Those roads and highways, as well as the bridges and all the public works depending upon the English Government, are admirably kept. It is clear that on that point Dublin Castle is resolved to give no handle to criticism. Those splendid tracks of road, laid across waste and desert land, even produce a curious effect, and one would be tempted to see an affectation about it, did they not, in the majority of cases, lead to some magnificent private property, spreading as far as one can see over hill and dale, always shut in by stone walls eight or ten feet high, enclosing an area of several miles. As for the conveyances that are seen on these Appian Ways they are of two kinds; either the smart carriage whose cockaded coachman drives magnificent horses, or the diminutive cart drawn by a small donkey, carrying, besides the grand-dame or child that drives it, a sort of conical-shaped utensil held in its place with cords and oftener filled with water than with milk. One must go to Morocco or Spain to see donkeys in such numbers as in Ireland. * * * * * One thing surprises in those endless pastures—it is to count so few grazing beasts on them. Not that they are altogether excluded; now and then one perceives on the intense green of the fields reddish or white spots that are cattle or sheep, the rounded haunch of a mare, the awkward frolics of a foal. On the brinks of rivers that one can almost always cross wading, one sometimes sees a few happy cows, their feet in the water, wide-eyed and munching dreamily. Here and there one sees geese, hens escorted by their chicks, pigs fraternally wallowing with children in the muddy ditch. But in a general way the landscape is wanting in animated life, and as poor in domestic animals as in labourers. As a contrast game is plentiful, as is natural in a land that is three-quarters uncultivated, where it is forbidden to carry arms, and where shooting is the exclusive privilege of a very small minority. Hares and rabbits seem to enjoy their immunity to the utmost, and everywhere their white breeches are seen scudding away in the dewy grass like fireworks. * * * * * Villages are rare, and rarer still is farmhouse or homestead. Undulating ridges succeed to undulating ridges and still one sees no trace of any dwellings. One might think that these stone walls radiating over the fields had sprung there of their own accord, and that the hay is doomed to rot standing, after feeding the butterflies. Yet that cannot be—evidently some one must come now and then to cut this grass, make it into stacks and carry it away.... At last, by dint of stretching neck and legs you succeed in discovering far away on the horizon a spire that belongs to a big borough, a market-town rather, where those civic tillers of the soil dwell in houses similar to those of the _liberties_ in Dublin.