the body of the people to the English, transferred, after the Reformation, to the Protestants, rather on account of their descent than their creed.

such, if deserving, never fail to receive it from their more affluent neighbours.‡

Throughout the English Baronies, the habitations, on the whole, are very superior to any others in the south of Ireland,---often as white as lime can make them,---especially in Forth; and boasting, moreover, of much comfort and cleanliness within. The male population are a fine manly race of well fed, well dressed, English-looking rustics, civil and frank, without servility in their deportment, and extremely intelligent. The raggedness of the Irish peasant is little seen among them, at any time; and their apparel on Sundays and holidays, especially that of the women, would reflect no discredit on their British kindred of the same standing in society.

Among the most striking peculiarities of this interesting people, however, is the circumstance of their having preserved the original Anglo-Saxon dialect, until the commencement of the present century,some of the old people, in very retired nooks, still continuing to speak it. Its Tuetonic origin is obvious enough; but, as a language, it is far inferior to that of the native Irish, abounding, as the latter does, in poetical imagery, bold metaphors, and sententious force, that seem to mark its oriental descent, as they

Even in the present day, amid remote districts, the Irish peasant has but one name, Sassenach, for Englishman and Protestant; and is impressed with the idea of Protestants being a race of men who deny the doctrine of the Trinity, and fear neither God nor man. Such feelings of hostility do not, however, by any means exist in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy; where, unless during periods of unusual excitement, both Protestants and Catholics live on very friendly terms of social intercourse; although not, perhaps, without those little feelings of jealousy which will always prevail in the main, among men of different creeds, where tolerance is not another name for indifference. The same good disposition towards their Protestant neighbours is also manifested by the inhabitants of the Island of Raghery, or Rathlin, off the coast of Antrim; and assignable to the same cause,---the absence of that contention between the opposite parties, in former days, which prevailed on the main land, and of whose lingering effects the wrong-headed politician and crafty demagogue too frequently avail themselves to keep alive that spirit of discord which alike frustrates every plan of private benevolence and legislative amelioration. For the The tenants on the estate of Samuel Boyce, Esq. whose exemplary conduct of all parties in the favoured spot farms, on an average, do not exceed twelve or fifteen acres, I am more particularly describing, it may suffice to had, some time since, two thousand pounds deposited in the observe, that scarcely a man was committed to Wex- Waterford Savings' Banks; and the active young men, who can find no adequate employment at home, being annually provided, ford gaol, from the Barony of Forth, for felony,--- to the number of ten or twelve, with funds to convey them to between 1798 (the year of the general rebellion) and America, by their landlord, the property is thus drained of a 1830. In the parish of Bamrow,* no murder has redundant and idle population. These circumstances may apoccurred for a century; nor is there even a floating pear trivial to the English reader, but are rather peculiar in tradition of one handed down from times more remote; Ireland, where, as very few landlords indeed, by comparison, ever make any abatement in their demands, however bad the unless, indeed, as I remember in the days of my boy-season, or depressed the market, the tenant generally pursues hood, some twenty years since, when the old people were wont to tell of a petty "robber chief," who dwelt, ages ago, in the old castle, or tower of Barristown, and dispatched his victims by hurling them down a perpendicular sort of shaft, still called "the murdering hole," into a small vaulted apartment, long since converted by the present hospitable Lord of the Castle+ into a receptacle for sundry good things pertaining to the social board. In this parish, it is also worthy of observation, there has been only one pauper wholly supported by alms for many years, and that pauper is blind: others, indeed, require occasional aid; and

his cheerless toil, pressed down by the dead weight of old arrears. The rents on Mr. Boyce's estates are not low; but, through the indefatigable exertions of his eldest son, Thomas Boyce, Esq. aided by the co-operation of a sober industrious people, a system of agriculture has been introduced, enabling the holder to till his few acres with the greatest profit. Mr. King, of Barristown, who has resided among the people during a long life, with the exception of one excursion to England, although not in the commission of the peace, has, for the last forty years, settled half the disputes in the parish:-such are the advantages of a resident gentry, when kind and benevolent to those around them.

