But none so bad as thine, I vow to God.
I have always till now maintained that Peter, with all his cynicism, was the best art critic, the Ruskin, shall we say, of his time. Now I give him up. N. Hone was no doubt quarrelsome and disagreeable, but he was a very considerable portrait-painter.
I had noted Derry as one of the places to be seen on account of the siege, and accordingly went there, to get another startling sensation. Like most other folk, I suppose, I had always looked on the story as interesting and heroic, and had wondered in a vague way how some 30,000 men, commanded by a distinguished French soldier, and a considerable part of them at any rate well-equipped regular troops, could have been kept at bay for ten months by a mere handful of regulars, backed by the ’prentice boys of the town and neighbourhood. Religious zeal was no doubt a strong factor on the side of the town, and Parson Walker, a born leader of men, “with a bugle in his throat,” like “Bobs.” But when one remembers that no provision had been made for a siege, that many of the leading men were for opening the gates, and indeed that the French officers and James’s deputy were actually within 300 yards in their boats, to accept the surrender, when the ’prentices rushed down and shut and manned the gates, and then looks at the scene on the spot, one is really dumbfounded, and wanders back in thought to King Hezekiah and Jerusalem. From the Cathedral, which dominates the city, you can trace distinctly the line of the old walls, and can hardly believe your eyes. The space enclosed cannot be more than a quarter of a mile in length, by some 300 yards in breadth (I could not get exact measurements), and in it, including garrison and the country folk who had flocked in, were more than 30,000 people. It was bombarded for eight months, during at least the last four of which famine and pestilence were raging. No wonder that the parish registers tell of more than 9000 burials in consecrated ground, while “the practice of burial in the backyards became unavoidable!” Where can such another story be found in authentic history? Parson Walker, let us say, fairly earned his monument.
I must own to grievous disappointment as to the farming in Ulster. All through the South and Centre I had seen the hay in the fields in small cocks in September, and the splendid ripe crops of oats and barley uncut, or, if cut, left in sheaf, or being carried in a leisurely fashion, which was quite provoking, while tall, yellow ragweed was growing in most of the pastures in ominous abundance. That will all be altered, I thought, when I cross “Boyne Water.” Not a bit of it! Here and there, indeed, I saw a good rick-yard and clean fields, but scarcely oftener than about Cork or Killarney, and no one seemed to mind any more than the pure southern Celts. One man said, when I mourned over the ragweed three feet or four feet high, that he did not mind it, as it showed the land was good! As to leaving hay in cock, well that was the custom—they would get it into stack after harvest, any way before Christmas; as to dawdling over cutting and carrying, well, with prices at present rates, what use in hurrying? There was a comic song called “Clear the Kitchen,” popular half a century ago, which ran—
I saw an old man come riding by.
Says I, “Old man, your horse will die”;
Says he, “If he dies I’ll tan his skin,
And if he lives I’ll ride him agin.”
It fits the Irish temper, North and South, pleasant enough to travel amongst, but bad, I should think, to live with.