The Letters of Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland"

From Roscommon I drove to Lanesborough where Longford and Roscommon meet at a bridge across the Shannon, and where a large Catholic church stands on each side of the river. The bridge at Lanesborough, a swing bridge, substantial and elegant, the solid stone piers-all the stone work on bridge and wharves is of hewn stone-speak of preparations for a great traffic which is not there, like the warehouses of Westport.

Seeing all facilities for trade and all conveniences for trade prepared, and the utter silence over all, makes one think of enchanted places where there must come a touch of some kind to break the charm before the bustle of life awakes and "leaps forward like a cataract."

One man stood idle and solitary on the wharf at Lanesborough as if he were waiting for the sudden termination of this spell-bound still life.

My glimpse of Longford from the neighborhood of Lanesborough showed a place of wooded hills and valleys covered with crops, and with this glimpse we turned back over the plain of Roscommon. The road lay through peat bog for a good part of the way, and the mud-wall cabins were a sad sight indeed.

Empty as the country is, eviction is still going on. Many have occurred lately, and more are hanging over the people. From Roscommon to Boyle, across more than one-half the length of this long county, from Roscommon to French Park, the country is so completely emptied of inhabitants that one can drive a distance of five miles at once without seeing a human habitation except a herd's hut. The country is as empty as if William the Conqueror had marched through it.

Several persons called upon me to give me some information on the state of things in general. I also received some casual information. One gentleman of large experience from his position, a person of great intelligence and cultivation, while utterly condemning the Land League, admitted that some change in the Land Law was absolutely necessary. He instanced one case where a gentleman acquired a property by marriage and immediately set about raising the rent. Rent on one little holding was raised from L2 to L10 at one jump. In no case was it less than doubled. This landlord complains bitterly that the people under the influence of the Land League have turned against him. They used to bow and smile, and it was, "What you will, sir," and, "As you please." Now they are surly and sullen and will not salute him.

The farmer who holds a good-sized farm always wishes to extend its borders and is ready and eager to add the poor man's fields to his own. Concentration of lands into few hands, reducing small farmers into laborers, is the idea that prevails largely.

My Athleague friend, a very interesting old gentleman, after mentioning the great depopulation of Roscommon, spoke of good landlords, such as Lord Dufresne, Mr. Charles French, the O'Connor Don, Mr. Mapother; but he paused before mentioning any oppressive ones. "Would his name appear?" No. His name should not appear. "Well, for fear of getting into any trouble I will mention no names, but we find that they who purchased in the Encumbered Estates Court are the most rapacious landlords."

One gentleman, who was representing to me the discouragement given to improvement, mentioned a case where a person of means who held a little place for comfort and beauty, but lived by another pursuit than farming, sought the agent to know if he could obtain any compensation for improvements which he had made, and which had made his place one of the most beautiful in Roscommon. He wanted to be sure that he was not throwing his money away. When he sought the agent on this subject he found him on his car preparing to drive away somewhere. He listened to his tenant's question as to compensation for outlay, and then whipped up the horse and drove away without answering.

I had a call from an elderly gentleman, before I left Roscommon, who gave me his views on the question very clearly. He thought as God had ordained some to be rich and others to be poor, any agitation to better the condition of the poor was sheer flying in the face of the Almighty. Under cover of helping the poor the Land League were plotting to dismember the British Empire. There never had been peace in the country since the confiscation, and there never would be until the Roman Catholic population were removed by emigration and replaced by Protestants. The blame of the present disturbed condition of the country he laid upon four parties: First, the Government, who administered the country in a fitful manner, now petting, now coercing, while they should keep the country steadily under coercion, for alternately petting and coercing sets parties against one another more than ever. Second, landlords and agents, who rented land too high and raised the rent on the tenant's own invested improvements. Third, the priests, who could repress outrage and reveal crime if they chose to do so. Fourth, Catholic tenants who took the law into their own hands instead of patiently waiting for redress by law.

According to this gentleman, the only innocent persons in Ireland were the Protestant tenantry; so to root out the Catholics and replace them by Protestants was the only possible way to have peace in the country. Boycotting he referred to especially as a dangerous thing, which paralyzed all industry and turned the country into a place governed by the worst kind of mob law.

Another gentleman of position and experience said that a strike against paying rent led easily into a strike against paying anything at all; that society had really become disorganized. Many held back their rents, which they were well able to pay-had the money by them. The Land League had done a great deal of harm. At the same time this gentleman confirmed the Athleague gentleman's statement that rents were raised past the possibility of the tenant's paying, that eviction was cruel and persistent, the belief being that large grass farms were the only paying form of letting land. In fact, he said, he himself had evicted the tenants on his property on pain of being evicted himself. He held land, but at such a rent that if living by farming alone he would not be able to pay it.

He gave some instances of boycotting. One was that travelling in the neighboring county of Longford he had occasion to get a smith to look at his horse's shoes, and was asked for his Land League ticket. On saying he had none, the smith refused to attend to the horse's shoes. Roscommon had boycotted a Longford man who had taken willow rods to sell because he had not a Land League ticket, and a Longford smith in reprisal would not set the shoe on the horse of a Roscommon man unless he had a Land League ticket. When the gentleman explained that he had bought five hundred of those same rods from that same man the smith attended to the horse, and the boycotting was over.

I heard of other cases of boycotting. It is not by any means a new device, although it has come so prominently before the public lately.

From Roscommon I crossed country past Clara and Tullamore, across King's county into Portarlington on the borders of Queen's county. Portarlington is the centre of a beautiful country full of cultivated farms as well as shut-up and walled-in gentlemen's seats.

Walking down the principal street, I noticed a large placard fastened to a board hanging on a wall; thought it was a proclamation and stopped to read it. It was an exposition of the errors of the Catholic Church in such large type that he that runs may read it. I have some doubts whether this is the best way of convincing people of an opposite belief of their errors. I went into the shop thinking I might perhaps buy a newspaper. I fear me the mistress of the establishment, a timid, elderly woman, imagined me to be a belligerent member of the attacked church come to call her to account, for she retreated at a fast run to the kitchen from which she called an answer in the negative to my enquiry.

Returning to my abiding place, I asked the hostess if the town contained many Catholics. "Oh, dear no," she replied, "there are few Catholics. The people are nearly all Protestants." In this neighborhood the celebrated John George Adair, of Derryveigh celebrity, has a magnificent residence called Belgrove Park. He has the name of being a very wealthy man. He is not praised here, but has the reputation of being hard- hearted, exacting and merciless. I doubted a little whether it was really the same man, as they called him, irreverently enough, Jack Adair, but to convince me they immediately began repeating the verses with their burden of five hundred thousand curses on cruel John Adair, which they could repeat readily with variations.

The railway facilities are very slow and conservative in their motions. I could not get on to Limerick the same day, but had to remain over night in Portarlington.

At Limerick Junction there was another wait of two hours, and at last we steamed into Limerick. It is a large city of tall houses, large churches and high monuments. The inhabitants say it was celebrated for its tall houses five or six hundred years ago.

L.

THE CITY ON THE SHANNON.

The Shannon is a mighty river running here between low green banks. The tide comes up to Limerick and rises sometimes to the top of the sea wall. A fine flourishing busy town is Limerick with its shipping. I have discovered the post-office, found out the magnificent Redemptorist Church. Noticing this church and the swarm of other grand churches with the same emblems and the five convents as well as other buildings for different fraternities, noticing also the queer by-places where dissenting places of worship are hidden away, one concludes that they are in a Catholic city, and so they are. On Sunday found out a little Presbyterian Church hid away behind some houses and joined its handful of worshippers.

In the afternoon walked along the streets for some way and found myself all at once in what is called the English part of the town, but which looked more foreign than any place I have yet seen on my own green isle. The houses were tall, and had been grand in King Donagh O'Brien's time, I suppose. The streets were very narrow. The last week's wash, that looked as if the Shannon was further away than it is, fluttered from the broken windows of the fifth story. All the shops were open; there did not seem to be any buyers, but if there were, they might get supplied. The very old huckster women sat by their baskets of very small and very wizened apples, and infinitesimal pears that had forgotten to grow. Two women, one in a third-story window and one on the street, were exchanging strong compliments. In fact, as our cousins would say, "there was no Sunday in that English quarter worth a cent." I made my escape with a sick longing for some one to carry a gospel of good tidings of great joy in there.

Next morning I found out the English Cathedral, which is at the very border, so to speak, of that forgotten place. It stands in pretty grounds. The elderly gentleman who has the care of it, and who shows it off like a pet child, happened to be there, and took charge of me. He was determined I should conscientiously see and hear all about that church. This church was built in 1194 by Donagh O'Brien, King of Munster. It was not new even then, for King Donagh made his new church out of an old palace of his.

I followed that old man while he pointed out the relics of the old and the glories of the new, the magnificent painted windows, the velvet of the costliest that covered the altar, the carvings of price, the cushions and the carpets, and, a few steps away, the fluttering rags, the horrible poverty, the hopeless lives of the English quarter. Truly the fat and the wool are in one place, and the flock on the dark mountains in another. Outside are various stone cupboards, called vaults, where highbred dust moulders in state free from any beggarly admixture.

That old man wished to delude me up unknown steps to the battlements and up to other battlements on the top of the church tower-it was raining heavily, and the gray clouds lying on the house tops, you could hardly have seen across two streets-to see the view forsooth; then he volunteered to set the bells ringing in my honor, but I declined. He then told me of the bells-it was new to me; it may not be new to others. They were-well-taken without leave from Italy. The Italian who cast them pilgrimed over the world in search of them. Sailing up the Shannon he heard his long-lost bells, and it killed him, the joy did.

The puritan soldiers destroyed the profusion of statues that decorated this church. Noticed one simple monument to one Dan Hayes, an honest man and a lover of his country. Near this cathedral is the house where Ireton died, tall and smoky, battered and fallen into age, but very high. Its broken windows showed several poverty-stricken faces looking down on the cathedral grounds, which, of course, are kept locked. King John's castle, very strong, very tall, very grim, seems mostly composed of three great towers, but there are really seven. Inside the walls is a barrack that could lodge 400 men. Limerick is full of old memorials of present magnificence and of past and present need. The inhabitants proudly tell you that it never was conquered, not considering capitulation conquest. The city raised the first monument to O'Connell. Of course I saw it, and thought it a good likeness. There is a square of grass and trees near it, where is a monument of Spring Rice, he who, when O'Connell was sick once, a political sickness, was said to be in despair:

"Poor Spring Rice, with his phiz all gloom,

Kept noiselessly creeping about the room;

His innocent nose in anguish blowing,

Murmuring forth, 'He's going, going.'"

I did not hear the sweet bells that charmed the life out of the poor wandering Italian, still I think I have perhaps told enough about the ancient city of Limerick on the Shannon.

From Limerick up through Clare, the railway passes along by the river Fergus, a big tributary of the Shannon. A Clare man informed me that Clare returned Dan O'Connell to Parliament. He sank his voice into an emphatic whisper to inform us that Dan was the first Catholic who ever got into Parliament.

