Thy sovereign shall behold thee face to face,
The eloquence of truth on thy fair brow
Beaming.—Oh, he never can forget its ray!
On thy green shores, the heart’s own welcome dwells!
There, an hundred thousand greetings wait him!
There, an hundred thousand blessings greet him!”
After the visit we have already mentioned to the Craigs, a season in Town, and a quiet month or two at dear Lodore, Fitz-Ullin prevailed on Julia to accompany him to that gem of the ocean, the Emerald Isle, the land of his birth, for the purpose of visiting his extensive paternal estates in the beautiful county of ⸺.
Here, nature indeed had been bountiful; but her benign intentions had, hitherto, been defeated by an ill judged organization of the social system.
For six and twenty years, agents and middlemen had oppressed the hardy tenant of the soil; till, what had been courage, became fierceness; what had been humour, bitterness; and even native beauty of feature was veiled by the utterly hopeless expression, which hung on almost every countenance; while not the muscles of the face only, but the very limbs of naturally athletic men appeared relaxed. For the rewards of labour being insufficient to inspire industry, bodily fatigue was unsustained by mental energy, and the mere animal instinct of hunger remained the sole stimulus to exertion.