An examination of the bedrooms will not prove more satisfactory; a glass or soap are luxuries seldom found. Sometimes one coarse and very small towel is provided; at Kilmallock, the measurement of mine was half a yard in length and a quarter in breadth; its complexion, too, evinced that it had assisted in the partial ablutions of many unfastidious persons. Mr. Arthur Young’s constant ejaculation, when he lighted on such quarters in Ireland, usually occurred to my mind, “Preserve me, Fate, from such another!” and I have no doubt he would agree with me, that two very essential requisites in an Irish tour are a stock of linen, and a tolerable partiality for bacon. But travellers, any more than beggars, cannot always be choosers, and those who will not submit with patience to the accidents and inconveniences of a journey, must sit at home and read the road that others travel.
“Who alwaies walkes, on carpet soft and gay,
Knowes not hard hills, nor likes the mountaine way.”[66]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 39·17.
[66] Mr. Croker’s Researches in the South of Ireland, 1824, 4to. This gentleman’s excursions were made between the years 1812 and 1822.