and maintain that any male person, possessed of an eye for the charms of what is commonly called the opposite sex, will find that in Ireland the decay of female beauty has not yet commenced. Whether he be in Dublin or in Cork, in Sligo or in Limerick, pretty women take his vision—as the daffodils take the winds of March—at every corner. In fine, it may be said without exaggeration that if Ireland possesses a characteristic which renders her entirely different from the countries to which, on the face of it, she displays a sort of second hand, tumble-down resemblance, it is the prettiness of her women. I take it for granted that this trait has been commented upon by other travelers; but I do not think that it has heretofore been in any sense properly impressed upon the public mind. It is generally understood among artists that Irish women have delicate hands and an eye with a sparkle about it. Irish poets, in more or less halting English verse, have done their best to indicate that Irish women are, to say the least of it, worth looking at. But I am not aware that on the whole the literature about Ireland insists, to anything like a reasonable degree, on the beauty of Irish women. If the present work were from the “exquisite” pen of Mr. Arthur Symons, our failure adequately to portray the beauty of Erin’s daughters would, no doubt, be counterbalanced by the insertion of a selection of half-tone portraits of representative specimens. As it is we are compelled to admit that words fail us, and that, even if we cared to employ them, the process-block makers would fail us also.