thousand clothed in mourning, for the occasion. But there is no need to go further into such traditions. Were _these_, then, the people who earned the hoarded hate of the Fenian? Was it this coarse and stupid extravagance, contrasted with the abject penury of the peasantry, (far greater then than now,) which has left such indelible, bitter memories? Very far indeed is this from being the case. That age of lavish waste is looked back upon universally in Ireland as one of those "former times" which are to be forever contrasted with the present,--an age of gold compared to an age of iron. True, the old landlords were harder on their tenants than any _dare_ now to be;--true, they neither improved land, nor built cottages, nor endowed schools, nor did one earthly thing to help the wretched and starving people in the face of whose misery they flaunted their splendor. But there was little or no bitterness of feeling toward them; for their faults were those with which the people sympathized, and their free-handed hospitality would have covered more sins even than they committed. Perhaps one of the very reasons why, in these last years, the never wholly quieted ground-swell of discontent has risen up in Fenianism is this, that the whole generation of which we have spoken has now utterly died out, and, since the Encumbered Estates Courts has done its work, the families of landholders have undergone great changes, and, where not changed in race, have wholly changed in habits and mode of life. "Castle Rackrent" exists no more. Irish landlords have now neither power nor inclination to hold free quarters for all comers. On the other hand, (we speak it advisedly,) no class of men in Europe strive more earnestly and self-denyingly to improve the condition of those dependent on them, to build good houses for their tenants, open schools for the children, and drain and fertilize the land. Let us hope that, as years roll on, and generations pass, the tradition of imaginary wrongs, and the unseen but too real results of actual ones, will both pass away, and there may yet come a day in which it will not seem a satire to speak of the land of the Fenian and the _Agrarian_ murderer as "The Isle of Saints." THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866. V. WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS. The conversation on dress which I had held with Jennie and her little covey of Birds of Paradise appeared to have worked in the minds of the fair council, for it was not long before they invaded my study again in a body. They were going out to a party, but called for Jennie, and of course gave me and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them equipped for conquest.