I have been taken for this one and that one since I came to Ireland, and have been amused or annoyed, as the case may be, but I am totally at a loss to know whom I resembled or was taken for in the County Clare. A decent-looking countrywoman shook hands with me, telling me she had seen me in some part of Clare a month ago, and I had never set foot into the county until to-day. "You remember me, my lady, I saw you when you stopped at --" some whispered name with an O to it. The woman's face was strangely familiar, but I was on entirely new ground.

There is enchantment in this western country. I was completely bewildered when a frieze-coated farmer told me, "That was a grand speech you made at Tuam, and true every word of it." It was a little confusing, seeing that I have never been in Tuam, or very near it at all. This old gentleman enquired coaxingly if I were going to speak at Ennis, and assured me of a grand welcome to be got up in a hurry. Then he and the farmer's wife exchanged thoughts-that "I did not want anybody to know I was in it"-in aggravating whispers as I looked steadily out of the windows to assure myself that I was I. My friend in frieze then began to draw my attention to certain landmarks, the ruins of this abbey and that castle, and the other graveyard as points of interest with which I was supposed to be familiar.

Truly this part of Clare seemed to have any amount of square castles in ruined grandeur scattered along the line of rail. We stopped at a station and saw Ennis lying below us, and O'Connell's statue rising up between us and the sky. My two friends parted from me here to my immense relief. I felt as if I were obtaining admiration on false pretences. The woman took my hand, and, with a long fond look, began to bless me in English, but her feelings compelled her to slide off into fervent Irish. The frieze-coated gentleman stood, hat in hand, and bowed and bowed, and "his life was at my service, and if I wished to pass unnoticed sure he could whisht, and good-by and God bless you." and away they went. For whom did they take me?

Clare is pretty stony. Again I saw fields from which stones had been gathered to form fences like ramparts. Again I saw fields crusted with stone like the fields of Cong, with the same waterworn appearance, but not so extensive. The little, pretty station of Cusheen seemed an oasis in a stony wilderness.

Past many a little field hemmed in with stony barricades, past many an ancient ruin, sitting in desolation, into Athenry, the ancient Ath-an- righ, the fortress of kings. It was pouring rain, it often is pouring rain. I took shelter in the hotel whose steps rise from the railway station. There, in a quaint little corner room with a broad strip of window, I settled myself to write with the light of a poor candle, and the rain fell outside. Athenry bristles with ruins.

King John has another castle here all in ruins. There is a part of a wall here and there, and the arch of a gate which has been patched up and has some fearful hovels leaning up against it. It has the ruins of an abbey and of a priory. The names of Clanricarde and De Birmingham linger among these ruins; the modern cabins, without window pane or any chimney at all, but a hole in the roof, are mixed up with the ruins also.

The well-fed maid at the hotel informed me that they were very poor. There is no work and no tillage, the land being in grass for sheep. "I do not believe any of them know what a full meal means. No one knows how they manage to live, the creatures," said the maid, comfortably. So the night and the morning passed at Athenry, and we passed on to the village of Oranmore.

LI.

GALWAY AND THE MEN OF GALWAY.

From Athenry and its ruins went to Oranmore and its ruins. The poverty of Athenry deepens into still greater poverty in Oranmore. The country is under grass, hay is the staple crop, so there being little tillage, little labor is required. They depend on chance employment to procure the foreign meal on which they live. Some depend for help to a great extent on the friends in America.

There is a new pier being built here, for an arm of the sea runs up to Oranmore. They told me that this pier was being built by the Canadian money. It will be a harbor of refuge for fishing craft and better days of work and food may yet dawn upon the West.

Behind the pier are the ruins of a large castle which belonged to the Blakes, one of the Galway tribes. It was inhabited by the last Blake who held any of the broad acres of his ancestors within the memory of the old people. I stood in the roofless upper room which had been the dancing saloon, penetrated into galleries built for defence lit only by loop holes, went down the little dark stair into the dungeon, tried to peer into the underground passage that connected with the seashore, ascended to the battlements and looked over the lonely land and explored multitudes of small rooms reached by many different flights of stone steps.

These people are largely of the Norman blood. Oh, for the time when peace and plenty, law and order shall reign here; when the peasant shall not consider law as an oppressor to be defied or evaded, an engine of oppression in the hands of the rich, but an impartial and inflexible protector of the rights of rich and poor alike!

A young priest told me here that the clergy about this place were opposed to the teachings of the Land League-did not countenance it among their people. A Catholic gentleman in Roscommon told me the same concerning the bishop and clergy of his own locality.

The tillage about Galway is careful and good, what there is of it. I saw great fields of wheat that had been cleared of stones, by generations of labor I should say. I had this fact brought to my mind by some peasants in the neighborhood of Athenry, in this way: "A man works and his family works on a bit of ground fencing it, improving it, gathering off the stones; as he improves his rent is raised; he clings to the little home; he gets evicted and disappears into the grave or the workhouse, and another takes the land at the higher rent; improves from that point; has the rent raised, till he too falls behind and is evicted; and so it goes on till the lands are fit for meadowing and grass, and the holdings are run together and the homes blotted out." Of course I do not give the man's words exactly, but I give his thoughts exactly.

Galway was something of a disappointment to me at first, it had not such a foreign look as I expected. It is a very busy town, has every appearance of being a thriving town, every one you meet walks with purpose as of one who has business to attend to. It is refreshing to see this after looking at the hopeless faces and lounging gait of the people of many places in the west. Wherever the tall chimneys rise the people have a quick step and an all-alive look.

I wandered about Galway, and to my great delight had a guide to point out what was most worth looking at. Of course I heard of the bravery of the thirteen tribes of Galway, who snapped up Galway from the O'Flaherties and assimilated themselves to the natives as more Irish than themselves. After walking about a little I did notice the arched gateways and the highly ornamented entrance doors which they concealed.

The first place of interest pointed out to me was Lynch castle. From one of the windows of this castle Warder Lynch, in 1493, hung his own son. It is said from this act the name Lynch Law arose. The Lynch family, originally Lintz, came from Lintz in Austria.

This mayor or Warder Lynch was a wealthy merchant trading with Spain. He trusted his son to go thither and purchase a cargo of wine. The young man fell into dissipation, and spent the money, buying the cargo on credit. The nephew of the Spanish merchant accompanied the ship to obtain the money, and arrange for further business. The devil tempted the young Lynch to hide his folly by committing crime. Near the Galway coast the young Spaniard was thrown overboard. All the friends of the family and his father received the young merchant after his successful voyage with great joy. The father consented to his son's marriage with his early love, the daughter of a neighbor, who gladly consented to accept the successful young merchant for his son-in-law. All went merry as a marriage bell. Just before the marriage a confessor was sent for to a sick seaman, who revealed young Lynch's crime. The Warder of Galway stood at the bed of this dying man, and heard of the villany of his beloved son. Young Lynch was arrested, tried, found guilty, and sentenced. The mother of young Lynch, having exhausted all efforts to obtain mercy for her son, flew in distraction to the Blake tribe-she was a Blake-and raised the whole clan for a rescue. When the hour of execution dawned, the castle was surrounded by the armed clan of the Blakes, demanding that the prisoner be spared for the honor of the family. The Warder addressed the crowd, entreating them to submit to the majesty of the law, but in vain. He led his son-who, when he had borne the shame, and came to feel the guilt of his deeds, had no desire to live-up the winding stair in the building to that very arched window that overlooks the street, and there, to that iron staple that is fixed in the wall, he hung him with his own hands, after embracing him, in sight of all the people. The father expected to die by the hands of the angry crowd below, but they, awed, went home at a dead march. The mother died of the shock, and the sternly just old man lived on. I looked at his house in Lombard street. Over the entrance is a skull and cross bones in relief on black marble, with this motto, which I copied,

"REMEMBER DEATH

Vanitie of vanities, and all is but vanitie."

There is a fine museum in Queen's College, Galway, which I did not see. Of course there are many things I did not see, although my eyes were on hard duty while there. I did see specimens of that most beautiful marble of Connemara. It is worked up into ornaments, in some cases mounted with silver. As soon as any one enquires for it they are known to be from America. A book shaped specimen that I coveted was priced at twelve and sixpence. It is there yet for me. It is of every shade and tint of green, and is really very lovely. I saw many specimens of it manufactured into harps stringed and set in silver, with a silver scroll, and the name of Davitt or Parnell on them in green enamel. There were brooches and scarf pins of this kind. I did not notice the name of the great Liberator among these ornaments.

The Claddagh was a great disappointment to me. I heard that it was not safe to venture into it alone. I got up early and had sunshine with me when I strolled through the Claddagh. I saw no extreme poverty there. Most of the houses were neatly whitewashed; all were superior to the huts among the ruins at Athenry. The people were very busy, very comfortably clothed, and, in a way, well-to-do looking. Some of the houses were small and windowless, something the shape of a beehive, but not at all forlornly squalid. They make celebrated fleecy flannel here in Claddagh. They make and mend nets. They fish. I saw some swarthy men of foreign look, in seamen's clothes, standing about. You will see beauty here of the swarthy type, accompanied by flashing black eyes and blue black hair, but I saw lasses with lint white locks also in the Claddagh. The testimony of all here is that the Claddagh people are a quiet, industrious, temperate and honest race of people. I am inclined to believe that myself. It is a pretty large district and I wandered through it without hearing one loud or one profane word. I was agreeably disappointed in the Claddagh. Claddagh has a church and large school of its own.

They told me that the Galway coast has the same flowers as the coast of Spain. I can testify that flowers abound in little front gardens, and window panes, and in boxes on every window ledge. I did not go to see the iodine works, where this substance is manufactured from sea weed. I saw people burning kelp-and smelled them too-on the Larne and Carnlough coast and in Mayo. They burn the dried sea weed in long narrow places built of stone. They are not kilns, but are more like them than anything else I know of. You see stacks and ropes of the sea weed put up to dry. Kelp burning is not a fragrant occupation, and its manufacture is not specially attractive.

I think Galway is a very prosperous thriving town. I went to the bathing place of Salt Hill, a long suburb of pretty cottages, mostly to be let furnished to sea bathers. I should have gone on to Cushla Bay and to the islands of Arran, but I did not. I looked round me and returned to Galway.

There is difference perceptible to me, but hardly describable between the Galway men and the rest of the West. The expression of face among the Donegal peasantry is a patience that waits. The Mayo men seem dispirited as the Leitrim men also do, but are capable of flashing up into desperation. The Galway men seem never to have been tamed. The ferocious O'Flaherties, the fierce tribes of Galway, the dark Spanish blood, have all left their marks on and bequeathed their spirit to the men of Galway. I met one or two who, like some of the Puritans, believed that killing was not murder, who urged that if the law would not deter great men from wrong-doing it should not protect them.

When trade revives and prosperity dawns upon the West the fierce blood, like the Norman blood elsewhere, will go out in enterprise and spend itself in improvements.

Land was pointed out to me in Galway for which L4 an acre was paid by village people to plant potatoes in. This is called conacre. In going through Galway City, even in the suburbs, I did not see great appealing poverty such as I saw elsewhere. There was the bustle of work and the independence of work everywhere, but in the country, there seems poverty mixed with the fierce impatience of seeing no better way to mend matters. I heard of evictions having taken place here and there, but saw none.

LII.

THE LAKES OF KILLARNEY.

