These pages were first published in the shape of letters addressed from Ireland to Le Temps , during the summer months of 1886 and 1887. A few extracts from those letters having found their way to the columns of the leading British papers, they became the occasion of somewhat premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat unfair conclusions, as to their general purport and bearing. A fiery correspondent of a London evening paper, in particular, who boldly signed “J. J. M.” for his name, went

It is indeed a chronic and constitutional disease that Ireland is labouring under. Twice within the last fifteen months it has been my fortune to visit the Sister Isle; first in the summer of 1886, at the apparently decisive hour when the die of her destiny was being cast in the ballot-box, and her children seemed on the point of starting upon a new life; then again, twelve months after, in the summer of 1887, when I found her a prey to the very same local disorders and to the same general anxie

Dublin. Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown, than you feel on an altogether different ground from England. Between Dover and Calais the contrast is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty little place, whose harbour is used by the steamers from Holyhead, and whither Dublin shopkeepers resort in summer. Half a century back, it was only a fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description. But George IV., late Prince Regent, having done that promontory the honour to embark ther

As there is little aristocracy in Dublin there are few lordly dwellings besides the Vice-regal castle. This is very striking in this country of lords and serfs. The masters of the land, mostly of English origin, do not care at all to live in the capital of Ireland; all the time that they do not spend on their property they prefer to beguile away in London, Paris, Naples or elsewhere. Few of their tradesmen are Irish; and the greatest part of the rents they raise on their lands merely accumulate

Private houses are built in Dublin on the general type adopted throughout the British Isles: a basement opening on the railed area which runs along the pavement, a ground floor, a first floor, sometimes a second one. Above the front door a pane of glass lighted with gas. It is the custom of the country to place there one’s artistic treasures,—a china vase, a bust, or a small plaster horse. The small horse especially is a great favourite. You see it in a thousand copies which all came out of the

Nothing can be easier than to go from one end to the other of Ireland. Though her network of railways is not yet complete, great arteries radiate from Dublin in all directions and allow the island to be traversed from end to end, whether southward, westward, or northward, in less than seven or eight hours. The journey from south to north, following the great axis, is longer and more complicated, for it is necessary to change lines several times. The circular journey along the coasts is facilitat

The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides the green colour and the absence of trees, the frequent ruins that meet the eyes everywhere—one cannot go two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles, abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings. There are quarters of large towns or boroughs, such as for instance the northern one in Galway, that might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows of houses, roofless and with gaping walls, for a street in Herculaneum or Pompeii

The English, it must be admitted, are no amiable masters. Never, in any quarter of the globe, were they able to command the goodwill of the nations submitted to their rule, nor did they fascinate them by those brilliant qualities that often go a long way towards forgiveness of possible injuries. “Take yourself off there, that I may take your place,” seems always to have been the last word of their policy. Pure and simple extermination of autochthon races; such is their surest way to supremacy. O

I know no place to compare with Killarney: so soft to the eye, so full of unspeakable grace. It is as a compendium of Ireland; all the characteristic features of the country are united there: the elegant “round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy outline of their conic shafts; the soft moistness of the atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky, the intense green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of peat, and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the grit-stone and clay-slate draw

It was not two days but six that we spent, my guide and I, visiting the County Kerry in all directions, examining the crops, asking about prices, entering cottages and small farms, chatting with anyone that we supposed capable of giving us information. The rather unexpected conclusion I arrived at was that the agrarian crisis is more especially felt in the richest districts, while it can hardly be said to exist in the poorest parts. Kerry is, in that particular, a true copy of Ireland on a small

“I wonder how landlords can manage to live, under such conditions,” I said to my guide. “Are there any tenants left paying their rent?” “There are many. First, those who have been able to come to an agreement with their landlord about the reduction of 20, 25, 30 per cent. that they claimed; in such cases the landlord’s income is reduced, but at least he still retains a part of it. Then, there is the tenant’s live stock; he cannot prevent its being seized for rent, in case of execution, and conse

We have glanced at a few facts presenting symptoms of the Irish disease, which were taken as chance guided us, in a ride through a south-western county. Similar symptoms are everywhere to be found through the island. To appreciate them at their right value, as even to comprehend them, it is essentially requisite to know, at least in its broader outlines, the physiology of landed property in this entirely agricultural country. Vast landed property and parcelled-out culture. This is the epitome of

Before setting foot in this country your notions are not unfrequently ready made about the characters of the inhabitants. You have gathered them from miscellaneous reading, novel-reading mostly, and what you expect is an Ireland poor certainly, but nevertheless gay, improvident, chivalrous, addicted to sound drinking, good eating, fond of practical jokes, not unmixed with riot and even blows; an Ireland, in short, such as Charles Lever and Carleton, Banim and Maxwell, Sam Lover and Thackeray hav

Ennis. The county Clare, and more especially Ennis, its chief town, have played an important part in the contemporary history of Ireland. It was here eight years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn meeting, gave his famous mot d’ordre on social and political interdict. “If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to take farms from which others have been evicted, the land question must be settled, and settled in a way that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are you to do t

From Kilrush, on the coast of Clare, an excellent service of steamers goes up the estuary of the Shannon to Foynes, where one takes the train to Limerick. It is a charming excursion, undertaken by all tourists. The Shannon here is of great breadth and majesty, flowing in an immense sheet of water, recalling the aspect of the great rivers of America. At the back you have the stormy ocean; in front, on the right, on the left, green hills dotted with snowy villas. Few trees or none, as is the rule

Galway. Galway is an old Spanish colony, planted on the western coast of Ireland, and which kept for a long time intimate relations with the mother country. Things and people have retained the original stamp to an uncommon degree; but for the Irish names that are to be read on every shop, you could believe yourself in some ancient quarter of Seville. The women have the olive complexion, black hair, and red petticoat of the mañolas ; the houses open on a courtyard, a thing unknown in other parts

Sligo. In all the cabins I enter, the first object that meets my eyes on the wall, besides a portrait of Parnell or Gladstone, is, enshrined between the bit of sacred palm and the photograph of the emigrant son, a sheet of printed paper, sometimes put under a glass, and headed by these words, “The Plan of Campaign.” This is a summary of the instructions given by the League to its followers in November, 1886, and of the various means by which the position may be made untenable by the landlords. T

Enniskillen. If you did not know beforehand that you are entering a new Ireland through Enniskillen, an Ireland, Scotch, Protestant, manufacturing, a glance through the carriage-window would suffice to reveal the fact. Over the hill, on the right, a fine country-house waves to the wind, as a defiance to the League, his orange-coloured flag, the colours of the “ Unionists .” The landlords of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, who are Orangemen, as well as others, dare not proclaim their opinions s

Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two organic Bills. By the first the British Government undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to redeem the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times the actual rent, to be paid in English Consols, at par. These lands would then be sold to the Irish tenants at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine years by instalments equal to about half the former rent. The second Bill provided for the local government of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Br

The ideal solution for the innumerable difficulties of the Irish question would evidently be the tabula rasa ,—the hypothesis that would transform Ireland into a newly-discovered island of virgin soil, barren and uninhabited, where England had just planted her flag, and out of which she wished to get the fullest value in the shortest possible time. What would her policy be in such a case? She would begin by surveying the whole extent of her new acquisition, by parcelling it out in lots carefully

The Times has published, on October 10, 1887, an exceedingly interesting batch of letters selected from some three hundred addressed within the last two years to an Irish landowner by his tenants. As the editor of those letters wrote most appropriately, there is perhaps no means whereby truer insight can be obtained into the ways and habits of the Irish peasantry than by studying the letters written by the people themselves. Typically enough, however, the same editor only saw in those letters ho