from it.  In several of the reports from the Board of Works’ inspectors, and other communications, it was said that as the Famine progressed, the people lost all their natural vivacity.  They looked upon themselves as doomed; and this feeling was expressed by their whole bearing.  The extent to which it prevailed amongst all classes is well illustrated by a circumstance related by the same clergyman.  When the Famine had somewhat abated in intensity, he was one day in a field which was separated from the public road by a wall.  He heard a voice on the road; it was that of a peasant girl humming a song.  The tears rushed to his eyes.  He walked quickly towards her, searching meantime for some coin to give her.  He placed a shilling in her hand, with a feeling somewhat akin to enthusiasm.  “It was,” said he to the author, “the first joyous sound I had heard for six months.”

From Roscommon the brief, but terrible, tidings came that whole families, who had retired to rest at night, were corpses in the morning; and were frequently left unburied for many days, for want of coffins in which to inter them.  And the report adds:  The state of our poorhouse is awful; the average daily deaths in it, from fever alone, is eighteen; there are upwards of eleven hundred inmates in it, and of these six hundred are in typhus fever.[222] In a circumference of eight miles from where I write, says a correspondent of the Roscommon Journal, not less than sixty bodies have been interred without a coffin.  In answer to queries sent to a part of Roscommon, I received the following replies from a reliable source:  Query.  “What other relief was given during the Government works by private charity, committees, etc.?” Answer.  “There was considerable relief given by charitable committees.” Query.  “What did the wealthy resident landlords give_?” Answer_.  “Considerable.” Query.  “What did the wealthy non-resident landlords give?” Again the answer was, “Considerable.”  But I am sorry to add that the two latter queries were almost uniformly answered from various parts of the country by the expressive words, “Nothing whatever.”  The same correspondent said, in reply to another query, that the aged and infirm did not live more than a day or two after being sent to hospital.  They died of dysentery.  The two following anecdotes are given on the best authority:  a family, consisting of father, mother, and daughter, were starving; they were devotedly attached to each other; the daughter was young and comely.  Offers of relief were made by a wealthy person, but they were accompanied by a dishonourable condition, and they were therefore indignantly spurned.  Fond as I am of my life, said the starving girl, and much as I love my father and mother, for whose relief I would endure any earthly toil, I will suffer them as well as myself to die, rather than get them relief at the price of my virtue.  A Roscommon man thus writes in the query sheet sent to him:  “Years after