There is a good deal of disturbance about Limerick, according to the papers. A traveller would never discover it. It does not appear on the surface. I have been a little here and there in the environs of Limerick, and have seen no sign of any mob or any disturbance. Police go out unexpectedly to do eviction service and it is only known when the report comes in the papers.

I did not hear in Limerick town or county, in any place where I happened to be, of any landlord who had got renown for any special hardness. There was a person boycotted quite near to the city who was getting help from neighboring landowners to gather in his crops. What his offence was I did not learn.

In Limerick I met with an old and very dear friend who gave me a few facts about boycotting as seen in personal experience. An outlying farm was taken by my friend from which a widow lady had been evicted before the present agitation commenced. A premium of L100 was paid for possession. My friends had congratulated themselves on this transaction having occurred before the organization of the Land League; but one night an armed and masked party took the widow lady and reinstated her in her place. My friends were startled a little by a visit from this party, who informed them that they were returning from reinstating the lady in her place. Had they any objection? No, they had no objection. Would they disturb her in possession? No, they would not disturb her in possession. If they had only the L100 which they had invested they were quite willing to surrender the farm. Three cheers were given for my friends, three cheers for the widow lady, a gun was fired off, there was a wild cheer for Rory of the Hills, and they disappeared. The widow lady after some time quietly left the place of her own accord, and everything was as it had been before. They, the armed party, found out that they were not doing the lady a kindness by reinstating her, and so the matter ended.

Limerick, though an old city, is not a very large one. Going down the principal street-George's street-you can look down any of the cross streets beyond the masts on Shannon and see on the other side of the river oats, waving yellow and in stocks, up the slope. Standing on the Wellesley Bridge, where young Fitzgibbon in bronze stands on a granite pedestal, perpetually endeavoring to draw his sword-which he succeeded in drawing to some purpose at Alma and Inkerman, if we are to credit the pedestal, which we do-you can look down the Shannon, over the boats and among the steamboat chimneys and the ships' masts, and see the green banks of the Shannon, broad and wide, with cattle standing ankle deep in the rich pasture. You can see them as they extend far away, widening as they go, till the horizon shuts out any farther view. The constant rain of these two last months, I am afraid, will damage the ripening crop. It is near the close of August and there is hay yet uncut, there is hay lying out in every form of bleached windrow, or lap, or spread, under the rain. Some of it looks quite spoiled.

No one, I suppose, leaves Limerick without gazing at and perhaps wishing for some of the beautiful specimens of Limerick lace that are displayed in the shop-windows.

From Limerick to Killarney in the rain through a country gradually growing poorer. At the junction there was a detention which enabled me to walk about a little. There was a detachment of police that filled a couple of car passing on their way to eviction in one direction; a large detachment returning from eviction got out of the cars here. Eviction in this part of Ireland is feverishly active, and on every hand you hear of Mr. Clifford Lloyd. A person with whom I had some conversation told me I could have no idea of the state of the country without penetrating through it away from the line of rail. Of course this is so.

As we neared Killarney the waters were out over the low lying lands and the hay looked pitiful. In a pelting rain we steamed into Killarney, passed through the army of cabmen and their allies and were whirled away to Lakeview House on the banks of the lower Killarney lake, a pretty place standing in its own grounds. Killarney is a nice little town with some astonishing buildings. I have heard it styled as a dirty town; it struck me as both clean and rather stylish in its general appearance. It seems to depend almost entirely on tourists. Unlike Limerick, unlike Galway, but very like other western towns the number of people standing idly at the corners, or leaning against a tree to shelter from the rain, strikes a stranger painfully. The lounging gait and alert eyes mark people who have no settled industry, but are watching their chance.

We were allured to Lakeview Hotel by a printed card of terms and found it delightfully situated. Did not intend to linger here any time, did not seem to care much for the lakes now when I had got to see them. It was a damp evening, the mountains, that loom up on every hand, were wrapped in their gray cloaks, the lake whipped up by the squally winds had risen in swells and everything looked dismal. I shall see some one convenient sight and look round me and leave in the morning, I said.

The only available sight to be seen that night was Torc Cascade-well, I will be content with that. I must take a car; bargained for that, and drove through the walled-up country. Every place here is walled up, enclosed, fenced in. I noticed some cottages that were pictures of rustic beauty, others that were dirty hovels. The pretty cottages were occupied by laborers on the estates that border on the lake. Passed a handsome, little Episcopalian church in a sheltered place; near it were two monumental crosses of the ancient Irish pattern, erected by the tenants to the memory of Mr. Herbert, who was their landlord and who is spoken of by the people as one who deserved that they should devote some of their scant earnings to raise a cross to his memory.

In due time we arrived at a little door in the wall, where a man stood in Mr. Herbert's interest, who gave a small ticket for sixpence, unlocked the little arched door and admitted the stranger into this temple of nature and art. A board hung on a tree was the first object, warning visitors not to pluck ferns or flowers, the man at the gate having notice to deprive marauding visitors of anything so gathered. There is a winding gravel walk leading up the height almost alongside of the brawling stream that leaps from rock to rock. I did not see any flowers at all, but the common heather bell in two varieties and the large coarse fern so common in our Canadian woods. There are many cascades unnamed and unnoticed in our Canadian forests as handsome as Torc Cascade. When you get up a good way you come to a black fence that bars the way. You are above the tall firs, and the solemn Torc Mountain rises far above you. I would have been lost in admiration had I never seen the upper Ottawa or the River aux Lievres. Feeling no inclination to commit petty larceny on the ferns, I descended slowly and returned.

The ruined abbey of Muckross is another of the sights of Killarney. Every visitor pays a shilling to Mr. Herbert for permission to enter here. I did not go to see it, but some of the party at the hotel did. They described the cloisters as being in a good state of preservation- cloisters are a kind of arched piazza running round a court yard, in this case having in its centre a magnificent yew tree. These ruins are taken great care of, therefore parts of the abbey are in a pretty good state of preservation. They tell of a certain man named John Drake, who took possession of the abbey kitchen about one hundred years ago, lived there as a hermit for about eleven years in the odor of sanctity.

There was quite a party going through the gap of Dunloe, which reduced the price of the trip to very little, comparatively speaking, and I was persuaded to join it. Every available spot about here has a lordly tower, a lady's bower, an old ruin or a new castle. The Workhouse is fine enough and extensive enough for a castle, and the Lunatic Asylum might be a palace for a crowned head. There are the ruins of Aghadon Castle on one ridge and the shrunk remains of a round tower. A brother of the great O'Connell lives here in a white house bearing the same name as the hotel, Lakeview House. We look with some interest at Dunloe Castle. once the residence of O'Sullivan Mor, and listen to the car-man who tells us of the glories of the three great families that owned Kerry, O'Sullivan Mor, O'Sullivan Bear and great O'Donoghoe.

Of course we hear legend after legend of the threadbare tales of the Lakes. We heard much of the cave of Dunloe which has many records, in the Ogham character, of Ireland in the days of the Druids. All this time we were driving along a road with bare mountains, and tree-covered mountains rising on every hand. It reminded me in some places of the long glen in Leitrim, in others of Canadian scenes among the mountains. We began to be beset by mounted men on scrubby ponies. They gathered round us, riding along as our escort, behind and before and alongside urging on us the necessity of a pony to cross the road through the gap. Their pertinacity was something wonderful.

The carman stopped at a miserable cabin said to have been the residence of the Kate Kearney of Lady Morgan's song. That heroine's modern representative expects everyone to take a dose of goat's milk in poteen from her, and leave some gratuity in return. The whole population turned out to beg under some pretext or another. One very handsome girl, bareheaded and barefooted, and got up light and airy as to costume, begged unblushingly without any excuse. She gathered up her light drapery with one hand, and kept up with the horse, skelping along through mud and mire as if she liked it. I noticed that she was set on by her parents who were the occupiers of a little farm.

Suddenly our car stopped at a house where all sorts of lake curiosities were exposed for sale. From this point it was four miles, Irish miles, through the gap to the lake to the point where we took the boat. This was one circumstance of which we were not aware when we started; it was therefore a surprize. I am sorry to say that this gap was a disappointment to me. It was a difficult path among bare mountains, but nothing startling or uncommon.

What was uncommon was the relays of indefatigable women that lay in wait for us at every turn. Goats' milk and poteen, photographs, knitted socks, carved knick-nacks in bog oak; everything is offered for sale; denial will not be taken. You pass one detachment to come upon another lurking in ambush at a corner. There are men with small cannons who will wake the echoes for a consideration; there are men with key bugles who will wake the echoes more musically for a consideration; there is the blind fiddler of the gap who fiddles away in hopes of intercepting some stray pennies from the shower. One impudent woman followed us for quite a way to sell us her photograph, as the photograph of Eily O'Connor, murdered here by her lover many years ago-murdered not at the gap but in the lake. There was a large party of us and these followers, horse, foot and artillery, I may say were a persistent nuisance all the way. The ponies, crowds of them, followed us to the entrance of the Gap, where they disappeared, but the women and girls never faltered for the five miles. The reiterated and re-reiterated offer of goat's milk and poteen became exasperating; the bodyguard of these pertinacious women that could not be shaken off was most annoying. The tourists are to the inhabitants of Killarney what a wreck used to be to the coast people of Cornwall, a God-send.

One does feel inclined to lose all patience as they run the gauntlet here, and then one looks around at the miserable cabins built of loose stones, at the thatch held on by ropes weighted with stones, the same as are to be seen in Achil Island, among the Donegal hills, or the long glens of Leitrim, notices the patches of pale, sickly, stunted oats, the little corners of pinched potatoes-a girl passed us with a tin dish of potatoes for the dinner, they were little bigger than marbles-the little rickles of turf that the constant rain is spoiling, and one sees that as there is really no industry in the place, of loom or factory, that want and encouragement have combined to make them come down like the wolf on the fold to the attack of tourists. It spoiled the view, it destroyed any pleasure the scenery might have afforded, and yet under the circumstances it was natural enough on their part. "We depend on the tourists, this is our harvest," the carmen explained to us. From the hotel keeper to the beggar all depend on the tourist season.

After all it was something to have passed through between the Macgillicuddy's Reeks and the purple mountain; something to see water like spun silver flinging itself from the mountain top in leaps to the valley below, to struggle up and up to the highest point of the gap and look back at the serpentine road winding in and out beside small still lakes through the valley far below. Of course we look into the Black Lough where St. Patrick imprisoned the last snake. Of course we had pointed out to us the top of Mangerton, and were told of the devil's punch bowl up there. Down through the Black Valley we came to the point where the boats waited for us, leaving the black rocks, the bare mountains, the poor little patches of tillage, the miserable huts and the multitudinous vendors of goat's milk and poteen behind. To our surprise the way to the boats was barred by a gate, and at the gate stood a man of Mr. Herbert's to receive a shilling for each passenger before they could pass to the boats. "He makes a good thing out of it," remarked the boatmen. I do not know how many more fees are to be paid for a look about the lakes of Killarney, but this gate, Torc Cascade and Muckross Abbey cost each tourist two shillings and sixpence to look at them.

