that in England, during the reign of Elizabeth, a member of parliament defined a justice of peace to be “an animal, who for half a dozen chickens will dispense with half a dozen penal statutes.” Time is necessary to enforce the sanctions of legislation and civilization--But I am anticipating reflections which I made at a much later period of my life. To return to my history. My benevolence was soon checked by slight disappointments. Ellinor’s cottage, which I had taken so much pains to build, became a source of mortification to me. One day I found my old nurse sitting at her wheel, in the midst of the wreck and litter of all sorts of household furniture, singing her favourite song of “There was a lady loved a swine: Honey! says she, I’ll give ye a silver trough. _Hunk!_ says he!” Ellinor seemed, alas! to have as little taste for the luxuries with which I had provided her as the pig had for the silver trough. What I called conveniences were to her incumbrances: she had not been used to them; she was put out of her way; and it was a daily torment to one of her habits, to keep her house clean and neat. There may be, as some philosophers assure us that there is, an innate love of order in the human mind; but of this instinctive principle my poor Ellinor was totally destitute. Her ornamented farm-house became, in a wonderfully short time, a scene of dirt, rubbish, and confusion. There was a partition between two rooms, which had been built with turf or peat, instead of bricks, by the wise economy I had employed. Of course, this was pulled down to get at the turf. The stairs also were pulled down and burned, though there was no scarcity of firing. As the walls were plastered and papered before they were quite dry, the paper grew mouldy, and the plaster fell off. In the hurry of finishing, some of the woodwork had but one coat of paint. In Ireland they have not faith in the excellent Dutch proverb, _“Paint costs nothing.”_ I could not get my workmen to give a second coat of paint to any of the sashes, and the wood decayed: divers panes of glass in the windows were broken, and their places filled up with shoes, an old hat, or a bundle of rags. Some of the slates were blown off one windy night: the slater lived at ten miles distance, and before the slates were replaced, the rain came in, and Ellinor was forced to make a bedchamber of the parlour, and then of the kitchen, retreating from corner to corner as the rain pursued, till, at last, when “it _would_ come _every way_ upon her bed,” she petitioned me to let her take the slates off and thatch the house; for a slated-house, she said, was never so warm as a _tatched cabin_; and as there was no smoke, she was _kilt_ with the _cowld_. In my life I never felt so angry. I was ten times more angry than when Crawley ran away with my wife. In a paroxysm of passion, I reproached Ellinor with being a savage, an Irish-woman, and an ungrateful fool.