation of a fresh-run salmon will reward the pilgrim age ; and if he fill a creel — as I have done in two brief hours — will he not marvel that, in piscatoral ignorance, unhappy citizens " of credit and renown" waste time about Lea Bridge, and money in adjacent hostelries, where some flavour less fish, which on the Borders would be kicked away, is immortalized in a glass case ; and the skeleton of a pike, which, as a capture, every cowboy in Connemara could emulate, is held out above the mantel-piece as an encouragement for Cockneys to wet their feet, by proving that marshy waters are not ungrateful, and rheuma tism shall have its reward. To tourists of a "gentler mood," those who employ the pencil or the rod, dislike damp clothing, and delight in comfortable inns, I recommend the Border.

To the rougher specimens of mankind — personages who have spent Christmas in the Bay of Biscay, or made a few Peninsular marches in bad weather, when the Iron Duke was in a hurry, I would point out the northern Highlands, and the far Orcades. Throughout the Land of Cakes, Chambers will prove an excellent ally — Anderson be invaluable as a Highland Cicerone — and, as a sea-coast

INTRODUCTION.

. companion, let them put full faith in the voyage of the pleasantest Professor * in the realm. The land of the Gael is not the country wherein to sport purple and fine linen — Scotch mists bear a striking affinity to an English planet-shower — and Mackintosh will be often found a friend in need. Irish travellers are respectfully informed that fire-arms may be left at home, a pocket-pistol only being required. Charged heavily with pure alcohol, and presented at, or rather to a grumbling river-keeper, I have found its agency most serviceable. The Celtic race have not yet ranged themselves beneath the banners of the water-drinking apostle; and I never met a Highland heart to which Glenlivet and civility were not the surest and the speediest passports. * Christopher North. London, January 1, 1844.

ERRATA TO VOL. I. Page lsi, line 4, for Jeremiah, read Jeremiade. — 30, — 17, for Moinner, read mourner. — 153, — ]■■> for whole, read old. — 304, — 4>,for fenny, read ferny. EPISTLE TO JOHN O'FLAGHERTY, Esq. May 10, 1841. And have you never been up the Clyde ? What a confession for a finished traveller — one who has slidden on a glacier, and scratched his initials on a pillar of the Acropolis ! You have wasted years on the continent, and left unvisited one of the most glorious rivers in the world — and with such facilities — steamers "from every point i' the seaman's card," splashing over its silver current every day but the seventh — ay, and even on that blessed one of rest, could you but put your faith in an Irish boiler and the prayers of the church, you might still reach Glasgow. Donald, no matter how hard he may struggle for " the B siller," observes his sabbath punctiliously, — but Pat, in the exuberance of his industry, " Joins night to day, and Sunday to the week — and while " the Lord of the Isles " cheek by jowl with " the Maid of Bute," rests idly beside the Bromielaw, " Nora Crina " comes frisking up the Frith, and " Daniel O'Connell " puffs and grum bles as he goes, noisy as his namesake before the rent-day, while fulminating tirades against Tory ism, and persuading " the finest peasantry on earth " that malgre their virtues and deserts, they are, God help them ! the worst-treated community in Christendom.

Five-and-twenty years, with one short interval, have passed, since I left the roof-tree of our fathers, a beardless boy. Of those who shared my earlier joys or sorrows but few remain. I come back, and all look strangely at me. The once rosy cheek of youth, bronzed by a tropic sun, forbids remembrance, — and in the bilious looking colonel none can trace the laughing cadet — and faith, no wonder — " For time, and care, and Mar have plough 'd My very soul from out my brow !" And can I marvel at this change in my outer man, I, who can barely identify the premises where I was born ? Roman cement— every thing in Ireland is Roman now — has superseded the good old pebble-dashing of your mansion — and within doors, the march of reform is still more evidenced. Where is the massive furniture, whose cumbrous frames and inky-looking maho gany bore the imprint of a century ? — where our grandmother's spinette ? — and where Tim Haddi gan's bagpipes ? — that reed and chaunter which could discourse such eloquent music !

Gone — gone ! I spent some restless hours in the little road side inn, whither I had repaired to catch the Dublin coach at day-break. I could not sleep. I thought of days passed by, and persons half forgotten. Scenes and actors once more appeared in shadowy review ; and the last night be fore a young career upon the world commenced, came back more vividly than all. That night was memorable, Jack. Then you received an honourable patronymic — and a more ill-conditioned neophyte never kicked in the arms of a divine. Seldom had the ancient roof tree covered a merrier group — and, in imagi nation, I see them now. My honoured aunt, in the ripe bloom that marks a matron's beauty, sate in her high-backed chair, listening rever ently to the baptismal prayer ; albeit, the form belonged to another church, and from him by b2 whom the holy rite was celebrated, she dissented conscientiously.

