We are indebted to our talented countryman, Crofton Croker, for the translation of the tour of a French traveller, M. de la Boullaye Le Gouz, in Ireland in 1644. Its author journeyed from Dublin to the principal cities and towns in Ireland, and sketches what he saw in a very amusing manner. The value of the publication, however, is greatly enhanced by the interesting notes appended to it by Mr Croker and some of his friends; and as the work is less known in Ireland than it should be, we extract from it the Frenchman's sketch of the habits and customs of the Irish people as they prevailed two centuries back, in the belief that they will be acceptable to our readers. "Ireland, or Hibernia, has always been called the Island of Saints, owing to the number of great men who have been born there. The natives are known to the English under the name of Iriche, to the French under that of Hibernois, which they take from the Latin, or of Irois, from the English, or Irlandois from the name of the island, because land signifies ground. They call themselves Ayrenake, in their own language, a tongue which you must learn by practice, because they do not write it; they learn Latin in English characters, with which characters they also write their own language; and so I have seen a monk write, but in such a way as no one but himself could read it. Saint Patrick was the apostle of this island, who according to the natives blessed the land, and gave his malediction to all venomous things; and it cannot be denied that the earth and the timber of Ireland, being transported, will contain neither serpents, worms, spiders, nor rats, as one sees in the west of England and in Scotland, where all particular persons have their trunks and the boards of their floors of Irish wood; and in all Ireland there is not to be found a serpent or toad. The Irish of the southern and eastern coasts follow the customs of the English; those of the north, the Scotch. The others are not very polished, and are called by the English savages. The English colonists were of the English church, and the Scotch were Calvinists, but at present they are all Puritans. The native Irish are very good Catholics, though knowing little of their religion; those of the Hebrides and of the North acknowledge only Jesus and St Colombe [_Columkill_], but their faith is great in the church of Rome. Before the English revolution, when an Irish gentleman died, his Britannic majesty became seised of the property and tutellage of the children of the deceased, whom they usually brought up in the English Protestant religion. Lord Insequin [_Inchiquin_] was educated in this manner, to whom the Irish have given the name of plague or pest of his country.