We have seen many a youth, on more occasions than one, standing in profound affliction over the dead body of his aged father, exclaiming, “Ahir, vick machree—­vick machree—­wuil thu marra wo’um?  Wuil thu marra wo’um? Father, son of my heart, son of my heart, art thou dead from me—­art thou dead from me?” An expression, we think, under any circumstances, not to be surpassed in the intensity of domestic affection which it expresses; but under those alluded to, we consider it altogether elevated in exquisite and poetic beauty above the most powerful symbols of Oriental imagery.

A third phrase peculiar to love and affection, is “Manim asthee hu—­or, My soul’s within you.”  Every person acquainted with languages knows how much an idiom suffers by a literal translation.  How beautiful, then, how tender and powerful, must those short expressions be, uttered, too, with a fervor of manner peculiar to a deeply feeling people, when, even after a literal translation, they carry so much of their tenderness and energy into a language whose genius is cold when compared to the glowing beauty of the Irish.

Mauourneen dheelish, too, is only a short phrase, but, coming warm and mellowed from Paddy’s lips into the ear of his colleen dhas, it is a perfect spell—­a sweet murmur, to which the lenis susurrus of the Hybla bees is, with all their honey, jarring discord.  How tame is “My sweet darling,” its literal translation, compared to its soft and lulling intonations.  There is a dissolving, entrancing, beguiling, deluding, flattering, insinuating, coaxing, winning, inveigling, roguish, palavering, come-overing, comedhering, consenting, blarneying, killing, willing, charm in it, worth all the philters that ever the gross knavery of a withered alchemist imposed upon the credulity of those who inhabit the other nations of the earth—­for we don’t read that these shrivelled philter-mongers ever prospered in Ireland.

No, no—­let Paddy alone.  If he hates intensely and effectually, he loves intensely, comprehensively, and gallantly.  To love with power is a proof of a large soul, and to hate well is, according to the great moralist, a thing in itself to be loved.  Ireland is, therefore, through all its sects, parties, and religions, an amicable nation.  Their affections are, indeed, so vivid, that they scruple not sometimes to kill each other with kindness:  but we hope that the march of love and friendship will not only keep pace with, but outstrip, the march of intellect.

*****

Peter Cornell was for many years of his life a pattern and proverb for industry and sobriety.  He first began the world as keeper of a shebeen-house at the cross-roads, about four miles from the town of Ballypoteen.  He was decidedly an honest man to his neighbors, but a knave to excisemen, whom he hated by a kind of instinct that he had, which prompted him, in order to satisfy his conscience, to render them every practicable injury