Of Dublin itself, what shall be said? A much-travelled Belgian priest told me recently that only in Naples had he seen such widespread marks of destitution, and in Naples they have little to suffer from cold. A young Irish nationalist, London-bred, describing the emotion with which he made his first visit to the country he had worked so hard for, said that his week in Dublin left one leading impression on his mind--the saddest people he had ever seen; nowhere had he heard so little laughter. He had lived near poverty all his life in London and yet had not seen so many pinched and drawn faces. All this is true, especially on the north bank of the Liffey. And yet an artist who came with me once to the city spent his days in rapture over the beauty of the public buildings. That also is true. The King's Inns, the Four Courts, and the Custom House on the north side of the river; in College Green, the front of Trinity College and the old Parliament House, (still--in 1911--the Bank of Ireland), are all splendid examples of the severe Georgian style of architecture, which found even happier expression in many noble and nobly ornamented dwelling houses. All this building was done in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Dublin had its day, when it was in reality the capital of Ireland. [Illustration: NEAR ABBEYLEIX, QUEEN'S CO] Traces of its earlier history are found in the Castle, Norman built, but standing where the Danish founders of the city set their stronghold by the ford above the tideway; and in Christ Church, first founded by the Danes when in the eleventh century they came over to Christianity. Skilful restoration of the cathedral has disclosed much of the early fabric--Norman work on Danish foundations. And yet that ancient Danish stronghold interests me no more than Cæsar's Londinium; nor does the medieval city hold any charm for my mind--lying as it did outside the real life of Ireland, merely a fortress of a foreign power. Strongbow's tomb is there to see in Christ Church, but to my thinking a far more significant monument is to be found in the other cathedral, St. Patrick's. Dublin as we know it, the capital and centre of an English-speaking Ireland, really dates from the eighteenth century; and its first outstanding and notable figure was Jonathan Swift, the immortal Dean. The Deanery, in which were spent the most remarkable years of his splendid and sinister existence, stands outside the main entrance; near that entrance, in the south aisle, surmounted by a small bust, is the marble slab which enshrines his famous epitaph. I translate it:-- "Jonathan Swift, for thirty years Dean of this Cathedral, lies here, where fierce indignation can no longer prey upon his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate, if you can, him who did a man's part as the strenuous upholder of liberty."