nestly works; in Idleness alone is there perpetual
despair." So they work every day and all the day, save on rare
occasions, and for these holidays they make up by overtime. They think
Home Rule is useless at best, and not only useless, but dangerous.
They declare it would affect their liberties, and this notion is
ineradicable. Touch them in their freedom and the secold Northerners
become aflame. And while the Irish Kelts burn like straw--a flame and
a puff of smoke, and there an end--these Scots settlers are like oaken
logs, slow to take fire, but hard to extinguish. They prosper under
the Union, and therefore, say they, the Union is good. What the poor
Irish need is industry, not Acts of Parliament. The land is rich, the
laws are just, the judges are honest, and industry is encouraged. The
fault is in the people themselves, and in their pastors and masters.
The convergence of Ulster opinion reminds me of an old line, which
fitly illustrates the position of the Irish malcontent party--

_Heu mihi! quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in arvo._ Quaint old
Thomas Fuller (as I remember) has rendered this--

My starveling bull,
Ah, woe is me,
In pasture full
How lean is he!

I am almost disposed to believe that Horace anticipated the case; or
that, like Mr. John Dillon, he had the gift of remembering occurrences
before they took place.

Much has been spoken and written in England concerning "Orange
rowdyism." I saw the twenty thousand Orangemen who walked through
Belfast to Knocknagoney on Wednesday last. They had nearly five miles
to march on a hot day before they reached the meeting-place, some
hours to stand there listening to speeches, and then the long march
back again. Large numbers went to the Orange Halls, there to conclude
the day. I followed them thither, heard their speeches, noted their
modes of enjoyment, watched them unnoticed and unknown, save in one
instance, until they finally dispersed. Next day I went to Scarva,
forty miles away, to see the great sham fight which annually takes
place there between representatives of King James and King William of
Orange. There were sixty-four special trains, at cheap fares, running
to Scarva, besides the ordinary service, and let it be remembered that
Scarva is on the main line from Dublin to Belfast. Now let me state
precisely what I saw.

The Belfast procession was very like the tail of the Belfast Balfour
demonstration, and with good reason,