The upper lake is beautiful, fenced around by mountains of every size and variety of appearance. Of course they are the same mountains you have been seeing all day, but seen from a different standpoint. The Eagle's Nest towers up like an attenuated pyramid, partly clothed with trees, and is grand enough and high enough for the eagles to build on its summit, which they do. Here were men stationed to wake the echoes with the bugle. As our boat swept round, recognizing that we had not employed them, they ceased the strain until we passed, but the echoes followed us and insisted on being heard.

There are many, many spots on the Upper Ottawa as fair and as romantic as the Lakes of Killarney, and they are very lovely. The trees on the islands have a variety that do not grow in our Canada, principally the glossy-leaved arbutus. From the upper lake we slid down a baby rapid under an old bridge-built by the Danes of course, the arch formed as the arches of the castles in the west-into the middle lake.

The day had been one of dim showers, but in the middle lake the sun streamed out and touched the peak of the purple mountain and all the mountain sides and woody islands with splendor, that streamed down in golden shafts along the rain that was falling on some, and chased for a moment the shadows that lay on others. We slid down a fainter rapid under another bridge into the last and largest lake. On every lake there are buildings of glory and beauty to be seen nestling on the banks among the trees, or towering on the heights, owned by the wealthy and titled people that own the land round the lakes. A cottage built for Her Majesty was pointed out to us, and we heard of a royal deer hunt held here. We heard rapturous accounts of stags hunted to the verge of death, and saved alive to repeat the ennobling sport. And we censure without measure the Spanish bull fight where the animals are killed once! How many deaths do these timid deer suffer? I am afraid we are not as noble and merciful a people as we think we are.

There are sights to be seen and tales to be heard about these lakes of loveliness that would occupy weeks, but a glimpse and away must suffice for some, and our party all left Killarney on the next morning. I must say that the wealth and the poverty, the unblushing begging, the want of any remunerative industry, the idle listless people about the corners, made Killarney a sad place to me.

LIII.

CORK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.

After returning from the lakes the rain came down in such torrents as made us feel very thankful to be indoors again. We heard it raining all through the night as if the days of Noah were returned once more. Every one became anxious about the harvest in consequence of this steady rain. The bishop has recommended prayer in all the Catholic churches for seasonable weather to save the harvest. Murmurs of the appearance of rot in the potatoes reach me frequently. I have noticed disease in the potatoes appearing on the dinner table, a kind of dry rot, only to be noticed after cutting the potato.

From Killarney to Cahirciveen is forty-five miles; beyond that is the island of Valentia. There are many wild views to be seen on this island, the property of the Knight of Kerry. The traveller here can notice how the Atlantic is wearing away the Kerry coast.

The first part of this drive of forty-five miles is through a poor, poverty-stricken country, with such cabins of mud and misery as are an amusement to the tourist and a pain and a shame to the Irish lover of his country. There is nothing about these habitations to hint that any idea of comfort had ever penetrated here. For the reason of pelting rain and driving winds I was forced to give up my intention of going across by car to Kenmare, and from thence to Skibbereen, and took the train for Cork. The land seems to grow better the nearer we come to Cork.

Arrived at Cork, the first object which attracted my attention was the monument to Father Mathew. The temperance cause to which he dedicated his life sadly needs another champion. Will another Father Mathew arise?

As soon after my arrival in Cork as I was comfortably settled, I sallied out to discover the river Lee with an insane notion that I would hear "the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on" its pleasant waters. I discovered the river with tree-shaded, secluded dwellings on one bank and a wide green pasture on another. There was a bridge at the place where I first came in sight of the river, and a great crowd, so eager as to be silent, gazing up the stream. Thinking it was a boat race that drew their attention, I crossed the bridge to gain the green pasture at the other side. The pasture was reached by a little arched door through a boundary wall, where a policeman kept guard. There was a great crowd around this little door. There had been an accident, a boat had upset and all in it had been lost; they were searching for the bodies. I asked for admittance and the policeman unlocked the door and allowed me to pass. Followed the path along the water side, and came to the crowd round the four bodies laid upon the wet meadow grass. A father, so quiet, partially gray, trim and respectable looking, a young lad in blue boating costume, a young girl in black, farther on another in whom they thought there were signs of life, and about her two doctors were working, applying a galvanic battery. The mother had been restored and was conveyed into one of the houses.

I never saw any attempts to recover a drowned person before. I wondered that they left the body lying on the damp earth in wet clothing. They told me that it might be fatal to move her before they succeeded in bringing her back to life. They tried a long time in vain, then they laid the four bodies all in a row for the coroner. The damp grass, the trampling and sympathetic crowd, the four bodies in their wet garments laid on the bank, will always rise in my memory along with my first sight of the river Lee.

Cork seems a rich city, full of business, bustle on all the wharves, buying and selling on all the streets. The buildings are very grand. Alongside the river is a long ridge rising up to a tree-crowned summit. On that hillside is tier upon tier of grand houses, grand churches, fine convents and public buildings of one kind and another. You come upon fine churches through the town in corners where you do not expect them.

The church of churches in Cork is the Protestant Cathedral, of St. Finn Barre-whoever he was. This church sits high up on a rocky foundation, its pointed spires of exquisite stone-work pierce the sky. It is not finished, scaffoldings are there, and skilled chisels and cunning hammers have been knapping and polishing there for many a day, and are likely to continue hammering and chiselling for many a day more. Inside, it is marble of Cork, marble of Connemara, marble of Italy, polished to the brightest. The gates which admit from one ecclesiastical division to another are wrought in flowers that blaze in gold. Before the altar, parables of our Lord are wrought in mosaic on the floor. On the wall the different noble families who belong here, or have money invested here, have their shields containing their coats of arms on the wall. Into this grand church have been wrought the religious ideas of the church people for years, at the cost of L100,000, and there is an immense golden angel on the point of a gable calling with two trumpets for L25,000 more to finish it.

None but a rich city could afford the splendid buildings that are in Cork. The evening on which I arrived in Cork was signalized not only by the boat accident, but by a grand wedding, the wedding of a Sir George Colthurst in the splendid cathedral church just mentioned, and there was any amount of fashion, and high birth and young beauty gathered there. The bride was beautiful, the bride was "tall," and not yet, they say, out of her teens. She was dressed in white satin and silver cloth, Irish lace and orange blossoms, and wore no jewels. None but invited eyes were allowed to look at the grand ceremony which made the fair bride and the lord of Blarney castle one. Some tenants of the bridegroom got up a bonfire, had some barrels of beer given them to rejoice withal, and were dancing to the music produced by six fiddlers, when they were surrounded by a small army of disguised people, fired into, beaten and dispersed. The first accounts put the number of wounded at twenty, to-day they are reduced to five-perhaps that is the proportion of exaggeration in newspaper accounts of outrage generally. The newly-made bride and bridegroom went to see the wounded, leaving cordials and money at every house.

One thing is observable in Cork, the determination to make an effort to restore native industry from its present languishing condition. Passing along the streets I notice clerks in the windows affixing labels on goods with the words, "Irish Manufactures," "Cork made goods," "Blarney tweeds," "Irish blankets," "Cork made furniture." There have been meetings held on the subject since I came here. No city in the world could appear to be more quiet and law-abiding than Cork to all appearance.

As one instance of the exaggeration of reports concerning outrages, I see the disturbance in Cork that took place at the rejoicings about Sir George Colthurst's marriage advertised with the heading 20 men shot. The local report says five injured, one shot, but not fatally.

Went down the river Lee to Queenstown. It did not rain except a few drops during the whole time. The sun shone, the clouds, some of them were billowy and white, and massed themselves on a deep, blue sky. The little steamer was crowded fore and aft with holiday passengers, and a large quantity of small babies. The river Lee, from Cork to Queenstown, wears a green color, as if it were akin to the ocean. Flocks of sea gulls flying about, or perching on the ooze where the tide is out, make one think of the sea, but the green banks of the river are there to testify against it.

We expected to find that the scenery from Cork to Queenstown was beautiful, and so it is. There is no use in trying to praise it, for all praise seems flat compared with the reality. There are glorious, steep slopes leading up to fair, round hills, waving with golden grain, or green with aftermath, checked off into fields by gay, green hedges or files of stately trees. On the slope, half way up the slope, snuggling down at the foot of the slope, are residences of every degree of beauty. Houses, square and solid, with wide porticos; houses rising into many gabled peaks; houses that have swollen into all sorts of bay windows running up to the roof, or stopping with the first story. Houses that fling themselves up into the sky in towers and turrets, and assert themselves to be, indeed, castles.

Queenstown comes at last, a town hung up on a steep hillside, and on the very brow of the hill is an immense cathedral, unfinished like St. Finn Barre's, of Cork. In these cathedrals two forms of religious belief are slowly and expensively trying to express themselves in stone, chiselled and cut into a thousand forms of beauty, in marbles, polished and carved, in painted windows, in gildings and draperies of the costliest. Looking at these costly fanes erected to be a local spot where Jehovah's presence shall dwell, one can scarcely believe that He will dwell in the heart of the poor who are willing to receive Him in the day of His power. Is the soul of the beggar more dear to God as a dwelling place than these lofty temples? Forever the world is saying "Lord, behold what manner of stones and what buildings are here?" And the Lord cares more for the toiling fisherman, the poor disheartened widow, and the laboring and heavy laden peasant than the grandest buildings. The cost of these churches would buy out Achil island and the appurtenances thereof, I think. It would maybe purchase the wildest tract of the Donegal mountains. I wonder if a hardy mountain people, who could live on their own soil, and begin to feel the stirrings of enterprise and energy, would be as acceptable to Him who came anointed to preach the gospel to the poor as these poems in stone. Who knows?

We sat on a bench under the trees and looked at the harbor-its waters cut by many a flying keel, at Spike Island lying in the sun, all its fortifications as silent and lonely looking as if no convict nor any other living creature was there. Steamboats for "a' the airts the winds can blaw," were passing out and away, leaving a train of smoke behind them, and big sail vessels, three-masted and with sails packed up, are waiting to go, and revenue cutters and small passenger boats are flying about each on their way.

A lady sits by me and is drawn to talk to the stranger of the greenness of the grass here winter and summer, of the beauty spread out all around. She tells of one who died away in another land brought home to lie under the daisies here, just twenty years ago to-day. Other people, she says, are proud of their country, are fond of their country, but none have the same love for their country as the Irish have for green Erin. Every inch of ground; every blade of grass in Ireland is holy, says this lady with tears in her eyes. She is thinking of the dust that Irish grass covers from her sight. It is on an anniversary we meet; she cannot help speaking on this day of sacred things. The steamboat is wading up to the wharf. We do not know one another's names, but we have drawn near to each other-we clasp hands and part with a mutual God bless you. The little boat swallows up all that are willing to come on board, and like a black swan she sails up over the calm river, under the bright sky, past the handsome houses and the lovely grounds, among the clustering masts back to the rich city of Cork.

All the people injured in the attack on the rejoicing at Sir George Colthurst's marriage are pronounced recovered to-day, except the one who was wounded by a shot; he is still in the infirmary. A dignitary of the Catholic Church who preached at Millstreet, where the disturbance took place, introduced into his sermon remarks on the state of society there, when his hearers became affected with coughing to such a degree that the rev. gentleman had to stop for a time and speak directly to his hearers. After the sermon most of the congregation left the church before mass- few remaining.

