dimmed her glory and overthrown her royal state that Irishmen burn with patriot indignation, and not by any means because she has merely left barbarism and disunion still barbarous and disunited after seven centuries, and has checked, instead of encouraging, the industry and commerce of the land. Proceeding on this false ground, the Celtic Irishman, with his fervid imagination, easily builds for himself a whole edifice of local and personal grievances on the pattern of the supposed national one. Was Ireland once a rich and splendid country? So was every town and neighborhood once full of gayety and prosperity, when "the family" lived at home and did not travel or spend the season in London. Full of extravagant reverence for birth and rank, it is always, in the Irishman's mind, not _his_ fault, nor that of his compeers of the working and middle classes, that trade and agriculture do not flourish in the land; but the fault of some lord or squire who ought to come and spend money there, or some king or queen who should hold court in Dublin and waste as much treasure as possible upon state ceremonials. Nay, every man for himself, almost, has at the bottom of his heart a belief that _he_ ought to be, not a laborer or carter, shoemaker or tailor, but the head of some ancient house,--some O' or Mac,--living not in his own mud cabin, but in the handsome residence of some English gentleman whose estate was wrongfully taken in "former times" from his--the laborer's or shoemaker's--ancestors.