Where farms are not too small, it is probably far better to have ground divided among a numerous than a scanty tenantry. In Jersey and Guernsey almost every head of a family not residing in a town holds his own farm; often, by the earnings

This parish has been described at some length by the of his personal frugality, or his forefathers' industry, converted Rev. Dr. Walsh, in "the Amulet for 1830."

+ Jonas King, Esq.-(the local " Man of Ross.")

into a miniature estate: and, of course, where almost every one has something to lose, the attachment of the people in general

GEORGE HERIOT,

certainly do its antiquity. But whatever the merits | import is given in modern English in the same volume, of the Hibernian tongue, the unmixed colloquial it will enable the ordinary reader to judge of the phraseology of our English ancestors of the twelfth amazing progress our language has made since the century, as preserved in Ireland, must claim the time of Henry II.; and furnish the more close obattention of the curious. And here it may be related, server with some data for tracing the affinities between as a singular fact, that the Rev. William Eastwood, the provincialisms of England and the yet scarcely Rector of Tacumshane, Barony of Forth, while discontinued dialect of Forth and Bargy. amusing himself one day in his field with a volume of Chaucer, fancied some of the obsolete words which met his eye resembled those which also met his ear, as his workmen conversed together: he accordingly called them around him, and commenced reading a page or two of old Geoffrey aloud, to their great delight, as they well understood the most obscure expressions, and often explained them better than the glossarial aids of Dryden and Johnson. As a specimen of their own rude but antique rhymes, we may refer to the second volume of the "Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy," in which there is a "Memoir," by General Vallancey, "on the Language, Manners, and Customs" of the Anglo-Saxon settlers in the above-named Baronies, which includes a yola zong, (an old song) "handed down," as the writer states, " by tradition, from the arrival of the colony in Ireland." The subject of the song is the game at ball called Camánn, or Hurley ;---and, as its

GOLDSMITH TO JAMES I. AND HIS CONSORT,
ANNE OF DENMARK.

"But why should lordlings all our praise engross?
Rise, honest Muse, and sing the Man of Ross."

POPE.

to social order and the support of good government is proportionably strong. The comfort of the labouring classes in Northumberland has often been referred to by those who advocate the setting of ground in large divisions: but although farms of one thousand acres, and upwards, are not uncommon there, the married labourer, especially on the Duke of Northumberland's estates, has, for the most part, his cottage and plot of ground. SIR WALTER SCOTT's "Fortunes of Nigel" was Some of the estates in Shropshire ought to be models to our the first work which, in any considerable degree, nobility and gentry; as the people residing on them are not directed the attention of South Britain to the fortunes only rendered exceedingly comfortable, but schools are opened, at the landlord's expense, for the useful education of their and character of "MASTER GEORGE HERIOT," children; the neglect of which, in general, will readily account who was born at Edinburgh in June, 1563, and for the clownishness of our rustics. Fifty years since, as I am" who has left the most magnificent proofs of his informed by an elderly friend, connected with Staffordshire, the labourer there received about 1s. 6d. per diem wages, and usually had a neat cottage, paddock, garden, and little orchard. From the annihilation of the cottage system, and of the small farmer, have resulted many of the evils and much of the discontent now prevalent in our rural districts; and it is only by careful attention to the practical and speedy remedy of those evils that our landed proprietors can secure their influence at such a period as the present. A loyal rural population is the strength of every nation; and while all interests demand the same paternal care from a well-ordered government, short sighted is that policy which would sacrifice the agriculturist on the altar of immediate expediency. The experiment was tried by Colbert, during the expensive wars of Louis XIV. with temporary increase, it is true, of the public finances; but with an ultimate

failure and ruinous reaction far counterbalancing the gain of the passing moment.

benevolence and charity that the capital of Scotland has to display."*"The person so named," continues our author, "was a wealthy citizen of Edinburgh, and the king's goldsmith, who followed James to the English capital, and was so successful in his profession as to die, in 1624, extremely wealthy for that period. He had no children; and, after making a full provision for such relations as might have claims upon him, he left the residue of his fortune to establish an Hospital, in which the sons of Edinburgh freemen are gratuitously brought up, and educated for the station to which their talents may recommend

Waverley Novels," vol. xxvi. Introduction, p. iii.

them, and are finally enabled to enter life under res- | 1624, he was also buried there on the 20th of the pectable auspices.

