Page 394 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

READING LESSONS.
393
nate hospitality, which, though naturally devoted to the necessities of a iend, is never denied by him even to the distresses of an enemy. To be in wan or misery, is the best recommendtion to his disin­ terested protection; his od, his bed, his raiment, are equally the stranger's and his own; and the deeper the distress, the more welcome is the su erer to the peasant's cottage.
6. His attachments to his kindred are of the strongest nature. The social duties are intimately blended with the natural disposition of an Irish peas­ ant; though covered with rags, oppressed with pov­ erty, and perhaps with hunger, the nest specimens of generosity and heroism are to be und in his un­ equalled character.
7. An enthusiastic attachment to the place of their nativity, is another striking trait of the Irish charac­ ter, which neither time nor absence, prosperity nor adversity, can obliterate or diminish. ·\Vherever an Irish peasant was born, there he wishes to die; and, however success l in acquiring wealth or rank iu distant places, he returns with fond a ection to re­ new his intercourse with the iends and companions of his youth and his obscurity.
8. An innate spirit of insubordination to the laws has been strongly charged upon the Irish peasantry; but a people, to whom the punishment of crimes appears rather as a sacri ce to revenge th;m a mea­ sure of prevention, can never have the same defor­ ence to the law as those who are inst ctcd in the principles of justice, and tanght to recognise its equality. It has, however, been uni rmly admitted by every impartial writer on the a airs of Irehnd, that a spirit of strict justice has ever chnractensed