An occurrence now took place which may serve, in some measure, to throw light upon many of the atrocities and outrages which take place in Ireland.  Before I mention it, however, I think it necessary to make a few observations relative to it.  I am convinced that those who are intimately acquainted with the Irish peasantry will grant that there is not on the earth a class of people in whom the domestic affections of blood-relationship are so pure, strong, and sacred.  The birth of a child will occasion a poor man to break in upon the money set apart for his landlord, in order to keep the christening, surrounded by his friends and neighbors, with due festivity.  A marriage exhibits a spirit of joy, an exuberance of happiness and delight, to be found only in the Green Island; and the death of a member of a family is attended with a sincerity of grief, scarcely to be expected from men so much the creatures of the more mirthful feelings.  In fact, their sorrow is a solecism in humanity—­at once deep and loud—­mingled up, even in its deepest paroxysms, with a laughter-loving spirit.  It is impossible that an Irishman, sunk in the lowest depths of affliction, could permit his grief to flow in all its sad solemnity, even for a day, without some glimpse of his natural humor throwing a faint and rapid light over the gloom within him.  No:  there is an amalgamation of sentiments in his mind which, as I said before, would puzzle any philosopher to account for.  Yet it would be wrong to say, though his grief has something of an unsettled and ludicrous character about it, that he is incapable of the most subtle and delicate shades of sentiment, or the deepest and most desolating intensity of sorrow.  But he laughs off those heavy vapors which hang about the moral constitution of the people of other nations, giving them a morbid habit, which leaves them neither strength nor firmness to resist calamity—­which they feel less keenly than an Irishman, exactly as a healthy man will feel the pangs of death with more acuteness than one who is wasted away by debility and decay.  Let any man witness an emigration, and he will satisfy himself that this is true.  I am convinced that Goldsmith’s inimitable description of one in his “Deserted Village,” was a picture drawn from actual observation.  Let him observe the emigrant, as he crosses the Atlantic, and he will find, although he joins the jest, and the laugh, and the song, that he will seek a silent corner, or a silent hour, to indulge the sorrow which he still feels for the friends, the companions, and the native fields that he has left behind him.  This constitution of mind is beneficial:  the Irishman seldom or never hangs himself, because he is capable of too much real feeling to permit himself to become the slave of that which is factitious.  There is no void in his affections or sentiments, which a morbid and depraved sensibility could occupy; but his feelings, of what character soever they may be, are strong, because they are fresh and healthy.