The old harper was a character looked upon by the Irish rather as a musical curiosity, than a being specially created to contribute to their enjoyment. There was something about him which they did not feel to be in perfect sympathy with their habits and amusements. He was above them, not of them; and although they respected him, and treated him kindly, yet was he never received among them with that spontaneous ebullition of warmth and cordiality with which they welcomed their own musician, the fiddler. The harper, in fact, belonged to the gentry, and to the gentry they were willing to leave him. They listened to his music when he felt disposed to play for them, but it only gratified their curiosity, instead of enlivening their hearts--a fact sufficiently evident from the circumstance of their seldom attempting to dance to it. This preference, however, of the fiddle to the harp, is a feeling generated by change of times and circumstances, for it is well known that in days gone by, when Irish habits were purer, older, and more hereditary than they are now, the harp was the favourite instrument of young and old, of high and low. The only instrument that can be said to rival the fiddle, is the bagpipe; but every person knows that Ireland is a loving country, and that at our fairs, dances, weddings, and other places of amusement, Paddy and his sweetheart are in the habit of indulging in a certain quiet and affectionate kind of whisper, the creamy tones of which are sadly curdled by the sharp jar of the chanter. It is not, in fact, an instrument adapted for love-making. The drone is an enemy to sentiment, and it is an unpleasant thing for a pretty blushing girl to find herself put to the necessity of bawling out her consent at the top of her lungs, which she must do, or have the ecstatic words lost in its drowsy and monotonous murmur. The bagpipe might do for war, to which, with a slight variation, it has been applied; but in our opinion it is only fit to be danced to by an assembly of people who are hard of hearing. Indeed, we have little doubt but its cultivation might be introduced with good effect as a system of medical treatment, suitable to the pupils of a deaf and dumb institution; for if any thing could bring them to the use of their ears, its sharp and stiletto notes surely would effect that object.