CHAPTER XXIV .-- Thoughts on Our Country and Our Countrymen.
-- Dora and Her Lover.
The state of the country, at this period of our narrative, was full of gloom and depression.

Spring had now set in, and the numbers of our independent and most industrious countrymen that flocked towards our great seaports were reckoned by many thousands; and this had been the case for many a season previously.

That something was wrong, and that something is wrong in the country must, alas! be evident from the myriad's who, whilst they have the means in their hands, are anxious to get out of it as fast as they can.

And yet there is not a country in the world, a population so affectionately attached to the soil--to the place of their birth--as the Irish.

In fact, the love of their native fields, their green meadows, the dark mountains, and the glorious torrents that gush from them, is a passion of which they have in foreign lands been often known to die.