“The Irish peasantry have generally an appearance of apathy and depression. This is seen in their mode of living, in their habitations, in their dress, in the dress of their children, and in their general economy and conduct. They seem to have no pride, no emulation; to be heedless of the present, and careless of the future. They do not strive to improve their appearance, or add to their comforts. Their cabins are slovenly, smoky, dirty, almost without furniture, or any article of convenience or common decency. On entering a cottage, the woman and children are seen seated on the floor surrounded by pigs and poultry, the man is lounging at the door, which can only be approached through mud and filth. Yet he is too indolent to make a dry approach to his dwelling, although there are materials close at hand, and his wife is too slatternly to cleanse the place in which they live, or sweep the dirt and offal from the floor. If you point out these defects, and endeavour to show how easily they might improve their condition and increase their comforts, you are invariably met by excuses as to their poverty. Are a woman, and her children, and her cabin filthy, whilst a stream of water runs past the door—the answer invariably is, ‘Sure, how can we help it? we are so poor!’ With the man it is the same; you find him idly basking in the sun, or seated by the fire, whilst his cabin is scarcely approachable through the accumulation of mud—and he too will exclaim, ‘Sure, how can we help it? we are so poor!’ whilst at the very time he is smoking tobacco, and has probably not denied himself the enjoyment of whisky. Now poverty is _not_ the cause, or at least not the sole cause, of this condition of the Irish peasantry. If they desired to live better, or to appear better, they might do so; but they seem to have no such ambition, and hence the depressed tone of which I have spoken. This may be partly owing to the remains of old habits; for bad as the circumstances of the peasantry now are, they were yet, I am persuaded, worse fifty or thirty years ago. A part also may be attributed to the want of education, and of a feeling of self-respect; and a part likewise to their poverty—to which last cause alone, everything that is wrong in Ireland is invariably attributed.