HOPE FOR IRELAND.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2135, 16 March 1886, Page 2

HOPE FOR IRELAND.

An* Irish home ! Novelists of a past generation -MUs Kdgcwoith, Lever, ami Lover -have painted it for English annibemciit, pity, or contempt. And more tluiii one modern w liter— notably the author of "Hognn, M P."— has (lone the mine, urging the wondeiful power of liish wit and liish pathos to make error " funny," and evoke, sympathy, not timely with irOiio'.v but wit!) sin. AH may lie true enough— the recklessness and th- poveity. the cutwaid gaudiness and inward sijnalor. But is Irulaud the onl> counti} whore i-mMs that miserable habit of putting the best on the ouUidc, and living for .show, not icnlity? whore everything n allowed, morally and physically, to go to rack and ruin for want of that " Btieh in time 1 ' which "eaves nine" — that systematic order, economy, and punctuality which form the very keystone ot .ill home honor and home happiue«s ? I have seen in wealthy England and prudent Scotland homes which iinswend to this wi etched picture, and in Ireland homes just the contiaiy. Not rich, it is true— nobody is nch in Ireland— but where a noble economy makes all needful comforts attainable, where to dress simply and tiavel second-class is a thing nu'thcr to shiink fiom nor be ashamed of, while to spend tune, thought, and all available money upon the poor and needy, is a sclf-sucnlicc go natural that none regard it as such ; where the heads of the household are its guides and helpers as well as its rulers, and the servants would almost die for 'the family ;' whcie Catholic and Protestant live together m harmony, the landlord going among his tenants, needing no protection fiom policemen or revolver, and the mistress taking her rounds of charity at any hour of tho day or night a3 safe aud as honoured as any Catholic nun. lam piinting no ideal pictuie. Such homes exist, and while they do, there is hope for poor old Ireland.—The English Illustrated Magazine.