JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND. 179 



but he, at any rate, does not expect to see the 

 sow rooting up his kitchen garden or his hens 

 scratching up the flower garden, which proceed- 

 ings the Irish farmer appears to regard with 

 the utmost complacency. It forms, indeed, an 

 ordinary operation in garden tillage. 



It is the universal use of the plough where- 

 in lies the economic hope of this pastoral 

 country. The same instinct which impelled 

 the English labourer to smash up agricultural 

 machinery in the early part of the nineteenth 

 century, drove the Irish peasant to clear 

 cattle off the land wherever he felt blue 

 smoke from his own hearth should be seen 

 arising. 



Yet while Hodge is receptive of only one 

 idea at a time, and is swayed by but one 

 sentiment, Patrick seems filled with warring 

 contradictions. " They are the merriest 

 people and the saddest, the most turbulent 

 and the most docile, the most talented and 

 the most unproductive, the most practical 

 and the most visionary, the most devout and 

 the most pagan," wrote the late Harold 

 Frederic in his splendid work of fiction. 

 Illumination. 



I arrived in Roscommon just after a cattle- 



