“The house in question was considerably dilapidated.  Its doors were not visible, and its windows had all been shivered.  Its smokeless chimneys, its cold and desolate appearance, together with the still more ruinous condition of the outhouses, added to the utter silence which prevailed about it, and the absence of every symptom of life and motion—­all told a tale which has left many a bloody moral to the country.  The slaps, gates, and enclosures were down—­the hedges broken or cut away—­the fences trampled on and levelled to the earth—­and nothing seemed to thrive—­for the garden was overrun with them—­but the rank weeds already alluded to, as those which love to trace the footsteps of ruin and desolation, in order to show, as it were, what they leave behind them.  As we advanced, other and more startling proofs of M’Clutchy came in our way—­proofs which did not consist of ruined houses, desolate villages, or roofless-cottages—­but of those unfortunate persons, whose simple circle of domestic life—­whose little cares, and struggles, and sorrows, and affections, formed the whole round of their humble existence, and its enjoyments, as given them by Almighty God himself.  All these, however, like the feelings and affections of the manacled slave, were as completely overlooked by those who turned them adrift, as if in possessing such feelings, they had invaded a right which belonged only to their betters, and which,the same betters, by the way, seldom exercise either in such strength or purity as those whom they despise and oppress.  Aged men we met, bent, with years, and weighed down still more by that houseless sorrow, which is found accompanying them along the highways of life:—­through its rugged solitudes and its dreariest paths—­in the storm and in the tempest—­wherever they go—­in want, nakedness, and destitution—­still at their side is that houseless sorrow—­pouring into their memories and their hearts the conviction, which is most terrible to old age, that it has no home here but the grave—­no pillow on which to forget its cares but the dust.  The sight of these wretched old men, turned out from, the little holdings that sheltered their helplessness, to beg a morsel, through utter charity, in the decrepitude of life, was enough to make a man wish that he had never been born to witness such a wanton abuse of that power which was entrusted to man for the purpose of diffusing happiness instead of misery.  All these were known to Raymond, who, as far as he could, gave me their brief and unfortunate history.  That which showed us, however, the heartless evils of the-clearance system in its immediate operation upon the poorer classes, was the groups of squalid females who traversed the country, accompanied by their pale and sickly looking children, all in a state of mendicancy, and wofully destitute of clothing.  The system in this case being to deny their husbands employment upon the property, in order to drive them, by the strong scourge of necessity, off it, the poor