Weekly National Intelligencer

GOOD HOPE FOR IRELAND.

We are sure that not less than ninety-nine hundredths of our readers will unite with us in the glow of satisfaction we experienced when the following portion of the contents of a letter from a gentleman of high respectability in Ireland to his friend in Washington were first communicated to us. That a new era should have dawned on Old Ireland—for it is no less—is a fact second to none in point of gratifying interest which has occurred in our age, at least:

"I suppose you have been to the New York Exhibition, and that it is a very beautiful show. Our Irish Exhibition has fully equalled or surpassed expectations in all ways but one, namely, that I fear it will not pay the cost of getting it together. The building covers about seven acres, or rather more, and is well filled. There are two large picture galleries, collected from various parts of Europe, and I have never seen so many good pictures in one room—I mean modern pictures—as are here displayed. It is the great feature of the Exhibition. The Irish lace and muslin work is also extremely beautiful. This is a branch of industry which had its origin in the charitable exertions of a few ladies during the famine years, prior to which there was scarcely any thing of the kind done in Ireland. So great is the change now that the last statistical report states that four hundred thousand persons in various parts of the island are more or less employed in this kind of labor, and the produce comes to several millions sterling. Some, as the mothers and elder children, are only engaged in ornamental sewing for a part of their time; the younger ones, boys as well as girls, fully employed. Teachers have been imported from Belgium and France to a model school in Dublin, where every variety of bobbin lace is now made, and from whence trained pupils are scattered over the country. So that in a few years Ireland will produce lace and frippery enough for all the world! At present the 400,000 engaged cannot supply fast enough the demand, especially since the Australian market has been added to the others. This activity of labor, together with the drain of population from emigration, has advanced the prices of every thing here, and at the same time added greatly to the comforts of the laboring poor. A rapid change for the better seems at last dawning for poor Ireland, if the politicians will only let us alone. In politics, however, we are as bad as ever."