the single cannon and some old muskets and ammunition, which latter they carried off next morning, when they abandoned the tower and cannon on the approach of the police. But though the groundwork of fact as to the condition of the Home Rule agitation may be infinitesimal, there is very serious apprehension still on the Land Question, upon which I found it difficult to draw the man in the street. I was fortunate enough, however, to come across several resident landlords and professional men, both Catholic and Protestant, who, one and all, look with the gravest distrust at the operation of recent land legislation. The Commissioners who administer these Acts have, unfortunately, the strongest interest in prolonging the present state of uncertainty. Their appointments will end with the cessation of appeals by tenants for further reductions of rent, which, under the circumstances, does not seem likely to come about before the landlords’ interest has been pared down bit by bit till it touches prairie-value. The present utter confusion and uncertainty is at any rate a striking object-lesson as to the dangers of meddling with freedom of contract by Acts of Parliament. When I landed in Ireland, I was under the impression--for which I think you, sir, and perhaps the late Lord Beaconsfield, with his dictum about the “melancholy ocean,” were responsible--that there is a note of sadness underlying the superficial gaiety of the Irish character, as is the case with most Celts. Well, whether it be from natural incapacity, and that each observer only brings with him a limited power of seeing below the surface in such matters, in any case I wholly failed to discern any such characteristic in Central or South Ireland, though there may be a trace of it perhaps in the North, where, by the way, they are not Celts. On the contrary, the remark of a friendly and communicative Killarney carman, “Shure, sir, we always try to get on the sunny side of the bush, like the little birds,” seemed to me transparently true. And next to this desire for the sunny side of the bush, a happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth temper struck me as the prevailing characteristic, as Sir Walter saw it when he wrote “Sultan Solomon’s Search after Happiness.” Look at the national vehicle, the outside car--far more national and popular than our hansom. Did any race ever invent a conveyance so easy to mount and dismount from, or which offers the same chances of being shot off at every street corner or turn in the road? If any reader doubts, let him go over to the next horse-show at Dublin, and watch the crowd breaking up at the end of the show. The roads into the city are certainly unusually broad, but the sight of a dozen jaunting-cars coming along, two or three abreast, as hard as their horses can trot, the driver lolling carelessly, with a loose rein, on one side, and a couple of Irishmen on the other, is a sight to make the Saxon “sit up,” though he may be accustomed to the fastest and most