* It is well known that within these last thirty years the Connaught peasant laboured for _threepence_ a day and two meals of potatoes and milk, and four pence when he maintained himself; while in Leinster the harvest hire rose from eight pence to a shilling. Riding out one day near the village of Castletown Delvin, in Westmeath, in company with the younger branches of the respectable family of the F----ns, of that county, we observed two young men lying at a little distance from each other in a dry ditch, with some lighted turf burning near them; they both seemed on the verge of eternity, and we learned from a peasant who was passing, that they were Connaught men who had come to Leinster to work; that they had been disappointed, and owing to want and fatigue, had been first attacked with ague and then with fevers of so fatal a nature, that no one would suffer them to remain in their cabins: owing to the benevolent exertions of my young friends, we however found an asylum for these unfortunates, and had the happiness of seeing them return comparatively well and happy to their native province. This was uttered with an air of despondency that touched my very soul, and I involuntarily presented him some sea biscuit I had in my pocket. He thanked me, and carelessly added, “that it was the first morsel he had tasted for twenty-four hours; * not,” said he, “but I can fast with any one, and well it is for me I can.” He continued brushing an intrusive tear from his eye; and the next moment whistling a lively air, he advanced to his cow, talking to her in Irish, in a soothing tone, and presenting her with such wild flowers and blades of grass as the scanty vegetation of the bog afforded, turned round to me with a smile of self-satisfaction and said, “One can better suffer themselves a thousand times over, than see one’s poor dumb beast want: it is next, please your Honour, to seeing one’s child in want--God help him who has witnessed both!” * The temperance of an Irish peasant in this respect is almost incredible; many of them are satisfied with one meal a day--none of them exceed two--breakfast and supper; which invariably consists of potatoes, sometimes with, sometimes without milk. One of the rules observed by the Finian Band, an ancient militia of Ireland, was to eat but once in the twenty-four hours.--See Keating’s History of Ireland.