between the Irish and the Danes after the battle of Clontarf, although the foreign people held Dublin until the arrival of Strongbow, and made a very poor stand against him, for he captured the city with very little difficulty. Dublin has hardly suffered what could be called a siege since 988, when Malachy II. took it from the Danes. When Strongbow held it, the Irish under the wretched Roderick O'Connor marched a great army under its walls, and were going to take it; but before they began siege operations, and while they were amusing themselves by swimming in the Liffey, Strongbow sallied out on them and totally defeated them. That was the last serious attempt to besiege Dublin. Dublin does not appear to have grown much until after the wretched, and for Ireland terribly unfortunate, Jacobite wars were over. It grew and prospered rapidly almost all through the eighteenth century when a native parliament sat there; but from about 1820 until about 1870 there was not very much either of growth or improvement in it. Since then, in spite of what the census may show, it has grown considerably, and has been improved immensely. It is not easy to see what has caused such improvement in Dublin since 1870. The only way that the improvement in the state of the streets, the pulling down of old buildings and the erection of new ones, can be accounted for, is by the fact that the local government of the city is in the hands of a different class of men from those who ruled it so long and so badly up to about the time mentioned. When one considers all that has been done since then in the paving of streets, the laying down of new side walks, the tearing down of old buildings, the erection of cottages for the working classes where rotten and pestiferous houses had stood, the deepening of the river so that the largest ships can now enter it, the extension and perfecting of the tram-car system, and other improvements too numerous to mention, it strikes him as something astonishing; but when it is remembered that all these improvements have taken place in the face of declining trade, declining population, and declining wealth in the country at large, what has been accomplished becomes absolutely sublime. It shows clearly that there is a class of the Irish people who, with all their faults, possess hearts and souls "that sorrows have frowned on in vain, Whose spirit outlives them, unfading and warm"; and that they never give up and never despair. Never has any city been so much improved in so short a time, and in the face of such difficulties. The improvements are still being carried on. If they are carried on for another quarter of a century at the same rate at which they were carried on during the last quarter of a century, Dublin will be one of the cleanest, pleasantest, healthiest, and most beautiful cities in the world.