But in those days a difference in religious faith did not matter a brass button. Popery was unobtrusive — Protestants were tole rant — Heaven was considered attainable by all — and, contrary to the more enlightened opinions of modern clerks, persons professing another creed were not, as a matter of course, consigned direct to Pandemonium. But to return to thy christening : There stood my uncles, Jack— your father — " looking every inch " an honest-hearted, hospitable fox-hunter — and his twin-brother, our uncle Antony ; but of him you can have no recollection — for ere you were " a satchelled schoolboy," Antony was " under the grey stone," and reposing with his ancestors in Tubbermore. Antony was the terror of the whole community of Carmeen. When he spoke irreverently of the Pope himself, Father John Kelly did not venture a rebuke : and, at the first creak of his shoe, the boldest spider-brusher fled from the presence.

Antony, by his own account, was some fifty — but " by'r Lady," he was inclining to " threescore." His years, with honest Jack's, were analogous, but in all besides the resemblance ended. Above six feet in height, in youth he was the " beau ideal " of a trooper, so far as a broad chest and light legs would go ; but he was now a gaunt, attenuated old man, bent double by rheumatism, and sorely crippled with the gout. For thirty years he had served in the Austrian army, till, worn out and minus an arm, he revisited his native land with a colonel's rank, a moderate pension, three honorary medals, and the cross of Maria Theresa. Anton}', after his kind, was good-hearted to a degree, and, when in tolerable health, cheerful and companionable. He could mull port, tell a story, argue by the hour, arrange the preliminaries of a duel, and, provided the distance was not too great nor the gout too troublesome, he would attend good naturedly in person to witness the success of his friend, or, if the result proved otherwise, look to his obsequies after witnessing his will.

Such a personage, in any country, would be a treasure, but, in Connaught, he was a jewel above price. Antony was a loyal subject and staunch Protes tant. To his religious creed he clung with the tenacity of a martyr — some said, from sheer opposition, and according to others, from an early antipathy to fish. Antony was a man whom no community, besides that of Carmeen, would have tolerated. He was his brother — and your easy-tempered father bore all his humours patiently. He was the kinsman of her husband — and your mother let all his rudeness pass. In Father Kelly's hearing he absolutely whistled " the Boyne Water" — and once, in a full bumper, consigned " the Pope to the pillory, with the Devil pelting priests at him." Father John bore it like a stoic, whispering apologeti cally, in my aunt's ear, that " the colonel's gout was coming on, and, poor soul ! an enemy would pity him !"

But a less lenient tribunal sat in judgment on the misdeeds of the irreligious commander. The kitchen was Catholic to a woman — and there the enormities of " that one-armed sinner " un derwent no " delicate investigation." All, nem. con. agreed, that his conversion was a hopeless affair, and consequently, that Purgatory would be too good for him : and it was resolved, that if malefactors fried for their offences, our uncle Antony was certain of a warm corner in a place, which every body perfectly understood, but which none considered it quite correct to par ticularize. Carmeen, on that eventful evening when you were christened, Jack, was indeed the house of feasting — and surely the church would lend its countenance for the nonce. Doctor Morton, as in duty bound, honoured this high festival with his portly presence — and where the Doctor was, Father John Kelly was sure to be.

In brotherly regard the priest and parson were united as the Siamese Twins ; and two worthier churchmen never finished a cooper of port, and packed it with a pint of poteen afterwards. Were the priest wanted for a sick-call, the parsonage was the surest place to seek him. The Doctor was of the king's poor esquires ; and the priest aided and assisted in the due administration of justice — and, woe to the sin ner whom he denounced, for on him " the iron knuckles of the law" descended with additional severity. In every thing an identity of feeling united these gifted Gamaliels — and property was in common, ay, even to the person of the clerk. Peter Maguire was held in joint tenancy, and officiated in vestry room and sacristy. In both he was master of the robes ; served first mass for Father Kelly, and responded afterwards to Doctor Morton : and, notwithstanding the mur murings of the ignorant, he discharged his double duties to the last.

In religion, Peter was a doubtful professor ; and on his merits the parish was awfully divided — some asserting that he was a true Catholic as ever performed on Lady-day upon the Reek — while others objected that he had been caught eating bacon on a Friday, and, as if to aggravate the offending, that Friday was in Lent. Indeed, nothing was clearly known touching his earlier life, parentage, and educa tion. He had emigrated from " the north" — well, that was a suspicious place to come from : and wherefore he had made Connaught his abiding place, was a matter involved in mystery : some conjecturing that he had been " out in ninety eight," and others averring that it was merely to escape the assiduities of three wives — Peter, in that valuable article, having been, unfortunately for himself, a pluralist.

