Ireland.

waters. There was a peculiar unhealthiness in the aspect of these three individuals, which attracted my notice. It differed from the half-jaundiced sallowness of the Anglo-Indian invalid-and also from the pallid and faded complexion of the fashionable and dissipated SEASONERS of the metropolis. It had a sickliness, sui generis, and beyond my power of analysis. As soon as they began to converse with each other, I recognised the accent of the Emerald Isle-and this increased my wonder. I applied to my aerial CICERONE for information. "That gentleman," said he, "is a great landlord and squire in the county of His numerous tenantry are ignorant, and therefore semi-savage-disagreeable to the eyes of the fashionable family; and therefore, perhaps, somewhat dangerous. Under these circumstances, it was opportunely discovered that the health of a daughter was delicate, and that the climate of Ireland was damp-that the skies of Italy were bright-the society there recherché—and expenses very little more than in Castle Rackrent. The conduct to be pursued admitted of no question. The bailiff was ordered to collect the rents, and the courier was ordered to prepare for the journey. Paris was visited-the Simplon was scaled-and Florence, Rome, and Naples were explored, Years passed away on the classic soil, and yet curiosity was not sated, nor pleasure exhausted. But, on a fine summer's evening, while the family were sitting on the heights of Albano, inhaling the balmy zephyrs, and enjoying the superb panorama of the Campagna, with its scattered ruins and surrounding Apennines, one of the young ladies inspired the deadly poison that so often floats on the fragrance of Italian gales! The tide of happiness, like that of fortune, has its affluxes and effluxes. The current of affliction now took its turn. The hapless and innocent victim of an Italian climate, (to speak of nothing else,) fevered, faded, and ultimately sunk beneath the pestiferous influence of the syren soil! Her spirit fled to Heaven-her mortal remains lie on the banks of the Tyber, near the pyramid of Caius Cestius.*

"The long-inhaled poison of Italian malaria-the heart-rending scenes attendant on the protracted sufferings of the beautiful girl-and feelings, which are best known to the unhappy survivors, have produced the frightful ravages in the minds and bodies of the party before you,

*This is no imaginary picture. It is only a specimen from a large class. See the "Three Years' Residence (of an Irish family) in Italy," where a parallel instance is painfully detailed. It was probably the perusal of Anny's" history, and some melancholy instances of death in foreign climes, that conjured up this reverie in my mind on the present occasion. J. J.

which have rivetted your attention. The waters of Lethe may, but those of Cheltenham never can, wash out the mental and corporeal sufferings of that wretched TRIO."

The next figure (a political economist), was busily employed in calculating the grains of muriate of soda that were expended during an autumn at this fashionable rendezvous. When he had completed his calculus, he gravely" gave notice" to the pump-maid, that he would move for a return of all the waters drunk in Cheltenham during the last seven years, in order to shew the prodigal waste of culinary salt at this fashionable watering-place, and how much might be saved to the nation by shutting up the wells.

An elderly friend of his, of most aristocratic appearance, remained. He seemed to be labouring under the agony of a discharge of gall-stones. I understood that he was subject to periodical attacks of “black bile,” ever since he had opened a Transatlantic grave, in quest of subjects for dissection.

I was agreeably surprised to see in this place one of the great bulwarks of our glorious constitution and our enviable laws. He had spent a con siderable portion of his life in the arduous task of disentangling equity from iniquity-and had often found it impossible to make up his mind on some knotty points, till one of the inferior officers of his court (SERJEANT BEGGARY) stept in to solve the problem! The venerable senator had come down to Cheltenham, partly for his health, but principally to drink a farewell to the constitution and laws of his country, having lived to see all reverence for precedents abolished, and the besom of Reform sweeping away the cobwebs of antiquity from every shelf of his well-stored archives!

The crowd now became so pressing, that all attempts to individualize were fruitless. The rooms, the walks, the shops were filled with myriads of Whigs, Tories, and Radicals-aristocrats, democrats, and bureaucrats. One thing was very clear-that the WHIGS seemed all to prefer the chalybeate or tonic waters-most of them appearing to labour under considerable debility; and some of them being actually affected with a kind of" shaking palsy."

The TORIES, on the contrary, all flocked to the cooling saline aperient springs, most of them being thirsty, excited, irritable, and feverish. Many of them, I was informed, were scarcely convalescent from severe inflammatory attacks—some having been affected with brain-fever, and under restraint, for a time, by advice of their moral and medical attendants. Among these, I perceived some PRELATES, from the sister isle, who were decidedly in a state of ATROPHY, a disorder which I had never before observed in any one with lawn sleeves.

The RADICALS were not very numerous; but they seemed generally inclined to slake their thirst at the same spring with their natural enemies-the TORIES! The fable of the wolf and the lamb coming to drink at the same stream, here rushed across my mind; but I suppose there was no analogy between the two cases, nor any chance of the consequences that ensued in the fable.

I was astonished to find that almost the whole members of the reformed parliament came here, after the close of the first session, in 1833. I inquired of my familiar what were the principal complaints under which the M.P.'s laboured? He shewed me a long catalogue of most uncouth names, very few of which I could either understand or remember. I gathered from the Cheltenham sprite, however, that many of the м. P.'s were affected with flatulence, indigestion, and bilibus complaints—that several had impediments of speech-that some few were short-winded, or asthmatic-but that great numbers laboured under a disease, not classed in nosology—namely, LONG-WINDEDNESS, or a propensity to elaborate an immense quantity, every night, of nouns, pronouns, adverbs, and proverbs, which were carefully collected and preserved in presses, by means of a black, oily pickle, as literary relishes for all kinds of appetite, throughout the various classes of society.