:

The Hospital is a well-built quadrangular edifice, of tyme Jeweler to King James the Sixth, of happie memorie, who mortified not only so much of his Estate as founded and completed this stately Hospital, but doeth now also maintaine 130 poor Burgeses and Freemens children of the citie of Edinburgh; in the tearmes specified in the Statuts of the said Hospitall, compiled by D: Balcanquell, D. of Rochester, the Founder's Trustee for that effect.

the mixed style of architecture prevalent at the period of its design at each angle is a square tower, turretted; and on the north, or principal front, is a lofty central tower, terminating in an octagonal cupola. Beneath this tower is a vaulted archway, leading into the court-yard, over the middle of which, within a niche, is a statue of the benevolent founder, standing, in a short cloak, in the general dress of his degree and times. On the fascia of the entablature above the niche is inscribed;

CORPORIS HÆC ANIMA EST HOC OPUS EFFIGIES.

Anno Domine, M.DC.XCIII.

We shall conclude this article by fac similes of the autographs both of Queen Anne of Denmark and Heriot himself: that of the Queen is attached to the

Over the outer gate there is, also, the following in- following order:— scription :

Fundendo Fundavi.

Vi cor incaluit Pietatis et Charitatis
Sic vos Deus, ut vos eos,

Deus nobis hæc otia fecit.

On the central part of the south-front is a circular tower, which exhibits a handsome pointed window, forming part of the Chapel: the latter is suitably fitted up for the accommodation of the boys, who assemble here every morning and evening to prayers, in accordance with the Statutes of the Institution. Over the entrance is this sentence:

Aurifici dederat mihi, vis divina perennem,

Et Facere in Terris, in Cali, et ferre, coronam.

The ingenious Monagram at the head of this article, and which consists of a fanciful arrangement

"Sir thomas kneuat. We desyre you to delyuere to marster heriot our Jouellere, the soume of nyne hunderithe and twenty poundes. And ressaue his acquytance upowne the same. me At hamptowne Court the saxt day of October 1606."

Anna R

Heriot's signature is appended to a brief statement of the name GEORGE HERIOT, is copied from a stone of his charge for jewels and goldsmith's work furchimney-piece within the hospital. It is freely sculp-nished to the Queen in the course of ten months, viz. tured; and, like the Apprentices' Pillar, in Rosslyn Chapel, is rarely omitted to be pointed out to the visitor by the cicerone of the place.

In the Council-room are original portraits, but in a decayed state, of the founder and his father, which were presented to the Governors by the Earl of Buchan on that of the son is Anno ætatis suæ 26, 1589; and on that of the elder Heriot, Anno ætatis ṣuæ 50, 1590.' There is also a portrait inscribed William Aytonne, Measter Meason to Heriot's Vorke' who was one the most skilful masons of his time. Among the inscriptions in the Councilroom, and which record the names and benefactions of different persons, is the following:

"To the pious and worthie Memorie of GEORGE HERIOT, Goldsmith, Burges of Edinburgh, and some

It is a singular fact, that in this building there are no two windows which resemble each other.

"The acompt of my firnishinge maid to hir matie from the xth of june 1608 to the ix of apryll 1609, extending to the some of 2896" 6* money of Eng

land."

George herrete

* The number of boys now supported on this foundation is 180.-In 1828, Mr. John Goldicutt published "Illustrations of Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh," in eight plates; small fol.