Such, Jack, was the goodly company, with some thirty coosherers, and the usual assortment of nurses, huntsmen, pipers, and ladies'-maids, who witnessed the ceremonial of your christening. Where are they ? Alas ! that question brings a melancholy answer. But few remain ; and upon those, what a heavy hand time has laid ! One brief visit I paid Carmeen, and oh ! what a change ten years had made. Her, whom I loved with a son's affection— who had watched my or phan age, and had been more to me than mother — a fever caught in the exercise of the charity she loved had prematurely hurried to the grave. My honest uncle had fallen in the quarrel of another, fighting the battle of a scoundrel, who lacked courage to defend himself; while our uncle Antony died as he lived, acting purely out of opposition.

A surfeit swept him "in double quick" to the tomb of the Capulets — for, con trary to the orders of his doctor, he ate cutlets on a holiday, merely to mortify the cook, who had lately become a Carmelite. Churchmen are mortal, Jack, and John Kelly was doomed to leave Doctor Morton for a brief space behind him. Long will his virtues be remembered in Kiltogher ; for where will his fellow now-a-days be found ? Poor John ! he was kind-hearted and companionable, liked long whist, played a little on the fiddle, and, as the maids declared, was a man of short shrift and liberal indulgence. He died in his vocation, a victim to jig-dancing and potheen punch ; for three christenings, two weddings, and a dragging home, in one brief week, were too much for a plethoric gentleman of sixty-five. Could he but have witnessed his own obsequies, it would have gratified his pride.

For three nights he lay in state ; twelve priests exercised their best endea vours to abridge his necessary imprisonment in purgatory ; whisky and tobacco were supplied with unsparing liberality ; and when the defunct churchman was carried to the grave, thejxmeral train extended from the gates of Carmeen even to the abbey of Kiltogher. Richard Morton never raised his head after he had been apprized of the demise of Father John ; and in ten days the spiritual charge of Kiltogher — tithes, glebes, tenths, with all pro perty ecclesiastic, were duly vacated, and the parson followed the priest. Grief begets gout, and gout suddenly assailed that most important of a churchman's organs — the stomach. Vainly were all the customary remedies administered ; usquebaugh and burnt brandy were tried and found wanting ; a patent remedy was resorted to, but in vain ; all would not do ; for the disease was master of the citadel, and malgre alcohol and hot flannel, Richard Morton followed the priest, and slept in the vault of his prede cessors.

The rest you know, Jack. Like kings, church men never die, and on the same day both vacancies were filled — a crack-brained zealot, professing ultra-piety, stepped into Morton's shoes, while a dark-minded monk, hot from the cloisters of Maynooth, succeeded as simple a confessor as ever thumbed a breviary. Between them, all kindly relations in the parish were an nihilated. They sowed a glorious crop of into lerance — and, judging from the fruits, the seed fell not by the way-side. The complexion of society, such as it existed in my boyhood, might be imagined from this hurried sketch. I return in the sear and yellow leaf, and all is changed. Is the country im proved^ — and are the people more enlightened ? Do men hold the positions which property should command, or talent may attain ? Does plenty gladden the peasant's home, and peace surround the mansions of the rich ?

Ah ! Jack, these are tender interrogatories. Where are the lords of the soil ? Driven, in sheer disgust, into absen teeism, and their places usurped by men whose undue elevation has entailed a curse alike upon themselves and the community. The Shallows and the Simples you must seek in an English watering place or foreign capital ; and in their places who hold the Queen's commissions ? Men whose fathers waited in our fathers' halls — them selves illiterate, struggling against high rents, and jobbing one day in law and the next in cattle. You boast yourself a resident ; compare your position in the county with what your father held. He had two hundred freeholders. Would one of them have opposed the candidate whom he supported ? You have barely twenty. Well, individually they respect you. At your bidding they would clear a fair, drown a bailiff, burn a church, or in any other trifle evince their af fection for their landlord ; but were your best friend to start for the representation of , with every qualification that worth and wealth can offer, were he opposed by some wretched pauper, who in poverty and principle was suited to become a willing tool of any to whom he was indebted for privilege to evade a jail, could you, Jack, influence one tenant to support your friend 1 Would not the priest laugh in your face, drag your freeholder to the hustings by the neck, and poll him as he pleased ?