I awoke from my reverie, and immediately retired to my hotel, where, over a chirping pint of sherry, (which I preferred to No. 4,) I noted the foregoing ruminations, and then took my SIESTA.

An evening scene in Cheltenham, where heavenly airs were exchanged for earthy waters, occasioned some moral reflections; but these are reserved for a future edition of this tour-should it ever arrive at that honour.

JOHN BULL.

Having sketched a few characteristics of England, perhaps I may be indulged in a few reflections on JOHN BULL himself. The old adage, "Gnosce teipsum," or "Know thyself," is quite superannuated. No person is supposed to know any thing of himself—and the same holds good in respect to nations. The English can form no correct notion of themselves they must draw all appreciations of national character from foreigners. Prince Puckler Moskau, and Baron D'Haussez, are far better judges of the English than Bulwer, or any one born and bred on British soil possibly can be. Under this conviction, I shall be somewhat brief in this characteristic sketch, since few, perhaps, will read it, and still fewer subscribe to its accuracy.

I would say, then, that the English, as a people, are inferior to the FRENCH in vivacity—to the ITALIANS in sensibility—to the GREEKS in subtlety-to the GERMANS in ideality-to the SPANIARDS in gravity— to the DUTCH in phlegm-to the RUSSIANS in autocracy-to the AMERICANS in democracy-to the IRISH in humour-to the WELSH in choler-and to the SCOTCH in caution.

Yet, into the moral and physical character of JOHN BULL, have entered certain portions or proportions of the prominent features of other nations, which, nurtured by free institutions, and modified by an insular situation, have blended and amalgamated into a composition (like that of his language) not readily matched, and not easily described.

In MARTIAL COURAGE, no nation need claim superiority; for none will acknowledge inferiority. Miguelites and Pedroites have agreed, for example, in only one sentiment—that the Portuguese are the bravest people on earth! Of all nations, the English have the least necessity to urge their claims to this valued commodity. The very existence of their own independence, is a sufficient title to an average ratio, after Europe, from the Danube to the Baltic, had been leagued, for years, to annihilate it-and that under the greatest warrior which the world ever produced a warrior to whose chariot-wheels victory was chained—on whose banners were written, "Delenda est Carthago "--but whose ́enormous power could not intimidate, much less subjugate, these "haughty islanders "-this "nation of shopkeepers."

That a small cluster of isles, which the Romans thought it hardly worth while to annex to their unwieldy dominion till they were dying of ennui, should now hold in subjection, or rather in willing obedience, territories more extensive than the whole Roman empire itself—and diffuse its language, its literature, and its manners, over a hemisphere where Roman eagle never flew, and where the name of Rome had never been pronounced, is a historical fact, which looks like a poetic fiction, and upon which Britons may safely leave even their enemies to ponder and comment.

Sensitively jealous of imagined rights, while patiently submissive under substantial wrongs-enthusiastic in defence of liberty at home, while shedding his blood, for many years, in defence of tyranny abroad -JOHN BULL has recently awoke from his romantic dream of universal benevolence, and become affected (some say, afflicted) with a violent fit of selfishness and economy. After expending a hundred millions of sovereigns, to save half a dozen of crowns, (some of which were base metal,) he is grown, all at once, so parsimonious, that he is discharging three-fourths of his old and faithful servants, while the remainder are put on board wages scarcely sufficient to procure bread and cheese for them and their families!

In JOHN BULL's tastes and amusements, too, there has been a wonderful revolution. Formerly, he kept a very large menagerie of bears, vultures, black eagles, muscovy ducks, foxes, jackalls, camels, crocodiles, and various other exotic animals, on which he expended immense sums of money. But, latterly, his menagerie has presented no other foreign pets than a Flanders' mare, a French baboon, and a pretty little Brazilian parroquet.

To the bear and the eagle, John Bull has taken a decided aversion, on account of some preternaturally savage dispositions which these creatures have recently evinced towards some of the more spirited and interesting inhabitants of the old menagerie.

As several of the other wild and domesticated animals shewed an inclination to imitate the bear,-some from instinct, others from fear,John Bull bundled the whole of them overboard, (with the exceptions above-mentioned,) and left them to return to their native haunts, and pursue their instinctive propensities.

But it is not merely in zoological matters that John Bull's taste has become revolutionized. Formerly, he kept in pay a great number of gladiators and prize-fighters-for the benefit and amusement of his foreign friends-the English being little inclined to sights of this kind, though very fond of reading bulletins of the exploits performed by these mercenaries, in other countries. Of late years, John Bull has tied up his purse-turned almost a Jew in money-matters-and, from being at the head of the FANCY, in all outlandish boxing-matches, has become a veritable QUAKER, in everything pugnacious!!

John Bull, too, and most of the younger branches of his family, have lately begun to doubt the truth of that philosophical dogma which assures us that the natural state of mankind is warfare. Some of the juniors in John Bull's household have even gone the length of questioning the hitherto undisputed maxim transmitted from father to son, time immemorial, that the channel, deep though narrow, which separates Calais from Dover, was placed there by nature, as an unequivocal proof and indication that France and England could never be united, either geographically, politically, commercially, or amicably-but that, on the contrary, Frenchmen and English are, by nature, and consequently by necessity, as decided enemies to each other, as cats are to rats :—In fine, that Gauls and Britons flew at one another, and must always fly, from the same irresistible instinct that impels two bantam cocks to engage, on the instant of meeting!

These sentiments are entertained by a considerable number of the elder branches, male and female, of John Bull's extensive establishment. They were taught by their forefathers, and they firmly believed