The passionate major, instead of being a mere Irish _blunderer_, was, without knowing it, a learned casuist; for he was capable of deciding, in one word, a question, which, it seems, had puzzled the understandings of the ablest lawyers of France, or which had appalled their conscientious sensibility. Alas! there is nothing new under the sun. “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” CHAPTER VI. “THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE, AND WORDS THAT BURN.” We lamented, in our last chapter, that there is nothing new under the sun; yet, perhaps, the thoughts and phraseology of the following story may not be familiar to the English. “Plase your honour,” says a man, whose head is bound up with a garter, in token and commemoration of his having been at a fair the preceding night--“Plase your honour, it’s what I am striving since six o’clock and before, this morning, becààse I’d sooner trouble your honour’s honour than any man in all Ireland, on account of your character, and having lived under your family, me and mine, twinty years, aye, say forty again to the back o’ that, in the old gentleman’s time, as I well remember before I was born; that same time I heard tell of your own honour’s riding a little horse in green with your gun before you, a grousing over our town-lands, which was the mill and abbey of Ballynagobogg, though ‘tis now set away from me (owing to them that belied my father) to Christy Salmon, becààse he’s an Orangeman--or his wife--though he was once (let him deny it who can), to _my certain knowledge_, behind the haystack in Tullygore, _sworn_ in a United man by Captain Alick, who was hanged----Pace to the dead any how!------Well, not to be talking too much of that now, only for this Christy Salmon, I should be still living under your honour.” “Very likely; but what has all this to do with the present business? If you have any complaint to make against Christy Salmon, make it--if not, let me go to dinner.”