. Highways and byways in Donegal and Antrim; . ack of the inn Forster waits forus and is kindly received. The purpose of the hotel was in those days more evidentthan it is now. It was to make an oasis in what Carlyle called,rightly enough, the desolate savagery round it; the farmattached to it was to show what could be done with the samesort of land as any one else had ; it was to be a kind of standardof human civilisation. Incidentally also it was no doubtmeant to make tourists a possible source of revenue, andshame the other inns of the country into cleanliness andcomfort. All these things i
. Highways and byways in Donegal and Antrim; . ack of the inn Forster waits forus and is kindly received. The purpose of the hotel was in those days more evidentthan it is now. It was to make an oasis in what Carlyle called,rightly enough, the desolate savagery round it; the farmattached to it was to show what could be done with the samesort of land as any one else had ; it was to be a kind of standardof human civilisation. Incidentally also it was no doubtmeant to make tourists a possible source of revenue, andshame the other inns of the country into cleanliness andcomfort. All these things it has done to some extent, andnaturally the oasis is no longer so conspicuously an oasis. It is no longer necessary to teach the folk of that countrythat it is better to put harness on a pony than yoke him to aharrow by the tail, which was their primitive method. But thedesolation and savagery were marked enough when Carlylewent out to spy with keen unsparing vision upon the nakednessof the land. He writes ; On the whole I had to repeat often. 14* CAULYLKS JUDGMENT CHAP. to Lord G. what I said yesterday, to which he could notrefuse essential consent. It is the largest attempt at benevolenceand beneficence on the modern system (the emancipation, allfor liberty, abolition of capital punishment, roast goose atChristmas system) ever seen by me or like tc be seen; alas, howcan it prosper, except to the soul of the noble man himselfwho earnestly tries it and works at it, making himself a slave*to it these seventeen years ? Go now and look at Bunbeg, which Carlyle saw, a villageperhaps of 300 or more, scattered distractedly among thecrags, and judge between the man who denounced idleness,ignorance, slavish superstition, and the rest so eloquently, andthe man who peaceably tried his philanthropic store founded to supply articles, then not purchas-able within twenty miles, found soon enough the prac-tical shopkeeper, who was still desiderated when Carlyle sawit; no minera
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