Maria Edgeworth, in her Essay on Irish Bulls, remarks that “the difficulty of selecting from the vulgar herd a bull that shall be entitled to the prize, from the united merits of pre-eminent absurdity and indisputable originality, is greater than hasty judges may imagine.”

Very true; but if the prize were offered for a batch of Irish diamonds, we think the following copy of a letter written during the Rebellion, by S——, an Irish member of Parliament, to his friend in London, would present the strongest claim:—

“My dear Sir:—Having now a little peace and quietness, I sit down to inform you of the dreadful bustle and confusion we are in from these blood-thirsty rebels, most of whom are (thank God!) killed and dispersed. We are in a pretty mess; can get nothing to eat, nor wine to drink, except whiskey; and when we sit down to dinner, we are obliged to keep both hands armed. Whilst I write this, I hold a pistol in each hand and a sword in the other. I concluded in the beginning that this would be the end of it; and I see I was right, for it is not half over yet. At present there are such goings on, that every thing is at a stand still. I should have answered your letter a fortnight ago, but I did not receive it till this morning. Indeed, hardly a mail arrives safe without being robbed. No longer ago than yesterday the coach with the mails from Dublin was robbed near this town: the bags had been judiciously left behind for fear of accident, and by good luck there was nobody in it but two outside passengers who had nothing for thieves to take. Last Thursday notice was given that a gang of rebels were advancing here under the French standard; but they had no colors, nor any drums except bagpipes. Immediately every man in the place, including women and children, ran out to meet them. We soon found our force much too little; and we were far too near to think of retreating. Death was in every face; but to it we went, and by the time half our little party were killed we began to be all alive again. Fortunately, the rebels had no guns, except pistols, cutlasses, and pikes; and as we had plenty of guns and ammunition, we put them all to the sword. Not a soul of them escaped, except some that were drowned in an adjacent bog; and in a very short time nothing was to be heard but silence. Their uniforms were all different colors, but mostly green. After the action, we went to rummage a sort of camp which they had left behind them. All we found was a few pikes without heads, a parcel of empty bottles full of water, and a bundle of French commissions filled up with Irish names. Troops are now stationed all around the country, which exactly squares with my ideas. I have only time to add that I am in great haste.

“P. S.—If you do not receive this, of course it must have miscarried: therefore I beg you will write and let me know.”

Miss Edgeworth says, further, that “many bulls, reputed to be bred and born in Ireland, are of foreign extraction; and many more, supposed to be unrivalled in their kind, may be matched in all their capital points.” To prove this, she cites numerous examples of well-known bulls, with their foreign prototypes, not only English and Continental, but even Oriental and ancient. Among the parallels of familiar bulls to be found nearer our American home since the skillful defender of Erin’s naÏvetÉ wrote her Essay, one of the best is an economical method of erecting a new jail:—

The following resolutions were passed by the Board of Councilmen in Canton, Mississippi:—

1. Resolved, by this Council, that we build a new Jail.

2. Resolved, that the new Jail be built out of the materials of the old Jail.

3. Resolved, that the old Jail be used until the new Jail is finished.

It was a Frenchman who, in making a classified catalogue of books, placed Miss Edgeworth’s Essay in the list of works on Natural History; and it was a Scotchman who, having purchased a copy of it, pronounced her “a puir silly body, to write a book on bulls, and no ane word o’ horned cattle in it a’, forbye the bit beastie [the vignette] at the beginning.” Examples from the common walks of life and from periodical literature may readily be multiplied to show that these phraseological peculiarities are not to be exclusively attributed to Ireland. But if we adopt Coleridge’s definition, which is, that “a bull consists in a mental juxtaposition of incongruous ideas, with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection,” we shall find frequent instances of its occurrence among standard authors. Take the following blunders, for examples:—

Swift, being an Irishman, of course abounds in blunders, some of them of the most ludicrous character; but we should hardly expect to find in the elegant Addison, the model of classical English, such a singular inaccuracy as the following:—

He must have seen in a blaze of blinding light (this is “ipsis Hibernis Hibernior”) the vanity and evil, the folly and madness, of the worldly or selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested and Christian life.—Gilfillan’s Bards of the Bible.

The real and peculiar magnificence of St. Petersburgh consists in thus sailing apparently upon the bosom of the ocean, into a city of palaces.—Sedgwick’s Letters from the Baltic.

The astonished Yahoo, smoking, as well as he could, a cigar, with which he had filled all his pockets.—Warren’s Ten Thousand a Year.

The following specimens are from the works of Dr. Johnson:—

Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a dead language, it will always live.

Shakspeare has not only shown human nature as it is, but as it would be found in situations to which it cannot be exposed.

These observations were made by favor of a contrary wind.

The next two are from Pope:—

Shakspeare says,—

In the Irish Bank-bill passed by Parliament in June, 1808, is a clause providing that the profits shall be equally divided and the residue go to the Governor.

