I am assured too that the consumption of spirits all through this region has greatly increased of late years. "The official reports will show you," said one gentleman, "that the annual outlay upon whisky in Ireland equals the sum saved to the tenants by the reductions in rent." This is a proposition so remarkable that I simply record it for future verification, as having been made by a very quiet, cool, and methodical person, whose information on other points I have found to be correct. He tells me too, as of his own knowledge, that in going over some financial matters with a small farmer in his neighbourhood, he ascertained, beyond a peradventure, that this farmer annually spent in whisky, for the use of his family, consisting of himself, his wife and three adult children, nearly, or quite, _seventy pounds a year_! "You won't believe this," he said to me; "and if you print the statement nobody else will believe it; but for all that it is the simple unexaggerated truth." Falstaff's reckoning at Dame Quickly's becomes a moderate score in comparison with this! I spent half an hour again in the muniment-room at Kilkenny Castle, where, in the Expense-Book of the second Duke of Ormond, I found a supper _menu_ worthy of record, as illustrating what people meant by "keeping open house" in the great families of the time of Queen Anne.[Note L.] Taking a train early in the afternoon, I came on here in time to dine last night with Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, an uncompromising Protestant "Home Ruler"--as Protestant and as uncompromising as John Mitchel--whose recent pamphlet on "Boycotting" has deservedly attracted so much attention on both sides of the Irish Sea.