ustom house officers,
very gentlemanly men, came on board; our luggage was all set out, and
passed through a rapid examination, which in many cases amounted only to
opening the trunk and shutting it, and all was over. The whole ceremony
did not occupy two hours.

So ends this letter. You shall hear further how we landed at some future
time.

LETTER II.

DEAR FATHER:--

It was on Sunday morning that we first came in sight of land. The day
was one of a thousand--clear, calm, and bright. It is one of those
strange, throbbing feelings, that come only once in a while in life;
this waking up to find an ocean crossed and long-lost land restored
again in another hemisphere; something like what we should suppose might
be the thrill of awakening from life to immortality, and all the wonders
of the world unknown. That low, green line of land in the horizon is
Ireland; and we, with water smooth as a lake and sails furled, are
running within a mile of the shore. Every body on deck, full of spirits
and expectation, busy as can be looking through spyglasses, and
exclaiming at every object on shore,--

"Look! there's Skibareen, where the worst of the famine was," says one.

"Look! that's a ruined Martello tower," says another.

We new voyagers, who had never seen any ruin more imposing than that of
a cow house, and, of course, were ravenous for old towers, were now
quite wide awake, but were disappointed to learn that these were only
custom house rendezvous. Here is the county of Cork. Some one calls
out,--

"There is O'Connell's house;" and a warm dispute ensues whether a large
mansion, with a stone chapel by it, answers to that name. At all events
the region looks desolate enough, and they say the natives of it are
almost savages. A passenger remarks, that "O'Connell never really did
any thing for the Irish, but lived on his capacity for exciting their
enthusiasm." Thereupon another expresses great contempt for the Irish
who could be so taken in. Nevertheless, the capability of a
disinterested enthusiasm is, on the whole, a nobler property of a human
being than a shrewd self-interest. I like the Irish all the better for
it.

Now we pass Kinsale lighthouse; there is the spot where the Albion was
wrecked. It is a bare, frowning cliff, with walls of rock rising
perpendicularly out of the sea. Now, to be sure, the sea smiles and
sparkles around the base of it, as gently as if it never could storm;
yet under other ski