The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-10-19 00:00:00

MR. LANDOR'S SECOND LETTER,

IN ANSWER TO THE ABOVE.
(Front the Dublin Evening Mail.)
While in the act (as will be seen elsewhere) of comment-
ing on Mr. O'Connell's poetical effusion, we received the
following letter, bearing the signature of Walter Savage
Landor. Not being acquainted with Mr. Landor's hand-
writing, wa cannot vouch for its authenticity. it the letter
be genuine—and from its style it appears to be so—we can
assure Mr. Landor that, in selecting the Evening Mail as a
vehicle of his views, he has secured them a very extensive
circulation among men able to appreciate both him and the
man he writes to
"TO DANIEL O'CONNEL ESQ.
" S I 11,—We are deeply indebted to you for protecting us
from the Atlantic. I make no doubt that Snowden and the
Grampians would have been swamped long since but for the
shelter they derive from the mountains of your neighbour-
hood. You are indeed in the front of the battle when it
blows from the smith-west, but an easterly gale reverses the
obligation, and lays your constituents of Dublin under great
compliments to the Earl of Scarborough. I admit that wes-
terly and southerly winds are, however, the more prevalent
in these latitudes, so that the balance of obligation is still
due to Bolus head. But whether we should make our ac-
knowledgments to that extremity of Iveragh itself, or to the
Provost and Fellows of Trinity College, who own it, or to
you, who glorify it, or, finally, to those small cattle, the Kerry
cows, who are, after all, better acquainted with the matter
than any of us, is a question which will no doubt receive the
consideration it deserves when the British people become
duly sensible of the many obligations your coast has laid I
them under. For my own part, am quite ready to kiss the
holy stone of Killiguaore, which you see from your parlour
window, in consideration of self and country, so long pre-
served from death by drowning; for, from my childhood,
never could abide the idea of a watery grave. And indeed
it requires mountains to oppose waves mountain-high. We
have no, waves on the coast of Britain—'tis only a ripple from
Land's End, and to where—
" The moaning Mull of sweet Cantyre
On Caithness' rocky strand,
Breaks the long swell that at the Pole began."
" 'Tis a mere ripple, that plays sportingly round the painted
sides of our line of battle ships, while thirty-six-pound car-
ronades and long twenty-tours look out in open-mouthed
admiration to see how the jolly-boat rocks! It is, indeed,
impossible for a Briton to have any notion of the sea—any
idea of the sights that await those who go down to the great
deep in ships—till he has witnessed the surf breaking on the
beach of Ballinaskelligs bay, and beheld the gallant Corragh
straining its wicker ribs and sides of sheep-skin against the
blue, impending, city-wasting, steeple-swallowing, roaring,
soaring, battering, tattering. Irish lump of a mountain billow,
that is presently :knocked all to joup' on that sublime, stern,
soul-awakening, storm.controuling, Britain-fencing, Kerry-
cow-grazing, Irish lump of a conglomerate head-land fifty
feet high! But, cease rude sou-wester ! the moon has
arisen—

Noe erat et ecelo fulgebat luna sereno
Inter minora sidera—
Cum tu—

but I will not here say anything about the oath—the moon is
up; the watch-tower dimly burns—and you invite me to
wander with you along the shingle, We have no such moon
as this in England. You Irish far excel us in your moon-
shine, especially on water. Our own moon after a rainy morn
is no more than green cheese. I give it up to you, Mr. O'Con-
nell. I carnot rival you either in head-land or head-piece.
In the turgid hubbub of breakers at my door, and in words
rushing oU:their rubject like surge urging surge on a lee-shore,
I confess myself fat your inferior. Like every other versifier
I have sung the moon, crescent and on the wane, the harvest
moon also, and a good deal about starlight, when the moon
was not there; but I do not aspire to be an auept in aught
relating to that hazy and uncertain medium, where solid
interests ale to be discussed with clearness and sobriety, by
honest men doing. what they can for the good of their fellow-
creatures . so I give up the moonshine in the bargin—it will
be ‘rood Irish make-weight. And now let me alone for having
so far followed by comingin of raillery which you have been
pleased to open, by directly, without moon or moun-
tain. to the point in issue.
" I told you it was idle to attempt the reconstruction of an
Irish legislative assembly. Why? Because Irish legislative