drove of them sweeping past, like a whirlwind, in a cloud of their own
raising; their sharp and lengthy outlines dimly visible through the
shining haze, like a flock of antelopes crossing the deserts of the
East.

But alas! for those happy days! This breed is now a curiosity--few
specimens of it remaining except in the mountainous parts of the
country, whither these lovers of liberty, like the free natives of the
back settlements of America, have retired to avoid the encroachments of
civilization, and exhibit their Irish antipathy to the slavish comforts
of steamboat navigation, and the relaxing luxuries of English feeding.

Indeed, their patriotism, as evinced in an attachment to Ireland and
Irish habits, was scarcely more remarkable than their sagacity. There is
not an antiquary among the members of that learned and useful body, the
Irish Academy, who can boast such an intimate knowledge of the Irish
language in all its shades of meaning and idiomatic beauty, as did this
once flourishing class of animals. Nor were they confined to the Irish
tongue alone, many of them understood English too; and it was said
of those that belonged to a convent, the members of which, in their
intercourse with each other, spoke only in Latin, that they were
tolerable masters of that language, and refused to leave a potato field
or plot of cabbages, except when addressed in it. To the English tongue,
however, they had a deep-rooted antipathy; whether it proceeded from the
national feeling, or the fact of its not being sufficiently guttural,
I cannot say; but be this as it may, it must be admitted that they were
excellent Irish scholars, and paid a surprising degree of deference and
obedience to whatever was addressed to them in their own language. In
Munster, too, such of them as belonged to the hedge-schoolmasters were
good proficients in Latin; but it is on a critical knowledge of their