measured cadence, their soft, distinct, suggestive murmurs, whilst they
spend themselves on the shore of the ever new, ever delightful, ever
enchanting Vale of Shangannah, immortalized by our Irish poet, Denis
Florence M'Carthy. But this old Obelisk itself, what is it?--What
brought it here? The tourist reads: "Last year being hard with the POOR,
the walls about these HILLS, and THIS, etc., erected by JOHN MALPAS,
Esq., June, 1742." The story of Ireland is before him; it is told in
the landscape, and the inscription, it may be expressed in two
words--Beauty and Starvation.

The famine of 1741 did not deter farmers from the culture of the potato;
on the contrary, it increased rapidly after that period, and we now find
it, for the first time, recognised as a rotation crop. They preferred to
turn their attention to improve its quality and productiveness, and to
take measures for its protection from frost, rather than to abandon its
culture. And, indeed, it was as much a matter of necessity as choice
that they did so. The potato, on a given area, supplied about four times
as much food as any other crop; and, from the limited breadth of land
then available for tillage, the population would be in continual danger
of falling short of food, unless the potato were cultivated to a large
extent. The agricultural literature of the country from 1741 until the
arrival of the celebrated traveller, Arthur Young, in Ireland, consisted
chiefly of fierce attacks upon graziers--of a continual demand for the
breaking up of grass lands into tillage--of plans for the establishment
of public granaries to sustain the people in years of bad harvests, and
of the results of experiments undertaken to improve the culture of the
potato. The writers on these subjects also frequently denounced the rich
for the wretchedness and misery to which they allowed the labouring poor
to be reduced. The author of a pamphlet, which went through several
editions, thus attacks them, in the edition of 1755:--"The want of trade