As a feature of Irish manners, I may mention another circumstance which astonished me. When upon my tour I spent a day or two with the Right Hon. Silver Oliver, who had at that time much company in his house. The table was well appointed, and everything wore an air of splendour and affluence. Afterwards when I resided at Mitchelstown—Mr. Oliver was either dead or absent, and everything in the house was advertised to be sold by auction—I went over to that auction, which gave me an opportunity of examining the whole house. I desired to be shown into the kitchen, as I could not find it of myself. When pointed out I was in utter amazement. There never was such a hole. I insisted upon it that it could not be the kitchen, as I had myself partook of dinners which could never have been dressed in such a pig-stye; but they assured me there was no other. It was about eight feet wide and ten long. Scarcely any light, and the walls black as the inside of the chimney. The furniture was no better than the fitting up; dressers, tables, and shelves seemed to have been laid aside as superfluous luxuries. It must have been an effort of uncommon ingenuity to cook at a turf hearth, in such a cave as this, the ample dinners I had seen in this house, and Etna or Vesuvius might as soon have been found in England as such a kitchen. Its existence for a single instant in the house of a man of fortune would be a moral impossibility. No English farmer would submit to it for a week. This strongly shows the manners of the people. A family with whom I resided for some time, while waiting for the Waterford packet, was that of Mr. Bolton, in a beautiful situation, commanding the finest views. Mr. Bolton, the elder, was a respectable man; but his son, the present proprietor of the estate, then in Parliament, was a man of singular and genuine patriotism, and of so mild and pleasing a temper that I much regretted I had him not for a neighbour at Bradfield. I had the pleasure of sending him from Suffolk many implements &c. for assisting him in his improved husbandry; and he has proved to the present day one of the most enlightened friends that Ireland has to boast, making an equal figure in my tour, and in the very able work of Mr. Wakefield[58] published within an interval of thirty years. Among the persons who received me in the most agreeable and hospitable manner I may be permitted to name the following: Earl of Harcourt (Lord Lieutenant), Earl of Charlemont, Lord Chief Baron Forster, his Grace the Lord Primate, the Archbishop of Tuam, Sir James Caldwell, &c. 1777.—This was the first favourable turn that promised anything after ten years’ anxiety and misery, yet how little did I deserve from that Providence I had so long neglected. The year was a remarkable one in the events of my life.