DEAR MR. POPLAR, -Captain Basil having agreed to meet me on my return from Ossory, we were true to our tryste at Maryborough, not under the "greenwood tree," for arborescents of all kinds are scarce in this locality, but in a less shady but more salutiferous locality, the refreshment-room of the station, kept, and well kept too, by my old friend Mr. M'Evoy, on whose face and form I was happy to see Time does not appear to have laid his claw. Here the many hunters after landscape felicity, steambound for Killarney, pause a while to allay the cravings of the inward man; here Cork butter-merchants and Castle attachés, Smithfield salemasters and Tipperary squires, are seen huddled together at the prolific counter, discussing ham sandwiches, brandishing busy forks over the bosoms of departed fowls, or pledging silent healths to absent dear ones in tumblers of XX or non-inebriating cups of cheering

congou.

Human life, dear Mr. Poplar, is, alas a blotted volume, and when we meet a blank page among the black ones, we esteem it a treat negative, and rejoice thereat. So I must say that the directors on this line of railroad are manifestly gentlemanly and tender-hearted men, and evince a respect for the feelings and frailties of our common, and, alas, too hungry nature; for they give ample time at luncheon, if not for digestion, at least for appetite, and masticatory action. Here is no sudden electric-shock ringing of the bell, as at Wolverton, to "fright the train from its propriety;" no coarse and violent Harpeian descent on the banquet; no vulgar bolting of the edibles adown your startled æsophagus; no frantic issuing from the refreshment-room in hysterical dubiousness as to where your carriage may be-all is calm, quiet, and well-bred. The station-master stands smiling at the effects of "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy lunch;" the guard saunters along the platform, with his hands behind him, and his silver whistle un

VOL. XLIV.NO. CCLXIV.

sounded on his breast; and Mr. M'Evoy, as a happy restaurateur, with a bow and smile, sees his numerous guests depart, if not "wiser and sadder men," at least less hungry, and all well satisfied with him, his cheer, and his charges.

After seeing the train off, Captain Basil and I strolled quietly down into Maryborough, passing the old castle on our right, or rather its grey remains, which are most unattractive. It was built in the reign of Queen Mary, by Sir Anthony St. Leger, A.D. 1547, to protect the English interests; and in the insurrection of the O'Mores, O'Dempsies, &c., in which Essex was defeated at the Pass of Plumes, A.D. 1599, this strong fort "was held for the Queen's (Elizabeth) Majesty, by Captains Hartpole, Bowen, and Pigott," all three ancestors of old county families in this land. I have a copy of the patent, dated June 14, 1604, by which James I. constituted Sir Richard Græme, Knight, constable of this castle and fort. The document is curious, as it reveals the enormous military power these castellans were entrusted with, and also the great fear the Government entertained of "that indefatigable rebel, O'More of Leix." This instrument confers on Græme "full power and authority to assemble, and call together all freeholders, and farmers, and other inhabitants in the Queen's County, of what condition or degree soever, and to command them to do all and everything for the defence of the county, and the public weal of the inhabitants of the same, the suppression of rebellion, and the punishment of all malefactors, as to him or to his deputies (he had two) should be thought meet, and, together with the sheriff of the said county, to execute martial law; also to prosecute, invade, chase away, chastise, withstand, punish, and correct, by all means and ways, all nations of the O'Mores, their servants, followers, and adherents."

This Sir Richard Græme, who is called indifferently Grimes, Græmes, and Grahame in Camden, Moryson, and

2 x

the "Pacata Hibernia," commanded a troop of the "Horse Guards" at Kinsale, having previously performed a most daring and brilliant exploit, with a single troop of cavalry, against the forces of the Sugan Earl of Desmond, in which he was successful. This affray took place at a bog near Kilmallock, and is mentioned in Lady Chatterton's "Rambles in the South of Ireland," a book eminent for its extreme gracefulness and rightful tone of feeling.

