live habitually in the presence and within the influence of Nature without imbibing and finally imitating something of her deliberation and serene patience. Man may

increase the pace of his machinemade wheels and pistons, but he cannot compel or induce Nature to go any faster. Neither, beyond a certain point which is soon reached, can he force her to be more wealth-producing, as the most recent results of high farming plainly show. The bulk of the Irish people are bred on and wedded to the soil, the air, the seasons, the weather, mist, hail, sunshine, and snow; and familiarity and co-operation with these help to deepen that pious Christian fatalism which is innate in their temperament. Therefore they work in moderation, and with long rests between whiles,-rest, perhaps, not absolutely needed by the physical frame, but akin to that passiveness which Wordsworth somewhere calls wise. Compare an ordinary English or Scotch with an ordinary Irish railway station, and the contrast is most striking. In the latter there is a total absence of fuss, bustle, expedition; and of a desire to get the trains off as summarily as possible. Even the railway porters are of opinion that there is plenty of time between this and the Day of Judgment in which to get life's rather unimportant business done, after a fashion.

After leaving Kilkee, I was so anxious to get to Killarney, and to get there quickly, in order that we might enjoy the sharp and sudden contrast between the barren grandeur of Clare and the leafy loveliness of Kerry, that, had it not been for the foregoing reflections, prompted by the splendid but sailless Shannon, I might perhaps have been impatient at

the railway dispensation which forbade us to get farther that night than Tralee. But abiding by the true traveller's motto"Levius fit patientiâ

Quidquid corrigere est nefas,"

I am sure Horace learned that little bit of wisdom, not in Rome, but at his Sabine farm-we congratulated ourselves on the easygoingness which permitted us to have tea and a couple of hours at Listowel, to saunter towards sundown by the banks of the salmon - haunted Feale, and to gaze at what is left upon its banks of the last stronghold that held out against Elizabeth in the Desmond insurrection.

Spring never arrayed herself in beauty more captivatingly childlike than on the mid-May morning when we arrived at Killarney. She had been weeping, half in play, half for petulance; but now she had put all her tears away, or had glorified what was left of them with radiating sunshine. Was it April? Was it May? Was it June? It seemed all three. But indeed every month keeps reminiscences of the one that precedes, and cherishes anticipations of the one that is to follow it. "Fresh emeralds jewelled the bare brown mould,

And the blond sallow tasseled itself with gold;

The hive of the broom brimmed with honeyed dew,

And Springtime swarmed in the gorse

anew.

There is no such gorse in wealthy Britain as enriches the vernal season in Ireland. I had come to that conclusion from what I had seen in King's County, in West Meath, and in Clare itself; but they in turn seemed poor in this opulent flower compared with the golden growth all about Mahony's

"June blushing under her hawthorn veil."

For Ireland is the land of the white as well as of the black thorn. But indeed of what wild flower that grows, of what green tree that burgeons, of what shrub that blossoms, are not the shores and woods and lanes and meadows of Killarney the home? Such varied and vigorous vegetation I have seen no otherwhere; and when one has said that, one has gone far towards awarding the prize for natural beauty. But vegetation, at once robust and graceful, is but the fringe and decoration of the loveliness of that enchanting district. The tender grace of wood and water is set in a framework of hills, now stern, now ineffably gentle, now dimpling with smiles, now frowning and rugged with impending storm, now muffled and mysterious with mist, only to gaze out on you again with clear and candid sunshine. Here the trout leaps, there the eagle soars, and there beyond the wild deer dash through the arbutus coverts, through which they have come to the margin of the lake to drink, and, scared by your footstep or your oar, are away back to crosiered bracken or heather-covered moorland. But the first, the final, the deepest and most enduring impression of Killarney is that of beauty unspeakably tender, which puts on at times a garb of grandeur and a look of awe only in order to heighten, by passing contrast, the sense of soft insinuating loveliness. How the missel-thrushes sing, as well they may! How the streams and runnels gurgle and leap and laugh! For the sound of jour

neying water is never out of your ears, the feeling of the moist, the fresh, the vernal, never out of your heart. My companion agreed with me that there is nothing in England or Scotland as beautiful as Killarney, meaning by Killarney its lakes, its streams, its hills, its vegetation; and if mountain, wood, and water, harmoniously blent, constitute the most perfect and adequate loveliness that Nature presents, it surely must be owned that it has, all the world over, no superior. I suppose there is a time when tourists pass through Killarney. Happily it had not commenced when we were there. But I gathered that they come for but a brief season; and a well-known resident and landowner, to whom we were indebted for much that added to the inevitable enjoyment of our visit, told me that he had in vain tried to provide himself with a few neighbours, by maintaining and even furnishing some most attractive and charmingly placed dwellings on his estate. It is so far away, so remote from London. And then-it is Ireland.

