  WE witnessed at the railway station, on our arrival at Galway, a most painful and touching scene,—the departure of some emigrants, and their last separation, here on earth, from dear relations and friends. The train was about to start, and the platform was crowded with men, women, and children, pressing round to take a last fond look. Ever and anon, a mother or a sister would force a way into the carriages, flinging her arms around her beloved, only to be separated by a superior strength, and parting from them with such looks of misery as disturbed the soul with pity. And then, for the first time, we heard the wild Irish “cry,” beginning with a low, plaintive wail, and gradually rising in its tone of intense sorrow, until “Lamentis, gemituque et fÆmineo ululatu Tecta fremunt.” Nor was this great grief simulated, as by hired keeners at a wake, the mulieres proficae of the Irish Feralia, but came gushing with its waters of bitterness from the full fountain of those loving hearts. There were faces there no actor could assume—faces which would have immortalised the painter who could have traced them truly, but were beyond the compass of art. Two, especially, I shall never forget. A youth of eighteen or nineteen, who had a cheerful word and pleasant smile for all, though you could see the while, in his white cheek and quivering lip, how grief was gnawing his brave Spartan heart (Ah, “What a noble thing it is To suffer and be strong!”) and the other, an elderly man, who stood somewhat aloof from the rest, with his arms folded, and his head bent, motionless, speechless, with a face on which despair had written, I shall smile no more until I welcome death! I thought of those beautiful lines which begin, “Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not More grief than ye can weep for. That is well;” 1 1 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. and I thought, also, what great hearts beat under coats of frieze, and how bounden we are, with all our might, to avert from them these overwhelming sorrows, or, at the least, and if fall they must, to prove our sympathy as best we can. Many of the emigrants had bunches of wild flowers and heather, and one of them a shamrock in a broken flowerpot, as memorials of dear ould Ireland. Nor does this fond love of home and kindred decline in a distant land; no less a sum than 7,520,000 L. having been sent from America to Ireland, in the years 1848 to 1854, inclusive, according to the statement of the Emigration Commissioners. It was a strange recollection during this scene of sorrow, (and how strangely our thoughts will sometimes set themselves at variance with what is passing before us!) that, all the while, the Great Jig was going on at Leenane, and the fiddlers fiddling, and the hundred and fifty couple footing it, right merrily! Well, “Let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must laugh, And some must weep— So runs the world away!” And I, accordingly, having sorrowed, and that heartily, with the poor emigrants and their friends, shall venture to refresh myself, and, I hope, my readers, with a small historical incident, suggested to my memory by the wild Irish cry. When Richard de Clare, surnamed Strongbow, invaded Ireland in 1171, one of his sons was so exceedingly astonished at the awful howlings, which the enemy raised, by way of overture to the fight, that he became prematurely “tired of war's alarms,” and set forth without loss of time in search of more peaceful scenes;—colloquially speaking, he cut and run. But hearing, soon afterwards, that the Governor had silenced these disagreeable vocalists, and that the conquerors were having no end of fun, Master Strongbow returned to the bosom of his family—where he must have been inexpressibly surprised and disgusted at the abrupt and ungentlemanly behaviour of Papa, who no sooner caught sight of him, than he rushed at him, and—cut him in two. 1 1 Moore's History of Ireland, vol. ii., p. 290. We left Galway at four p.m., and reached Athlone in a couple of hours. If the Widow Malone, och hone, still lives in the town of Athlone, och hone, I do not admire her choice of residence, for its aspect is cold and cheerless. So at least it appeared, as we saw it, on a day that was dark, and dull, and dreary, with rain. We read in “Wanleys Wonders”(one of the most carefully-collated and painstaking books of lies extant) that the inhabitants of Catona were wont to make their king swear, at his coronation, that it should not rain immoderately, in any part of his dominions, so long as he remained on the throne; and one sighs for a similar dynasty