d a
year in Ireland, who live in habitations that a man of seven hundred a
year in England would disdain; an air of neatness, order, dress, and
_proprete_, is wanting to a surprising degree around the mansion; even
new and excellent houses have often nothing of this about them. But the
badness of the houses is remedying every hour throughout the whole
kingdom, for the number of new ones just built, or building, is
prodigiously great. I should suppose there were not ten dwellings in the
kingdom thirty years ago that were fit for an English pig to live in.
Gardens were equally bad, but now they are running into the contrary
extreme, and wall in five, six, ten, and even twenty Irish acres for a
garden, but generally double or treble what is necessary.

The tables of people of fortune are very plentifully spread; many
elegantly, differing in nothing from those of England. I think I
remarked that venison wants the flavour it has with us, probably for the
same reason, that the produce of rich parks is never equal to that of
poor ones; the moisture of the climate, and the richness of the soil,
give fat but not flavour. Another reason is the smallness of the parks,
a man who has three or four thousand acres in his hands, has not perhaps
above three or four hundred in his deer-park, and range is a great point
for good venison. Nor do I think that garden vegetables have the flavour
found in those of England, certainly owing to the climate; green peas I
found everywhere perfectly insipid, and lettuce, etc., not good. Claret
is the common wine of all tables, and so much inferior to what is drunk
in England, that it does not appear to be the same wine; but their port
is incomparable, so much better than the English, as to prove, if proof
was wanting, the abominable adulterations it must undergo with us.
Drinking and duelling are two charges which have long been alleged
against the gentlemen of Ireland, but the change of manners which has
taken place in that kingdom is not generally known in England.
Drunkenness ought no longer to be a reproach, for at every table I was at
in Ireland I saw a perfect freedom reign, every person drank just as
little as they pleased, nor have I ever been asked to drink a single
glass more than I had an inclination for; I may go farther and assert
that hard drinking is very rare among people of fortune; yet it is
certain that they sit much longer at table than in England. I was much
surprised at f