of
life, points to no period of rest or repose; year succeeds year in the
same dull routine of toil and privation; nor can he look around him and
see one who has risen from that life of misery, to a position of even
comparative comfort.

The whole study of his existence, the whole philosophy of his life, is,
how to endure; to struggle on under poverty and sickness; in seasons of
famine, in times of national calamity, to hoard up the little pittance
for his landlord and the payment for his Priest; and he has nothing
more to seek for. Were it our object here, it would not be difficult
to pursue this theme further, and examine, if much of the imputed
slothfulness and indolence of the people was not in reality due to that
very hopelessness. How little energy would be left to life, if you took
away its ambitions; how few would enter upon the race, if there were no
goal before them! Our present aim, however, is rather with the fortunes
of those we have so lately left. To these poor men, now, a new existence
opened. Not the sun of spring could more suddenly illumine the landscape
where winter so late had thrown its shadows, than did prosperity fall
brightly on their hearts, endowing life with pleasures and enjoyments,
of which they had not dared to dream before.

In preferring this mountain-tract to some rich lowland farm, they
were rather guided by that spirit of attachment to the home of their
fathers--so characteristic a trait in the Irish peasant--than by the
promptings of self-interest. The mountain was indeed a wild and bleak
expanse, scarce affording herbage for a few sheep and goats; the callows
at its foot, deeply flooded in winter, and even by the rains of autumn,
made tillage precarious and uncertain; yet the fact that these were
rent-free, that of its labour and its fruits all was now their own,
inspired hope and sweetened toil. They no longer felt the dreary
monotony of daily exertion, by which hour was linked to hour, and year
to year, in one unbroken succession;--no; they now could look forward,
they could lift up their hearts and strain their eyes to a future, where
honest industry had laid up its store for the decline of life; they
could already fancy the enjoyments of the summer season, when they
should look down upon their own crops and herds, or think of the winter
nights, and the howling of the storm without, reminding them of the
blessings of a home.

How little to the mind teeming with its bright and