Moreover, I agree in the main with the American critic of sermons, who said if a preacher can’t strike ile in ten minutes he has got a bad organ, or he is boring in the wrong place.  It is always unfair to bore in the pulpit, because the congregation have no means of retaliation except by subsequently staying away, and in the country that is not compatible with the public worship of their Maker.

We have all heard the traditional stories about the divines who, having found the sand of the hour-glass exhausted, calmly reversed it and continued for a second spell, to the complete satisfaction of the congregations.  But in my experience only one preacher could have done that without unendurably provoking me, and he was Archbishop Magee, of whom I shall have something to say when I am dealing with County Cork.

For the Scots in character I conceived much respect and little enthusiasm.  If there is anything more remarkable than the hard-working powers of the Scottish farmer it is his capacity for hard drinking.  But that only makes him offensive in his brief conviviality and morose in the long subsequent sulkiness.  Whereas I defy you to be seriously angry with a drunken Irishman, if you have a due sense of humour—­and without that you have lost the salt of life.  To my mind there is something austere in the better characteristics of the Scot, and also something hypocritical about his morality.  You always hear that professed in Scotland, and never in Ireland.  But in the latter fewer illegitimate children are born than in any other country in Europe, and in Scotland—­notably Glasgow—­the high percentage has become sadly proverbial.  Yet, despite these adverse points, the Scottish character has a native grandeur which must provoke admiration, though all my warmth of feelings goes to my own oft-erring countrymen.

I returned to Ireland in 1843 with the intention of farming in Kerry on the scientific system I had learned in Berwickshire.  However, I found the land so subdivided that it was not only difficult, but impossible, to obtain a farm of sufficient size to return a reasonable percentage on the necessary outlay.  The population of Kerry was then 293,880, and the land was divided into 25,848 farms, the holders of which, I may say, entirely depended for existence on 26,030 acres of potatoes.  To give an example of the intense love of subdivision, I knew a case where one horse was the property of three ‘farmers,’ and as they differed as to who was to pay for the fourth shoe, they sold the horse, which was bought by an uncle of mine.

Few farmers ate meat except at Christmas.  They wore homespun flannel and frieze, and their only luxury, whisky, was obtainable at a quarter of its present price.  A young couple were considered ready to start in married life when they had obtained a ‘farm,’ consisting of a couple of acres for potatoes and a mud hovel for themselves; and thus a population, dependent on a precarious root, increased very rapidly.