No one can pass through a career like Mr. O’Brien’s without making many enemies; but he must possess very fine qualities, for even his bitterest opponents acknowledge the perfect respectability of his life. In every one’s opinion he is a sincerely pious and exceedingly charitable man. Nearly all the money he earns, and he earns a great deal, is spent in good works. Last year, at the end of a political lawsuit, his opponent was sentenced to pay him 1,000_l._ damages and interest. With one stroke of the pen he gave it all to charity. Physically he is rather a small, dark man, who looks older than he is, in spite of the brightness of his eyes which shine through his spectacles. He has all the appearance of an enthusiast, and I believe that he is absolutely convinced of the justice of the cause that he serves without a mental reservation and with the most absolute devotion. I will not record our conversation here, because it differed very little from the conversations that I had with other chiefs of the Land League. I prefer to discuss them all together and then sum up the information that I have collected. If I do not make this rule I shall repeat myself. When I left the office of the _United Ireland_, I was driven to that of the _Freeman’s Journal_, where I saw Mr. Dwyer Gray. Mr. E. Dwyer Gray is the son of a man who has played an important part in the political history of contemporary Ireland, Sir John Gray was the owner of the _Freeman’s_, which, even in his time, brought in, so they say, 200,000 francs, 8,000_l._, per annum. When I remember the trouble our papers have to pay their expenses I cannot understand the financial prosperity of English and American journals. The _Freeman’s_, which, after all, is only a small provincial newspaper, prints forty thousand copies; its size almost equals the _Times_; it keeps a staff of seven shorthand writers in London, who telegraph daily by a special wire the debates in the House; it publishes very well written foreign correspondence, yet it brings in a great deal more since it has been in Mr. Dwyer Gray’s hands than formerly. He opened his political life as a member of the Dublin corporation, then he became lord mayor, and afterwards county Carlow returned him to Parliament where, as a business speaker, he has won a good reputation amongst Parnell’s colleagues. A converted Protestant, he represents a relatively moderate element in politics as well as in religion. A few incidents in his career deserve notice. In his relations with the Municipality he had an opportunity of discovering the embezzlements of the infamous Carey, afterwards so sadly notorious through first founding and then betraying the Invincible Society which assassinated Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in Phœnix Park, by stabs with a knife. Although Carey was in the main a co-religionist, he did not hesitate to unmask him, and even pursued him so energetically that, later on, during the trial of