We must now request our reader to accompany us to the little town of Mohill; not that there is anything attractive in the place to repay him for the trouble of going there.

Mohill is a small country town, standing¹ on no high road, nor on any thoroughfare from the metropolis²; and therefore it owes to itself whatever importance it may possess — and, in truth, that is not much. It is, or, at any rate, was, at the time of which we are writing, the picture of an impoverished⁴ town — the property of a non-resident landlord — destitute⁵ of anything to give it interest or prosperity — without business, without trade, and without society. The idea that would strike one on entering it was chiefly this: “Why was it a town at all? — why were there, on that spot, so many houses congregated⁶, called Mohill? — what was the inducement to people to come and live there? — Why didn’t they go to Longford, to Cavan, to Carrick, to Dublin — anywhere rather than there, when they were going to settle themselves?” This is a question which proposes itself at the sight of many Irish towns; they look so poor, so destitute of advantage, so unfriended. Mohill is by no means the only town in the west of Ireland, that strikes one as being there without a cause.

It is built on the side of a steep hill, and one part of the town seems constantly threatening the destruction of the other. Every now and again, down each side of the hill, there is a slated⁷ house, but they are few and far between; and the long spaces intervening are filled with the most miserable⁸ descriptions of cabins — hovels without chimneys, windows, door, or signs of humanity, except the children playing on the collected filth⁹ in front of them. The very scraughs of which the roofs are composed are

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