all our colonies, examined before the Colonisation
Committee. Mr. Pemberton and Mr.
Brydone attest the success of Irishmen in
Canada. Mr. Perley speaks for them in New
Brunswick. In Nova Scotia they are vouched
for by Mr. Uniacke; by Mr. Mintern in the
United States; in Australia andVan Dieman's
Land by Colonel Mitchell, Colonel M' Arthur,
Mr. Verner, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Besnard,
Mr. Justice Therry, and the Rev. C. D. Lang.
Count Strzelecki answers for them in the
United States, Canada, and Australia; they
get to prosper and to grumble quite as readily
as Anglo-Saxons."

"You know that?" the hermit said.

"What do you mean by asking whether I
know that? I know it and say it. The fervid
character of the Irish makes them as apt for
hope as for despair; in their mud cabins they
have never received Hope for guest; she
never said a grace to the potatoes. The Irish
character has not a small resemblance to the
temperament of the ancient Greeks; and when
her years of misery are over, Ireland may run
a race of honour with the sister isle. Speeches
and books cannot be read for nothing," said
the traveller, perceiving that the hermit
smiled.

"Pardon me," said the hermit, " I respect
your earnestness. I only wonder that you,
feeling thus and knowing so much, take no
interest in home affairs."

"Familiarity, oh most innocent hermit,
has bred—Heigho!" The traveller here
yawned. "To think that I have come into
the woods to talk about 'the Irish
Difficulty.' Well, go on, Mr. Showman, I'll be
lecturer, and let you see that I don't need
your lessons. Pray forgive these yawns. Yea,
there we have dissolving views again. Ah,
now it grows. I see, I understand, Thady is
working on a patch of waste land on the
outskirt of a farm. He is allowed that patch of
waste land for his own for three years, Mr.
Hermit, during which time he may eat what
he can grow upon it. At the end of three
years he will have turned it into tolerable
land, and then it goes into the farm, and
Thady starts fresh with another bit of moor.
Delicious fruit of labour to the farmer, but I
would as soon be Sisyphus as Thady—Silence,
hermit, I will discharge now for your benefit
a vast amount of knowledge:—

"Ireland's a fine country, 'first flower of
the earth,' and so on, has fine harbours,
noble rivers, and a fertile land. Of this rich
land nearly one-third is bog, moor, waste,
totally uncultivated. The cultivated land has
not increased in quantity, but dwindled. The
land was held by few men, bound by the
laws of land, encumbered, and almost unable
to sell; hundreds of thousands of acres have
gone out of cultivation. In one barony in
the county of Cork, Sir Robert Peel told
us in 1849, extending over eighty thousand
acres, all the lands were thrown waste. A
recent act facilitates the sale of encumbered
property, and will in some degree check this
evil. But of the waste land, while the Irish
bid their famine prices for potatoes, there are
a million and a half of acres reclaimable for
spade or plough—(here, Hermit, I quote the
report of Mr. Griffith to Lord Devon's
Commission); two and a half millions reclaimable
for pasture. Two and a half millions Mr.
Griffith calls hopelessly waste, but there is no
soil hopeless to a small proprietor. Here,
Hermit, I quote John Stuart Mill. Were these
wastes bought by Government and sold again,
or sold at once by their possessors, in small
freehold properties, to the poor Irish tenants,
each would spend such energy upon his own
domain as would soon turn the mass of waste
into a little home Australia. Not only would
thousands be fed and raised into comfort upon
what is now mere useless ground, but a new
thing would be seen,—a multitude of happy
peasants in the sister island. I have been in
Zurich, and have seen how men who own a
bit of ground, love it and nourish it, plant
every corner, water solicitously every single
cabbage, rise with the sun, and even spend
their holidays upon the cherished soil. When
people come to love the land after that fashion,
the land loves them, and makes them
handsome presents."

"But," said the hermit, " has not this a
tendency to root men to one spot–––to stick
them as firmly into a small patch of the earth
as the vegetables they grow? does it not
smother energy and check enterprise?"

"Every tree must have a root," replied the
"fast " young traveller, " or it spreads no
branches; so with man. Give him a status,
and he educates his family to respect that
standing and to support it. He sends his
children out into the world to find similar
standing places for themselves; he trains
them to expect this, and not to live to snatch
away some of his hard-earned acres, or to
become his neighbouring rival. His branches
are spread till they extend to other parts of
the earth; where they, in turn, take root, and
thus become centres of the same sound and
beneficial expansion of population."

"Look here," said the hermit, moving
the globe.

"Flanders, the Campine," said the traveller.
"Yes, I know all about it. There we have a
waste of sandhills. Look to the right and
you perceive some spaces where the sandhills
have been levelled and surrounded by a
trench; broom is sown there; a few potatoes
straggle up, and here and there some clover.
Keep your eyes about you, Hermit, and you
will see some patches where the broom is cut;
they cut it after three years' growth, and sell
it then for faggots—by that time fallen broom
leaves have enriched the sand a little, and the
roots have given it consistency. Then, Hermit,
the industrious proprietor will plough it lip,
or turn it with the spade, and buckwheat, or
even rye, will grow without manure. And
after this is reaped the ground will pay the