“Savage I am, for any thing I know; and _fool_ I am, that’s certain; but ungrateful I am not,” said she, bursting into tears. She went home and took to her bed; and the next thing I heard from her son was, “that she was _lying in the rheumatism_, which had kept her awake many a long night, before she would come to complain to my honour of the house, in dread that I should blame myself for _sending of_ her into it _afore_ it was dry.” The rheumatism reconciled me immediately to Ellinor; I let her take her own way, and thatch the house, and have as much smoke as she pleased, and she recovered. But I did not entirely recover my desire to do good to my poor tenants. After forming, in the first enthusiasm of my benevolence, princely schemes for their advantage, my ardour was damped, and my zeal discouraged, by a few slight disappointments. I did not consider, that there is often, amongst uncultivated people, a mixture of obstinate and lazy content, which makes them despise the luxuries of their richer neighbours; like those mountaineers, who, proud of their own hard fare,[80] out of a singular species of contempt, call the inhabitants of the plains _mange-rotis_, “eaters of roast meat.” I did not consider that it must take time to change local and national habits and prejudices; and that it is necessary to raise a taste for comforts, before they can be properly enjoyed. In the pettishness of my disappointment, I decided that it was in vain to attempt to improve and civilize such people as the Irish. I did not recollect, perhaps at that time I did not know, that even in the days of the great Queen Elizabeth, “the greatest part of the buildings in the cities and good towns of England consisted only of timber, cast over with thick clay to keep out the wind. The new houses of the nobility were indeed either of brick or stone; and glass windows were then beginning to be used in England:”[81] and clean rushes were strewed over the dirty floors of the royal palace. In the impatience of my zeal for improvement, I expected to do the work of two hundred years in a few months: and because I could not accelerate the progress of refinement in this miraculous manner, I was out of humour with myself and with a whole nation. So easily is the humanity of the rich and great disgusted and discouraged! as if any people could be civilized in a moment, and at the word of command of ignorant pride or despotic benevolence! CHAPTER IX. “He saw--and but that admiration Had been too active, too like passion, Or had he been to _ton_ less true, Cupid had shot him through and through.”