The sun has come out and the harvest will be greatly benefited by this tardy warmth, I am sure.

There has been some marching of soldiers-dragoons-fine looking men on fine horses-through the streets to-day, to the blare of a military band, accompanied and escorted by all the loose population of Cork. I was much interested to see among the running crowd the good pace made by a man with a wooden leg, who really could hop along with the best of them. This is all the apology for a crowd which I have seen in Cork. I have not heard the roar of one belated drunkard; such sounds have broken slumber in other towns. Whatever excitement may be in the county, the city of Cork seems as quiet, as orderly and as thriving as any city in the kingdom.

I have discovered that, though the lower part of the river Lee is crowded with masts and alive with traffic, the upper part, flowing along under the shadow of green trees and bordered by wide meadows, is as quiet as if it were flowing through the country miles from any city. I have discovered the magnificent promenade called the Mardyke, a wide, gravelled road overarched with trees, running along by the river. When the evening lamps are lit, the susceptibility of Cork wander here in pairs and "in couples agree." There are plenty of comfortable seats in which to rest, for the promenade is a very long one, and the shimmer of the many lamps among the green foliage has a pretty effect.

LIV.

CORK, TO BANDON, SKIBBEREEN AND SKULL.

From Cork by the new railway to Skibbereen there is one rather noticeable feature by the way. All the way stations in small places are wooden houses built American fashion, either clapboarded or upright boards battened where they meet. The road is through a hilly country and therefore lies mostly through deep cuttings that shut out the scenery. There is one long tunnel not far from Cork that educates you into a sense of what utter darkness means. It is pleasant to look over rich pastures back to the city crowding its lofty hills, and to notice what a grand steeple-crowned city it is.

The train crawls along through deep cuts, past these little wooden stations where everything is more primitive and backwoods looking than anything I have seen before in Ireland. The porters are civil and obliging, ready to answer the questions of the ignorant, even of those who travel third-class. The vast majority of the passengers are small traders, market-women and farmers' wives, who have been away making purchases.

By the time we reach Dunmanway we had our allowance of light served out to us, a lamp being thrust through the ceiling of the car from the top, and by its light we steamed into Skibbereen. I expected Skibbereen to be a small assemblage of mud huts, but was surprised to find it a large town of tall houses. As the bus rattled along through one gaslight street after another, I kept asking myself, is this really Skibbereen.

The little hotel where we stopped was very comfortable, very clean, and possesses a good cook. The next day in exploring the by streets and suburbs of the town I saw poverty enough, want enough. It was market day and the streets were crowded with country women in blue cloaks. These cloaks are all the same make, but some of them, owing to their material, were very stylish and shrouded as pretty black eyed, black-haired, rosy- cheeked women as I ever saw. Some of these cloaks are made of very fine material, the pleating about the shoulders very artistic, and the wide hoods lined with black satin when worn round the face make the wearers look like fancy pictures. Some of the women gather them round them in folds like drapery. I noticed at once that the artist who made the statues of O'Connell and Father Mathew had studied the drapery from the cloaks of some Claddagh or Skibbereen woman.

Market day is used as a day for confession, and the clergy are on hard duty on that day. Skibbereen boasts of a bishop and numerous resident priests. The town is as quiet as if such a thing as a riot, an outrage or a mob was never known.

In a little corner, squeezed in between houses, is a neat Methodist chapel and the parsonage beside it. Called on the minister, who received me graciously and was courteous and communicative. Having been by virtue of his office over a great part of Ireland he had seen a good deal of the oppression of the tenant, partly from the thoughtlessness of absentee landlords, partly from the want of any sympathy with the tenants. Had the Land League confined themselves to moderate efforts, and to the employment of constitutional means-means not tending to the dismemberment of the empire, he would have joined them with heart and soul, knowing the need there was of redress to the wrongs of the small farmer. He advised me to take a car and go on to Skull through Ballydehob if I wished to see poverty and misery.

The road from Skibbereen to Ballydehob and Skull runs along the coast mostly. All that grand rocks and great stretches of water dotted with many islands can do to make this scenery grand, wild and romantic has been done by Dame Nature. It is not satisfying to merely pass along. One would like to tarry here and get acquainted with nature in these out-of- the-way haunts of hers. The cottages are most miserable, most ruinous. There is no limestone here. It resembles Achil Island in this respect. The houses are built of stones and daubed with clay. The clay soon filters away under the combined action of winter wind and winter frost, and the houses look like piles of stones tottering to fall.

I heard of a pier being built somewhere here, with part of the Canadian money, which a priest assured me would be a great benefit to the poor people. I was very sorry to leave this part without seeing more of the country and the people. I left Skibbereen on a car for a journey by the coast the other way to meet the train at Bandon to return to Cork.

The only industry of any kind which I saw between Skibbereen and Bandon was a slate quarry which they told me shipped a great quantity of slates besides supplying local demands. As we advanced eastward we left the heather-clad mountains behind us, the landscape softened down considerably, and became almost empty of inhabitants. That reminds me that about Skull was almost emptied of inhabitants also. About the time of the great famine the people fled away. The remains of houses are scattered all along on that road. Some cause has also emptied this part of the country of people. There is much unreclaimed land here, which is not to be wondered at, seeing that a fine for reclamation was exacted in the shape of increased rent.

Clonakilty is another little town thronged with small traders and places "licensed to sell." As we passed east the long boundary walls that enclose gentlemen's plantations begin to prevail.

A little way, maybe two miles, out of Clonakilty is the property of Mr. Bence Jones, who has created some stir in the world. One hears story after story of his grasping and overbearing disposition. The chief accusation is adding to a man's rent if his father dies. Case after case of this was spoken of by the passengers on the car with me. Whether these accusations against Mr. Bence Jones were true or false, here is his place, and a very fine place it is. The lodge is at one side of the road, the entrance to his residence at the other. The residence is very nice, very commodious, and is at some distance from the road. The property is extensive, but very poor land-mountain and bog. His walled- in plantation ran along the road for quite a great distance. When they spoke of him on the car the mere mention of his name caused the driver to lose himself in profanity.

From Clonakilty to Bandon was a long, dreary drive, and the night had fallen for some time, sharp and chill, before we entered the second time into merry Bandon town. It is quite a large place, and, entered by another way than the railway, looks bright and pleasant. The houses are lofty on the principal streets, and the whole town has a scattered appearance. It was a welcome sight to us, weary of travelling by car, and visions of a warm fire and a good supper-for I had travelled from breakfast without waiting to eat-ran in my head; but it was Saturday night, a train was almost due for Cork, and, contenting myself with an after-night glimpse of merry Bandon town, I came to the ponderous station, and started in due time for Cork.

At one of the first way stations, where is the little clapboarded waiting-room, two policemen entered our compartment with a prisoner. Whether he was a suspect or was charged with a specific crime we did not learn, but surely such a poor scare-crow never was arrested before. He was black with dirt, as if he had been taken out of the bog, or from a coal-pit. His clothes were thin and ragged, and he had such a fierce, desperate look. The policemen fraternized with their fellow-passengers and chatted merrily. The prisoner listened to their talk with a kind of dumb fierceness, shaking his head from side to side as I have seen an angry horse do. It was very chilly, and he was so miserably clad that he shivered, though he tried not to do so.

The way was long by train, and he might have marched for many a weary mile before he got on the train. He lay down on the seat and tried to sleep but could not, so he started up and resumed the wild glancing from side to side and the fierce head shakes. I began to think he might be very hungry, and if he was, he was not likely to get anything in gaol till morning. I had some biscuits and cheese in my satchel, and they began to struggle to get out, and at last I consented and handed the little parcel silently to the prisoner. He did not thank me, except by falling to and eating like a famished creature.

Arrived at Cork, the police took him away on a car, and the last glimpse

I got of him he was eating as if he had not eaten before for a week.

I was very thankful when Sabbath morning found me in Cork again and with power to rest. There is not much appearance of Sabbath in the streets of Cork; it looks like a vast crowd keeping holiday. A great many shops are open; the stall women are in their places and seem to drive a good trade. I even heard a woman crying her wares as on any other day. I do not think that a little more Sabbath would hurt this fair town in the very least. I rested this day.

In the evening I had the pleasure of hearing "the bells of Shandon" ringing the people in to worship in the old Shandon Church. I heard them while walking by "the pleasant waters of the river Lee." I followed their chime and enjoyed it, sweetly solemn and grand it was, and thought of Father Prout who has made them so famous, and finally found myself at Shandon church.

When the chimes ceased I went up the high steps into the old church. It is very old. It is high, long and narrow. The tower, in which are the famous bells, seems of better workmanship than the church. It is built in stories. The bells were chiming out, "Oh, that will be joyful!" as I entered. It is a nice, homely, comfortable church; but so plain that the tide of fashion has rolled past it into another quarter of the town. The pulpit and reading-desk were supplied by a gray-haired clergyman, who had power to read the service, so that it had a newness as if it had never been heard before and to preach to the heart. With the echo of his words and the echo of the bells of Shandon the Sabbath closed.

LV.

THE SOUTH-THE FEELING OF THE PEOPLE-EVICTIONS AND THE LAND LAW.

In conversing with a very sensible gentleman in Cork, he mentioned the competition among the farmers themselves as one reason of the high rents. I have heard this brought forward again and again in every part of Ireland. It is difficult to get so far into the confidence of the southern people as to know what they really think or feel. Without an introduction from one whom they trust they are very reticent and non- committal. There is another party who will not be drawn into giving an opinion for fear of their names appearing in print in company with these opinions.

Cork is such a brilliant city, such a sunshiny city, for the sun shone while I was there as it did not shine anywhere else where I have been for the last two months, such a brisk, busy city, that I felt some regret at leaving it. Cork is a busy town, but there are many idle hands and hungry mouths within its boundaries.

The prevalence of drinking habits is deplored by many with whom I conversed here. Speaking of the movement, now so rife, for encouraging home manufacture, especially in the shoe trade, a lady remarked that if there were a revival in trade without a revival in temperance many shoemakers would only work three days a week as had been the case in good times before.

It was a sunny day when I looked my last on the busy city on the river Lee, on the numerous basket women that squat in its streets, some knitting or crocheting for dear life, some sitting with arms crossed, fat and lazy, basking contentedly in the sun beside their baskets of miserable stunted apples that would be thrown to the pigs in Canada.

Between Cork and Mallow my travelling companion was an elderly Scotchman, a cattle dealer, who deplored the disturbed state of the country very feelingly. He admitted that there was undeniable need of a revision of the land tenure but thought that the people went about securing it in a very wrong way. I ventured to suggest that there was likely to be an agitation in Scotland on the land question. "Aye, there will and must be that, but they will manage it differently," said the old gentleman. He censured my excitable country people pretty freely. I enquired why he did not return to Scotland to live in that tranquil country. "He had been long, out of Scotland, about forty years, and had got into the ways of the Irish, and truly they were a kind-hearted people and easily pleased."

Another gentleman in this compartment pointed out to me Blarney Castle in the distance, and Blarney woollen mills nearer hand, where the celebrated Blarney tweed is manufactured, and whispered to me that Father --, I did not catch the name with the noise of the cars, had appeared in a suit of Blarney tweed. There and then I wished that every reverend Father in Ireland was dressed in native manufacture.

