Ah, Johnny Joyce! there's a homily for us all in that “divil a taste!” The beautiful, so close to us, over head, under foot, we prize not; the great hills are voiceless to the mountaineer; and the lowlander sees no loveliness in valleys thick with corn. Ashore, we sigh for the wild magnificence of ocean; and, at sea, our unquiet spirit yearns for the landscape's rest and peace. Let us ask for eyes to read, and loving hearts to understand, the declarations of wisdom and of goodness God-written everywhere!
We spent a pleasant evening in the common-room of our inn. There was, among others, a landscape-painter, who, manfully confessing that he “could do nothing with Connamara,” showed us, nevertheless, some very interesting sketches; and there was a clever, merry, young graduate, of our sister university at Dublin, as full of good sense as good humour. He told us, as we sipped our punch, how that whiskey derived its name from the Irish uiske, the water; “the only water,” quoth he, “that's good for a gentleman to drink;” how that usquebaugh meant “water of life,” as aqua vitae in Latin, and eau de vie in French; and how this reminded him that the Phoenix Park in Dublin, derived its name from Finniske, or Fionuisge, fair-water, and was so called from a spring in the neighbourhood, once much resorted to as a chalybeate spa.
As we became confidential, I asked him what he thought of Ireland's prospects?
“Well,” he said, after a long, reflective pull at his little, black, dudeen, “I am not so sanguine as some with regard to the prosperity of Ireland. That which Pope said of man in general, seems to me to be especially true with regard to an Irishman in particular, he 'never is, but always to be, blessed.' Every history, or book of travels, written no matter when or by whom, always has the same moral,—Ireland is emerging from a state of misery and degradation—followed by some fine, old-crusted quotations with regard to our capabilities, and the wonderful results which might be achieved, 'if only the hand of man did join with the hand of nature.'” 1
1 Lord Bacon, the original, not the boatman.
“Pity,” I thought, “that the hand of man should be unhappily preoccupied—with a blunderbuss!”
“No,” he continued, “physicians, Danish, Saxon, and Norman, have prescribed for us (generally a course of bleeding and depletion) with so little success; the grand panacea, Protestantism, has been administered to us,—as gently as a ball to some restive horse, with a twitch upon our national nose, and a thrust down our national throat,—with so few favourable results, that I begin to fear our malady is chronic, and that affliction must be regarded as our normal.
“I have heard before,” I remarked, “that Ireland has not been considered by her medical advisers to be a very good subject.”
“I see,” he answered, “but we are more loyal, perhaps, than you are inclined to suppose, and quite as much so as you have a right to expect. Some people seem surprised that we Irish do not set up statues of Turgesius, the Norwegian gentleman, who favoured us with a tax called Nosestate. Money, by which he merely meant, that, if we declined to pay, he should remove the facial adjunct alluded to; that we do not paint memorial pictures of Prince John and his Normans ridiculing our Irish Chiefs, when they came to welcome them at Waterford, and chaffing them about their long hair and their short yellow shirts, which, I grant, must have been rather funny; that we exhibit no restlessness for the canonisation of Cromwell, and make no pious pilgrimages to the tomb of Dutch William. Now, I by no means say, with Junius, that 'Ireland has been uniformly plundered and oppressed,' but I do say that the bride which Pope Adrian, himself an Englishman, gave, with a gay marriage-ring of emeralds, to your second Henry, has not been very lovingly dealt with.”
“The wedding,” I said, “has not been, as yet, productive of much happiness; but you must remember, that if the husband has been harsh at times, and disagreeable, the conduct of the lady has been very aggravating and suspicious. Hath she not flirted with Monsieur and Jonathan? Hath she not decked herself with ribbons of obnoxious hue, and gone after strange priests, whom John Bull honoureth not? Could he have foreseen the troublous consequences of the union, he might have wished to imitate the example of Jupiter, who, having considered the subject in all its bearings, devoured Metis, his wife, lest she should produce an offspring wiser than himself.”