He threw these aside, however, as themes that had no interest for him. What had he to do with the people? His care was with the soil, and less even with it than with its burdens and incumbrances. One conviction certainly did impress itself strongly upon him,--that he 'd part with his claims on the estate for almost anything, in preference to himself assuming the cares and duties of an Irish landlord,--a position which he summed up by muttering to himself, “is simply to have so many acres of bad land, with the charge of feeding so many thousands of bad people.” Here were suggestions, it is true, how to make them better, coupled with details that showed the writer to be one well acquainted with the difficulties of his task; here, also, were dark catalogues of crime, showing how destitution and vice went hand in hand, and that the seasons of suffering were those of lawlessness and violence. Various hands were detectable in these documents. Some evinced the easy style and graceful penmanship of education; others were written in the gnarled hand of the daily, laborer. Many of these were interlined in what Merl soon detected to be the stranger's own handwriting; and brief as such remarks were, they sufficed to show how carefully their contents had been studied by him. “What could be the object of all this research? Was he some emissary of the Government, sent expressly to obtain this knowledge? Was he employed by some section of party politicians, or was he one of those literary philanthropists who trade upon the cheap luxury of pitying the poor and detailing their sorrows? At all events,” thought Mr. Merl, “this same information seems to have cost him considerable research, and not a little money; and as I am under a pledge to give the Captain some account of his dear country, here is a capital opportunity to do so, not only with ease, but actually with honor.” And having formed this resolve, he instantly proceeded to its execution. That wonderful little note-book, with its strong silver clasps, so full of strange and curious information, was now produced; but he soon saw that the various facts to be recorded demanded a wider space, and so he set himself to write down on a loose sheet of paper notices of the land in tillage or in pasture, the numerical condition of the people as compared with former years, their state, their prospects; but when he came to tell of the ravages made and still making by pestilence amongst them, he actually stopped to reread the records, so terrible and astounding were the facts narrated. A dreadful malady walked the land, and its victims lay in every house! The villages were depopulated, the little clusters of houses at cross roads were stricken, the lone shealing on the mountain side, the miserable cottage of the dreary moor, were each the scenes of desolation and death. It was as though the land were about to be devastated, and the race of man swept from its surface! As he read on, he came upon