ground yourself in the Disraeli-Smyth-
Manners mill, and came out a Young
Englander."

"No; I grew a beard. I learned the secret
of the Egyptian sorcerer!"

"What! the blot, of ink, the little boy, the
sweeper, the cup of coffee, the sultan in his
camp, and the anything and anybody you ask
to see that is going on or existing in any part
of the world, presented to your wondering
eyes in the black magic of a blot of ink?"

"Precisely."

"For a full account of which see"—
continued the lively visitor—"neither the cabala,
nor any other mysterious volume of antiquity,
but Lane's 'Modern Egyptians.'"

"But mine is not a shining blot of ink. It
is as you have seen, a globe."

"Ah, we live in an age of improvements.
Magic is done much better now than it was
in the times of the Magi. I'd back Döbler
against Trismegistus any day."

"Mine," continued the hermit, "is simply
a mimic world. Whatever part you gaze
upon will grow under your eyes, and you
will see whatever may be taking place in
that spot at that moment. The condition of
possession was, that I must abide by my
seclusion from the world; the spell would
bind me to it."

"All the better. Well?"—

"Well, I came hither, put my globe where
you have seen it, fixed my hermitage close by.
Alas! alas!"

"O bother! Why alas?"

"I find I was mistaken, traveller. I study
the globe and find I did not know the world,
as I pretended. I see a thousand things in it
that tempt me to rush out of my seclusion, and
to join my labour to the labour of my fellows;
and when I try to fly, the spell retains me.
I see that there is, need of earnest speaking,
hearty action, stirring love; speech,
action, and love I have renounced; to me
the world is made a hermit's toy, and I am
miserable."

"A worse reason for misery I never heard,"
the traveller said, laughing. "As for your
globe it's just a newspaper, a sort of
illustrated journal. Well, now I understand the
thing, we'll dip into it again, and this time
take it easily. Let me sharpen the point of
my cane. There, friend, there's an exhibiting
rod. Point where you please, and let us both
look at the same thing. You shall show me
some of the things that grieve you. Heigho!"
The traveller here yawned prodigiously; the
hermit again drew aside the curtain.
Presently he touched a point upon the globe, and
not precisely finding what he meant to show,
moved the cane slowly. As the pictures
grew and faded, the traveller, with some
impatience beat his foot upon the ground.

"Pooh," said he, "bog and waste. I have
seen better dissolving views at the Polytechnic.
Yes, now you stop, I see what you are at.
Paddies and pigs, more than half naked
children, a mud hut with a hole for a door
and a hole for a window, and one room inside
for the pig-sty, parlour, bedrooms, drawing-
room, and kitchen. My dear fellow, that is
Ireland, one of the most hackneyed and
tiresome of all subjects. As an M.P., I have
read blue-books for a new excitement; read
Lord Devon's Commission, heard everlasting
speeches, spoken myself, know facts and
figures. Oh, it's too bad; indeed it is! I
know, out of speeches in parliament, precisely
what that hut contains. A kettle (that's to
boil potatoes in), just a few plates, a heap of
straw and a bench."

"You know that?" said the hermit.

"To be sure I do. Here are statistics for
you, from Sir Robert Peel's speech on the
Irish famine. In these mud cabins, or mud
sheds, without a second room;—places unfit for
human habitation, and which rather compromised
the character of pigs, who happened to
be joint tenants—there lived forty-seven per
cent. of the inhabitants of Donegal, ditto of
Leitrim and Roscominon; fifty per cent. of
Sligo men, and fifty-two of Galway; fifty-five
per cent. of Limerick folks, and fifty-six per
cent. of Cork and Clare; sixty-two per cent.
of the inhabitants of Mayo, and sixty-six per
cent. of the inhabitants of Kerry."

"You know that?" said the hermit.

"To be sure I do. And glad enough the
people are to have even these mud huts, and
chance enough there is of an eviction even
from them. Fifty thousand families were
turned out of such homes in 1849, unable to
pay rent."

"The little rent that it must be!"

"The little rent! You undertake to tell
me of the world. Why, my good man, the
people bid against each other recklessly to
get a holding. If they get a bit of ground
and plant potatoes, they can eat them. If they
have no land, they can have no potatoes, and
they cannot eat. Men are known to have bid
six times more for a small bit of land than
the amount that could be got from it by the
most skilful management. See Mill's Political
Economy. O pooh, why I am teaching
you the world."

"They cannot pay this rent?"

"Pay it! They pay all their surplus, and
they owe the rest, and are of course always
liable to eviction. If a windfall comes, it pays
arrears of rent. Nothing can better them, so
they are reckless, and we laugh at them for
their improvidence."

"Why do they bid so recklessly?"

"Six hungry mouths are offering against
each other famine prices for a plateful of
potatoes."

"But are they not hot-blooded reckless
Celts, do you not think?"

"Ah, you mean satire, but I'll answer
plainly. Facts, history, are all clear against the
theory of an inherent perverseness in the Irish
race. The Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1850,
refers you, my dear fellow, to witnesses from