My third wedding was a picturesque Irish {67} one--that of Ninian Crichton Stuart to Lord Gormanston's only daughter, with, of course, a large party of Butes and Prestons gathered at Gormanston Castle, a huge pile mostly modern; but the quaint little chapel, Jacobean Gothic without and Empire style within, gaily adorned with lilies, marguerites, and trailing smilax, dates from 1687.[13] It was far too small to hold the wedding guests, who perforce remained on the lawn outside. I walked with our host, later in the day, in the splendidly timbered park, and the great picturesque untidy Irish garden; and he held forth on the hardship of having to live uncomfortably in Ireland after the luxury of Colonial governorships. "_Ireland!_ a rotten old country, only fit, as some one said, to dig up and use as a top-dressing for England!" was the summing-up of his lordship, whose ancestors had owned the land on which we were walking for some seven centuries.[14] I thought his bemoanings rather pathetic; but he amused me by his recital of a prescription for "The Salvation of Ireland" which once appeared (anonymously) in a northern newspaper. "Drain your Bogs--Fat more Hogs--Lots more Lime--Lots more Chalk--LOTS MORE WORK--LOTS LESS TALK!" I returned to Oxford in time for Commemoration, at {68} which Lord Milner and Mgr. Duchesne, two of our be-doctored guests, were very warmly received; attended the big luncheon in All Souls' library, where the agreeable ladies who sat on my right and left were totally unknown to me; and drank coffee in the sunlit quad, where a band played and I met many friends. Next day I took ship at Southampton (a noisy, shaky, creaky ship it was) for Guernsey, on a visit to my brother, who was in command of the Gunners there. I thought the approach to the island very pretty on a still summer morning: quaint houses and church towers climbing the hill among trees and gardens, with a foreground of white sails and blue sea. Very pretty too was "Ordnance House" and its old garden, with hedges of golden calceolarias and other attractions. I spent a pleasant week here, delighted with the rocky coast (reminding me of my native Wigtownshire) and the luxuriant gardens, especially that of the Lieutenant-Governor, whose charming house (he occupied Lord de Saumarez's seat) was full, as was to be expected,[15] of beautiful naval prints and other relics. Of a morning I would walk down to Fort Cornet--part of it of great antiquity--and watch my brother's guns at sea-target practice, till my head ached with the roar and concussion. The shooting was excellent, but the electric firing-apparatus occasionally went wrong, which might be awkward in battle! I was interested in the fine fifteenth-century parish church of St. Peter-Port, of flamboyant Gothic: the effect of the interior {69} nave-arches rising almost from the ground, with hardly any pillars, is most singular.