It was of a cheery spring morning, sunlit and breezy, when, in the chirping songs of birds, the rustling leaves, and fast-flowing rivulets, Nature seems to enjoy a more intense vitality, that the Earl sat at breakfast with his daughter. A fairer prospect could hardly be seen than that which lay before the open windows in front of them. The green lawn, dotted with clumps of ancient trees, inclined with many a waving slope to the sea, which in a long narrow arm pierced its way between two jutting headlands,--the one bold, rocky, and precipitous; the other grass-covered and flowery, reflecting its rich tints in the glassy water beneath. The sea was, indeed, calm and still as any lake, and, save when a low, surging sound arose within some rocky cavern, as silent and noiseless. The cattle browsed down to the very water's edge, and the nets of the fishermen hung to dry over the red-berried foliage of the arbutus. They who looked--when they did, perchance, look on this scene--gazed with almost apathy on it. Their eyes never brightened as the changing sunlight cast new effects upon the scene. Nor was this indifference the result of any unconsciousness of its beauty. A few months back it was the theme of all their praises. Landscape-painters and photographers were invited specially to catch its first morning tints, its last mellow glow at sunset. The old Lord said it was finer than Sorrento, equal to anything in Greece. If the Mediterranean were bluer, where was there such emerald verdure,--where such blended coloring of heaths, purple and blue and violet,--in what land did the fragrance of the white thorn so load the warm atmosphere? Such, and such like, were the encomiums they were wont to utter; and wherefore was it that they uttered them no more? The explanation is a brief one. A commission, or a deputation, or a something as important, had come down to examine Bantry Bay, and investigate its fitness to become a packet station for America. In the course of this examination, a scientific member of the body had strayed down to Glengariff, where, being of a speculative as well as of a scientific turn, he was struck by its immense capabilities. What a gem it was, and what might it not be made! It was Ireland in the tropics,--“the Green Isle” in the Indian Ocean! Only imagine such a spot converted into a watering-place! With a lodge for the Queen on that slope sheltered by the ilex-copse, crescents, and casinos, and yacht stations, and ornamental villas rose on every side by his descriptive powers, and the old Earl--for he was dining with him--saw at one glance how he had suddenly become a benefactor of mankind and a millionnaire. “That little angle of the shore yonder, my Lord,--the space between the pointed rock and the stone-pine trees,--is worth fifty thousand pounds; the crescent that would stand there would leave many an untenanted house at Kemp Town. I 'll engage myself to get