In the rebellion of 1641, the Roman Catholic Confederates held it for a while. In 1646, Red Owen O'Nial took possession of it with his northern gallowglasses (called in Latin "securiferi," from the weapon they bore, as the kerne the light-armed soldiers were styled "turbarii," from the word turbary, meo periculo, as being ofttimes bog-trotters, or quasi turbulenti, from their prevailing character; or possibly from "turba," a crowd, which was generally produced by the row they kicked up wherever they went). Pardon this second digression, dear Mr. Poplar, but an "unde derivatur' always had a butterfly charm to my mind; after which, over hedge and ditch it has been my passion to run and scamper, ever since I read the undergraduate course, and thumbed the "Clavis Homerica" with old Dr. F

After a few other vicissitudes in 1650, Reynolds and Hewson, two of Oliver Cromwell's Roundhead Colonels, and very pretty iconoclasts, after a modern fashion, and who certainly never left any work to be done after them, plied this Castle with their heavy shot, and totally dismantled it. Maryborough is an uninteresting town; there are a few good shops in the long, muddy main-street, which is flanked by an ugly courthouse, and full of shebeen-houses and turf-cars. The church is a very decent and handsome structure, with a steeple resembling the Wellington Testimonial in miniature, and something like an anenometrical rod at the top, although I believe it is only an invalided weathercock. The small river Triogue, which feeds the Barrow, waters the town, and a famous well, gushing from the

Escar, or low ridge, a mile above Maryborough, has much repute amongst the people. The gaol and lunatic asylum, standing viz-a-viz, like partners in a melancholy quadrille, are singularly handsome structures. I did not

visit the latter on the present occasion, although I am free to confess having more than once gone to asylums like this, through an unhealthy desire of seeing something which would produce a measure of extraordinary excitement or interest in my mind, but have always come back disappointed and humbled from witnessing sight after sight of either low, grovelling, carnal craving; ferocious, haughty absurdity; or the mere agitations of animal mechanism.

Captain Basil also contented himself with a look on the outside of the building, a sigh for poor human nature, and the thousand natural ills that flesh is heir to, and then gave us, with much pathos and good humour,

"But ever and anon of grief subdued."

was

He told us an anecdote on our way home of his brother, who was a Chancery counsel of eminence-a man of the highest intellectual attainments, but simple in his ways as a child; he had been vacationizing it at Edinburgh, and each summer morning was up with the lark, and off into the country, gathering botanical treasures from rock, and hedge, and "bank where the wild thyme blows." One morning he had been unusually successful, so that he knew not where to stow all the plants he had plucked; his tin case full, his coat and waistcoat pockets were running over with wild nosegays, his button-holes were full of flowers, and the green band of his broad-brimmed straw hat was stuffed all round with nodding weeds; each hand grasped a bulky bouquet of greenery, as, with his coat flying open and a springy step, he descended a long hill near Edinburgh, repeating aloud (the family failing) some of the lines of the Loves of the Plants, and looking certainly a most extraordinary figure. Presently he overtakes a tall and canny Scot. "Good morning, my friend; pray, can you tell me what large building is that on the right ?"

long, low, twining nature of the mound.

Botanist.. "And what, in the name of goodness, is the auslum?"

Scot (gazing at him from head to foot)." It is a place for fuils and daft folk; and troth, lad, if ane may judge by your outward appearance, you're a varra fit subject for the auslum yirsel. It's but tint time clattering wi' ye-so, guid morning." And so he strode away, looking behind him uneasily at the unconscious botanist, who was greatly amused when he discovered that the "auslum" was the lunatic asylum, and that he had been mistaken by the alarmed Scot for one of its occupants who had broken bounds, and was decidedly dangerous. Next morning we ran back to Portarlington, per train, the Captain being anxious to recover possession of a favourite fishingrod and fly-book he had left at the hotel. A most intelligent medical gentleman was our chance companion; a lady sat in a corner, with a scornful expression, writing with a pencil on a soiled manuscript, probably "meditating song," giving birth to a sonnet, or laying the keel of an heroic epic. If so, she was certainly a very uncombed Calliope; and, as I surveyed her from my own diagonal corner, I thought of two lines which I think are in the Dunciad

"Her tresses staring with poetic dreams,

And never washed save in Castalia's streams."

