In England such extensive demesnes would be parks around the seats for beauty as much as use, but it is not so in Ireland; the words deer-park and demesne are to be distinguished; there are great demesnes without any parks, but a want of taste, too common in Ireland, is having a deer-park at a distance from the house; the residence surrounded by walls, or hedges, or cabins; and the lawn inclosure scattered with animals of various sorts, perhaps three miles off. The small quantity of corn proportioned to the total acres, shows how little tillage is attended to even by those who are the best able to carry it on; and the column of turnips proves in the clearest manner what the progress of improvement is in that kingdom. The number of horses may almost be esteemed a satire upon common sense; were they well fed enough to be useful, they would not be so numerous, but I have found a good hack for a common ride scarce in a house where there were a hundred. Upon an average, the horses in gentlemen's stables throughout the kingdom are not fed half so well as they are in England by men of equal fortune; yet the number makes the expense of them very heavy. Another circumstance to be remarked in the country life is the miserableness of many of their houses; there are men of five thousand a year in Ireland, who live in habitations that a man of seven hundred a year in England would disdain; an air of neatness, order, dress, and _proprete_, is wanting to a surprising degree around the mansion; even new and excellent houses have often nothing of this about them. But the badness of the houses is remedying every hour throughout the whole kingdom, for the number of new ones just built, or building, is prodigiously great. I should suppose there were not ten dwellings in the kingdom thirty years ago that were fit for an English pig to live in. Gardens were equally bad, but now they are running into the contrary extreme, and wall in five, six, ten, and even twenty Irish acres for a garden, but generally double or treble what is necessary.