Round Towers-Whisky Mills-Want of Industry - Prison Discipline-Irish Cry-Scenery on the Suir-Fin-ma-Cool and the Devil's Bit-The Rock of Cashel. "Were you ever in sweet Tipperary, where the fields are so sunny and green, And the heath-brown Slieve Bloom and the Galties look down with so noble a mien ? 'Tis there you would see as much beauty as on all other Irish ground; Oh! bless you, my sweet Tipperary; where else could your match e'er be found?" FIANNUALLA. As our chariot rolled up the street of the fine old town of Roscrea, in the county of Tipperary, towards the close of a lovely autumn evening, I felt myself somewhat at home; I cannot well say why, but the place was old, and it was Irish and still my native land. There was certainly a charm for me in beholding its high round-tower. Many a boyish day had I spent close by a similar one at Clondalkin, with companions of my youth, from whom I then first separated. To be sure, the joyous laugh was not just there; but there the tower was, in its seeming very identity, and thus to me a friend. "The Lord be praised, I'm not alone," said our youthful children's-maid, a few years before; "there's the moon come after me from Naas;" and the big tears rolled down her cheeks with joy and gratitude at the recognition. It was so with me. On looking up to the ancient tower, I felt somewhat at home; and the more so when we were warmly received at the hospitable mansion of “ The Valley-House." What a soothing power has music. Here were the lovely Irish airs poured forth in all their witching originality; many with words no longer heard, and some, even then, with the fascinating words by Moore. As we had had the rare good fortune to have heard them sung by many, and even by Moore himself, in the metropolitan circles, we were both pleased and charmed again to recognise them here; and after light refreshment and our evening prayer, we gladly went to rest. "Oh! what a manufactory of vice!" I exclaimed, next morning, as I viewed the far-famed Roscrea whisky mills; in jest I called them so, but many a serious thing is said in jest. There was the food of man, in quantities incredible, being ground to powder-into mimic mountains-to be converted into liquid poison! destined to produce "Sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace WHISKY MILLS. It might be called "the devil's walk," for everything that ingenuity and industry (in a better cause) could urge was here most lavishly bestowed, to spread abroad but RUIN! "There's a custodium," said a clever country harpy of the law, with joyous sneer, as he observed a pipe of wine pass over Athlone Bridge, to poor and reckless Connaught. The same idea struck me as the loaded carriers passed from the distillery outward; to many, what a melancholy procession! Dray after dray rolled on; some had two, some three, enormously-sized casks. I thought, that like the Connaught wine-pipe's fate, if the consequences of each full measure of iniquity were branded on its face, how great the good might be to suffering humanity. To shipwrecks, and neglect of all sorts, we might add crime on crime! manslaughter! madness! MURDER! The very exuberance of sin, from want of space, would shut the page, though large the area to record it on. A stream brought fuel to this "fire-water," into this very vortex of destruction; for a navigable cut connected a vast peat-bog with this "malefactory." ✓ Even here, I thought that good might come from evil. The cut-out bog, with just a little care and draining, could be converted into garden-ground,* or even the finest pasture.t So, if the sword of death at one end smote both deep and wide, the gently-healing hand of nature might have been there extended to make some return for the waste of food, of fuel, and of mankind! * See Highland Society's Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, 1835"Castleconnell Bog Improvement." + See Woodlawn Bog Improvements Commissioners' Report, 1829; also, Arthur Young. The lovely hills around Roscrea, the beauty of the scenery, and richness of the soil, led me to reflect that, where God and nature did so much, man became a lounging looker-on. 66 The celebrity of Tipperary for its massacres and murders, riotous fairs and faction-fights, would suddenly cease for ever, would bounteous Providence but remove a spit of its too-rich soil, and place it on the sterile hills of Ulster, where a nice labour" is the idiomatic term for a well-wrought farm. A Tipperary man would perish even if placed with stock, and crop, and help upon a pattern farm in many parts of Ulster; though entirely free of rent, he would never win a pittance from the stubborn soil that only yields to labour. "Who lags for dread of daily work, And his appointed task would shirk, Delightful drives round Roscrea and to Templemore, with visits at the Priory, &c., detained us a few days, and then we reached Dromoland, in the county of Clare. Here was a contrast to lounging Tipperary life and laziness. Sir Edward O'Brien was a clear-headed and early agriculturist, fully understanding that Clare land, however grateful for attention, must be wooed before it is. won. I think I see before me the gentle features of Sir Edward, though a sufferer from gout, as he, smilingly, drove along through waving fields of ripening corn, his whereabouts just seen at times, or indicated, by the noble crest and head-gear of his favourite phaeton-horse, as they rose above the golden grain. Then rumbling sounds were heard from blasting operations, carried on to form a tunnelled passage for "pent-up" waters, that had flooded some hundred , acres, which, thus relieved, yielded a very liberal return for the cost and labour so expended. About forty acres of that great tract, rather too low for any practicable level, Sir Edward's good taste had formed into a sheet of water, beautiful even in its then embryo state, as I saw it, from the height on which the house is placed, the superabundant soil so excavated enriching all around. To Ennis we next travelled. My friend, whose consummate ability in that way rendered him an instrument to work out what was then so lamentably wanted—a reformation of our prisons and their discipline,—was the author of the able essays on those subjects, and as designer of the radiated gaols of Gloucester and of Cavan, he had a welcome from each well-wisher of his country and his fellow-man. I think it was amidst Clare's wildest hills I first heard, sighing on the wind, the true, the melancholy Irish cry! In Curran's life is given a matchless sketch of wake, and keen, and cry. The hired keeners, with their set phrases, contrasted with the natural, fervid eloquence of the bereaved widow, was the orator's first, his greatest lesson. Yet the funeral train passing on-the hirelings, generally six in ✓ |