so little minded here, as to Churches or Chapels, or national Piety, that I don't wonder to see the Land running into a Desart every Hour, fill'd with Beasts and a few Savages. PRIOR. I see, _Dean_, you have not forgot your old way of thinking and speaking. It is well there is no Pen and Ink, or Printing allow'd under Ground; or else we shou'd have old work below Stairs---- _Sub Terris tonnuisse putes----_ As the witty Classick expresses it. SWIFT. If there was, I wou'd raise a little Earthquake yet in this Kingdom. But I have not forgot, _Tom_, nor I cannot yet forgive your strange Rant of improving the very Climate in _Ireland_. If it was, I wou'd not curse it, as _Harry_ the Eighth's Fool did the fine Weather, for taking all the good Company abroad from him, but I shou'd rail at it and you for another Cause; for fear of bringing us better Company than I desire in _Ireland_. I must confess honestly, that our Winter begins very late, and hardly appears till about the End of _December_, and is gone before the beginning of _February_. But then it must be own'd, that we have but very little Spring, unless it be of Grass and Weeds; and that our Autumn lasts but very few Weeks, without any Harvest to gather in, but a little pittance of Corn and some half made Hay; and as for our Summers (as we call them) they come as it were by Chance, now and then one, when _Spain_ and _Italy_ have done with them. Nay, even then, we only get them, as Servants do their surfeited Masters broken Meals; half hot, half cold, in little Scraps and Morsels that do us no Good. In short, _Tom_, a Summer in _Ireland_ when it wanders thither, is of as little Service as fair Weather in _Greenland_, where nothing is the better for it, but vast Swamps and Savannahs and a wild waste of Plains and Mountains, a few rational Brutes that dwell in Caves and Holes of the Rocks, and a parcel of Hares and Deers, which they live tollerably on, while they have Light enough to hunt them. And to talk of mending our Climate, where nothing but a general Conflagration can dry the Land, or purge the Dampness of our unelastick Air, is as absurd as the Philosophers Sun-dial in the Grave. Ah, _Tom_, I was always a very Atmospherical Creature; and often have the Rains of _Ireland_ sunk my Spirits, and made me envy those happy Climates, where the Natives toast in the Sunshine, till they almost grow tir'd of it, and rejoice for Rain and bad Weather, like so many Hackney Coachmen. But as I hope you have done with all your mighty Reasons, for thinking _Ireland_ on the mending hand, I expect you will indulge me now, while I give you mine, why I think her in a very dangerous declining Situation.