st paroxysms, with a laughter-loving spirit. It is impossible that
an Irishman, sunk in the lowest depths of affliction, could permit his
grief to flow in all its sad solemnity, even for a day, without some
glimpse of his natural humor throwing a faint and rapid light over the
gloom within him. No: there is an amalgamation of sentiments in his mind
which, as I said before, would puzzle any philosopher to account for.
Yet it would be wrong to say, though his grief has something of an
unsettled and ludicrous character about it, that he is incapable of the
most subtle and delicate shades of sentiment, or the deepest and most
desolating intensity of sorrow. But he laughs off those heavy vapors
which hang about the moral constitution of the people of other
nations, giving them a morbid habit, which leaves them neither strength
nor firmness to resist calamity--which they feel less keenly than an
Irishman, exactly as a healthy man will feel the pangs of death with
more acuteness than one who is wasted away by debility and decay. Let
any man witness an emigration, and he will satisfy himself that this is
true. I am convinced that Goldsmith's inimitable description of one in
his "Deserted Village," was a picture drawn from actual observation. Let
him observe the emigrant, as he crosses the Atlantic, and he will find,
although he joins the jest, and the laugh, and the song, that he will
seek a silent corner, or a silent hour, to indulge the sorrow which he
still feels for the friends, the companions, and the native fields that
he has left behind him. This constitution of mind is beneficial: the
Irishman seldom or never hangs himself, because he is capable of too
much real feeling to permit himself to become the slave of that which
is factitious. There is no void in his affections or sentiments, which a
morbid and depraved sensibility could occupy; but his feelings, of what
character soever they may be, are strong, because they are fresh and
healthy. For this reason, I maintain, that when the domestic affections
come under the influence of either grief or joy, the peasantry of no
nation are capable of feeling so deeply. Even on the ordinary occasions
of death, sorrow, though it alternates with mirth and cheerfulness, in
a manner peculiar to themselves, lingers long in the unseen recesses
of domestic life: any hand, therefore, whether by law or violence, that
plants a wound here, will suffer to the death.

When my brother and I ente