he wrote for the English public, wrote mainly about Ireland. So, too, with his contemporary Le Fanu, whose reputation rests on a double basis. He made some wonderful excursions into the realm of the bizarre, the uncanny, and the gruesome. But in the collection known as _The Purcell Papers_ will be found three short stories which for exuberant drollery and "diversion" have never been excelled. That the same man could have written _Uncle Silas_ and _The Quare Gander_ is yet another proof of the strange dualism of the Irish character. The record of the last fifty years shows an uninterrupted progress in the invasion of English _belles lettres_ by Irish writers. Outside literature, perhaps the most famous sayer of good things of our times was a simple Irish parish priest, the late Father Healy. Of his humorous sayings the number is legion; his wit may be illustrated by a less familiar example--his comment on a very tall young lady named Lynch: "Nature gave her an inch and she took an ell." In the House of Commons today there is no greater master of irony and sardonic humor than his namesake, Mr. Tim Healy. On one occasion he remarked that Lord Rosebery was not a man to go tiger-shooting with--except at the Zoo. On another, being anxious to bring an indictment against the "Castle" _régime_ in Dublin and finding the way blocked by a debate on Uganda, he successfully accomplished his purpose by a judicious geographical transference of names, and convulsed the House by a speech in which the nomenclature of Central Africa was applied to the government of Ireland.