'Mud cabins swarm in
This place so charming,
With sailor garments
Hung out to dry;
And each abode is
Snug and commodious,
With pigs melodious
In their straw-built sty.'

Father Prout.

'"Did the Irish elves ever explain themselves to you, Red Rose?"

'"I can't say that they did," said the English Elf. "You can't call it an explanation to say that a thing has always been that way, just: or that a thing would be a heap more bother any other way."'

The west of Ireland is depressing, but it is very beautiful; at least if your taste includes an appreciation of what is wild, magnificent, and sombre. Oppressed you must be, even if you are an artist, by its bleakness and its dreariness, its lonely lakes reflecting a dull, grey sky, its desolate boglands, its solitary chapels, its wretched cabins perched on hillsides that are very wildernesses of rocks. But for cloud effects, for wonderful shadows, for fantastic and unbelievable sunsets, when the mountains are violet, the lakes silver with red flashes, the islets gold and crimson and purple, and the whole cloudy west in a flame, it is unsurpassed; only your standard of beauty must not be a velvet lawn studded with copper beeches, or a primary-hued landscape bathed in American sunshine. Connemara is austere and gloomy under a dull sky, but it has the poetic charm that belongs to all mystery, and its bare cliffs and ridges are delicately pencilled on a violet background, in a way peculiar to itself and enchantingly lovely.

The waste of all God's gifts; the incredible poverty; the miserable huts, often without window or chimney; the sad-eyed women, sometimes nothing but 'skins, bones, and grief'; the wild, beautiful children, springing up like startled deer from behind piles of rocks or growths of underbrush; the stony little bits of earth which the peasants cling to with such passion, while good grasslands lie unused, yet seem for ever out of reach,--all this makes one dream, and wonder, and speculate, and hope against hope that the worst is over and a better day dawning. We passed within sight of a hill village without a single road to connect it with the outer world. The only supply of turf was on the mountain-top, and from thence it had to be brought, basket by basket, even in the snow. The only manure for such land is seaweed, and that must be carried from the shore to the tiny plats of sterile earth on the hillside. I remember it all, for I refused to buy a pair of stockings of a woman along the road. We had taken so many that my courage failed; but I saw her climbing the slopes patiently, wearily, a shawl over her white hair,--knitting, knitting, knitting, as she walked in the rain to her cabin somewhere behind the high hills. We never give to beggars in any case, but we buy whatever we can as we are able; and why did I draw the line at that particular pair of stockings, only to be haunted by that pathetic figure for the rest of my life? Beggars there are by the score, chiefly in the tourist districts; but it is only fair to add that there are hundreds of huts where it would be a dire insult to offer a penny for a glass of water, a sup of milk, or the shelter of a turf fire.

As we drive along the road, we see, if the umbrellas can be closed for a half-hour, flocks of sheep grazing on the tops of the hills, where it is sunnier, where food is better and flies less numerous. Crystal streams and waterfalls are pouring down the hillsides to lose themselves in one of Connemara's many bays, and we have a glimpse of osmunda fern, golden green and beautiful. It was under a branch of this Osmunda regalis that the Irish princess lay hidden, they say, till she had evaded her pursuers. The blue turf smoke rises here and there,--now from a cabin with house-leek growing on the crumbling thatch, now from one whose roof is held on by ropes and stones,--and there is always a turf bog, stacks and stacks of the cut blocks, a woman in a gown of dark-red flannel resting for a moment, with the empty creel beside her, and a man cutting in the distance. After climbing the long hill beyond the 'station' we are rewarded by a glimpse of more fertile fields; the clumps of ragwort and purple loosestrife are reinforced with kingcups and lilies growing near the wayside, and the rare sight, first of a pot of geraniums in the window, and then of a garden all aglow with red fuchsias, torch plants, and huge dahlias, so cheers Veritas that he takes heart again. "This is something like home!" he exclaims breezily; whereupon Mr. Shamrock murmurs that if people find nothing to admire in a foreign country save what resembles their own, he wonders that they take the trouble to be travelling.

"It is a darlin' year for the pitaties," the drivers says; and there are plenty of them planted hereabouts, even in stony spots not worth a keenogue for anything else, for "pitaties doesn't require anny inTHRICKet farmin', you see, ma'am."

The clergyman remarks that only three things are required to make Ireland the most attractive country in the world: "Protestantism, cleanliness, and gardens"; and Mr. Shamrock, who is of course a Roman Catholic, answers this tactful speech in a way that surprises the speaker and keeps him silent for hours.

The Birmingham cutler, who has a copy of Ismay's Children in his pocket, triumphantly reads aloud, at this moment, a remark put into the mouth of an Irish character: "The low Irish are quite destitute of all notion of beauty,--have not the remotest particle of artistic sentiment or taste; their cabins are exactly as they were six hundred years ago, for they never want to improve themselves."

Then Mr. Shamrock asserts that any show of prosperity on a tenant's part would only mean an advance of rent on the landlord's; and Mr. Rose retorts that while that might have been true in former times, it is utterly false to-day.

Mrs. Shamrock, who is a natural apologist, pleads that the Irish gentry have the most beautiful gardens in the world and the greatest natural taste in gardening, and there must be some reason why the lower classes are so different in this respect. May it not be due partly to lack of ground, lack of money to spend on seeds and fertilisers, lack of all refining, civilising and educating influences? Mr. Shamrock adds that the dwellers in cabins cannot successfully train creepers against the walls or flowers in the dooryard, because of the goat, pig, donkey, ducks, hens, and chickens; and Veritas asks triumphantly, "Why don't you keep the pig in a sty, then?"

The man with the evergreen heart (who has already been told this morning that I am happily married, Francesca engaged, Salemina a determined celibate, but Benella quite at liberty) peeps under Salemina's umbrella at this juncture, and says tenderly, "And what do you think about these vexed questions, dear madam?" Which gives her a chance to reply with some distinctness, "I shall not know what I think for several months to come; and at any rate there are various things more needed on this coach than opinions."

At this the Frenchman murmurs, "Ah, she has right!" and the Birmingham cutler says, "'Ear! 'ear!"

On another day the parson began to tell the man with the evergreen heart some interesting things about America. He had never been there himself, but he had a cousin who had travelled extensively in that country, and had brought back much unusual information. "The Americans are an extraordinary people on the practical side," he remarked; "but having said that, you have said all, for they are sordid, and absolutely devoid of ideality. Take an American at his roller-top desk, a telephone at one side and a typewriter at the other, talk to him of pork and dollars, and you have him at his very best. He always keeps on his Panama hat at business, and sits in a rocking-chair smoking a long cigar. The American woman wears a blue dress with a red lining, or a black dress with orange trimmings, showing a survival of African taste; while another exhibits the American-Indian type,--sallow, with high cheekbones. The manners of the servant classes are extraordinary. I believe they are called 'the help,' and they commonly sit in the drawing-room after the work is finished."

"You surprise me!" said Mrs. Shamrock.

"It is indeed amazing," he continued; "and there are other extraordinary customs, among them the habit of mixing ices with all beverages. They plunge ices into mugs of ale, beer, porter, lemonade, or Apollinaris, and sip the mixture with ............