commencement! *

* I mean no offence whatsoever to this distinguished and
multitudinous writer; but the commencement of this novel really
resembled that of so many of his that I was anxious to avoid the
charge of imitating him.

It was one evening at the close of a September month and a September day
that two equestrians might be observed passing along one of those old
and lonely Irish roads that seemed, from the nature of its construction,
to have been paved by a society of antiquarians, if a person could judge
from its obsolete character, and the difficulty, without risk of neck or
limb, of riding a horse or driving a carriage along it. Ireland, as our
English readers ought to know, has always been a country teeming with
abundance--a happy land, in which want, destitution, sickness, and
famine have never been felt or known, except through the mendacious
misrepresentations of her enemies. The road we speak of was a proof
of this; for it was evident to every observer that, in some season of
superabundant food, the people, not knowing exactly how to dispose of
their shilling loaves, took to paving the common roads with them, rather
than they should be utterly useless. These loaves, in the course
of time, underwent the process of petrifaction, but could not,
nevertheless, be looked upon as wholly lost to the country. A great
number of the Irish, within six of the last preceding years--that is,
from '46 to '52--took a peculiar fancy for them as food, which, we
presume, caused their enemies to say that we then had hard times in
Ireland. Be this as it may, it enabled the sagacious epicures who lived
upon them to retire, in due course, to the delightful retreats of Skull
and Skibbereen,* and similar asylums, there to pass the very short
remainder of their lives in health, ease, and luxury.