The two parks are marvels, almost without other rivals in the world, for their prodigious extent, their admirably kept shrubberies and avenues, and the splendour and variety of the points of view which art has devised on the lakes. Those lakes themselves, with their islands, bays, and toy-peninsulas, their rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only part of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to possess the old abbey of the same name, and the Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen, Ross Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of O’Donoghue’s Castle, and a hundred other wonders. It is more regal than lordly, and there are indeed few royal residences which can boast such gardens. You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with verdure, ozone, and poetic sights. You come back the day following, you almost wish to take root there for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard any heavier occupation than catching salmon, smoking endless cigarettes, and reading over your favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I don’t know how much ready money to Lord Kenmare if he would grant him five hundred square yards of ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined. * * * * * There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could scarcely be less brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough of about four or five thousand inhabitants, more miserable looking than words can express. Except in the great hotels which English enterprise has raised for fleecing the tourists attracted there by the beauty of the lakes, there is not a vestige of ease or prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture is to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few dusty wares which nobody seems anxious either to buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness about, and people look tired with doing nothing. The women, all more or less “tattered and torn,” wear a poor rag of a shawl on their heads. Half-naked children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all the small alleys which open on the one street of the town. Only the Anglican and Catholic churches rise above the sordid little dwellings with a substantial and well-to-do air. Go out of the village, follow the long walls which enclose the lordly seats, and after three or four miles you will find again the Irish country such as you have seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields, thin pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side occasionally is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in mud fraternally with two or three bright-eyed urchins. Here and there a hovel with the traditional dung-hill and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring a new light on the agrarian crisis.