grant from Parliament to extend its utility. Another
takes to old volumes on a book-stall; and becoming, as most men are
who have little knowledge of life, fascinated with his own
discoveries, thinks he has ascertained some curious details of ancient
history, and communicating his results to others as stupid and old as
himself, they dub themselves antiquarians, or archaeologists, and
obtain a grant also.

Now, one half of these societies are neither more nor less than most
impertinent sarcasms on the land we live in. The man who sets himself
down deliberately to chronicle the clouds in our atmosphere, and jot
down the rainy days in our calendar, is, to my thinking, performing
about as grateful a task, as though he were to count the carbuncles on
his friend's nose. We have, it is true, a most abominable climate: the
sun rarely shows himself, and, when he does, it is through a tattered
garment of clouds, dim and disagreeable; but why throw it in our
teeth? and, still more, why pay a body of men to publish the slander?
Then again, as to history, all the world knows that since the Flood
the Irish have never done any thing else than make love, illicit
whiskey, and beat each other. What nonsense, then, to talk about the
ancient cultivation of the land, of its high rank in literature, and
its excellence in art. A stone bishop, with a nose like a negro, and a
crosier like a garden-rake, are the only evidences of our ancestors'
taste in sculpture; and some doggrel verses in Irish, explaining how
King Phelim O'Toole cheated a brother monarch out of his
small-clothes, are about the extent of our historic treasures. But,
for argument's sake, suppose it otherwise; imagine for a moment that
our ancestors were all that Sir William Betham and Mr. Petrie would
make them--I do not know how other people may feel, but I myself deem
it no pleasant reflection to think of _their_ times and look at _our
own_. What! we were poets and painters, architects, historians, and
musicians! What have we now among us to represent these great and
mighty gifts? I am afraid, except our Big Beggarman, we have not a
single living celebrity; and is this a comfortable reflection, is this
a pleasing thought, that while, fourteen hundred years ago, some Irish
Raphael and some Galway Grisi were the delight of our illustrious
ancestors--that while the splendour of King Malachi, with his collar
of gold, astonished the ladies in the neighbourhood of Trim--we have
no