The daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1848-1851, 1851-11-27

Their song is love and liberty.
Some airy songster's feathered shape,
Oh! could my love and assume,
The ring .dove's glossy neck he take, /
And the modest turtle's plume,
OH then we'd sport from bush 10 tree.
Love fill our throats,
Love swell our notes,
Our song be love and liberty.
--------
~ The Story Of Ireland.
The moorand was wide, level and black, black
night if you could suppose night condensed on
the surface of the earth, and that you could tread
solid darkness in the mdst of day. The day it.
self was indeed fast dropping into night, although
i was dresry and gloomy at the best for it was
Novern Der day. The moor, for miles around was
treeless and houseess; devoid Of vegetation, ex.
cept heather which clad with its gloomy rieze coat
the shivering landscape. At q distance you could
discern, through the misty atmosphere the outline
OF mountains apparently as bare and stony this
wilderness, which they bounded. There were no
fields, no hedgerows, no marks OF the hand OF man,
except the nakedness itself, which the work Of
man, iu past ages; when period after period, he
had tramped over the with fire and sword, and
left all that could not fly before him, either ashes to
be scattered by the savage winds, stems Of trees,
and carcases Of men trodden into the swampy earth
As the Roman historian said OF other oestroyers,
They creaed solitude, and called it peace" That
all this the work of man, and not Of Nature
any spot of this huge and howlifg wilderness
v,
surface. In its bosom lay thousands of ancient
oaks and pines, black as ebony; which told, by the
irgigantic bulk, that forests must have once
listed on this spot, as rich as the scene was now
bleak. Nobler things than trees lay buried there
bat were for the most part, resolved into the sub
stance of the inkv earth. The dwellings Of men
had lett few Traces for they had been con-
sumed in flames; and the hearts that had loved,
and suffered and pershed beneath the hand Of vio-
lence and insult, were no longer human hearts, but
IL. II s. IL AZ
place, and nsked when his eyes were unbandaged
where he was, he would say" Ireland
Hewould want no clue TO the identity of the
place, bur the scene before him. There no heath
like an Irish heath. There is no desolaion like an
Irish desolatioD. Where Nature herself has spread
the expanse of a solitude, cheerful solitude
The air flows over it lovingly the flowers nod and
dance in gladness; the soil breathes up spirit of
wild fragrance, which communicates a buoyant
sensation to the hearE You feel that you tread
on ground where the peace of God, and not the
"peace" of man created in the merciless hurricane
of war, has sojourned; where the sun shone on
creatures sporting ground or on tree, as the
Divine Goodness of the Universe meant them TO
sport; where the hunter disturbed alone the en-
joyment of the lower animals by his own bolsterOus
joy; where the traveller sung he went over it,
because-he felt spring of inexpressible music in
his heart; where the weary wayfarer sat beneath
hush and blessed God, though his limbs ached
with travel, ana his goal was far of In God'i
desert dwells gladness in mans deserts, death
melancholy smites you as You enter them There
is darkness from the past tina, enveops youI
trt, and The means and signs OF ten times perpe
trated misery seem still 10 live in the very winds
One shallow and widely-spread stream strugge LED
through the moor; sometimes between masses o
gray stone. Sedges and the white headed cotton
rush whistled OIL its margin, and on sland-hk'
eYpanses that here and there above the surfac,
Of its middle course.
l have said that there was no sign OF life but OF
one oil those gray stones stood heron watching 10
prey. He had remained straight rigid and motion
less for hours. Probably his appetite was appease'
by his days success among the trout OF that dar
red brown stream, which colored by the pea
from which it oozed. When he did move h
sprung up at once, stretched his broad wings, and
silent as the scene around him, made a circuit il
the air; rising higher as he went, with slow an
solemn flight He had been startled by sound
There was lite in the desert now. Two horseme
came gallopng along highway not far distan
and the heron, continuing his grave gyrations, sur
n veyed them as he went. Had they been ira 'eler
: over plain h India, an Australian waste, or tn
4 Pampas OF South America, they could not hav
al been srmmer OF aspect, or more thoroughly chi
IL dren Of the wild. They were Irish from head to foo
mr., They mounted two spare, but by n
D means clumsy horses. The creatures had mark
~ of blood and breed that had been introduced
the English to the country. They could claim,
they knew it, lineage of Arabia. The one was
poor bay, the other, and lesser, was black b.
both were lean as death, haggard as famine The
were wet with the speed with which they ha
been hurried along. The soil of the damp moo
land, of the field in which, during the day, the
had probably been drawing the peasants cart, sti
smeared their bodies, and their names flew as wilt
ly and untrimmed as the sedge or the cotton rus
on the wastes through which they careere
Their riders, welding each heavy stick instes
OF riding whip. which they applied ever and ane
to the shoulders f1anks Of their smoking an
mails, were mounted on their bare backs, and guide
them by halter, instead of bride. They were
couple of the short freze. coated, knee breech
and gray stocking fellows who plentiful {
Irish soil as potatoes. From beneath their ma
w-brimmed old, weather beaten hats, streams
hair as unkemped their horses Names IT
Celtic physiguomy was distinctly marked-t
small and somewhat upturned nose, the black ii
Of skin, the eye, now looking gray, now blacl
the freckled cheek and sandy hair. Beard al
whskers covered half the face, and the sho
square sfoudered bodies were bent forward wi
eager impatence, as they thumped and kick
along their horses, muttering curses as they wei
The heron, sailing on broad and seemingly sic
vans, sill kept them in view. Anon, they reach
a part of the moorland where traces of human
bor were visible. Black piles of peat stood on I
solitary ground, ready, after summers cutti
and drying. Presently, patches of cultivation p
sented themselves; plots OF ground raised on bt
each a few feet wide, with intervening trenches
carry off the boggy water, where potatoes, b
grown, and small fields where grew more stalks
ragwort than grass enclosed by banks cast up q
tipped here and there with briar or a stone.
was the husbandry Of misery and indgence. 1
ground had already been freshly manured by 9
weeds, but the vlllage-where was it Botc
of burnt ground, scorched heaps Of rubbish, :
fragments OF blackened walls, alone were vis
Garden plots were rodden down, and their
bushes rent up, or hung with tatters OF rags.
two horsemen as they hurried by with gloomy
ages, uttered more than a single word
"Evicton!"
Further on, the ground heaved itself into {
otic confusion. stony heaps sweed up here
there, naked, black, and barren: the huge h
OF the earth proruded themselves through
shin' Shattered rocks arose, sprinkled with b
ss' and smoke curied up from what looked
mere heaps OF rubbish but which were III rel
rnsted in the wind their roofs (which ,
sunk by places, As if falling in,) and pits Of +
ing fltn seemed placed exactly to prevent acce
some OF the low doors; while, to others,
stepping ston.s made that access only poss
Here the ~" riders stopped, and hurriedly /