peasant became less a stranger to him. The evidences of this better order of things became manifest on the face of the country. Agriculture, though still backward, made real progress; the breeds of farming animals greatly improved; the huge breadths of pasturage had a less deserted aspect. The country towns had generally advanced; the land had been opened by good roads; the means of locomotion had been largely multiplied. The rental of Ireland had doubled within living memory; in some counties, indeed, it was nearly as high as it is now; the land was at a price of more years' purchase than it is at the close of the nineteenth century. It was at this period that the great country houses of Ireland were built, and their vast demesnes laid out; the wages of labour were low, but had distinctly risen; the peasant hind, Arthur Young tells us, in point of food and clothing, was as well off as his fellow in England. The land was largely parcelled out into considerable farms; but small holdings were on the increase; and the cottar system, in the course of time to become a source of manifold evils, was not yet a cause of much mischief; the pressure of population on the soil was not severely felt. Many of the great landlords, too, were excellent men; they ruled the country well, and greatly improved their estates; in numberless instances they had won the hearts of dependents, who regarded them as kind masters. Yet the picture was not without a dark side; this land system still had evil, nay, repulsive, features. Except in the best part of Ulster the deep divisions of race and faith continued to be profoundly marked; the Penal Code had made these, to a great extent, indelible. There was still much oppression and exaction in landed relations; the class of small landlords and the class of middlemen were too generally tyrannical and harsh; complaints of over-renting were not infrequent; and if the great landlords, as a rule, were not severe superiors, many were extravagant, addicted to excess, and reckless duellists; they bore a strong resemblance to the seigneurie of the old French Monarchy. The peasantry, too, remained serfs, illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious; the good feelings they often had for their lords had too much of the submissiveness of the slave; and virtuous as their women ordinarily were, they too generally yielded to the lusts of their masters. The habitations, besides, of this population were still wretched; if their lot had assuredly become better, it was often hard, above all, degraded. They had begun to feel more acutely the ills they suffered; in many counties they had banded themselves together into lawless leagues, to protect themselves and to resist authority. These associations, known by the general name of Whiteboys--perhaps taken from the Camisards of the Cevennes--had as their objects the preservation of rights of commonage, the extinction of tithes, and the reduction of rents;