Went on an exploring expedition to the ruins of Green Castle. One authority told me it had been the castle of the chief of the clan Doherty, once ruling lord here in the clannish times. Another equally good authority told me it was built by De Burgo in the sixteenth century to hold the natives in awe. Whoever built it, the pride of its strength and the dread of its power have passed away forever. It is a very extensive ruin and covers a large tract of ground. It looks as if three solid, high, square buildings were set, not very regularly, end to end, the outer wall of one built in a semi-circle, and towers raised at every corner and every irregularity of the wall. Of course the roof was on the floor, turrets and towers have lost part of their height and stand, rent and ragged, tottering to their fall. A good deal is said about the Norman style of arch and the Saxon style of arch found in old buildings. I am convinced that the arches of Green Castle, and its architecture generally, had been formed on the pattern of the rocks at Port-a-dorus and the other heaps along the coast. The same massiveness, the same wedge-like stones piled together to form arches prevail in both. Seaward the castle sits on a steep rock, like the rock on which Quebec sits for height, but cleaner scarped, and more inaccessible I should think. To stand on the shore and look up, the castle seems perched on a dizzy height, its ruined battlements and broken towers rising up into the sky. The pretty green ivy forms a kindly hap and a garment of beauty, both for rock and ruin. Long live the ivy green. There is a clean, smooth new fort standing beside the ruined old castle like a prosperous, solid, closely-shaven, modern gentleman beside dilapidated nobility. Its fat, broad tower looks strong enough and solid enough and grim enough for anything. Inside of the fort everything is clean, regular and orderly, as becomes a place under the care of British soldiers. The house, or quarters I suppose they should be called, are clean and bright, whitewashed (I almost said pipe-clayed), to the highest point of perfection. There are fortifications above fortifications here, and plenty of cannon pointed at an imaginary foe. There are cannon balls in scientific heaps waiting to be despatched on errands of destruction. Long may they wait. I saw the outside of the magazine, cased over with so many feet--oh, a great number--of solid masonry, padded over that with a great many feet of earth, containing a fabulous amount of powder--tons and tons of it. Saw also the slippers which the worshippers of Mars put upon their martial feet when they enter into his temple--slippers without a suspicion of shod, hob nail or sparable, with which the heels of the worshippers of Ceres in this country are armed. If any one of these intruded on this domain sacred to Mars, he would in his indignation gift them with the feathered heels of Mercury and send them off with an abrupt message for the stars.