Cleopatra was a Gipsy, Helen a rogue, and Ruth a deep one? I have not sufficient reasoning faculty to settle the doctrine of thrift, as it is consistent with the dignity of human Society--with the happiness of Cottagers. All I can do is by plump contrasts; were the fingers made to squeeze a guinea or a white hand?--were the lips made to hold a pen or a kiss? and yet in Cities man is shut out from his fellows if he is poor--the cottager must be very dirty, and very wretched, if she be not thrifty--the present state of society demands this, and this convinces me that the world is very young, and in a very ignorant state--We live in a barbarous age--I would sooner be a wild deer, than a girl under the dominion of the Kirk; and I would sooner be a wild hog, than be the occasion of a poor Creature's penance before those execrable elders. It is not so far to the Giant's Causeway as we supposed--We thought it 70, and hear it is only 48 miles--So we shall leave one of our knapsacks here at Donaghadee, take our immediate wants, and be back in a week, when we shall proceed to the County of Ayr. In the Packet yesterday we heard some ballads from two old men--One was a Romance which seemed very poor--then there was "The Battle of the Boyne," then "Robin Huid," as they call him--"Before the King you shall go, go, go; before the King you shall go." [Stranraer,] July 9th. We stopped very little in Ireland, and that you may not have leisure to marvel at our speedy return to Port Patrick, I will tell you that it is as dear living in Ireland as at the Hummums--thrice the expense of Scotland--it would have cost us L15 before our return; moreover we found those 48 miles to be Irish ones, which reach to 70 English--so having walked to Belfast one day, and back to Donaghadee the next, we left Ireland with a fair breeze. We slept last night at Port Patrick, when I was gratified by a letter from you. On our walk in Ireland, we had too much opportunity to see the worse than nakedness, the rags, the dirt and misery, of the poor common Irish--A Scotch cottage, though in that sometimes the smoke has no exit but at the door, is a palace to an Irish one. We could observe that impetuosity in Man and Woman--We had the pleasure of finding our way through a Peat-bog, three miles long at least--dreary, flat, dank, black, and spongy--here and there were poor dirty Creatures, and a few strong men cutting or carting Peat--We heard on passing into Belfast through a most wretched suburb, that most disgusting of all noises, worse than the Bagpipes--the laugh of a Monkey--the chatter of women--the scream of a Macaw--I mean the sound of the Shuttle. What a tremendous difficulty is the improvement of such people. I cannot conceive how a mind "_with child_" of philanthrophy could grasp at its possibility--with me it is absolute despair--