* Two poor-houses in the most desolate parts of the County of
Cork, where famine, fever, dysentery, and cholera, rendered more
destructive by the crowded state of the houses and the consequent
want of ventilation, swept away the wretched in-mates to the
amount, if we recollect rightly, of sometimes from fifty to
seventy per diem in the years '45 and '47.

The evening, as we have said, was about the close of September, when the
two equestrians we speak of were proceeding at a pace necessarily slow.
One of them was a bluff, fresh-complexioned man, of about sixty summers;
but although of a healthy look, and a frame that had evidently once
been vigorous, yet he was a good deal stooped, had about him all the
impotence of plethora, and his hair, which fell down his shoulders, was
white as snow. The other, who rode pretty close to him, was much about
his own age, or perhaps a few years older, if one could judge by a face
that gave more undeniable evidences of those furrows and wrinkles which
Time usually leaves behind him. This person did not ride exactly side by
side with the first-mentioned, but a little aback, though not so far
as to prevent the possibility of conversation. At this time it may be
mentioned here that every man that could afford it wore a wig, with the
exception of some of those eccentric individuals that are to be found
in every state and period of society, and who are remarkable for
that peculiar love of singularity which generally constitutes their
character--a small and harmless ambition, easily gratified, and
involving no injury to their fellow-creatures. The second horseman,
therefore, wore a wig, but the other, although he eschewed that
ornament, if it can be called so, was by no means a man of that mild
and harmless character which we have attributed to the eccentric and
unfashionable class of whom we have just spoken. So far from that, he