Various

“ Henceforward we shall be cautious how we trust to the evidence of our senses for any thing we may see, for it is pretty plain that hitherto they have been of no manner of use to us. They have deceived and bamboozled us our whole lives long; and from the present moment we will trust to none save those of Messrs Bartlett and Willis—at least we will never trust to our own. ”

“ At length he laid his hand upon Scanlan’s shoulder. “Come, James,” said he, “look up, man; don’t be so utterly cast down. You know the old saying, ‘Whilst there’s life, there’s hope.’”
“It’s kind of your honour to try and comfort me; but yours was always the good heart, and the kind one, and you never made the sight of your sunny face a compliment. But it’s no use—there’s no hope. The death’s on her handsome countenance.” ”

“ We certainly have not yet found time to acquire that polish in America [most civilized people!] ; and if we must wait till the working classes find time to lean, it will be a century or two at least before we can show as polished an hotel as the Donegal Arms at Belfast, or (at that particular line above the side walk) as polished a city altogether.” Such is Mr Willis’s description of the Gresham’s Hotel of Belfast, a house which we had foolishly thought was remarkable for its cleanliness, order, and good accommodation. ”

“ Who took the gloss from these coats, once broadcloth? who wore them? who tore them? who sold them to the Jews? (for, by the way, Irish rags are fine rags, seldom frieze or fustian) . How came the tatters of the entire world, in short, assembled in Ireland? for if, as it would seem, they have all descended from the backs of gentlemen, the entire world must contribute to maintain the supply.”
Readers, such of you as have been in Drogheda, did you ever see any thing like this? People of Drogheda, do you recognise yourselves in this picture here drawn of you? We are sure you cannot. ”

“ Yet mirth does live in these places—people do smile on you from these squalid abodes of wretchedness—the rose of health does show itself upon the cheeks of children, whose cradle is a dung-heap, and whose play-fellows are hogs! ”

“ The extraordinary part of it, too, is, that it seems almost altogether the result of choice. I scarce saw one hovel, the mud-floor of which was not excavated several inches below the ground-level without; and as there is no sill, or raised threshold, there is no bar, I will not say to the water, but to the liquid filth that oozes to its lower reservoir within. A few miles from Drogheda, I pointed out to my companions a woman sitting in a hovel at work, with the muddy water up to her ancles, and an enormous hog scratching himself against her knee. ”

“ Dr Blundell showed that it possessed the means of reproducing the pain in the most intense form. The south pole of the magnet was directed along the finger. At the third pass the patient began to bite his lip and close his eyes with an expression of pain. At a few passes more his chin was spasmodically buried in his breast, and his wrinkled features expressed the acutest suffering. This was allowed to continue for a few seconds, when the north pole was again presented to the finger, and the agony speedily subsided. The spectators then left the man lying with a countenance perfectly tranquil. ”

“ I am but a young man, yet my brain reels, and my eyes burn, and my heart swells to my throat, as memory holds the mirror to my view, and I see depicted in it the scenes, and feel again the feelings, that have been more than once or twice excited at the stages which I have just recounted in order. ”

“ The cathedral, as already stated, consists of a choir, nave, and transepts, with a square tower in the centre. The greatest length, from east to west, is about two hundred and ten feet, and the breadth in the transepts is about a hundred and seventy feet. There are no side aisles, and the windows are of the lancet form, usual in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A century has not yet elapsed since this magnificent pile was doomed to destruction, and that by one who should have been its most zealous preserver. ”

“ Men of Belfast, what think you of that? But hear him out—
“I had thought, among a people so imaginative as the Irish, to have seen some touch of fancy in dress, if ever so poor—a bit of ribbon on the women’s caps, or a jaunty cock of the ‘boy’s’ tile, or his jacket or coat worn shapely and with an air. But dirty cloaks, ribbonless caps, uncombed hair, and not even a little straw taken from the cart and put under them when they sat on the dirty side-walk, were universal symptoms that left no room for belief in the existence of any vanity whatsoever in the women ”

“ Who shall say what extremes may not meet, when, amid the filth of an Irish hovel, spring, like flowers, out of ordure, the graces of a prince in his palace?”
All this, the reader will remark, was seen from the top of a stage-coach on a drenching wet day! What wonderful powers of observation he must have! The penciller next treats us to a song, descriptive of an Irish cabin, which he tells us was sung for him by one of the most beautiful women he saw in Ireland. ”

“ When your mother and I were married, we were both of us full of old sayings and proverbs, and we thought, like most others, that their meaning should be taken in the plainest and fullest signification; and as most of them are universally allowed to contain a great deal of wisdom and good sense, we thought that whoever regulated his or her conduct strictly according to their rule, would of necessity be the wisest person in the world. ”

“ Since the period of which I now write, I have often witnessed the closing scene of mortality, and various are the opinions I have heard, as to which point of time, between the moment of death and the first appearance abroad of the survivors in their mourning apparel, is the saddest, the most afflicting, or the most trying—whether the moment of dissolution, the first appearance of the undertaker, the laying out in the apparel of death, the bringing of the coffin, the last frantic kiss and look, the screwing down, the carrying out, the dull thud of the clay upon the coffin lid. ”

“ And of the beings who live thus, courage, wit, and quenchless love of liberty, are the undenied and universal characteristics. Truly, that mysterious law of nature by which corruption paints the rose and feeds the fragrant cup of the lily, is not without its similitude! ”

