CHAPTER XV.

A.D. 1846-7. ET. 51-52.

Six days in Ireland-John Mitchel-Return to London-Margaret Fuller-Visit to the Grange-Irish famine-Dr. Chalmers--Literature as a profession-Matlock-Sight near Buxton-Visit to Rochdale John and Jacob Bright-Emerson comes from America -The Jew Bill '-Hare's Life of Sterling-Plans for future books --Exodus from Houndsditch.

IRELAND had long been an anxious subject of Carlyle's meditations. It was the weak point of English constitutional government. The Constitution was the natural growth of the English mind and character. We had imposed it upon the Irish in the confident belief that a system which answered among ourselves must be universally excellent, and be equally suited for every other country and people. Carlyle's conviction was that even for England it was something temporary in itself, an historical phenomenon which in time would cease to answer its purpose even where it originated, and that Ireland was the weak spot, where the failure was first becoming evident. He had wished to see the unfortunate island with his own eyes, now particularly when its normal wretchedness was accentuated by the potato blight and famine. He had no present leisure for a detailed survey, but

VISIT TO IRELAND.

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he had resolved at least to look at it if only for a few days.

On the last of August he left Scotsbrig, went to Dumfries, and thence made a hasty visit to Craigenputtock, which was now his own property, and where there was business to be attended to. From Dumfries he went by coach to Ayr and Ardrossan, from which a steamer carried him at night to Belfast. Gavan Duffy and John Mitchel had arranged to meet him. at Drogheda. The drive thither from Belfast was full of instruction; the scene all new to him; the story of the country written in ruined cabins and uncultivated fields, the air poisoned with the fatal smell of the poisoned potato. He had an agreeable companion on the coach in a clever young Dublin man, who pleased him well. Drogheda must have had impressive associations for him. There is no finer passage in his Cromwell' than his description of the stern business once enacted there. But he did not stay to look for traces of Oliver. He missed his two friends through a mistake at the Post Office, and hurried on by railway to Dublin, where he stopped at the Imperial Hotel in Sackville Street. Here for a day or two he was alone. He had come for a glance at Ireland, and that was all which he got. He witnessed, however, a remarkable scene, the last appearance of O'Connell, then released from prison, in Conciliation Hall. He says, long after :

I saw Conciliation Hall and the last glimpse of O'Connell, chief quack of the then world; first time I had ever heard the lying scoundrel speak-a most melancholy scene to me altogether; Conciliation Hall something like a decent Methodist Chapel, but its audience very sparse, very bad

and blackguard-looking; brazen faces like tapsters, tavernkeepers, miscellaneous hucksters, and quarrelsome male or female nondescripts the prevailing type; not one that you would have called a gentleman, much less a man of culture; and discontent visible among them. The speech, on potato rot, most serious of topics, had not one word of sincerity, not to speak of wisdom, in it. Every sentence seemed to you a lie, and even to know that it was a detected lie. I was standing in the area in a small group of non-members and transitory people, quite near this Demosthenes of blarney, when a low voice whispered in high accent, Did you ever hear such damned nonsense in all your life?' It was my Belfast-Drogheda coach companion, and I thoroughly agreed with him. Beggarly O'Connell made out of Ireland straightway and never returned-crept under the Pope's petticoat to die (and be 'saved' from what he had merited), the eminently despicable and eminently poisonous professor of blarney that he was.

The

The Young Irelanders had waited at Drogheda, and only discovered their guest at last at Dundrum, to which he had gone to some address which Mr. Duffy had given him. There he was entertained at a large dinner-party. 'Young Ireland almost in mass.' The novelist Carleton was there, a genuine bit of old Ireland.' They talked and drank liquids of various strengths.' Carlyle was scornful. Young Irelanders fought fiercely with him for their own views; but they liked him and he liked them, wild and unhopeful as he knew their projects to be. He could not see even the surface of Ireland without recognising that there was a curse upon it of some kind, and these young enthusiasts were at least conscious of the fact, and were not crying 'Peace' none. The next day he dined with one of them; then, perhaps, the most notorious.

when there was

Dined at Mitchel's (he writes) with a select party, and ate there the last truly good potato I have met with in the world. Mitchel's wife, especially his mother (Presbyterian parson's widow of the best Scotch type), his frugally elegant small house and table, pleased me much, as did the man himself, a fine elastic-spirited young fellow, whom I grieved to see rushing on destruction, palpable, by attack of windmills, but on whom all my persuasions were thrown away. Both Duffy and him I have always regarded as specimens of the best kind of Irish youth, seduced, like thousands of them in their early day, into courses that were at once mad and ridiculous, and which nearly ruined the life of both, by the big Beggarman who had 15,000l. a year, and, proh pudor! the favour of English Ministers, instead of the pillory from them, for professing blarney with such and still worse results.

'Poor Mitchel!' (Carlyle said afterwards) 'I told him he would most likely be hanged, but I told him too they could not hang the immortal part of him.'

On the last day of his stay he was taken for a drive, one of the most beautiful in the world, by the Dargle and Powerscourt, and round through the Glen of the Downs to Bray. Before entering the Dublin mountains, they crossed the low rich meadows of the old Pale, the longest in English occupation, a fertile oasis in the general wretchedness. I have heard that he said, looking over the thick green grass and welltrimmed fences and the herds of cattle fattening there,

Ah, Duffy, there you see the hoof of the bloody Saxon.' This was his final excursion, a pleasant taste in the mouth to end with. The same evening his friends saw him on board the steamer at Kingstown; and in the early morning of September 10 he was sitting smoking a cigar before the door of his wife's uncle's house in Liverpool till the household should awake and let him in.

He had looked on Ireland, and that was all; but he had seen enough to make intelligible to him all that followed. When he came again, three years later, the bubble had burst. Europe was in revolution; the dry Irish tinder had kindled, and a rebellion which was a blaze of straw had ended in a cabbage garden. Duffy, Mitchel, and others of that bright Dundrum party had stood at the bar to be tried for treason. Duffy narrowly escaped. The rest were exiled, scattered over the world, and lost to Ireland for ever. Mitchel has lately died in America. The 'immortal part' of him still works in the Phoenix Park and in dynamite conspiracies; what will come of it has yet to be seen.

To the family at Scotsbrig Ireland had been a word of terror, and Carlyle hastened to assure them of his safe return.

Tell my dear mother (he wrote to his brother John) that the Papists have not hurt me in the least; on the contrary, they were abundantly and over-abundantly kind and hospitable to me, and many a rough object has been put in my head which may usefully smooth itself for me some day.

In London, when he was again settled there, he had nothing of importance to attend to. No fresh work had risen upon him. There had been trouble with servants, &c. The establishment at Cheyne Row consisted of a single maid-of-all-work, and to find a woman who would take such a place, and yet satisfy a master and mistress so sensitive to disorder, material or moral, was no easy matter. Mrs. Carlyle has related her afflictions on this score; just then they had been particularly severe, and she had been worried into illness. The fame' from Cromwell'