A little fiddler was playing in the car for halfpence, and the Irish gentleman paid him to play Scotch tunes in our honor, thinking we were both Scotch, I and the old Scotch gentleman. I asked the child to play "Harvey Duff," as I wanted to hear that most belligerent tune. The poor child looked as frightened as if I had asked him to commit high treason and shook his head. At Mallow the fine old Scotchman got off the train. We had had a long talk on country and country's needs, and his fervent "God bless you" at parting was a comfort and encouragement to me, indeed it was.

At a station we took up some police who had been drinking-one sergeant was very drunk; then some soldiers who had been drinking, and some civilians who were in the same state. One fine looking young farmer of the better sort was fighting drunk. There were sober people and a good many women also on the car. It was one of those cars whose compartments are boxed up halfway. The sergeant spilled a box of wafers and felt that he did not wish to pick them up; another policeman in an overcoat set himself to gather them up. I heard the young farmer say to him, "You're a peeler," and in a moment every man in the car was on his feet. We had not yet left the station, and many women rushed out of the car. The official came and locked the doors, and we steamed out of the station with all the men on their feet in a crowd, gesticulating and shouting at one another at the top of their voices. As they swayed about with the motion of the carriage, every soldier and constable with his rifle in his hand, I found myself wondering if they were loaded or could possibly go off of themselves.

As soon as I could distinguish words among the war of sounds I understood that the young farmer accused the soberest sergeant of being one of the party that shot young Hickey at Dr. Pomeroy's, and that he was burning for revenge. The constable was a Northman, I knew by his tongue, and he was at a northern white heat of anger. The young farmer was almost mad with rage and drink. The drunken sergeant seemed to sober in the congenial element of a probable row, and he and two sober civilians exerted themselves to keep the peace, and to pacify the farmer and get him to sit down.

In one of the pauses in the storm the peace-making sergeant wanted a match; an old man behind me who had matches was appealed to for one and he declined, averring with much simplicity that he was afraid of being shot. His wife in a vigorous whisper advised him to keep his matches in his pocket. Everyone in that car, drunk or sober, peace-making or not, sympathised with that young farmer and were against the police.

We reached Fermoy quite late. The next morning early I took a car and drove out to Mitchelstown, at the foot of the Galtees. Passed at a distance, half hidden among embowering woods, the castle residence of Lord Mount Cashel, who seems to be as much liked here as he was on the Galgorm estate, but there were whispered reminiscences of by-gone wicked agents.

The country on the way to Mitchelstown is partly very rich-looking now waving with the harvest. There is a long valley in sight stretching away for many miles, yellow with ripened corn and dotted with farm houses, each with a few sheltering trees. Upon what is called mountain land I saw a fine little farm that had been reclaimed from the heather quite recently. The farmer and his sons were binding after the cradle. He holds this land at two shillings and sixpence an acre, and hopes under the new Land Law that it shall not be raised on him. Mitchelstown is quite a large place, and was as quiet as Indian summer. Had my worst experience of hotel life in Fermoy, and gladly left it behind for Cappoquin. The road lies alongside a lovely valley of the Blackwater, and one has glimpses of the most enchanting scenery as they steam along. Cappoquin is quite a nice town, and seems to have some trade by river as well as by rail.

Walked out through the fair country to Mount Mellary Monastery, a property reclaimed out of the stony heathery mountain by the monks of La Trappe. They have succeeded in creating smiling fields among the waste of the mountain wilderness. They hold the land on a lease of 999 years. No woman is allowed into the precincts of the monastery proper, but there is a hospice attached where travellers are received and entertained without charge, but any gratuity is accepted. There is also a school among the buildings.

The valley between Cappoquin and Mount Mellary is strikingly beautiful. There is tradition of a great battle having been fought here once in the dim past when a hundred fights was no uncommon allowance of battle to one warrior. All is quiet and peaceful here now. The crops are being gathered in in the sunshine, and everything is smiling and serene. I received very much kindness in Cappoquin for which there will always be sunshine over my memories of it.

LVI.

TIPPERARY-OVER THE KNOCK-ME-LE-DOWM MOUNTAINS-"NATE CLOGHEEN"-CAHIR- WATERFORD-DUBLIN.

From Cappoquin I proposed to go to Cahir, across the pass, through the Knock-me-le-Down Mountains. Took a car for this journey which was driven by the only sullen and ill-tempered driver which I had seen on my journey through Ireland. The road passed through Lismore, a little town about four miles from Cappoquin, which is in a red hot state of excitement just now; the bitterest feelings rage about the land question. Evictions and boycottings are the order of the day. The feeling of exasperation against the police is so determined that supplies of any kind for their use could not be purchased for any money in Lismore. The police feel just as exasperated against Miss Parnell, who attends all evictions as a sympathizer with the tenants, and reports all the proceedings. The police made an effigy of her and stoned it to pieces to relieve their feelings.

The road to Lismore lay along a fair valley; the town itself was a pleasant surprise. It looked as peaceful and peaceable as possible when I passed through it; there was neither sight nor sound to reveal the present state of things among the people. From the grand castle of Lismore the road wound along between low range walls, ivy-covered and moss-grown, that fenced in extensive woods, clothing bold hills and deep valleys with wild verdure. The wildness of these woods and their thick growth of underbrush reminded me of far off Canadian forests.

We overtook a decent-looking country woman, who was toiling along the road with a big basket; the car man took her up; she seemed an old acquaintance. On one side of the road below the range wall a shallow little river ran brawling among the stones. I tried to find out its name from the woman with the basket but she could only tell its name in Irish, a very long name, and not to be got hold of hastily. "Her son was in America-God bless it for a home for the homeless!-and he had that day sent her L120, which she was carrying home in the bosom of her dress." "She had good boys who neither meddled with tobacco or drink, and not many mothers could say that for their sons." "Her boys were as good boys to their father and mother as ever wore shoes, thoughtful and quiet they were." "They had good learning and did not need to work as laborers." I asked her why she did not go out to America. "Ould trees don't take kindly to transplanting," she said, "I will see the hills I have looked at all my life around me as long as I see anything. I want the green grass that covers all my people to cover me at last."

At a turn in the road the woman left us to climb a steep boreen that led to her home among the hills, with her heavy basket and her son's love gift of L120 in her bosom, and I sat in the car dreamily looking at the wooded hills and wondered how dear a hilly country is to its inhabitants.

The most beautiful thing which I saw in Killarney was the feeling of proprietorship and kinship that all the people felt in and for the mountains and lakes. It takes a lifetime to get thoroughly acquainted with the eternal hills. They have ways of their own that they only display upon long acquaintance. You can see shadowy hands draw on the misty night cap or fold round massive shoulders the billowy gray drapery or inky cloak when passing rain squall or mountain tempest is brewing. They wrinkle their brows and draw near with austere familiarity; they retreat and let the sunshine and shadows play hide-and-seek round them, or lift their bald heads in still summer sunshine with calm joyfulness. The dwellers among them learn to love them through all their varying moods.

As I dreamed dreams the car driver, the surliest of his class which I have met, was urging a tired horse up a gradual ascent higher and higher among the hills, until we left houses, holdings, roads-except the gamekeeper's or bog rangers' track-far below us. These wild places, he told me, had no deer, but unlimited grouse, hares and rabbits. I was inclined to think very slightly of rabbits, especially when told of land that had formerly supported inhabitants having been given over to small game of this kind; but a gentleman landholder told me of a nobleman's estate (I will not name him for fear I mistake the name) which averaged 1,000 rabbits weekly, which were worth one shilling and sixpence a couple after all expenses were paid. I have respected rabbits as rivals of human beings ever since.

We got up among the bleak mountains at last, high and bare, except where their rocky nakedness was covered with ragged heather. Silent and awful their huge bulk rose behind one another skyward. After we had long passed sight or sound of human habitation, we suddenly came to a whitewashed cosy police station in the shelter of the mountains, with a pretty garden in front, and a pleasant-faced constable came down for the mail. It was such a lovely place for a man to wear a cheerful face in, that I could not help saying, "You have a nice place here, sergeant." "Yes," he smilingly answered, "but lonely enough at times." The car man was very sullen, and seemed eager to pick a quarrel with the policeman, which the other evaded with dexterous good nature, while another policeman, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, gloomed at the driver from behind him.

I should not wonder if my driver resented me speaking to the policeman, for feeling runs high against them in these southern counties for a long time now; he was still more sullen, at all events, after we passed the station. I was told that from these Knock-me-le-Down Mountains, I could see a glimpse of the Galtees, but the mountains began to array themselves in, what the sullen driver called fog, cloaks of gray mists that fell in curling folds down their brown sides. Up and up we climbed, along a road that twisted itself among the solemn giants of the hills sitting in veiled awfulness. We passed a boundary ridge that separated the Duke of Devonshire's lands from the next landlord, and I thought we were at the highest point of the pass, and here the storm came down, and the mountain rain and mountain winds began to fight and struggle round every peak and through every glen. I have never ventured among the mountains yet without rousing the fury of the mountain spirits. The jaded horse got himself into a staggering gallop, and so, chased by the storm, we threaded our way about and around on the downward slope of the mountains. It grew very dark, and we jaunted along a bit in one direction, and then turned sharp and jaunted off in another, the driver informing me that this was the V of the mountains, and miles immeasurably spread seemed lengthening as we hurried on.

We reached at length, at the foot of the hills, the "town of nate Clogheen, where Sergeant Snap met Paddy Carey." As far as the darkness permitted us to see, Clogheen is still neat Clogheen. A little further west is the classic little town of Ballyporeen, which has danced to music that was not wedding music more than once during late years.

After we left Clogheen and struck through a wide plain for Cahir the moon came out and touched the dark mountains with silver and they folded away their gray robes until we should return. Those eight Irish miles from Clogheen to Cahir were the longest miles I have ever met with, exceeding in length the famous Rasharken miles. Here in a rambling, forsaken like assemblage of stairs and passages, called a hotel, we found a room and I rested for the remaining hours of the night. I never bestowed whip money so grudgingly as I did on the sullen driver who brought me through the Knock-me-le-down mountains. Under his care all my bags and parcels came to grief in the most innocently unaccountable way and were carried in in a wrecked condition.

In the morning the melancholy waiter who set my little breakfast at one end of a desert of a table in a dusty wilderness of a room, commenced bemoaning over the poverty of the country. It was a market morning and there were many asses, creels and carts with fish drawn up in the market place. I ventured to suggest a fish for breakfast, which was an utter impossibility. Cahir has a handsome old castle standing close to its main street which is still inhabited.

We dropped down by rail through Clonmel to Waterford, our companions by the way being all returning tourists, English and Welsh people over for a holiday to see the disturbances in Ireland, which they had always missed seeing some way. We amused ourselves in drawing comparisons between the lines of rail in Ireland and those in other countries to the total disparagement of Irish railways. They spoke of the railways in England and Wales, and I exalted Canadian railways.

Waterford seemed a pretty, lively, bustling town. The river seemed alive with boats; there was a good deal of building going on near the depot, and the people had a step and an air as if they had something to do and were hurrying to do it. It looked very unlike its ancient name, which was, I am told, the Glen of Lamentation. Tales still linger here of the sack of Waterford by Strongbow and his marriage to Princess Eva, and of the landing here of Henry the Second when he came to take possession.

