In Dublin, he had one adventure that afforded him much enjoyment. I went into an extensive toy-shop to make some purchase, and Jack, enchanted with the wonders around him, strolled to the further end, and into a little adjoining recess, well filled with toys. A great uproar in that direction made us all run to inquire the cause, and there was Jack, mounted on a first-rate rocking-horse, tearing away full gallop, and absolutely roaring out in the maddest paroxysm of delight, his hat fallen off, his arm raised, his eyes and mouth wide open, and the surrounding valuables in imminent peril of a general crash. The mistress of the shop was so convulsed with laughter that she could render no assistance, and it was with some difficulty I checked his triumphant career, and dismounted him. He gave me afterwards a diverting account of his cautious approach to the "good horse;" how he ascertained it was "bite, no; kick, no:" and gradually got resolution to mount it. He wanted to know how far he had rode, and also if he was a God-made? I told him it was wood, but I doubt whether he believed me. Thenceforth Dublin was associated in his mind with nothing else; even at nineteen years of age he would say, if he met with the name, "Good Dublin, good horse; small Jack love good Dublin horse." The shipping pleased him greatly, and many of his beautiful drawings were representations of sailing vessels. I had now been in Ireland five years and three months; and with what different feelings did I prepare to leave its green shores from those with which I first pressed them. Unfounded prejudice was succeeded by an attachment founded on close acquaintance with those among whom I had dwelt, contempt by respect, and dislike by the warmest, most grateful affection. I had scorned her poverty, and hated her turbulence. The first I now knew to be no poverty of soil, of natural resources, of mind, talent, or energy, but the effect of a blight, permitted to rest alike on the land and people, through the selfishness of an unjust, crooked policy, that made their welfare of no account in its calculations, nor would stretch forth a hand to deliver them from the dark dominion of Popery. Their turbulence was the natural fruit of such poverty, and of their being wholly under the influence of a party necessarily hostile to the interests of a Protestant state, and bent on subverting its ascendency. What Ireland was, I too plainly saw: what she might be, I clearly understood; and the guilt of my country's responsibility lay heavy on my heart as I watched the outline of her receding coast.