Page 393 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

392 THIRD BOOK OF
land has been to keep Ireland in a state of intern division, perfect unanimity among her inhabitants has been considered as likely to give her a popula­ tion and a power incompatible with su ection; and there are not wanting natives of Ireland, who, im­ pressed with that erroneous idea, zealously plunge into the same doctrine, as if they could best prove
their loyalty to the king by vilifying their country.
3. The Irish peasantry, who necessarily composed the great body of the population, combined in their character many of those singular and 1·epugnant qualities which peculiarly designate the people of di erent nations; and this remarkable contrariety of characteristic traits pervaded almost the whole cur­ rent of their natural dispositions. Laborious, domes­ tic, accustomed to wants in the midst of plenty, they submit to hardships without repining, and bear the severest privations with stoic rtitude. The sharp­ est wit, and the shrewdest snbtilty, which abound in the character of the Irish peasant, generally lie con­ cealed under the semblance of dulness, or the ap­ pearance of simplicity; and his language, replete with the keenest humour, possesses an idiom of equivocation, which never ils success lly to evade a direct answer to an unwelcome question.
4. Inquisitive, art l, and penetrating, the Irish peasant learns mankind without extensive inter­ course, and has an instinctive knowledge of the world, without mingling in its societies, and never, in any other instance, did there exist a people who could display so much address and so much talent in the ordinary transactions of li as the Irish peasantry.
5. The Irish peasant has, at all periods, been pe­ culiarly distinguished r unbounded, but indiscrimi-