It appears that this rather primitive couch is still used in many houses. But moralists have some reason to say that luxury is penetrating everywhere. In all the cottages that I have yet visited, the inhabitants have already mounted one step on the ladder of comfort. I have always seen one, and sometimes two beds, but never more. When there is only one bed, the father, mother, and daughters sleep side by side at one end; the sons at the other. When there are two, the parents and daughters occupy one, and the sons repose on the other. The pigs had also profited by this innovation; they sleep under the bed, and the hens generally perch above it. I have never seen such arrangements even amongst the savages on the African coast. This system, deplorable from a human point of view, seems, on the contrary, to have the happiest effect on the development of the intellectual and affectionate qualities of the pig. To him is confided the education of the children, who, almost naked, play in the mud outside the cottage. I saw two this morning, nearly of the same age, a little boy and a little girl, sleeping in the glare of the sun, their heads comfortably resting on the side of a great sow. The latter was evidently quite conscious of her important charge. When I advanced she first moved her ears, then uttered some little grunts, intended to herald the approach of a stranger, but she did not move for fear of awaking the two children. A little further on three others, of four and five years old, were filling an old tin box with dirty water, which they afterwards poured over their legs, with great satisfaction. Their guardian lying full length in the pool, watched this innocent amusement from one corner of her eye, and seemed to take extreme pleasure in it. What have all these people to live on? And here I must assert that they have no appearance of suffering. The race is not remarkable for physical beauty. But though they are ragged and half naked, they do not look famished with hunger as the people do at Dublin. The children are very fat. We are now at the commencement of the hay season, but yet all the men seem idling about the cottages. The Colonel assures me that many of them have money deposited in the banks, and that it is not rare to see a man living like those whom I have visited give his daughters when they marry a dowry of 40_l._ or 50_l._ each. Where do they get all this money, besides the sums they spend? More than a shilling a day is never paid for a man’s labour. The mystery is explained to me by the information that in a few days they will all go to England to assist in the harvest and hop-picking, and they live in idleness through the rest of the year on the money then made. Formerly, part of it went to pay the rent; but those good times are quite past now.