LIFE IN IRELAND i6i 



never stop till you get to Turnham Green, a distance 

 of seven miles from Holborn-bridge, and then you may 

 say you are out of fo7v?i at last, and in the centre of 

 a dunghill, where you breathe pestilence, and tread in 

 pollution. 



London, taken from the City boundaries in a circular 

 way, is full ten miles out of its ancient limits ; but by 

 water the good citizens have a privilege, celebrated every 

 year by an aquatic excursion, of seeing the school-boys 

 at Harrow and Eton lead up the ' Montem, and eat 

 gingerbread to the King's health ' — God rest his soul — 

 oh ! by my troth, I humbly beg his dody's pardon, I had 

 forgot that he is still 'alive and kicking' in Germany. 



Besides, they have no want of a burial-place gratis, 

 as Gravesend is in the limits of the City ; but my busi- 

 ness here is not to describe Lo?idon, and all its defects, 

 but Dublin, and all its beauties. I care about as much 

 for London, as the Archbishop of Canterbury does for 

 the Popes toe, or the Greek Patriarch's gallows. So 

 said Brian Boru, as he trod in a beautiful country 

 only one mile from a beautiful city, and cast his eye 

 upon the wude of ocean, that sweep in majestic silence 

 its world of w^aters along the winding shores of Dublin 

 Bay : he could no more at that moment refrain from 

 offering up a prayer for his native land, than an Irish- 

 man could refrain from eating potatoes and drinking 

 whiskey on his death-bed : — 



' My soul relies 

 On that all healing and all forming power, 

 Who on the radiant day when time was born, 

 Cast his broad eye upon the face of ocean, 

 And calmed it with a glance — 