We parted with our agreeable doctor at the station, all of us agreeing to meet at dinner that evening.

I had a pleasant walk the same day to Woodbrook, the beautiful seat of Mr. Wilmot Chetwode. This place is about two miles from Portarlington, on the Mountmellick road, and possesses a literary interest from having been occasionally visited by Dean Swift, who was the friend and correspondent of Knightley Chetwode, an ancestor of the present occupier of the place. Near the house we saw "the Doctor's Field;" for Swift, if we remember his letters to Sheridan, as to how the latter should manage his ground, as well as his own mad freaks with the Doctor's soil when he got to Quilca, in planting, welldigging, arbour-constructing, bowerbuilding, rath-erecting, and islandmaking, appears to have had a decided taste for practical, though eccentric Georgics; and here, probably, he often walked, surveying the furrowing pas

sage of the plough, or censuring the operations of the farm, or pouring into the ear of his friend many a withering diatribe against the world, as he rolled the spike-armed cynical tub of his keen sarcasm along the walks of life the court, the camp, the senate, and the coffee-house-wounding or hustling aside all who opposed or would not leave the way. His intercourse with Knightley Chetwode continued more than twenty-five years, when the two old gentlemen quarrelled; the casus belli is not on record, but a quarrel with the Dean was always likely to be a probability, unless there were very lofty rank to command his homage (and no man ever adored rank in his secret soul more than Swift - it stood next to the great idolatry of his heart, which was himself), or undoubted wit or learning to engage his sympathy and secure his respect; or at least the devotion of patient friendship to sit admiringly in the dust at his feet and worship him while he kicked at it.

I remember an anecdote told of the late AK, the friend of Bishop Jebb, an extremely gentle, sensitive, though erroneous philosopher. He was one day arguing with a friendly antagonist, robust in mind and impressive in manner, and the logomachia, or strife of words, waxing strong, he said to his opponent in a ludicrously deprecating way "Now, you and I are swimming down the stream of an argument; you I compare to an iron pot, myself I liken to a China bowl, and inevitably if you come too roughly against me I shall be shattered to pieces." Now, it is not improbable that, as coming age acidulated the temper of these two old fellows, the Dean acted the iron pot, and the Squire the weaker vessel. There are fifty original letters from Swift to Chetwode, which have never been published. These I had seen many years ago with the most lively interest.

Besides these, Woodbrook can boast of other literary treasures, indubitable Xuna, in every sense of the word. Here are autograph letters from the great Duke of Marlborough to another Knightley Chetwode, who was Dean of Gloucester in Queen Anne's days. I thought of Chesterfield's libel on the Duke's spelling; but these letters rebut the slander. The orthography is good for the time-the handwriting and style excellent. After all, what is

bad spelling, but an independent deviation from an arbitrary and often undefined rule? An awkwardly made coat does not prevent a man from being acknowledged as a gentleman, and many brightest thoughts may come down from a writer's pen, and walk across his paper, although clothed in a garment of spelling perhaps more original than correct. Spelling and grammar are amongst our first lessons to be learnt and our last to know well, though few are so candid on this subject as Taylor, the Water Poet, who thus expresses himself anent the mat

ter

"I never yet could learn my accidence ;
But having got from Possum to Posset,
I there was gravelled-could no farther get."

On my way back from Woodbrook I passed "La Bergerie," another memorial of the Huguenot colony. Here I saw no shepherd or shepherdess; but sheep were there, which was enough to justify the name. Mr. Henry Trench, a cousin of Lord Ashtown, lives here. We dined together, as per paction, at a friend's house, and on speaking of the lunatic asylum, whose exterior we had seen in the morning, the conversation naturally glided into a discussion on nervousness, and its wondrous and diversified influence on the sons of men. Captain Basil, ever foremost with an illustrative narrative, told us of his having encountered in his piscatorial rambles an army surgeon, a Scot by birth, a clever man, but of an excitable physique; he had contracted a very bad toothache at the village of E- after a wetting amidst the hills, and one of his large bicuspid molars being thoroughly decayed, the village apothecary had acted as an odontist, and wrung it out of his jaw, after three or four hard tugs, each, as he averred, seemingly of sufficient force to snap the chain-cable of the Royal Albert. This algebraic extraction of the cube root, so far from giving him the desired ease, rendered him tenfold more irritable; his whole nervous system was outraged by the violence of the operation, and for two nights he had no sleep; on the third evening in a fit of desperation he had swallowed a large bowl of tea, which had been unluckily concocted on green leaves. This had set him all upon wires, and

