Everywhere in Ireland one sees none but peasants more miserable than savages. Only, instead of there being a hundred thousand, as there would be in a state of nature, there are eight millions,[5] who allow five hundred "absentees" to live in prosperity at London or Paris.
Society is infinitely more advanced in Scotland,[6] where, in very many respects, government is good (the rarity of crime, the diffusion of reading, the non-existence of bishops, etc.). There the tender passions can develop much more freely, and it is possible to leave these sombre thoughts and approach the humorous.
One cannot fail to notice a foundation of melancholy in Scottish women. This melancholy is particularly seductive at dances, where it gives a singular piquancy to the extreme ardour and energy with which they perform their national dances. Edinburgh has another advantage, that of being withdrawn from the vile empire of money. In this, as well as in the singular and savage beauty of its site, this city forms a complete contrast with London. Like Rome, fair Edinburgh seems rather the sojourn of the contemplative life. At London you have the ceaseless whirlwind and restless interests of active life, with all its advantages and inconveniences. Edinburgh seems to me to pay its tribute to the devil by a slight disposition to pedantry. Those days when Mary Stuart lived at old Holyrood, and Riccio was assassinated in her arms, were worth more to Love (and here all women will agree with me) than to-day, when one discusses at such length, and even in their presence, the preference to be accorded to the neptunian system over the vulcanian system of ... I prefer a discussion on the new uniform given by the king to the Guards, or on the peerage which Sir B. Bloomfield[(35)] failed to get—the topic of London in my day—to a learned discussion as to who has best explored the nature of rocks, de Werner or de....
I say nothing about the terrible Scottish Sunday, after which a Sunday in London looks like a beanfeast. That day, set aside for the honour of Heaven, is the best image of Hell that I have ever seen on earth. "Don't let's walk so fast," said a Scotchman returning from church to a Frenchman, his friend; "people might think we were going for a walk."[7]
Of the three countries, Ireland is the one in which there is the least hypocrisy. See the New Monthly Magazine thundering against Mozart and the Nozze di Figaro.[8]
In every country it is the aristocrats, who try to judge a literary magazine and literature; and for the last four years in England these have been hand in glove with the bishops. As I say, that of the three countries where, it seems to me, there is the least hypocrisy, is Ireland: on the contrary, you find there a reckless, a most fascinating vivacity. In Scotland there is the strict observance of Sunday, but on Monday they dance with a joy and an abandon unknown to London. There is plenty of love among the peasant class in Scotland. The omnipotence of imagination gallicised the country in the sixteenth century.
The terrible fault of English society, that which in a single day creates a greater amount of sadness than the national debt and its consequences, and even than the war to the death waged by the rich against the poor, is this sentence which I heard last autumn at Croydon, before the beautiful statue of the bishop: "In society no one wants to put himself forward, for fear of being deceived in his expectations."
Judge what laws, under the name of modesty, such men must impose on their wives and mistresses.
[1] The young child of Spenser was burnt alive in Ireland.
[2] To refute otherwise than by insults the portraiture of a certain class of Englishmen presented in these three works seems to me an impossible task. Satanic school.