From Waterford up through Kilkenny in the sunshine, wondering to see hay

still being cut in September. Heard no word of Kilkenny black coal or

Kilkenny marble and passed on to Bagenalstown in Carlow and up through

Kildare to Dublin.

The days were passing so swiftly away that there was but a little time to see Dublin sights; the question was, therefore, what to see and what not to see. Owing to the kindness of Miss Leitch, an art student, I had the privilege of half an hour in the Academy. Having so little time I spent it all before Maclise's picture of the marriage of Strongbow and Princess Eva and in a small way understood how a great painter can tell a story. The museum of Irish antiquities was the next place. I wanted to see the brooch of Tara and saw it, but I was not prepared to see so many reliques of gold and silver telling their own tale of the grandeur of the native rulers of the Ireland of long ago. The ingenuity shown in the broad collars of beaten gold which made them be alike fitted for collar or tiara was surprising. The shape of the brooches and cloak clasps are so like the Glenelg heirlooms which I saw in Glengarry families that the relationship between the clans of the Highlands and the Irish septs is quite apparent. There was quite a large room entirely devoted to gold and silver ornaments. One side was given up to gold collars, neck ornaments, bracelets, armlets and cloak clasps, all of gold. There was another cabinet of rings of various kinds. Some of the rings and bracelets are quite like modern ones. Saint Patrick's bell was another object of great interest to me. It was plain and common-looking, evidently for use, shaped a good deal like a common cow bell. I liked to think how often it had called the primitive people to hear God's message of mercy to them from the lips of his laborious messenger. Beside it stood the elaborate case which the piety of other ages manufactured for the bell. It is such an easy matter to deck shrines and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous when they are gone past the place where the echoes of man's praise can reach. It is easier than hearing and obeying the message which they carry. We were given a powerful magnifying glass to inspect the workmanship of the shrine that held the bell, but my thoughts would turn back to the plain common-looking bell itself. Still I did admire the exquisite workmanship of the shrine, which could only be fully appreciated when seen through the magnifying glass. It required the magnifying glass also to fully bring out the richness of the delicate tracery on the brooch of Tara. There were in another room quite a number of short swords of cast bronze similar to the one presented to me in Mayo. Some of them had been furbished up till they looked like gold. There were some specimens of the bronze chain mail used by the ancient Irish, and the foot covering, which they wore a good deal like Indian moccassins, answering exactly to the description given by Scott in the notes to the Lady of the Lake, of the kind of brogans of the dun deer's hide which shod the fleet-footed Malise, messenger of the fiery cross. There was also a woollen dress found in a bog, which was exactly shaped like a modern princess dress. I was sorry I had only one poor sixty minutes to carry off all my eyes could gather up in that time of these reliques of ancient Ireland. I would recommend any one who cares for the ancient history of Ireland to study these records of the past. What we see affects us more than what we hear.

DUBLIN-HOME AGAIN.

To my friend, Councillor Leitch, one of the many successful men who have migrated from the Moravian settlement of Grace Hill, I had expressed a wish to see the face of Jonathan Pim, the landlord of whose goodness I heard so much in the neighborhood of Clew Bay. Through Mr. Leitch's kindness I obtained a seat in the gallery of the round room of the Mansion House where the meeting was held to consider the advisability of holding an exhibition of Irish manufactures. It was expected that I should see Mr. Jonathan Pim at this meeting, but he was not there; he was represented by his son. It was something for my backwoods eyes to be privileged to see this grand room, built, I hear, for the reception of His Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth when he made his visit to Ireland, called the "Irish Avatar." At one side of the round room was a sort of dais, on which was a chair of state that, I suppose, represented a throne. Round the gallery were hung shields, containing the coats-of- arms of the worshipful the Lords Mayor of Dublin. The chair was occupied by the present Lord Mayor, a very fine-looking gentleman who became his gold chain of office well.

The day before I had been taken by Mrs. Leitch to an academy of arts and industry. For some reason of alterations and repairs there was no admission beyond the vestibule. In this entrance hall were specimen slabs and pillars of all the Irish marbles, which were there in as great variety as in Shushan the palace. There was the marble of Connemara in every shade of green, black marble of Kilkenny, red marble of Cork, blue credited to Killarney, I think, and many, many others. I think there was hardly a county in Ireland unrepresented. I do think that among all this wealth of marbles the Irish people might gratify their most fastidious taste without sending to Italy. I saw a good many productions of Irish industry, but they seem always confined to the localities which produce them. You see things in shop windows ticketed Scotch and English, but, until this new movement began, nothing marked Irish. Yet Limerick laces might tempt any fine lady, as well as Antrim linens and Down damasks. There is also Blarney tweed of great cheapness and excellence, Balina blankets, and the excellent Claddagh flannel.

If there were enterprise as well, and a desire to patronize home industries, I think the chimneys of factories now silent and idle might smoke again. I particularly noticed in every corner of Ireland where I have been that where I saw the tall chimneys of factories in operation I did not see barefoot women with barefoot asses selling ass loads of turf for threepence.

I left Dublin-really, I may say, an almost unseen Dublin-behind me and turned my face Belfastwards.

Drogheda is the last place of which I have taken any notes. I was a day or two there. In fact I was more than a few days, but was confined to my room by a severe neuralgia most of the time. There is a fine railway bridge here, lofty enough for schooners to sail under. The land on both sides of the river is like a garden, and is devoted to pleasure grounds in the usual proportion. I was wishful to see the very spot on the banks of the Boyne where James and William fought for a kingdom long ago. As I looked at the fair country checked off into large fields by green hedges, at the waving trees of enclosed pleasure-grounds, I recalled King William's words about Ireland, "This land is worth fighting for," and I thought he was right.

The Boyne is but a small river, no wider than the Muskrat at Pembroke, but deep enough to carry schooners a little way up. There is a canal beside it, and it was full of barges carrying coal and other things. Near to Drogheda town, in the suburbs, is a bridge over the Boyne. I crossed it looking for the locality of the battle. Meeting a clerical- looking gentleman, I enquired if he could point out to me where the battle of the Boyne was fought. This gentleman, who was a Franciscan friar, directed me to keep along the road by the river bank, when I would come to another bridge and the monument beside it. "It stands there a disgrace to Drogheda and a disgrace to all Ireland," he said. He showed me the new Franciscan church, a very grand cut stone building. There is also a Dominican church, and an Augustinian, besides two others, and there was the foundation stone of still another to the memory of that Oliver Plunket, Catholic archbishop and primate of Ireland, put to death in the time of Titus Oates. I was informed that the proportion of Catholics to Protestants in Drogheda is six to one.

Walking through Drogheda on market day I did not see one barefoot woman in the crowd; all were pretty well dressed and well shod. The asses were sleek and fat, shod and attached to carts. How different from Ramelton, Donegal, Manor Hamilton, Leitrim, Castlebar or Mayo, where straw harness, lean asses and hungry, barefoot women abound. The land is good round Drogheda, and there is manufacturing going on. This makes the difference.

I will never get up along the Boyne at this rate. I went along the south side and, hearing the cheery clack of a loom, went into a cottage to see the weaver, a woman. She was weaving canvas for stiffening for coats. Could make threepence a yard, which was better pay a good deal than the Antrim weavers of fine linen make. She was much exercised in her mind against Mr. Vere Forster, who helps young western girls to emigrate to America, confounding him with the infamous wretches who decoy girls to France and Belgium. I tried to set her right, to explain matters to her, but I am afraid that I did not succeed in convincing her.

The land on both sides of the Boyne is dotted with houses and filled with people, so the country looks more cheerful than in empty Mayo or Roscommon. I spoke to a farmer who was looking hopefully at a large field of oats, and asked him what rent he paid. Owing to his nearness to Drogheda he paid L7 per acre. "How can you pay it?" I asked. "I can pay it in good years well enough," he said. "What have you left for yourself?" "I have the straw," he answered. I walked on and got weary enough before I came to the iron bridge and the monument. The monument has a very neglected, weather-stained appearance. Where Duke Schomberg was said to have fallen there was a growth of red poppies. I plucked some as a memorial of the place. I returned by the Meath side along a lovely tree-shaded road.

Some work-people explained to me that the late severe winters had destroyed the song birds of Ireland. I did not hear one lark sing in all the summer since I came. These working people were all anxious to emigrate if they had some means, and listened eagerly to the advantages of Canada as a place for settlement.

I was one Sabbath day in Drogheda, and attended service in the Presbyterian church there, which was opposite the spot where the great massacre of women and children took place in Cromwell's time. This was eagerly pointed out to me. The congregation was very small, not half filling the church.

Between Dublin and Belfast I had as travelling companion a Manchester merchant, who had run over during his holidays to have a peep at the turbulent Irish. He had been in Ireland for a few weeks, and had visited some cabins and spoken to some laborers, and had settled the matter to his own satisfaction. "The ills of Ireland arise from the inordinate love of the soil in the Irish, and their lower civilization. For instance, an English farmer in renting a farm would consider how much would support his family first, and if the landlord would not accept as rent what was left the bargain would not be struck. The Irish farmer would think first how much he could give the landlord, and would calculate to live somehow, not as any human beings should live, but somehow on the balance."

This was his theory. He denounced in no measured terms the union of

Church and State, blaming this for the prevalent unbelief.

In many parts of Ireland I have been taken for some one else. I have had secrets whispered to me under the mistake that I was somebody else, and words of warning given that were of no use to me, but the funniest of all was on my way from Dublin to Belfast. At a station in Down, I think, a gentleman got into our compartment who was in the good-natured stage of tipsyness. He seemed to labor under the impression that I had, in company with my brother, canvassed eagerly for Colonel Knox at the Tyrone election. He felt called upon to tell me some home truths, the bitterness of which he qualified with nods and smiles. "We bate your Colonel Knox, mem, in spite of you and your brother. Thank God for the ballot, mem, we can vote according to our own consciences, mem, not as we're told as it used to be, mem. You and your party think you have all the sense and learning and religion in Ireland, mem. All your religion is in your song, 'We'll kick the Pope before us.' All your learning, mem, is to hold up King William a decent man and abuse King James at the Orange meetings in Scrabba where your brother speaks. You and your kind need to know nothing but what happened in '98 and only one side of that. What happens in '81, mem, you hold your noses too high to notice." In this manner my tipsy friend ran on until the train stopped at Lisburn, when he left with a parting benediction. "God bless you, mem, you're better natured than I thought you were. May you go to heaven and that's where your brother won't go in a hurry."

I had to go to Liverpool to catch the ship and so had to forego seeing many things in Belfast which I had hoped to see. It was with some gladness I saw the ship "Ontario" again. Having arrived before the other cabin passengers I took the opportunity of going over the steerage with Mr. Duffin, the excellent chief steward. The quarters for steerage passengers were on the same deck as the saloon, as lofty and as well ventilated. The berths were arranged in groups with an enclosed state room to each. Single men by themselves, families by themselves, single women by themselves and foreigners by themselves, every division having their own conveniences for cleanliness and comfort. I am sure the arrangements for steerage passengers on the "Ontario" would have gladdened the heart of Miss Charlotte O'Brien.

