ally in labour and
materials, giving work to the needy, and so helping to cure Erin's chief
disease,--poverty to the verge of famine. As to actual
life-peril,--every due precaution being taken,--the happy result of such
a humanising experiment might fairly be left to the generous native
loyalty of a kindly treated people, and to the gracious guardianship of
God's good providence. I am sure that present Royalty would neither be
boycotted nor burked. We remember with what generous cordiality our
Prince and Princess were received by all classes and creeds in their
recent brave visit to Ireland.

* * * * *

I cannot honestly pretend to have always taken quite so amiable a view
of Celtic matters. I plead guilty to having more than once assailed in
print Daniel O'Connell and his kind, and to have written a pair of once
famous poetical fly-leaves, "Erin go bragh" and "Hurrah for Repeal!"
copies of which (beyond my archived ones) can now only be found in the
Ballad Collection of the British Museum, which I used to supply with my
Sibyllines, at a chief librarian's request: I forget the name, but he
collected such placards. I fear the two above were not very
complimentary: but what can one do for a perverse people, who complain
of it as a wrong that they are excused the Queen's taxes? Also I wrote
certain famous letters on Ireland, especially four long ones signed
"T.," in the _Times_ of January 1847.

* * * * *

In Ireland I have caught a salmon at Killarney and cooked it too on an
arbutus stake; I have bruised my shins at the Giant's Causeway; I have
been an honoured guest at classical Florence Court; have picked up
native gold at Avoca; have done the Round Towers, possibly Phoenician
Baal-temples; have handled Brian Boroime's harp; and have been shocked
everywhere by the poverty and degradation of that musical barbarian's
miserable because idle people. What can be done for those who will not
help themselves?

CHAPTER XLIV.

SOME SPIRITUALISTIC REMINISCENCES.

Having often been asked to put on record my few and far-between
experiences of spiritualism, as on several occasions I have verbally
related them, I have hitherto neglected or declined to do so, on account
of having really seen little, whereas many others have seen far more.
And on the whole it is to me rather an unwelcome task from several
considerations; first, because I have never wished to