pathisers was one of the funniest I ever read. Item, there were two photographs of the Venerable Archbishop M'Hale; a moiré antique gent's vest; a piece of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's coffin; an Irish MS.; a few numbers of "Punch;" several Ninety-eight pikes and shillelaghs; a bog-oak négligé; a jar of whisky that had never paid duty-by cock and pye, it would have to pay duty, and a swingeing excise too, to the U.S. Government!-the stone on which Sarsfield signed the violated treaty; a doll dressed to represent a Tipperary man's " dark-eyed Mary;" a sod from the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone; a pair of lady's boots worked with a '98 pike; a portrait of Emmett, "in one of his pensive moods;" a Scottish claymore, taken at Wexford; a watch-pocket, "worked by a lady who hopes it will be worn next to a manly heart;" "A Bird's-eye view of the Protestant Reformation;" a pair of pink cork-soled slippers; a gross of pins, manufactured expressly for the fair; a portrait of St. Patrick; a crowbar, used by the Crowbar Brigade in '46-7; and a "curious bone, discovered on the island of Inchidonig." Next to the "cook's drawer" of Thomas Hood, the Fenian collection must have been about the queerest omnium gatherum ever brought together. Now, I don't think these Fenians will do much harm to the Saxon domination, or that the majority of the Celts who come to this country trouble themselves much more about the emancipation of the Green Isle from British rule, than the great body of the Teutons trouble themselves about German unity or the creation of a Federal fleet. Patriotism and love of country are--if the whole truth must out-only questions of

nomenclature.

The supremely governing power in the

human mind is selfishness, and nine hundred and ninetynine patriots out of a thousand love that country the best where they can make the most money, and do the most harm to those whom they hate.

CHAPTER XV.

DEMOCRACY AND THE DUSTBIN.

I HAVE Somewhere seen it remarked that Ireland would be a very nice country if they would only sweep it out, and make the beds about once a fortnight. So, likewise, would New York be one of the most magnificent cities in the world, if the authorities would only take the trouble to put its streets in some kind of decent order. It may without exaggeration be said that, with the exception of Broadway and Fifth Avenue-and they even are not wholly immaculatethere is no single thoroughfare in New York which does not most strongly and offensively remind the foreigner equally of Seven Dials, London, the Coomb in Dublin, and the Judegasse in Frankfort-on-the-Maine. This is surely not a political question. I may bring forward the expediency of drainage and the unsightliness of openly-displayed offal without becoming amenable to the charge of libelling the Americans and wilfully misrepresenting their institutions. My strictures are addressed simply to "whom they may concern," for I am not aware at whose door precisely the responsibility of the Empire City's sanitary shortcomings may lie. I merely argue on what my own eyes and nose have taught me at every hour of the day and night. There

is, I suppose, some kind of "Edility" here. There is a mayor; I have been introduced to him, and a very worthy soul he seemed to be. There is also, I presume, a board of aldermen, to assist Mr. Godfrey Gunther in his municipal duties. There is, I know, a board of councilmen. There are also, I should imagine, paving and lighting boards, district surveyors under Building Acts, and commissioners of police, nuisances, markets, and health. It is singular, if this city of over a million souls be indeed provided with all these "Ediles," that the streets should be in so very disgraceful a state. They cannot, it is true, be termed dirty in the active or moist signification of the term. Dirty is not precisely the word—they are more and less than dirty. In summer time there is scarcely any mud in New York, for the reason that the streets are rarely if ever watered, that it seldom rains, and that the power of the sun is so tremendous that any deposit of liquid formed on the roadway is almost instantaneously dried up to an impalpable powder, and in the form of dust careers from north to south, and from east to west, in wild simooms, or wafts itself down your throat, and settles on your lungs, and chokes up the pores of your skin. Mr. Mechi would not do much with his liquid-manure process on the island of Manhattan. The sun would so fry and dry him up as speedily to drive him to desperation. But dry dirt may become as intolerable as wet. The uncleanliness of New York is best expressed by a word inelegant in itself, but suggestive to all observant housewives of a very pregnant meaning-that of "Muck." The inhabitants of every street, with the two exceptions I have named, seem to

revel in a perpetual licence to shoot rubbish wherever they like. Muck, garbage, offal meet the eye at every turn. In front of the nicest houses you see barrels full of kag-mag sweltering in the sun. If an Irish "help" has a pail of slops which weighs heavy on her mind, she comes to the brink of the kerb and empties the pail into the gutter. The best streets wear an aspect of incurable untidiness. Nearly all the washing seems to be done at home, and groves of underlinen compete with the Stars and Stripes of the National Banner for the honour of fluttering in the breeze. In consideration of the sultriness of the weather, the natives are much given to sitting on their doorsteps; whilst the attire of the industrial class of the female population is, to use the mildest term, slatternly; and their children are, as a rule, destitute of shoes and stockings. The cotton "uglies" worn by these barefooted young patriots to shield them from the sun, give them an indescribably savage and Bosjesman-like aspect; nor are the pastimes in which they indulge of a nature to awaken confidence in the mind of the passing stranger. At him they hurl, by way of salute, the pretty but spiky clam-shell. For him they lay the artfully-devised pitfall, made of brickbats and faggots of kindling-wood, and, should he chance to tumble over it, yell with derisive delight; or round him they slowly circle, while, to measured tread and guttural strain, they intone a hideous lied, in bastard German, beginning "Johnny Schmoker, Johnny Schmoker, Ich kann spielen: Mein toodlesack, mein bimbom," and so forth; the whole winding up with an unearthly whoop, supposed to represent the fanfare of