in Ireland, (if the promise was really fulfilled), where that ancient monarch, “King O'Neill, of the Showers,” seems still perpetually to reign. So the streets were looking their narrowest and dingiest, and the Castle and Barracks their greyest and grimmest, as we saw them from under our umbrellas; and we were glad to return to Mr. Rourke's comfortable hotel, where papered walls and carpeted floors, and practicable windows, and duplicate towels, again welcomed us to the lap of luxury. But I felt little disposition to sit down in it, mourning for Connamara, gazing sadly through the windows of our coffee-room, and esteeming the Post-office opposite but a poor substitute for the great hills of Bina Beola, and the lakes to be very feebly represented by Mr. Pym's establishment for the diffusion of Dublin ales. Nor did sweet solace come, until we beheld once more—a real beef-steak. Frank's eyes, in their normal state of a mild, benevolent blue, glowed with a fiery greed; and I do not suppose that six Van Amburghs could have taken away our food with hot irons. After dinner we communicated to each other the little we knew with regard to the old town of Athlone:—how that—the Shannon, which flows through it, being here fordable,—it had always been a place of great military importance; how that William III. had, in the first instance, failed to take it,—or rather to receive it, 1 as he would have said, with the exquisite humour, for which he was remarkable,—and lost for a time that amiability of temper, which, according to the historian, 2 was so conspicuous in time of war; how that Ginkel, his General, (why does not history salute him by his more euphonious designation as first Earl of Athlone?) had much better luck next time, to wit, on the 1st of July, 1691, when, differing in opinion with the supercilious Frenchman, St. Ruth, who declared the thing to be impossible, even after it was done, he boldly crossed the river, attacked, and took the place. 1 His motto was, “Recepi non rapui,” which Swift happily translated, “the receiver is as bad as the thief.” 2 Smollett, who says, “His conversation was dry, and his manners disgusting, except in battle!”—Hume Continued, vol. i., p. 442. Here, feebly murmuring something about “the new bridge, which spans the noble stream, being a handsome structure,” we came to a decided check, Frank making a cast by ringing the bell, and requesting the waiter to “bring in a large dish of startling incidents, connected with the history of Athlone,”—an order, which seemed to amuse three good-looking priests, (en route for a Consecration at Ballinasloe, to be presided over by Cardinal Wiseman), and who were discussing, (and why not?—I'm not the man, at all events, to write and tell the Pope,) a small decanter of whiskey. The Shannon is a glorious river, broad and deep, and brimming over, extending, from source to sea, a distance of two hundred miles, and “making its waves a blessing as they flow” to ten Irish counties. I should think that hay for the universe might be grown upon its teeming banks, and we saw a goodly quantity studding the fields with those (to us) quaint-looking tumuli, which, like the “hobbledehoy, neither man nor boy,” are too large for haycocks, and too small for stacks. Six miles from Athlone, we pass the Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise, (once, as its name signifies, the Eton of Ireland, “the school of the sons of the nobles,”) by whom despoiled and desecrated we English need not pause to inquire; and close to these a brace of those famous Round Towers, which have so perplexed the archaeological world, and which, according to Frank, were, “most probably Lighthouses, which had come ashore at night for a spree, and had forgotten the way back again.” The scenery, which at first is flat and uninteresting, except to an agricultural eye, increases in attraction, as you progress towards Limerick, and is exceedingly beautiful about Lough Derg. There are delightful residences on either side, of which we admired particularly Portumna, my Lord Clanricarde's 1 and a place called Derry. The view from the upper windows of this latter home must be “a sight to make an old man young.” The mountains, inclosed and cultivated, have a tame unnatural look, as though they had been brought here from Connamara, and been broken to carry corn; and they wear a strange uncomfortable aspect, like some Cherokee Chief in the silk stockings and elegant attire of our Court. 1 Would that his motto were the watchword of every Irishmen:—“Un g foy, ung roy, ung loy!”
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