or of diggers elsewhere. These people say
that it was quite another sight last February,
when the scene was wrapped in flame. They
say it was a frightful sight; but it must
have been, as a mere spectacle, very grand. A
man had carried out a live sod into the bog
with him, to light his pipe. It was far away
from the Company's land: but fire observes
no boundaries. The man piled up his little
heap of fuel about his sod, and blew up the
spark. It was a windy day; and the heap
burst into flame, and the flame burst away to
seize upon anything that would burn. The
spikes of fire shot up the slopes of the turf
stacks of the Company. The stacks (called
clamps) were burned from the top downwards
—no less than sixty-eight of them. The
flame went leaping, running, and dancing
towards the buildings, and threatened to
devour them; but they were saved. It was
the river that stopped the mischief at last,
and not till six hundred pounds' worth of
damage had been done. This was a great
blow to the Company; though no triumph to
the little moss. Fewer people have been
employed since; the tone of the establishment
is relaxed, and its spirits are lowered. But
its demolition of the works of the little moss
is as thorough as ever, within the scope of its
operations. There is the great furnace, into
which air is perpetually blown by the steam-
engine. If we peep within certain slits in the
furnace door, we see the gases alight, fuming
and dancing—blue and yellow—keeping
everything within reach at a mighty heat.
Elsewhere there is the tar, oozing hither and
thither: and the oils in casks, scenting the
air; and the paraffine, of which candles are
to be made, but which now is seen in the
form of yellow waxy cakes, blistered and
unshapen, and lying between oily woollens.
It has had some of its oil pressed out; but it
is to be steamed and bleached, and squeezed
in the hydraulic press, before it is fit to make
such candles as those which were lighted, as
a specimen, on the table of the House of
Commons. And there lies a lump of salt—
salt got out of the vegetable decay of the spot
where the ancient inhabitants ate their food
without salt. There is not much in this salt,
however, that would give a relish to food. It
is worse than the flakes that whiten the
shores of the Dead Sea. The minutest grain
poisons the palate and throat for many hours.
And there is a great heap of slag—the black,
light, shining refuse of the small part of the
peat that is actually burnt. Here is the little
moss so treated as to come out, for human use,
in the forms of sperm, oils, salt, spirit, and
gases. This is being used up, with a vengeance.
The work, however, seems not to be carried
on with altogether so much activity as the
little moss used in building up its vast
structure. It is said on the spot that all the
declarations of the chemists have been made
good; that the most sanguine anticipations
have been proved reasonable: and there is
talk of building more furnaces, which will
employ more men; of employing forty or fifty
men upon the Works (exclusive of the peat
digging) instead of the fifteen who are at work
there now. We hope that all this may prove
soberly and accurately true; and that the
success of this one only establishment of the
Irish Peat Company may lead to the opening
of others, and to the employment of plenty of
Irish labour, and the creation of plenty of
Irish wealth. But, at present, the impression
on the mind of a visitor is not encouraging.
The few people employed look as if they did
not know what hearty work was. It appears
that little or nothing of the matter is known
in Ireland, and that the products are not
sold in Dublin, but all go to London. It
seems strange that there should be only
one languid establishment among the three
millions (nearly) of acres of Irish bog, if the
bog itself be such a mine of wealth as the
first estimates of this process led us to expect.
Time will prove the facts. The furnaces once
set up, and the products once in the market,
the case is fairly on its trial, and must establish
its own merits. It has everybody's good will
meanwhile.

What is doing in that far corner of the
bog, quite out of sight of the Peat Works?
A man digging for fuel is carefully extracting
sundry logs of wood. The scraggy roots and
lighter branches he puts aside to dry; they
are fir, and their fate is to be burnt, as people
burn cannel coal in England for the sake of the
cheerful blaze in the autumn evenings. Why
are the digger and his wife covering up so
carefully those blocks of black wood? They
are oak, those blocks, and worthy of so careful
and gradual a drying as will prevent their
splitting. If they split and crack, they will
be good for nothing but the fire: if carefully
and successfully dried, they will sell at a
good price to the carvers. So yonder log is
covered with damp sods; and the wife will
come pretty often and look to it—turning it,
and shading it, and, at last, sunning it, till it
is absolutely dry, and so tough that it will not
splinter under any treatment. And then it
will go into the bare garret in Dublin, and
some of it into the comfortless prison where
the reckless artist who can make his two
guineas a day is confined lor debt. In such
places, breathed upon by many sighs, will
this Irish ebony be carved, and perforated,
and beautifully wrought into forms of the
extinct Irish wolf-dog, and the national oak,
and shamrock, and round tower, and harp,
and whatever is Irish. Beautiful ink-stands,
and paper-knives, and snuff-boxes, and little
trays come out of these long-drowned oak
logs; and they are of an everlasting wear.
A great number of wood-carvers make from
ten shillings to two guineas a day as their
share of the profits from the destruction of
the fabric of the little moss.

But what now? See the people running
from far and near, and clustering round the