1827.] The Four Nations. 285 



Bid an Irishman sit down and limn for you his national portraiture, and 

 you shall be rapt by the effort of his wonderful pencil. He is an 

 ethereal essence a something lent to this world for its especial glory and 

 blessing ; and that benediction of St. Patrick which banished every thing 

 poisonous from the green isle, banished also every thing mean and malig- 

 nant from its airy inhabitants. Irish heart, Irish honour, Irish kindness, 

 and Irish independence, are the theme of his every-day song ; and though 

 you may convict him of having just hidden the gun, dropped the dagger, or 

 flung away the shilelah, he is ready to demonstrate to you, and confirm that 

 demonstration by " blood and wounds," that even these were used from 

 an overflowing of the milk of human kindness a delightful ebullition of 

 that most Irish, and therefore most amiable of all qualities a heart always 

 warm and generous, whether on the lip, the lead, the steel, or the cudgel. 

 The business habits the steady and straight-forward prosecution of one 

 purpose, together with its concomitant personal comfort and independence 

 of the Englishman, he scorns, as being of too tame, mechanical, and every- 

 day a nature for a heart so warm, and a soul so attuned to ethereal feeling 

 as his. The close, metaphysical wrigglings of the Scotsman are his abhor- 

 rence ; and he despises alike the ancestry and the perseverance of the 

 Welchman. It was the boast of the Roman that he came, saw, and con- 

 quered; but the Hibernian's is a more daring boast be it over man, 

 woman, or thing, he requires not to come or to see, but conquers in antici- 

 pation, and as it were by report. 



These characters, which three at least out of the Four Nations take to 

 themselves, may well be questioned, inasmuch as the inhabitant of any 

 country is as incapable of faithfully pourtraying the character of his nation 

 as he is of doing the same for his own character as an individual. The 

 mental superiority of the Scot exists nowhere but in his own idea ; neither 

 is he, abstractedly considered, one jot more sagacious or trustworthy than 

 his fellows. No doubt, from the peculiar nature of his institutions, and it 

 may be also from his more limited means of natural indulgence, and from 

 the whip of necessity being more early and more continually extended over 

 him than the Englishman ; he aims at a greater breadth of knowledge and 

 speculation than the native of the Southern part of the island ; but, when 

 we wish to determine their usefulness, knowledge and speculation, like all 

 other things, must be estimated according to their solid contents and not 

 their mere surface ; and, therefore, for every good purpose in life, the 

 knowledge of the Englishman, which extends, it may be, to a single sub- 

 ject, but embraces every quality and circumstance in that, is vastly more 

 efficient than the more rambling, but the more superficial speculation of the 

 inhabitant of the north. The very fact of a preliminary argumentation 

 about every thing which is in any way co-relative with the matter, is in 

 itself presumptive evidence of a less accurate perception of the real matter 

 itself; and perhaps the most just and equitable decision between the 

 Scotsman and the Englishman upon any single point or subject would be 

 that the former can say more about it, and the latter can do it better. 



The Welchman, again, evidently does not value himself upon those 

 qualities which constitute his real value. All the world have had just as- 

 many ancestors as he has had ; and if we may judge from existing circum- 

 stances, thej have, in every thing valuable which sire can transmit to son, 

 been as fortunate as he. But the Welchman is still a sober, laborious, 

 and steady animal ; and while his habits fit him for a very large share of 



