So fayre a creature in your town before?
Her goodlie eyes, like sapphyres shining bright;
Her forehead, ivory white;
Her lips like cherries, charming men to byte.'

Now we turned into the old Mardyke Walk, a rus in urbe, an avenue a
mile long lined with noble elm-trees; forsaken now as a fashionable
promenade for the Marina, but still beautiful and still beloved,
though frequented chiefly by nurse-maids and children. Such babies
and such children, of all classes and conditions--so jolly, smiling,
dimpled, curly-headed; such joyous disregard of rags and dirt; such
kindness one to the other in the little groups, where a child of ten
would be giving an anxious eye to four or five brothers and sisters,
and mothering a contented baby in arms as well.

Our driver, though very loquacious, was not quite intelligible. He
pronounced the simple phrase 'St. Patrick's Street' in a way to
astonish the traveller; it would seem impossible to crowd as many
h's into three words, and to wrap each in flannel, as he succeeded
in doing. He seemed pleased with our admiration of the babies, and
said that Irish children did be very fat and strong and hearty; that
they were the very best soldiers the Queen had, God kape her! They
could stand anny hardship and anny climate, for they were not
brought up soft, like the English. He also said that, fine as all
Irish children undoubtedly were, Cork produced the flower of them
all, and the finest women and the finest men; backing his opinion
with an Homeric vaunt which Francesca took down on the spot:-

'I'd back one man from Corkshire
To bate ten more from Yorkshire: