We shall expect you to-morrow evening, and we shall be quite ready to go on to the Lakes of Killarney or wherever you wish. By the way, I met an old acquaintance the morning I arrived here. I went to see Queen's College; and as I was walking under the archway which has carved upon it, 'Where Finbarr taught let Munster learn,' I saw two gentlemen. They looked like professors, and I asked if I might see the college. They said certainly, and offered to take my card into some one who would do the honours properly. I passed it to one of them: we looked at each other, and recognition was mutual. He (Dr. La Touche) is giving a course of lectures here on Irish Antiquities. It has been a great privilege to see this city and its environs with so learned a man; I wish you could have shared it. Yesterday he made up a party and we went to Passage, which you may remember in Father Prout's verses:-- 'The town of Passage is both large and spacious, And situated upon the say; 'Tis nate and dacent, and quite adjacent To come from Cork on a summer's day. There you may slip in and take a dippin' Fornent the shippin' that at anchor ride; Or in a wherry cross o'er the ferry To Carrigaloe, on the other side.' Dr. La Touche calls Father Prout an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt. Is not that a good characterisation? Good-bye for the moment, as I must see about Benella's luncheon. Yours affectionately S.P. Chapter X. The belles of Shandon. 'The spreading Lee that, like an Island fayre, Encloseth Corke with his divided floode.' Edmund Spenser. We had seen all that Youghal could offer to the tourist; we were yearning for Salemina; we wanted to hear Benella talk about 'the science'; we were eager to inspect the archaeologist, to see if he 'would do' for Salemina instead of the canon, or even the minor canon, of the English Church, for whom we had always privately destined her. Accordingly we decided to go by an earlier train, and give our family a pleasant surprise. It was five o'clock in the afternoon when our car trundled across St. Patrick's Bridge, past Father Mathew's statue, and within view of the church and bells of Shandon, that sound so grand on the pleasant waters of the river Lee. Away to the west is the two-armed river. Along its banks rise hills, green and well wooded, with beautiful gardens and verdant pastures reaching to the very brink of the shining stream.