TRAVELLING IN IRELAND--BIANCONI'S CARS--JOURNEY FROM CORK TO DUBLIN IN A POST-CHAISE--IRISH WIT--A POOR-LAW COMMISSIONER--MR. PEABODY--SIR WALTER SCOTT AND A GENUINE PADDY--MR. CHARLES BIANCONI--IRISH CAR DRIVERS. CHAPTER VII. Travelling by road in Ireland was and is very different from what it was and is in England. The mail and stage-coaches, almost similar to the English ones, were well-horsed, and kept their time very regularly. Occasionally "a frolicsome baste," or "rale bit of blood who won the plate at the Curragh," would start off at a tremendous pace, upset the "drag," the driver assuring the passengers that they were the "quietest craythures in Ireland," adding, "I'll give it ye, ye bastes, ye venomous sarpints, when I get ye home." The harness, too, was not a little the worse for wear, having so often been mended with string and rope that in descending a hill it would break into "smithereens," and now and then, when whisky was in the ascendant, the Jehu was so venturesome that in descending a hill he would come to grief. After a time the public cars, introduced by M. Bianconi displaced the regular coaches. In form they resembled the common outside jaunting-car, but were calculated to hold from twelve to sixteen persons. They were admirably horsed, had steady drivers, the team generally consisting of three horses, which travelled at the rate of seven Irish miles an hour, equivalent to nine English miles, the fares averaging twopence a mile. They were open cars, but a huge leather apron afforded protection from showers of rain, which are so prevalent in the sister isle. Post-chaises, which are now nearly extinct, were awful conveyances. I have a very lively impression of a journey from Cork to Dublin some fifty years ago in these vehicles; the one furnished by the proprietor of the Imperial Hotel, Cork (then, and I believe now, an excellent hôtellerie), which took me the first stage, was clean and comfortable; not so those that followed. Springs they appeared to have none; or, if they had, they were so covered with rope that there was no elasticity left in them. They rattled worse than any fire-engine. The roof was so dilapidated and the windows so broken that, except for the honour of the thing, you might as well have had no covering at all; the harness came to pieces whenever "Paddy" gave his horses a spurt, and the cattle were "divels to go." So disagreeable did I find the journey in a post-chaise that at Youghal I engaged a car, and prosecuted my journey to Dublin in cars. Persons who have never travelled in Ireland in these conveyances can have a very inadequate idea of the ready wit of the drivers. It has been admirably well told by Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, from whose work on the scenery and character of Ireland I quote the following:-- Some one told a story of a fellow who, on grumbling at the shilling gratuity at his journey's end, said, in a sly undertone,