Sir Richard Steele, being asked why his countrymen were so addicted to making bulls, said he believed there must be something in the air of Ireland, adding, “I dare say if an Englishman were born there he would do the same.”

Mr. Cunningham, to whom we are indebted for the interesting notes to Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” pronounces his author the most distinguished of his cotemporaries.

Sir Walter Scott perpetrates a curious blunder in one of his novels, in making certain of his characters behold a sunset over the waters of a seaport on the eastern coast of Scotland.

The following occurs in Dr. Latham’s English Language. Speaking of the genitive or possessive case, he says,—

“In the plural number, however, it is rare; so rare, indeed, that whenever the plural ends in s (as it always does) there is no genitive.”

Byron says,—

(He meant a palace on one hand, and a prison on the other.)

Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines a garret as “a room on the highest floor in the house,” and a cock-loft as “the room over the garret.”

For the sake of comparison, we recur to the favorite pasture of the genuine thorough-bred animal:—

An Irish member of Parliament, speaking of a certain minister’s well-known love of money, observed, “Let not the honorable member express a contempt for money,—for if there is any one office that glitters in the eyes of the honorable member, it is that of purse-bearer: a pension to him is a compendium of all the cardinal virtues. All his statesmanship is comprehended in the art of taxing; and for good, better, and best, in the scale of human nature, he invariably reads pence, shillings, and pounds. I verily believe,” continued the orator, rising to the height of his conception, “that if the honorable gentleman were an undertaker, it would be the delight of his heart to see all mankind seized with a common mortality, that he might have the benefit of the general burial, and provide scarfs and hat-bands for the survivors.”

The manager of a provincial theatre, finding upon one occasion but three persons in attendance, made the following address:—“Ladies and gentlemen—as there is nobody here, I’ll dismiss you all. The performances of this night will not be performed; but they will be repeated to-morrow evening.”

A Hibernian gentleman, when told by his nephew that he had just entered college with a view to the church, said, “I hope that I may live to hear you preach my funeral sermon.”

An Irishman, quarrelling with an Englishman, told him if he didn’t hold his tongue, he would break his impenetrable head, and let the brains out of his empty skull.

“My dear, come in and go to bed,” said the wife of a jolly son of Erin, who had just returned from the fair in a decidedly how-come-you-so state: “you must be dreadful tired, sure, with your long walk of six miles.” “Arrah! get away with your nonsense,” said Pat: “it wasn’t the length of the way, at all, that fatigued me: ’twas the breadth of it.”

A poor Irishman offered an old saucepan for sale. His children gathered around him and inquired why he parted with it. “Ah, me honeys,” he answered, “I would not be afther parting with it but for a little money to buy something to put in it.”

A young Irishman who had married when about nineteen years of age, complaining of the difficulties to which his early marriage subjected him, said he would never marry so young again if he lived to be as ould as Methuselah.

In an Irish provincial paper is the following notice:—Whereas Patrick O’Connor lately left his lodgings, this is to give notice that if he does not return immediately and pay for the same, he will be advertised.

“Has your sister got a son or a daughter?” asked an Irishman of a friend. “Upon my life,” was the reply, “I don’t know yet whether I’m an uncle or aunt.”

“I was going,” said an Irishman, “over Westminster Bridge the other day, and I met Pat Hewins. ‘Hewins,’ says I, ‘how are you?’ ‘Pretty well,’ says he, ‘thank you, Donnelly.’ ‘Donnelly!’ says I: ‘that’s not my name.’ ‘Faith, no more is mine Hewins,’ says he. So we looked at each other again, and sure it turned out to be nayther of us; and where’s the bull of that, now?”

“India, my boy,” said an Irish officer to a friend on his arrival at Calcutta, “is the finest climate under the sun; but a lot of young fellows come out here and they drink and they eat, and they drink and they die: and then they write home to their parents a pack of lies, and say it’s the climate that has killed them.”

In the perusal of a very solid book on the progress of the ecclesiastical differences of Ireland, written by a native of that country, after a good deal of tedious and vexatious matter, the reader’s complacency is restored by an artless statement how an eminent person “abandoned the errors of the church of Rome, and adopted those of the church of England.”

Here is an American Hibernicism, which is entitled to full recognition:—Among the things that Wells & Fargo’s Express is not responsible for as carriers is one couched in the following language in their regulations: “Not for any loss or damage by fire, the acts of God, or of Indians, or any other public enemies of the government.”

George Selwyn once declared in company that a lady could not write a letter without adding a postscript. A lady present replied, “The next letter that you receive from me, Mr. Selwyn, will prove that you are wrong.” Accordingly he received one from her the next day, in which, after her signature was the following:—

“P. S. Who is right, now, you or I?”

The two subjoined parliamentary utterances are worthy to have emanated from Sir Boyle Roche:—

“Mr. Speaker, I boldly answer in the affirmative—No.”

“Mr. Speaker, if I have any prejudice against the honorable member, it is in his favor.”

A PAIR OF BULLS.