Once again the Atlantic stops me. The eighty-three miles of country between here and Athlone have brought about no great change in the appearance of the people, who, on the whole, are better clad than the Galway folks. The difference in customs, dress, language, manners, and looks between one part of Ireland and another close by is sometimes very considerable. There is a lack of homogeneity, a want of fusion, an obvious need of some mixing process. The people do not travel, and in the rural districts many of them live and die without journeying five miles from home. The railways now projected or in process of construction will shortly change all this, and the tourist, with more convenience, will no longer be able to see the Ireland of centuries ago. The language is rapidly dying out. Not a word of Irish did I hear in Athlone, even on market day. The Westporters know nothing about it. The tongue of the brutal Saxon is everywhere heard. The degenerate Irish of these latter days cannot speak their own language. They preach, teach, quarrel, pray, swear, mourn, sing, bargain, bless, curse, make love in English. They are sufficiently familiar with the British vernacular to lie with the easy grace of a person speaking his mother-tongue. They are a gifted people, and a patriotic--at least they tell us so, and the Irish, they say, is the queen of languages, the softest, the sweetest, the most poetical, the most sonorous, the most soul-satisfying. And yet the patriot members speak it not. William O'Brien is said to know a little, but only as you know a foreign language. He could not address the people on the woes of Ireland, could not lash the brutal Saxon, could not express in his native tongue the withering outpourings of his patriotic soul. He always speaks in English, of which he thinks foul scorn. He is the best Gaelic scholar of the rout, and yet he could not give you the Irish for breeches. Westport is splendidly situated in a lovely valley watered by a nameless stream which empties itself into Clew Bay. A grand range of mountains rises around, the pyramidal form of Croagh Patrick dominating the quay. It was from the summit of this magnificent height that Saint Patrick sent forth the command which banished from the Green Isle the whole of the reptile tribe. "The Wicklow Hills are very high, An' so's the hill of Howth, Sir; But there's a hill much higher still, Aye, higher than them both, Sir! 'Twas from the top of this high hill Saint Patrick preached the sarmint, That drove the frogs out of the bogs An' bothered all the varmint. The toads went hop, the frogs went flop, Slap-dash into the water, An' the snakes committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter." Pity there is no modern successor of Saint Patrick to extirpate the reptilia of the present day, the moonlighters and their Parliamentary supporters, to wit.