" And have you no remedy," says John Bull— "rents exacted to the day, ejectments, and every annoyance to which a refractory tacksman ex poses himself — are they not yours ?" Undoubt edly they are ; but dare you employ them, Jack ? Ay ! there's the rub. Evict an ingrate from your property — one whose forefathers have hung upon the breath of yours, have flourished beneath their fosterage, multiplied, and got wealthy — exercise your legal right and reclaim what is your own — returning from a fair, you will be shot by some patriot from behind a hedge ; or, if stricken in years, and unable to leave your lawn, you will be stoned to death in front of your own house by some hired murderer, while twenty of the finest peasantry on earth calmly look on, and satisfy Father , their excellent confessor, that they were too industriously at work to witness the massacre of their benefactor.

And you would have me invest my property " at home." — " Home," — with windows blocked up, and loaded blunderbusses on the sideboard ! " Home !" — mine, indeed, Jack, shall be home ; but, i'faith, it must be in another country — a land uncursed by political priests, unvisited by prose lytizing parsons — your peace unbroken by sedi tious scoundrels agitating before " the rint," or by fanatics who never could tot three figures on a slate, announcing that they have calculated the millennium to a day, and hinting to ancient gentlewomen that the time is come when their houses should be set in order. Jack, I'll be plagued by none of these annoy ances ; I will remain in comfortable independence ; and when I invest the earnings of a hard and venturous life, it shall be in property over which I may exercise a legitimate control — and, though the doctrine is now exploded, "do with mine own what I will."

Think me not ungrateful after a recent sejour in your hospitable mansion, if I requite your kindness by disparaging the country or the hearth. Far from it — your household is unex ceptionable. That English spider brusher is a gem beyond value ; your butler should be canonized ; your cook shall live in my recollection ; and your wine* — the old cellar, Jack — should be immortalized by Captain Morris or Anacreon. But, d it — I hate to see fire-arms on the sideboard, and I get the fidgets whenever those splinter-proof window shutters are screwed up. Give me a quiet evening after a good dinner ; it assists digestion wonderfully. I have been too often under fire in my youth, to fancy it particu larly at forty-five. Honestly, Jack, I abominate a feast that terminates in a fusilade — ay, as heartily as Cuddie Headrigge hated sermons which ended in a psalm at the grass market.

Remember, Jack, I am also thy senior by some twenty years, and time will cool even the hot blood of the O'Flahertys. At your age I was shot at for seven shillings a day — and, were the truth told, the king had the worst of the bargain. Lieutenant O'Flaherty, for a company in expect ancy, headed a forlorn hope — and surely the said Lieutenant had ample consideration for scram bling in the dark over ten yards of ruined ma sonry. I was calcined in Ceylon, and half frozen in the Pyrenees ; but by each visitation I got a step. To the ague of South Beviland, and the vomita of the West Indies, I am deeply indebted for promotion ; and, thanks to the gods, I read my name among the colonels of '34, and append C.B. to my ancient patronymic. And shall I not, as the fat knight, thy namesake, says, che rish this old carcass now, and " take mine ease in mine inn," neither troubling your friend the coroner for a cast of his office, nor submitting my person to post mortem examination, to ascer tain the interesting particulars how the pension list was lightened by a pound a day, and solve a doubt whether a Companion of the Bath had been sped by bullet or " cold iron ?"

Here then, Jack — here, in sober, steady Scot land, like another Richard, will I exclaim, " Up with my tent ! " — Here, possessor of a highland hill, and master of an humble cottage, will I seek — " Health in the breeze and shelter in the storm." Here, I will sleep with an unlatched door — worship God as I please — and that, too, with a sure warrant that life is safe, and property free from spoliation. And when the last rout arrives from the Great Commander of us all, I will shuffle off this mortal coil as easily as I may — my hope, a Christian's — my bearing, that of A Soldier of Fortune. TO JOHN O'FLAGHERTY, Esq. June 15, 1841. I have received your letter — a regular Jeremiah — a new burden to an old song, and all anent years of suffering, and the calamitous results arising from English tyranny and misrule.

For a Whig epistle, the thing is well enough — but for that of a Repaler, it is nothing but milk and water. If you intend to go the whole hog, you must not only forget the feelings, but decline the parlance of a gentleman. All who presume to differ in opinion, and exercise a right of thinking for themselves, are, of logical necessity, both scoundrels and oppressors ; and while you describe the English peasant as truculent and ignorant, you must be sure to concentrate the cardinal virtues in the clod-hoppers at home. Remember, above all things, that Ireland is a second Goshen — a land over which Tommy Moore's lady of the wand and ring may commence her wanderings to-morrow, and, from Dingle to Downpatrick, none shall be found to say " black was the white of her eye." The newspapers will occasionally chronicle a fresh murder : no matter — if Sassenach proprietors persecute the finest peasantry upon earth, they must abide the consequences of their oppressions.