Page:The London Magazine, volume 9 (January–June 1824).djvu/473

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1824.]
A Visit Incognito of the Devil In Ireland.
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hold the face of friend or kindred:[1]—but who can say they did not deserve the deprivation?—they had dared to take a walk in the open air for half an hour after sunset, without being able to account satisfactorily for the excursion.—Alas! alas! is there not in that Arab tribe of legislators, whose restless humanity roves across the ocean to convert the Hindoo and redeem the Hottentot—is there not one whose sympathy can postpone its travels to act for a moment the Samaritan at home? Is the fellow-subject less deserving than the foreigner—the white man than the negro—the christian than the infidel? Away with that vagabond spirit of philan-. ponte A which strides over the pros- trate body of its neighbour to roam around the world in search of exotic calamities—If the Christian religion be their stimulus, or its spirit their incentive, the very next scene was one by which their morals, their hu- manity, and their faith should be equally embarrassed—it was suffi- cient to make nature shudder and Christianity ashamed—the devil ha pened to look down upon a church- yard, as ‘ by law established’—a crowd of mourning friends and kin- dred were about to bid a last fare- well to one they loved and honoured, and the pastor of their faith knelt down to offer over the grave his parting benediction. At the very moment when every heart was bowed and every eye was dimmed, another pastor—a Christian pastor[2]—entered at the head of an armed soldiery to drive heterodox affliction from the freehold of the church! !—As the mi- litary rushed across the grave, a few loose stones falling on the coffin seemed to speak the awful reproach of another world—it was echoed by the chuckle of the. triumphant plu- ralist, whose very nose gave token of “ the glorious memory,” and be- fore whose vision a mitre danced in the perspective! Three cheers from the soldiery completed the glories of the church militant, and the devil rebellowed them as far upward as he could, lest heaven should not hear them.—Soaring along he cursed Tom Paine and his labours, and wished within his heart the Turks would become such Christians as the Irish.

Elated with what he saw, Sata cast a farewell glance over the island, and departed. He felt that what- ever appearances it might assume, it was his, and for ever—he felt that whatever green spots or peaceful ine tervals there might arise within it, still it was only a pase volcano, filled with internal fire, and ready for a fresh eruption. A popula tion, uneducated, impoverished, and oppressed—a government vacillat- ing and divided—an_ establishment gorgeously provided for the few, by, the reluctant privations of the man: —a system of rackrent, tithing, a taxation almost without equivalent, and apparently without end— a clergy preaching lowliness and _professin, poverty, yet wallowing in wealth aod shouting ascendancy—an absentee aristocracy, without either sympathy or pity, through the veins of whose tenantry the Flood of the land ig sucked—power struggling for the res tention of its monopoly—superstition, burning for its revenge and its ag grandisement—a selfish spirit of dis~ sension in all, with scarce a redeem= ing quality of patriotism in any— these were the materials on which Satan built the foundation of his em- ire, and on these he relied, defying: rince Hohenlohe and all his works.




OBSERVATIONS ON "THE GHOST-PLAYER'S GUIDE,"

And on the invariable Tendency to Corpulence in Shakspeare's Ghosts:

together with

cursory remarks on swearing.

Mr. Umbra, who has written so elaborately in favour of half-starved spirits, in the last number of the London Magazine, has clearly paid much attention to the condition in which the paunches of ghosts should be, when they visit the glimpses of the moon to hunt for glow-worms (a foolish light, by the way, to hunt by!) And, certes, he

  1. See the Accounts under the insurrection act in the south.
  2. See the recent occurrences in some parts of Ireland.