rect them to follow us thither. The arrangement was
soon made, and we all sauntered down toward the shore, chatting over the
state of the country, and the chances of a successful rising. From the
specimen before me, I was not disposed to be over sanguine about the
peasantry. The man was evidently disaffected toward England. He bore her
neither good-will nor love; but his fears were greater than all else. He
had never heard of any thing but failure in all attempts against her;
and he could not believe in any other result. Even the aid and alliance
of France inspired no other feeling than distrust; for he said more than
once, "Sure, what can harm _yez_? Haven't ye yer ships, beyant, to take
yez away, if things goes bad?"

I was heartily glad that Colonel Charost knew so little English, that
the greater part of the peasant's conversation was unintelligible to
him, since, from the first, he had always spoken of the expedition in
terms of disparagement; and certainly what we were now to hear was not
of a nature to controvert the prediction.

In our ignorance as to the habits and modes of thought of the people, we
were much surprised at the greater interest the peasant betrayed when
asking us about France and her prospects, than when the conversation
concerned his own country. It appeared as though, in the one case,
distance gave grandeur and dimensions to all his conceptions, while
familiarity with home scenes and native politics had robbed them of all
their illusions. He knew well that there were plenty of hardships,
abundance of evils, to deplore in Ireland; rents were high, taxes and
tithes oppressive, agents were severe, bailiffs were cruel; social
wrongs he could discuss for hours, but of political woes, the only one
we could be expected to relieve or care for, he really knew nothing.
"'Tis true," he repeated, "that what my honor said was all right,
Ireland was badly treated," and so on; "liberty was an elegant thing if
a body had it," and such like; but there ended his patriotism.

Accustomed for many a day to the habits of a people where all were
politicians, where the rights of man, and the grand principles of
equality and self-government were everlastingly under discussion, I was,
I confess it, sorely disappointed at this worse than apathy.

"Will they fight?--ask him that," said Charost, to whom I had been
conveying a rather rose-colored version of my friend's talk.

"Oh, be gorra! we'll fight sure enough!" sai