To portray scenery by language is not possible, often as the feat has been attempted in our time. The utmost one can do is to convey an impression of beauty, or grandeur, or picturesqueness; and one could but use familiar epithets and adjectives to but little purpose, were one to attempt to depict in words what one saw on Long Island, at Muckross Abbey, at Torc Waterfall, in the Lower Lake, the Upper Lake, the Long Range, or what one gazed out on at Glena Cottage, where we found tea and Irish slim - cakes provided for us in a sitting-room silently eloquent of the taste and refinement of its absent mistress. Equally futile would it be to try to describe the

eight hours' drive from Killarney to Glengarriff by Kenmare Bay. I can only say to everybody, "Do not die without taking it." As for Glengarriff, I scarcely know how any one who goes there ever leaves it. For my part, I have been there ever since. It is a haven of absolute beauty and perfect rest.

I came to the conclusion at last that the reason why, though Ireland is more beautiful still than Britain, it is less travelled in and less talked about, is that it has never produced a great poet, a great painter, or even a great novelist, I mean one who has sung or depicted the beauties of Ireland so as to excite general enthusiasm about them. Carent vate sacro. The crowd have not been bewitched into going to Ireland; and indeed, if they went, the crowd would never discover loveliness for themselves, or at least never apprehend its relation to other loveliness. I hope I shall not give offence to a race I greatly admire, if I say that Irishmen do not seem to love Ireland as Englishmen love England, or Scotchmen Scotland. If Tom Moore had only loved Ireland as a poet should love his native land, he might have brought its extraordinary charm home to the world, and made its beauty universally known. I am sure the Vale of Cashmere is not lovelier than Innisfallen and all that surrounds it; but for want of intimate affection he wrote of both in precisely the same strain and style, insensible to local colour, local form, local character, and in each case satisfying himself and asking us to be satisfied with vague dulcet adjectives and melodious generalities. But in truth I doubt whether the Irish are a poetical people, in the higher sense. They

have plenty of fancy, but little or no imagination; and it is imagination that gives to thought, feeling, and sentiment about a country a local habitation and a name. The Irish are both too inaccurate and too sad to produce poetry of the impressive and influencing sort. The groundwork of the highest imagination is close attention to and clear apprehension of the fact, which imagination may then, if it chooses, glorify and transfigure as it will. To the typical Irishman of whom I am speaking, the fact, the precise fact, seems unimportant. He never looks at it, he never grasps it; therefore he exaggerates or curtails, the statement he makes to you, and indeed the one he makes to himself, being either in excess or in diminution of the reality. I am aware that, according to the habitual conception of many persons, perhaps of most, exaggeration and imagination are one and the same thing, or at any rate closely akin. There could not be a more complete

error. Not only are they not akin, they are utterly alien to each other. Fancy exaggerates or invents. Imagination perceives and transfigures.

Equally common is the belief, more especially in days when pessimism is a creed with some and a fashion with others, that poetry and sadness are not only closely but inseparably related; and up to a certain point, and within a certain range of poetry, but necessarily a lower and a narrower one, that is true. Much beautiful lyrical and elegiac verse do we owe to sadness; but it is unequal to the task of inspiring and sustaining the loftier flights of the poetic imagination. The Athenians were not sad. The Italians are not sad. The Germans are not sad. The English are not sad.

They are serious, which is a totally different thing; and, as I have ventured to assert, the Irish character, though sad, is noticeably wanting in seriousness. Be it observed too, in passing, that serious people are accurate-I mean, of course, as far as human infirmity will permit. But as regards poetry and sadness, did not Euripides long ago say, in "The Suppliants," that it is well the poet should produce songs with joy; and did he not ask how, if the poet have it not, he can communicate delight to others? The joy here spoken of is not a violent or spasmodic joy, which is own brother to sadness, but a serene and temperate joy, such as Tennyson had in his mind when he wrote concerning the poet

a quarter of a mile broad; passing on one side the ruined Castle of Tourin, and on the other the woods of Dromana, through which I galloped-as only Irish horses will gallop over rough and uneven ground-for the better part of two hours, without coming to the end of them. What strikes one in Ireland is the abundance of everything, the "lots to spare,' what Irish people call "lashins." Flower - garden, kitchen - garden, pleasure-garden alike, are invariably much larger in Ireland in proportion to the size of the domain than in England. An Irish acre is about the very least anybody apparently has ever troubled himself to enclose for vegetables and fruit; and frequently this handsome allowance is exceeded where, from the domestic conditions, you

through good and ill,

He saw through his own soul."

