Carrick-on-Shannon, the assize town of County Leitrim, though an assize town, is a very poor place. It consists of one long narrow, irregular street, lying along the Shannon, in which slated¹ houses and thatched cabins delightfully² relieve each other, and prevent the eye from being annoyed with sameness or monotony. The houses are mostly all shops, and even the cabins profess³ to afford “lodging and entherthainment;” so that it is to be presumed that the poverty of the place is attributable to circumstances and misfortune, and not to the idleness of the inhabitants. The prevailing⁴ feeling, however, arising in any human mind, on entering the place, would be that of compassion⁵ for the judges, barristers, attorneys, crown clerks, grand jury, long panel, witnesses, &c., who have to be crammed⁶ into this little place, and lodged⁷ and fed for five or six days, twice a year during the assizes.

There is, however, a tolerably good hotel in the place, and we at present beg to take our reader with us into the largest room therein, which was usually dignified⁹ by the name of the Ball Room. It was not, however, by any means dedicated¹⁰ solely¹¹ to the worship of Terpsichore: all the public dinners eaten in Carrick were eaten here; all the public meetings held in Carrick were held here; all the public speeches were spoken here. Here committees harangued¹³; Gallagher ventriloquised;

分享到：