The shadow of those days has not yet entirely passed: but the stranger will see little of it, following the famous route which leads up the Lee valley to Macroom (where the rail ends), and so past Inchigeela and Ballingarry, past Gouganebarra by Keimaneigh, through the mountains to Bantry and Glengariff. And here confession must be made. I have never seen these famous beauties. I have followed the Lee only to Inchigeela where it breaks into a score of channels between little islands covered with scrub oak and birch and hazel, a piece of river scenery whose like I never saw. And I have driven along the road from Macroom to Killarney, along the Sullane River to Ballyvourney, which tens of thousands know as "the metropolis of Irish-speaking Ireland". For, as it chances, Cork alone, of the more prosperous counties, has kept the Irish speech, and kept it in a form the least modified by modern simplifications. Irish is still to-day the language of well-to-do and well-educated men and women. My host at Ballyvourney had received his education in Paris, more than that, had been through all the Franco-Prussian war, and had seen more of the world than is given to most men; but for many years he has been back, a kind of king among his own people, and a real repository of the ancient scholarship and traditions of the Gael. At Ballingeary, a few miles from him, was founded the first of those "summer schools" where men and women, boys and girls, of all sorts and conditions, and from many corners of the world, unite for common study of the noble language which careless generations had nearly suffered to die out. That settlement is now one of the objects of interest on the coach road, and travellers, if not tourists, may well find it the most interesting of all.