Dublin, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 1851.

I had hoped to see all of Ireland that is accessible by Railroad from this city, but Time will not permit. Having remained here over Sunday, I had only Monday left for a trip Southward, and that would just suffice for reaching Limerick and returning without attempting Cork. So at 7 yesterday morning I took the "Great Southern and Western Railroad," and was set down in Limerick (130 miles) at a quarter before 1, passing Kildare, with its "Curragh" or spacious race-ground, Maryborough and Thurles on the way. Portarlington, Mount Melick, Mountrath and Templemore—all considerable towns—lie a few miles from the Railroad, on the right or west, as Naas, Cashel and Tipperary are not far from it on the left; while another Railroad, the "Irish South-Eastern," diverges at Kildare to Carlow, Bagnalstown and Kilkenny (146 miles from Dublin) on the South; while from Kilkenny the "Kilkenny and Waterford" has already been constructed to Thomastown (some 20 miles), and is to reach Waterford, at the head of ship navigation on the common estuary at the mouth of the Suir and Barrow, when completed.

I left the Great Southern and Western at Limerick Junction, 107 miles S. S. W. of Dublin, and took the crossroad from Tipperary to Limerick (30 miles), but the main road proceeds south-westerly to Charleville, 22½ miles further, and thence leads due south to Mallow, on the Blackwater, and then south by east to Cork, 164½ miles from Dublin, while another railroad has just been opened from Cork to Bandon, 18¾ miles still further south-west, making a completed line from Dublin to Bandon, 183½ miles, with branches to Limerick, Tipperary and Kilkenny, the latter to be continued to Waterford. In a country so easily traversed by Railroads, and so swarming with population as Ireland, these roads should be not only most useful but most productive to their stockholders, but they are very far from it. Few of the peasantry can afford to travel by them, except when leaving the country for ever, and their scanty patches of ground produce little surplus food for exportation, while they can afford to buy little that the Railroads bring in. Were the population of Ireland as well fed and as enterprising as that of New-England, with an industry as well diversified, her Railroads would pay ten per cent, on their cost; as things now are, they do not pay two per cent. Thus the rapacity of Capital defeats itself, and actually impoverishes its owners when it deprives Labor of a fair reward. If all the property-holders of Ireland would to-day combine in a firm resolve to pay at least half a dollar per day for men's labor, and to employ all that should present themselves, introducing new arts and manufactures and improving their estates in order to furnish such employment, they would not only speedily banish destitution and ignorance from the land but they would double the value of their own possessions. This is one of the truths which sloth, rapacity and extravagance are slow to learn, yet which they cannot safely ignore. The decay and ruin of nearly all the "old families" in Ireland are among the penalties of disregarding it.

To talk of an excess of labor, or an inability to employ it, in such a country as Ireland, is to insult the general understanding. In the first place, there is an immediate and urgent demand for at least Half a Million comfortable rain-proof dwellings. The inconceivable wretched hovels in which nine-tenths of the peasantry endure existence inevitably engender indolence, filthiness and disease. Generation after generation grows up ignorant and squalid from never having had a fireside by which they could sit down to read or study, nor an example of home comfort and cleanliness in their own class to profit by. In those narrow, unlighted, earth-floored, straw-thatched cabins, there is no room for the father and his sons to sit down and enjoy an evening, so they straggle off to the nearest groggery or other den in search of the comfort their home denies them. Of course, men who have grown up in this way have no idea of anything better and are slow to mend; but the personal influence of their superiors in wealth and station is very great, and might be ten times greater if the more fortunate class would make themselves familiar with the wants and woes, the feelings and aspirations of the poor, and act toward them as friends and wiser brethren, instead of seeming to regard them only as strange dogs to be repelled or as sheep to be sheared. But the first practical point to be struggled for is that of steady employment and just reward for labor. So long as men's wages (without board) range from fourpence to one and six-pence per day, and women's from a penny to six-pence (which, so far as I can learn, are the current rates at present, and nothing to do for half the year at any price), no radical improvement can be hoped for. A family with nothing to do, very little to eat and only a hog-pen to live in, will neither acquire mental expansion, moral integrity, nor habits of neatness and industry. On the contrary, however deficient they may originally be in these respects, they are morally certain to grow worse so long as their circumstances remain unchanged. But draw them out of their wretched hovel into a neat, dry, glass-lighted, comfortable dwelling, offer them work at all seasons, and a fair recompense for doing it, and you will have at least rendered improvement possible. The feasibility of cleanliness will instill the love of it, at least in the younger members; the opportunity of earning will awaken the instinct of saving as well as the desire to maintain a comely appearance in the eyes of friends and neighbors. The laborer, well paid, will naturally be adequately fed, and both able and willing to perform thrice the work per day he now does or can; seeing the more efficient often step above them to posts better paid and more respected, the dullest workers will aspire to greater knowledge and skill in order that they too may attain more eligible positions. "It is the first step that costs"—the others follow almost of course. If the Aristocracy of Ireland would unitedly resolve that every individual in the land should henceforth have constant work and just recompense, the outlay involved need not be great and the return would be abundant and certain. They have ample water-power for a thousand factories, machine-shops, foundries, &c., which has run to waste since creation, and can never bring them a dollar while Irish Industry remains as rude, ill-paid and inefficient as it now is. Every dollar wisely spent in improving this power will add two to the value of their estates. So they have stone-quarries of immense value all over the island which never produced anything and never will while the millions live in hovels and confine their attention to growing oats and potatoes for a subsistence. Agriculture alone and especially such Agriculture, can never adequately employ the people; when the Oats and Potatoes have been harvested, the peasant has very little to do but eat them until the season for planting them returns. But introduce a hundred new arts and processes—let each village have its mechanics, each county its manufacturers of the various wares and fabrics really needed in the country, and the excess of work done over the present aggregate would speedily transform general poverty into general competence. The Six Millions of People in Ireland are doing far less work this year than the Three Millions of New-England, although the Irish in New-England are at least as industrious and efficient as the natives. They work well everywhere but at home, because they everywhere else find the more powerful class ready to employ them, instruct them, pay them. In Ireland alone are they required to work for six pence to eighteen pence per day, and even at these rates stand idle half the year for want of anything to do; so that the rent which they would readily double (for better tenements) if they were fully employed and fairly paid, now benumbs and crushes them, and their little patches of land, which ought to be in the highest degree productive, are often the worst cultivated of any this side of the Alps. Ignorance, want, and hopelessness have paralysed their energies, and the consequent decay of the Peasantry has involved most of the Aristocracy in the general ruin. The Encumbered Estates Commission is now rapidly passing the soil of Ireland out of the hands of its bankrupt landlords into those of a new generation. May these be wise enough to profit by the warning before them, and by uniting to elevate the condition of the Laboring Millions place their own prosperity on a solid and lasting foundation!

