I was struck by their indifference to the political excitements of the day. One of them had forgotten that the Ripon and Morley reception was to take place to-night. The other called it "the love-feast of Voltaire and the Vatican." Both were much more fluent about hunting and farming. I asked if the hunting still went on in their part of the island. "It has never stopped for a moment," he replied. "No," added the other, "nor ever a dog poisoned. They were poisoned, whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The stories were printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at it so as not to be 'bothered.'" Both averred that they got their rents "fairly well," but both also said that they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderly man, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly went over to the markets in England. "I go to Norwich," he said, "not to Liverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that. Norwich is better for meat and for stores." Both agreed this was a great year for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoes to America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just taken from Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought over six hundred tons of hay from America. They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with a tale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, and eighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, with their tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The other capped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one of his farm lads about like a dog,--"the only pig," he said, "I ever saw show any human feeling!" The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought the English landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. "Ah, no!" interfered the other, "not quite; for if the English can't get their rents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rents nor keep our land!" They both admitted that there had been much bad management of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done the owners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but they both maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had been one-sided and short-sighted. "The tenants haven't got real good from it," said one, "because the claims of the landlord no longer check their extravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers and traders, who show them little mercy." Both also strenuously insisted on the gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of the charges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting those charges were cut down by legislation. "You have no landlords in America," said one, "but if you had, how would you like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a Disestablished Church at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their dues to you?"