“ THE SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF IRELAND ILLUSTRATED, BY BARTLETT AND WILLIS.
“Know thyself,” was the wise advice of the ancient Greek philosopher; and it is certainly desirable that we should know ourselves, and take every pains in our power to acquire self-knowledge. ”

“ In conclusion, we shall only remark, that the venerable group of ruins of which we have attempted this slight sketch, considered as an object of interest to pleasure tourists, and those of our own country in particular, have not as yet been sufficiently appreciated; and that, as Sir Walter Scott truly remarked, though the scenery of our lakes and mountains may be rivalled in many parts of the sister islands, there is nothing of their class, viewed as a whole, comparable in interest with the ruins on the Rock of Cashel. ”

“ When we stopped to change horses, the entire population, as deep as they could stand, at least with any chance of being heard, held out their hands, and in every conceivable tone and mode of arresting the attention, implored charity. ”

“ There is a female patient in another ward, who had suffered intense toothache for three months, when, a fortnight since, according to her own evidence, which we have no reason to doubt, it was instantly cured by one application of the magnet, through the medium of a key, and had not returned in the slightest degree up to the period of the visit of which we have given the details. ”

“ I did not know that men and women, upright, and made in God’s image, could live in styes, like swine, with swine—sitting, lying down, cooking and eating in such filth as all brute animals, save the one ‘unclean,’ revolt from and avoid. ”

“ The wonder at our blindness, however, in some degree diminished when we perceived—if we can guess at the only point from which such a view could be obtained—that the ingenious artist had represented the sun setting in the north ”

“ In fact, the continued exhibition of the medicine was demanded to secure any portion of rest.
A short time since, however, a new remedial agent presented itself, in the form of the magnet. The hospital was visited, first by Dr Kyle, and subsequently by Dr Blundell, who followed up the application begun by Dr Kyle. The lobelia inflata was allowed by Dr Elliotson to be suspended, and the effect of the magnet tried. That effect was, to the surprise of all who witnessed it, a most decided one; the pain was, on every application of the instrument, removed, and continued absent for several hours. ”

“ I returned to my chamber the moment before mounting the coach for something I had forgotten, and as the clock was striking eight, the faithful damsel knocked at my door and informed me that it was past six.”
Mr Willis is a fortunate traveller. Often as we have stopped at the Donegal Arms, we never had the good fortune to see the pink heels or bare legs of a chambermaid; and the moral economy of the house must be greatly changed also, when they allow the gentlemen to be called by the said bare-legged damsels ”

“ The perspective in this view is also of a novel kind, and well worthy of the attention of the Irish artists, and all those in Ireland who may hitherto have supposed that they knew something of this science. They will see that the level lines, or courses, on circular buildings, instead of ascending to the horizontal line when below it, descend to some horizontal line of their own ”

“ The patient, who was before unable even to cross the ward, or bear without excruciating agony the slightest contact with his finger-nails, and had become emaciated to the extremest degree, from pain and sleeplessness, was now enabled to walk a little way and enjoy intervals of rest, partly recovered his good looks, and became comparatively cheerful. ”

“ The specific name given to his instrument by Dr Blundell, is that of ‘mineral magnet.’ How far its application to disease admits of extension, we are at present ignorant.”
A Solvent Bank.
—The best bank ever yet known is a bank of earth; it never refuses to discount to honest labour; and the best share is the plough-share, on which dividends are always liberal.
An Irish Bull of 1630.
—Nowe that Ireland doth give birthe to strange sortes of men, whose too greate quicknesse of thoughte doth impeede theyre judgmente, this storye whiche I have heard, will shewe. ”

“ Archbishop Price, who succeeded to this see in 1744, and died in 1752, not being able, as tradition states, to drive in his carriage up the steep ascent to the church door, procured an act of parliament to remove the cathedral from the Rock of Cashel into the town, on which the roof was taken off for the value of the lead, and the venerable pile was abandoned to ruin! ”

“ The small round tower in the middle ground, which, as we believed, stood on the very shore, nearly level with the Shannon, has in this view mounted up the side of the hill. But what struck us as furnishing the most remarkable proofs of our defect of vision is, that the doorway of the great round tower, called O’Rourke’s Tower, which, according to our measurement, was five feet six inches in height, and placed at the distance of eight feet from the ground, is here represented as at least twenty feet from it ”

“ We think, then, that they are a pair of gentlemen who must have a wonderfully good opinion of themselves, and that not altogether without reason, inasmuch as they possess in common one quality, which shall be nameless, but in which not even we, natives of the Emerald Isle as we are, can pretend to compete with them. ”

“ Well, the season was dreadful: most of the crops were totally destroyed, and we suffered more than almost any of the neighbours. I was afraid to look Mary in the face, when I had made out the extent of my loss, but she only said, ‘Come, Jemmy, it can’t be helped; the worse luck now, the better another time. You’ll attend more to wise old sayings for the future ”

“ Look up to his honour, and never forget, that, though there’s no clanship in these times, and though many a shoneen holds a higher head than his in the country now, you still owe him your love and fealty, for he’s one of the real old stock ”

“ THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.
THE ROCK OF CASHEL, AS SEEN FROM THE SOUTH.
To such of our readers as have not had the good fortune to see the ancient metropolis of Munster, our prefixed illustration will, it is hoped, give some general idea of the situation and grandeur of a group of ruins, which on various accounts claim to rank as the most interesting in the British islands. Ancient buildings of greater extent and higher architectural splendour may indeed be found elsewhere ”