"Sir, I thank you," answered Ned, "for the compliment, but I cannot return it without telling a lie. _Your_ reasoning, sir, is not of the best, if you will consider the matter again, when you would say, all as one, as that books make brains. Why should the knowledge of reading and writing, and casting sums in arithmetic make wisdom amongst the poor, any more than amongst the rich; and you have plenty of dunces, sir, in the higher walks of life, who cannot argue a bit the better for any thing that they ever got hold of in school, or at college. But even if learning gave understanding, which it does _not_, for that is God's gift, still, sir, it might be, with all its worth, not fit for _us_ in our present condition. If you gave me a barrel of the best seed corn that your rich country ever grew, I could not say but that it was a good gift, and the grain fine grain; but if I threw it on the surface of that barren rock yonder there, what return would it make? Wouldn't it only bring the mag-pies in flocks about me, to eat not only that, but what little I had before? First, fence in a bit of ground; then, burn it, and dig it, and clear it; after that, you may sow your grain, and it will come up and yield increase. In like manner, sir, if you gentry would make your tenants more comfortable, give them a little property in their labours, encourage them to decent habits, reward the sober and peaceable, punish the bad, live amongst them, and employ them, you would soon find your soil prepared for sowing a crop which at present is thrown to waste, or only devoured by birds of prey." I could have staid till midnight with poor Ned, and Bentley seemed rivetted in attention to his acute observations and sound common sense; but Frederick looked at his watch, and gave the signal "to horse." As we were moving towards the place where our palfreys were in waiting, I said to Burke, "tell me how is it that the mass of the people in Ireland speak so much purer English than we do, though it is _our_ native tongue, and with you _not_ so?" "That is the very reason of it, sir, I suppose," replied this extra-ordinary man. "You speak English amongst your poor, as we speak Irish, by ear, and so we speak it badly enough, and differently in different places; but _our English_ we learn out of books, because it is _not_ our natural language, and so perhaps we may speak it nearer to the manner in which it is written than you do at your side of the water."