e
particularly in the baronies of Bargie and Forth in the county of
Wexford, the Saxon tongue is spoken without any mixture of the Irish, and
the people have a variety of customs mentioned in the minutes, which
distinguish them from their neighbours. The rest of the kingdom is made
up of mongrels. The Milesian race of Irish, which may be called native,
are scattered over the kingdom, but chiefly found in Connaught and
Munster; a few considerable families, whose genealogy is undoubted,
remain, but none of them with considerable possessions except the
O'Briens and Mr. O'Neil; the former have near twenty thousand pounds a
year in the family, the latter half as much, the remnant of a property
once his ancestors, which now forms six or seven of the greatest estates
in the kingdom. O'Hara and M'Dermot are great names in Connaught, and
O'Donnohue a considerable one in Kerry; but I heard of a family of
O'Drischal's in Cork, who claim an origin prior in Ireland to any of the
Milesian race.

The only divisions which a traveller, who passed through the kingdom
without making any residence could make, would be into people of
considerable fortune and mob. The intermediate division of the scale, so
numerous and respectable in England, would hardly attract the least
notice in Ireland. A residence in the kingdom convinces one, however,
that there is another class in general of small fortune--country
gentlemen and renters of land. The manners, habits, and customs of
people of considerable fortune are much the same everywhere, at least
there is very little difference between England and Ireland, it is among
the common people one must look for those traits by which we discriminate
a national character. The circumstances which struck me most in the
common Irish were, vivacity and a great and eloquent volubility of
speech; one would think they could take snuff and talk without tiring
till doomsday. They are infinitely more cheerful and lively than
anything we commonly see in England, having nothing of that incivility of
sullen silence with which so many Englishmen seem to wrap themselves up,
as if retiring within their own importance. Lazy to an excess at work,
but so spiritedly active at play, that at hurling, which is the cricket
of savages, they shew the greatest feats of agility. Their love of
society is as remarkable as their curiosity is insatiable; and their
hospitality to all comers, be their own poverty ever so pinching,