ir
own. They have been vilified and traduced--but what would Ireland be
without them? I repeat, that it would be well for her were all her sons
no worse than these much calumniated children of her adoption.

CHAPTER X.

We continued at this place for some months, during which time the
soldiers performed their duties, whatever they were; and I, having no
duties to perform, was sent to school. I had been to English schools,
and to the celebrated one of Edinburgh; but my education, at the present
day, would not be what it is--perfect, had I never had the honour of
being _alumnus_ in an Irish seminary.

"Captain," said our kind host, "you would, no doubt, wish that the young
gentleman should enjoy every advantage which the town may afford towards
helping him on in the path of genteel learning. It's a great pity that
he should waste his time in idleness--doing nothing else than what he
says he has been doing for the last fortnight--fishing in the river for
trouts which he never catches, and wandering up the glen in the mountain
in search of the hips that grow there. Now, we have a school here, where
he can learn the most elegant Latin, and get an insight into the Greek
letters, which is desirable; and where, moreover, he will have an
opportunity of making acquaintance with all the Protestant young
gentlemen of the place, the handsome well-dressed young persons whom your
honour sees in the church on the Sundays, when your honour goes there in
the morning, with the rest of the Protestant military; for it is no
Papist school, though there may be a Papist or two there--a few poor
farmers' sons from the country, with whom there is no necessity for your
honour's child to form any acquaintance at all, at all!"

And to the school I went, where I read the Latin tongue and the Greek
letters, with a nice old clergyman, who sat behind a black oaken desk,
with a huge Elzevir Flaccus before him, in a long gloomy kind of hall,
with a broken stone floor, the roof festooned with cobwebs, the walls
considerably dilapidated, and covered over with strange figures and
hieroglyphics, evidently produced by the application of burnt stick; and
there I made acquaintance with the Protestant young gentlemen of the
place, who, with whatever _eclat_ they might appear at church on a
Sunday, did assuredly not exhibit to much advantage in the school-room on
the week days, either with respect to clothes or looks. And there I was
in the habit