I was again struck by the superiority of Irish scenery to its reputation, when, passing round from west to south, I found myself on the Blackwater. What Englishman has not seen Warwick Castle, and to whom are its romantic position and imposing aspect not household talk? How many Englishmen have seen, or even heard of, Lismore? To my surprise and shame, I suddenly discovered that Lismore-concerning which, I will be bound to say, most persons, if interrogated, would reply, "Lismore? Lismore? It belongs to the Duke of Devonshire, does it not?"-is much more beautiful than Warwick, and almost as picturesque. It was my good fortune to spend several days in a most charming and hospitable house, whose spacious grounds slope gradually down to the Blackwater, where that noble stream is

in excess of the needs of the family. This superfluous and prodigal assignment of space frequently leads to a good deal of untidiness; but Irish people seem to prefer waste places and neglected corners to prim parsimoniousness. But it must not be supposed that all establishments in Ireland are untidy and uncared-for. I saw several gardens, not only near Dublin,like Lady Ardilaun's beautiful one of St Ann's at Clontarf,-but in the most remote and rustic parts of Ireland, that would hold their own against the best-kept ones in England. In the grounds of the house on the Blackwater to which I have alluded, I found the most effective spring-garden I ever saw,

-the Irish climate being peculiarly favourable to spring and early summer gardening, where man seconds with any pains the bounty and geniality of Nature. One must go to the most favoured spots in the south of Devonshire to meet, in England, with such

flowering - shrubs, such rhododendrons, such out-door azaleas as abound all over the west, the south, and even the east of Ireland. At the same time, with Irish gardens and gardening, as with most other Irish things, "taking-it-aisy" is the general law. The result is far from being always disastrous, where neglect and unkemptness have not been carried too far. Many a fair and precious flower is coddled and "titivated" out of existence in these trim and orderly days; and I shrewdly suspect that the greater part of the old-fashioned herbaceous plants which have recently come into favour with all of us, and which had died out in most parts of England, have been brought over from Irish gardens, where they have always flourished undisturbed and unsuperseded. I can say for myself that I am indebted to the sister island for several new, otherwise old, herbaceous flowers; for, as we all know, Irish people are never happier than when they are giving what they have got.

I wish this love of flowers, which educated folk in Ireland exhibit in so marked a manner, was felt by its peasantry. Could their whitewashed cottages but have little gardens in front of them, instead of what they call "the street," which consists of a dunghill-tenanted bit of roughly-paved, and not always paved, ground that abuts on the road; could they be got to plant creepers against their walls, to cherish a climbing rose, to embower their porches in honeysuckle, Ireland would, as if by enchantment, be an utterly transformed country to travel in. But just as its people, in many respects so gifted, have little imagination, so have they little feeling for beauty. After leaving the country of the Black

water, I found a warm welcome in Queen's County from one who is indeed a Lady Bountiful, and well known as such, and who is doing her utmost to get the peasantry to understand the charm and the refining influence of flowers, just as she has employed almost every known method for adding to the grace and dignity, as well as to the material comfort, of their lives. If she succeeds, as I fervently hope she may, she will indeed have been a benefactress to the people among whom she lives, and who, I could perceive, are not insensible to her large, catholic, and unostentatious interest in them. I had always imagined that Kent has no superior as a home for wild-flowers. But all that I know at home of floral woodland beauty fades into insignificance when compared with the miles on miles of bluebells, under secular timber of every kind, through which she led me on the evening of my arrival. At last I saw Fairy Land, not with the mind's eye but with the bodily vision; and not for days did the colour of that seemingly endless tract of wildwood hyacinths fade from the retina. Here again was another, and perhaps the most surprising, instance of the lavishness, the abundance of everything in Ireland, of which I have spoken, and the complete ignorance of Englishmen of what Ireland has to show them in the way of natural and cultivated beauty, which they are supposed, and not unjustly, to love SO dearly.

No country is beautiful throughout, but I cannot agree with the opinion I have heard expressed so frequently that the centre of Ireland is ugly. For my part, I have yet to see an ugly country where it still remains country; and I cannot understand how any rural