I speak for myself, and I know I speak the sentiments of all the cabin passengers, when I say that nothing could exceed the provisions made for our comfort, or the courtesy and kindness shown by the captain and officers of the "Ontario" to us all, both in saloon and steerage. In conversation on board these sentiments came up often, and with enthusiasm, and captain and crew, and the stout ship met with no measured praise.

Before retiring behind the curtain to shake hands with sea-sickness again, we had a long, fond look at the land we were leaving. Liverpool had receded into a long, low line of twinkling lamps. My thoughts went through the mist to the land of my own people now passing through the throes of a great change.

Erin, beloved and beautiful, once more

The time of parting comes to thee and me;

The sad delight of pilgrimage is o'er,

And voices call to me across the sea.

In Canada the magic summer shines,

A purple haze upon the mountain broods,

The soft warm breeze is whispering through the pines.

And leaping waters thunder through the woods.

September radiance tints the forest grand,

The maples are aflame upon the hills;

From bursting barns plenty smiles o'er the land,

Where the tall farmer owns the soil he tills.

Erin, thy robe of green is dewed with tears,

Fields outrage-stained, thy west wind thick with sighs,

Thou that hast walked with woe down through the years,

Weighted with all the wrongs of centuries.

Erin, beloved with love akin to pain,

Through woe and outrage, turbulence and strife,

Thou shalt arise and enter once again

Into a higher, freer, glorious life.

A LAST WORD-THE CAUSE OF IRELAND'S TROUBLES.

Because I have had the privilege of being Irish correspondent for the Montreal Witness for a time, I think it right to explain to you the change which travelling through my native country has produced in my sentiments and the convictions forced upon me.

Brought up in the North of Ireland in a purely Hiberno-Scotch neighborhood, I drank in with my native air all the ideas which reign in that part of Ireland. The people with whom I came in contact were Conservatives of the strongest type; from my youth up, therefore, I had the cause of Ireland's poverty and misery as an article of belief. I never dreamed that the tenure of land had anything to do with it. Landlords were lords and leaders, benefactors and protectors to their tenants in my imagination.

I changed my opinion while in Ireland, and now I believe that the land tenure is the main cause of Ireland's miseries.

English history is pretty much a history of struggles against monopolies of one kind and another. There is no monopoly, it seems to me, which bears such evil fruit as the monopoly of all the land of a country in the hands of a few. It is bad for the country, bad for the people, and bad for the landlords, whether the monopolists are honorable companies, a landed aristocracy, or an ecclesiastical corporation. God's-law, which is the law of our faith, shows plainly how the Great Lawgiver regards the monopoly of land by the care which He took to have a direct interest in the land of Canaan by personal inheritance for every Jew. To guard against the might of greed, to prevent the poor of the land, touched by misfortune or snared by debt, from sinking into farm laborers or serfs of the soil he instituted the year of jubilee when every man returned to his inheritance.

I first thought over these things in connection with the land question in Ireland when travelling there and seeing the evils arising from the existing tenure of land. I met with testimony everywhere of how often and how fatally the will of a lord interfered to prevent prosperity. There might have been a seam of coal opened in Antrim but for one landlord. In the present depressed state of the linen trade what a boon that would have been to the country. There might have been ship-building on the Foyle, to the great benefit of Derry and her people, but for the absentee landlords, the London companies. Donegal might have had a coal mine opened, but the landlord would neither open it himself nor let anyone else do it, and yet the great want of Donegal is employment for her people.

I did not think for a moment that the landlords of Ireland were, as a rule, naturally worse than other men, but they have too much power, and when "self the wavering balance shakes, it's rarely right adjusted."

I blame the system, not the men. There were and are landlords in Ireland too noble to abuse their power, of which class the Earl of Belmore is an illustrious example; but these men are noble in spite of the system which afforded every facility for the enormities of Lord Leitrim.

The evil of the Land Tenure is intensified by the fact that one class makes laws for another, and that the same class has all the executive of these laws under their control. There was no power in the law to protect the inhabitants of Milford when the earnings and savings of their whole lives, and the private property of their minister were confiscated by the strong hand, and some were reduced in consequence to beg their bread. The law, planned expressly to be an expensive luxury, was only for the rich, and was known to the poor, if they dared to contend with their landlord, as an engine of oppression. The judge who gave the award in Mrs. Auldjo's case knew better than anyone else the cost of Irish law, and that the award he gave her under the Act of 1870 was a defeating of the intentions of the law, as it was really less than the law costs. His award added insult to injury to a woman who was a widow, and wantonly ruined in fortune because she dared to contend with a lord. The same spirit of partisanship invented the infamous Grand Jury system.

After I left Antrim, while travelling through the wilds of Donegal, the glens of Leitrim, and all through beautiful and desolate Mayo, I wondered over the absolute power which was left in the hands of the landholders and the great gulf which separated them from the land- tilling class. Public opinion, which they control, seems to have absolutely no sympathy with the common people when they were behind in their rents, although they were emerging from a period of agricultural distress, culminating in absolute famine. I watched the papers, I took good heed to the conversation that went on around me, and saw or heard no expression of sympathy when events took place which, I had thought, impossible under British law.

When Mrs. Whittington, of Malin, was put out in the wild March weather, with a child three days old in her arms and a flock of six around her, I looked for some one to raise a voice of protest, but there was not a whisper. When a landlord's official forced his way past husband, doctor and nurse, to the bedside of Mrs. Stewart, to order her to get out of bed to go to the workhouse, bringing on fits that caused the death of her babe and nearly cost her her life, I watched eagerly for some voice to say this should not have been done, but there was none. I have heard of retreating armies stopping and hazarding battle, rather than forsake a childing woman in her extremity, in countries not boasting of so enlightened a government as our own. I had so gloried in the British Constitution, its justice, its mercy! I waited to see what the law would do in this case. All the facts were admitted in court, yet this man, who forgot that he, too, was born of a woman, was triumphantly acquitted and not one word of disapproval appeared in any public print that I saw.

I have often come home after seeing that on the side of the oppressor was power-the power of bayonets-and that the poor had no helper, until I could not sleep for pain and could only cry to our Father-theirs and mine-How long, Lord, how long!

A friend described to me quite gaily a scene at the Castlebar workhouse during the last famine, when the starving creatures coming for relief surged round the workhouse gate and pressed and hustled and trampled down one another, how the police standing ankle deep in mud had to lay about them with their batons, and the poor creatures were sent home again, and yet again, until they would learn to keep order-keep order- and they were starving!

A lady in Clones, who was talking to me on Sabbath School work and missionary enterprise in a highly edifying manner, could only express her surprise about the poor of her own people who were doomed to the poor house, that they did not go in at once without struggle or fuss. And yet she had been a mother, and must have known what parting with children meant to a mother's heart. For my part I sympathized with that mother of whom I read in the papers, who was taken before a magistrate and sentenced for making a disturbance in the workhouse when she heard the master beating her child.

I wondered much at a noble and high-minded Irish gentleman who feels strong sympathy with the Oka Indians, who, in speaking to me of a man caught in company with another fishing by night, thereby transgressing the law, and was deliberately shot down by the agent of the property, expressed his regret that the other had not been also shot. Hardening the heart I hold to be one of the very apparent effects of the land system.

Another evil is the encouragement of unutterable meanness; a meanness that allows rich men to manage to extract under pressure gratuitous work out of these poor people. No one needs to be told that the Irish peasant is worse fed, worse clothed, worse housed than any peasant in Europe, yet gentlemen will take from these gratuitous work, and see so little to be ashamed of in the transaction as to write about it over their own signature, as Ernest Cochrane did in the columns of the Witness. I have heard of miles of separating fence being made, in this way, of walls being built and even of monuments being erected "in memoriam" in the same way. I was told of a noble lord having brought a gentle pressure to bear on his Irish tenants to cause them to subscribe over and above their rents for the benefit of those who were suffering from an accident in his English collieries.

I have wondered to hear gentlemen, and even clergymen, in Ireland wishing that the people would rise in rebellion so that there might be an opportunity of laying the cold steel to them and putting them down effectually. I have also wondered at the refusal of the authorities to have the riots in Limerick investigated; surely that does not look like impartial justice. I have wondered again over the openly avowed purpose of rooting the people out of the country.

I have looked with great concern and astonishment at the lands already wasted and almost without inhabitants. I have read with great pain the Lord Lieutenant's speech at Belfast, aspersing the country as disloyal and threatening them with greater tyranny. The people are disloyal, to a system of oppression and absolutism which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear; but I believe from my heart that they are more loyal to Her Majesty than their oppressors are, for the system has made them oppressors. Only notice, from Mr. Smith's evidence at the Land Court recently, concerning the Enniskillen estate, for which he is agent, it is proven that even in Protestant Ulster a landlord can abolish the Ulster custom-the root of Ulster's exceptional prosperity-at the motion of his own will. In the trials for turbary in the Kiltyclogher cases a rule made by a landlord in his office overrides even a lease, and is accepted as de facto law in the court.

These things have convinced me that the exterminating landlords are the parties who are guilty of high treason against the commonwealth of England. The loyalty of Irish Catholics to a country that had scant justice to give them has been proven on every battle field from far India to the Crimea. No history of England's wars in these later times can be written truly without acknowledging the Irish blood given like water for England's honor.

Scotland has been more favored of late years, although the time is not so far distant when her language, her dress and ancient customs were also proscribed. Watching this, I have found myself wishing that some Irish Walter Scott would arise whose pen would make Ireland's lakes and glens, mountain passes and battlemented rocks, ruined castles and mouldering abbeys, famous and fashionable as Scotland's brown heath and shaggy wood, till the Queen would love to have a home there, and the nobles of the land would follow in her shadow.

I have changed my opinion on this also. The nobles come to covet the homes of the people. The Highlands of Scotland seem destined to become a hunting ground. The hardy mountaineers, guilty of no crime, must give up their hamlets and shielings, the inheritance of their fathers, at the order of any trader who has coined the sweat of his fellow men successfully into guineas, or any idle lord who has money. If "a death grapple of the nations" should ever come to England will she miss the Connaught Rangers, the glorious 88th who won from stern Picton the cheer, "Well done 88th," or the Enniskillen dragoons so famed in song and story, or the North Cork that moved to battle as to a festival? Will she miss "the torrent of tartan and steel" that charged at the Alma, or the cry that "the hills of grey Caledon know the shout of McDonald, McLean and McKay, when they dash at the breast of the foe?" Will she miss the clansmen of Athol, Breadalbane and Mar? Will the exterminating lords who must have hunting grounds at all hazards come to the front with squadrons of deer or battalions of rabbits? Surely it is an aweful thing to sweep the inhabitants of a country for gain. If Britain ever has to call on these Varuses for her legions, or to repeat George II.'s cry at Fontenoy, will the enemy be able to countervail the Queen's damage?

I would earnestly plead with the authorities, even yet, to try a little conciliation instead of such strong doses of coercion. History tells how cheaply the disturbed Highlands were pacified compared with the expense of coercing them, which was a failure. The tithe of the expense for bayonets would, I am convinced, make the West of Ireland contented and make future prosperity possible.

THE END.