Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum, with camels across the desert--a marvellous piece of military work. I find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present. He there formed what seem to me very sound and just views as to the ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of General Grant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modesty which were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The day before the evacuation of Petersburg by the Con federates, Grant was urged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused to do so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them. Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass, said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, "You were right, and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them." It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer at that time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago to Edinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have never been recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and then discerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in a newspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are in existence somewhere. ABBEYLEIX, _Monday, Feb. 13._--To-day, in company with Lord de Vesci and a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm, but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, I fear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks to its turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Bound Tower (one of these in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with a belfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep of its castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effect of the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character to the otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is a bit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with the scutcheon in stone of the O'Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of this family with the secret as well as the public story of the Parnellite movement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call "mighty interestin' reading." A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left of the old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans of Preston and O'Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin of the cause of the Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyal legate of Pope Innocent.