GENERAL ASPECTS.

The South of Ireland is decidedly more fertile and inviting than the North or West. There is a deeper, richer soil, with far less stone on the level low lands. The railroad from Dublin to Limerick runs throughout over a level plain, and though it passes from the valley of the Liffey across those of the Barrow, the Durrow and the Suir to that of the Shannon, no perceptible ridge is crossed, no tunnel traversed, and very little rock-cutting or embankment required. Although the highways are often carried over the track at an absurd expense, while the principal dÉpÔts are made to cost thrice what they should, I still cannot account for the great outlay on Irish railroads. They would have been built at one-half the cost in the States, where the wages of labor are thrice as much as here: who pockets the difference? Of course, there is stealing in the assessment of land damages; but so there is everywhere. When I was in Galway, a case was tried in which a proprietor, whose bog was crossed by the Midland Railroad, sued the company for more than the Appraisers had awarded him, and it was proved on the trial that his bog, utterly worthless before, had been partially drained and considerably increased in value by the railroad. There seems to be no conscience in exacting damages of those who invest their money, often most reluctantly, in railroads, of which the main benefits are universal. In Ireland they have palpably and greatly benefited every class but the stockholders, and these they have well nigh ruined.

There are fewer remains of dwellings recently "cleared" and thrown down in the South than in the West of Ireland; though they are not unknown here; but I saw no new ones going up, save in immediate connection with the Railroads, in either section. If Government, Society and Ideas are to remain as they have been, the country may be considered absolutely finished, with nothing more to do but decay. I trust, however, that a new leaf is about to be turned over; still, it is mournful to pass through so fine a country and see how the hand of death has transfixed it. Even Limerick, at the head of ship navigation on the glorious estuary of the Shannon, with steamboat navigation through the heart of this populous kingdom for sixty or eighty miles above it, shows scarcely a recent building except the Railroad DÉpÔt and the Union Poor-House, while its general aspect is that of stagnation, decline and decay. The smaller towns between it and Dublin have a like gloomy appearance—Kildare, with with its deserted "Curragh" and its towering ruins, looking most dreary of all. Happy is the Irishman who, in a new land and amid the activities and hopes which it inspires, is spared the daily contemplation of his country's ruin.

And yet there are brighter shades to the picture. Nature, ever buoyant and imperative, does her best to remedy the ills created by "Man's inhumanity to Man." The South of Ireland seems far better wooded than either the North or West, and thrifty young forests and tree plantations soften the gloom which unroofed and ruinous cabins would naturally suggest. Though the Railroad runs wholly through a tame, dull level sweeping ranges of hills appear at intervals on either side, exhibiting a lovely alternation of cultivation, grass and forest, to the delighted traveler. The Hay crop is badly saved so far, and some that has been cut several days is still under the weather, while a good deal, though long ripe, remains uncut; the Wheat looks to me thin and uneven; Oats (the principal grain here) are short and generally poor; but I never saw the Potato more luxuriant or promising, and the area covered with this noble root is most extensive. The poor have a fashion of planting in beds three to six feet wide, with narrow alleys between; which, though involving extra labor, must insure a large yield, and presents a most luxuriant appearance. Little Rye was sown, but that little is very good; Barley is suffering from the stormy weather, but is quite thrifty. Yet there is much arable land either wholly neglected or only yielding a little grass, while I perceive even less bog undergoing reclamation than in the West. I did not anticipate a tour of pleasure through Ireland, but the reality is more painful than I anticipated. Of all I have seen at work in the fields to-day, cutting and carrying turf, hoeing potatoes, shaking out Hay, &c., at least one-third were women. If I could believe that their fathers and husbands were in America, clearing lands and erecting cabins for their future homes, I should not regret this. But the probability is that only a few of them are there or hopefully employed anywhere, while hundreds of neglected, weedy, unpromising patches of cultivation show that, narrow as the holdings mainly are, they are yet often unskillfully cultivated. The end of this is of course ejectment, whence the next stage is the Union Work-House. Alas! unhappy Ireland!