The difference did not consist merely in the quantity either. Some of their lands, like Sir Walter's at Youghal, on the Blackwater, were splendid lands; those of Spenser were wild moorlands, facing the wilder mountains, where the Irish, yet smarting under defeat and expulsion, the destruction of their great chief, and this plan, which was to continue that expulsion forever, and plant on their own soil the hated Saxon, were looking down, ready to descend and take sanguinary vengeance. Such was the lot which Spenser chose in preference to the degrading slavery of court dependence. No doubt he pleased himself with the idea of a new English state, established in this newly-conquered region; where, surrounded by English gentlemen, and one of the lords of the soil, he should live a life of content and happiness, and hand down to his children a fair estate. But in this fond belief how much of the poet's self-delusive property was mixed! Hear what the authority I have already made such use of, because I know it to be good, says: "It was a wild and lonesome banishment at best, for one who had lived so much in courts, and in companionship with the rich and high-born. Mountains on all sides shut in the retreat, and in the midst of the long and level plain between them stood a strong fortalice of the Earl of Desmond, which was to be the poet's residence, Kilcolman Castle. Hard by the castle was a small lake, and a mile or two distant, on either side, a river descended from the hills. In position, likewise, it was insecure, forming, as it did, the frontier of the English line in the south, and the contiguous hills affording lurking-places for the Irish kerns, whence they could pour down in multitudes to plunder. In the insurrectionary warfare that shortly succeeded, these mountain passes became the scene of many a skirmish; and the first object of the commander of the English forces, when he heard of any partial outbreak, was to send off a detachment of light-armed troops to occupy them in the name of the queen."