84 A TEAR OF LIBERTY ; OR, 



which was passed the most miserable year of my life. There it was. 

 Even the kind moon would do nothing to cheer it, although she 

 smiled benignly on its opposite neighbour. Shall I ever forget that 

 great gaunt room on the second floor, where I had come to study 

 medicine in the early winter of 1849 ? How vividly that first day 

 came back to me now ! For the previous year I had been free as a 

 bird ; then I could only brood over lost liberty and present drudgery. 

 What was the price of a donkey-cart and tinker's stock-in-trade ? 

 With this at least one could wander at will. Or a pedlar's pack ? 

 that might do anything seemed better than the present lot. That 

 day two books had been purchased the nucleus of a future library: 

 '' Quain's Anatomy," and Muller's Physiology" comfortable little 

 works of about 1000 pages each, large 8vo. The miserable pseudo- 

 physician did not know a muscle from a tendon, the os frontis from 

 the occipital bone. Unable to comprehend a single line, he learned 

 ten pages by rote, laid aside the book, and meditated a last pipe and 

 a pan of charcoal. In occasional hours of moodiness, that horrible 

 room has often appeared before me. Now, having paid it a visit, I 

 hope the ghost has been laid for ever. 



Of Dublin we shall say nothing; of its beautiful surroundings, 

 little. The Wicklow mountains, the Dargle, Killiney Bay, and 

 Howth, have been described a thousand times already ; moreover, 

 we are out of spirits, like Kingsley's lobster ; my Fifty is already in 

 course of transmutation, for here is the door of a poplin manufactory 

 in the Liberties. 



This part of the city is to Dublin what St. Giles's is to London ; 

 yet some of the streets are wide and the houses large, and probably 

 knew much better days " when George the First was king." One 

 of these we entered. The stairs were carpeted with venerable dust ; 

 unmolested spiders' tapestry dimmed the windows ; the looms seemed 

 of the rudest kind ; yet here were produced the fabrics which queens 

 are proud to wear, and tourists unwilling to buy. 



My old acquaintance, Mrs. M., presented me with a bundle of 

 '* thrum silk" for fly tying purposes the best material ever pro- 

 duced, as it can be employed nearly as fine as the thread the spiders 



