miles." You travel on, and are informed by the next peasant you meet, "that it is five long miles." On you go, and the next will tell 66 your honour" it is "four miles, or about that same." The fourth will swear" if your honour stops at three miles, you'll never get there!" But, on pointing to a town just before you, and inquiring what place that is, he replies, "Oh! plaze your honour, that's Ballinrobe, sure enough!" 66 off!" Why you said it was more than three miles "Oh yes! to be sure and sartain, that's from my own cabin, plaze your honour. We're no scholards in this country. Arrah! how can we tell any distance, plaze your honour, but from our own little cabins? Nobody but the schoolmaster knows that, plaze your honour." Thus is the mystery unravelled. When you ask any peasant the distance of the place you require, he never computes it from where you then are, but from his own cabin; so that, if you asked twenty, in all probability you would have as many different answers, and not one of them correct. But it is to be observed, that frequently you can get no reply at all, unless you understand Irish. In parts of Kerry and Mayo, however, I have met with peasants who speak Latin not badly. On the election of Sir John Brown for the County of Mayo, Counsellor Thomas Moore and I went down as his counsel. The weather was desperately severe. At a solitary inn, where we were obliged to stop for horses, we requested dinner; upon which, the waiter laid a cloth that certainly exhibited every species of dirt ever invented. We called, and remonstrating with him, ordered a clean cloth. He was a low fat fellow, with a countenance perfectly immovable, and seeming to have scarcely a single muscle in it. He nodded, and on our return to the room, (which we had quitted during the interval,) we found, instead of a clean cloth, that he had only folded up the filthy one into the thickness of a cushion. We now scolded away in good earnest. He looked at us with the greatest sang-froid, and said sententiously, "Nemo me impune lacessit." He kept his word; when we had proceeded about four miles in deep snow, and through a desperate night, on a bleak road, one of the wheels came off the carriage, and down we went! We were at least two miles from any house. The driver cursed, in Irish, Michael the waiter, who, he said, had put a new wheel upon the carriage, which had turned out to be an old one, and had broken to pieces. We had to march through the snow to a wretched cottage, and sit up all night to get a genuine new wheel ready for the morning. The Irish peasant, also, never answers any question directly in some districts, if you ask him where such a gentleman's house is, he will point and reply, "Does your honour see that large house there, all amongst the trees, with a green field before it?"-You answer, "Yes." "Well," says he, "plaze your honour that's not it. But do you see the big brick house with the cow-houses by the side of that same, and a pond of water?" "Yes." Well, plaze your honour, that's not it. But, if you plaze, look quite to the right of that same house, and you'll see the top of a castle amongst the trees there, with a road going down to it betune the bushes." "Yes." "Well, plaze your honour, that's not it neither -but if your honour will come down this bit of a road a couple of miles, I'll show it you sure enough-and if your honour's in a hurry, I can run on hot foot,* and tell the squire your ho * A figurative expression for "with all possible speed"— used by the Irish peasants: by taking short cuts, and fairly hopping along, a young peasant would beat any good traveller. nour's galloping after me. Ah! who shall I tell the squire, plaze your honour, is coming to see him? he's my own landlord, God save his honour day and night!" IRISH INNS. Their general character-Objections commonly made to them-Answer thereto-Sir Charles Vernon's mimicry— Moll Harding-Accident nearly of a fatal nature to the author. AN Irish inn has been an eternal subject of ridicule to every writer upon the habits and appearances of my native country. It is true that, in the early period of my life, most of the inns in Ireland were nearly of the same quality; a composition of slovenliness, bad meat, worse cooking, and few vegetables (save the royal Irish potato), but plenty of fine eggs, smoked bacon, often excellent chickens, and occasionally the hen, as soon as she had done hatching them—if you could chew her. They generally had capital claret, and plenty of civility in all its ramifications. The poor people did their best to entertain their guests, but did not understand their trade; and even had it been otherwise, they had neither furniture, nor money, nor credit, nor cattle, nor |