excited his system so strongly that. the Captain averred he thought he would go mad, or at least have a fit of St. Vitus before midnight. Sedatives were tried; sal volatile, camphor; lobelia hinted at; colchicum advised; laudanum administered, but utterly useless; hot jar to the feet; poultice of poppyheads and cataplasm of camomile-leaves to the stomach, &c., &c., all signal failures. Patient irritable, restless, nervous, and intensely wakeful; at last the chambermaid, a girl from the North of Ireland, proposed that our friend "should be read to," saying that, whenever "her auld mither had the cute (acute) rummatticks in her hinches,* her feyther would always set to and read to her a fine buik, which a lady had given her, it Blair's Sarments,' which would mak her gae asleep like a wee chiel in the nurse's arms." On this hint a book was immediately procured; by good fortune it was a number of the "Westminster Review," for no sooner had Captain Basil read a page or two than the effect was perceptible-the doctor was first soothed, then tranquillised, then gradually stupified and somnofied; and before ten pages were administered he was as quiet as a child, his facial muscles sweetly relaxed, deep and healthful slumber rapidly setting in, and his nasal organ giving stertorous evidence

was

"In linked sweetness long drawn out,"

of the powerful effect of the narcotic. Indeed so operative and gracious was it, that all present, including the lively Captain, were sensibly affected by its influence

"And now to this side, now to that they nod,
As verse or prose inspires the drowsy god."

We talked of the effect of the human eye upon mad patients, when one of the company related the following anecdote:-He had been breakfasting with a party of gentlemen at CCollege, when, the conversation turning on this very point, a little man at the table, who seemed to have number eight of self-esteem in his cranium, gravely asserted that he had no doubt but that he had this power in his eye, and the company smiling thereat, they agreed at once to adjourn to a neigh

bouring asylum, and make the trial. Accordingly, having arrived they were shown by the keeper to a cell, where was a lunatic who was always mad more or less, and occasionally violent. The keeper accompanied them, but stood behind the patient at their request while they engaged him in conversation. Presently he became excited, his voice waxed loud, and his action violent. Now was the time for Mr. P, who, accordingly, folding his arms in a sublime position on his breast, fixed his eye on him like a basilisk, and with what the little man meant to be a very awful and terrible expression; but the moment the lunatic perceived him, he roared at him in a voice of thunder-" Take your ugly eyes out of me, you staring fool," and stooping down and whisking off his shoe he shied it with all his force at the hapless gazer's head, who ducked ingloriously to escape the missile, as the keeper came round and collared the patient; and the party departed, with Mr. P- considerably humbled at the ludicrous and unsuccessful result of his trial.

We hired, next morning, that most agreeable, airy, and independent of all vehicles an outside jaunting-car-in order to go to Abbeyleix. More than half of the journey we might have performed per train; but we preferred the dust of the road to the smoke of the engine, whitethorn hedges to black-lettered mile-posts, and to see the country rather than to fly through it. We had an agreeable companion on the car, who was going to put the Rock of Dunamaes in his breastpocket-an action worthy of Fin MacCoul himself; but in the case of our friend, the transmission was to be made through the medium of his sketchbook. He was an artist, and travelling for a London house-one of those great handsome print-shops you meet in Cockspur-street or the Strand, round whose windows many a lazy peripatetic lingers, where gentlemanly-looking pickpockets stand to ease you of what Shakspeare, in the face of the whole Manchester and monied interest, calls "trash"-viz, your purse, and where reconnoitering policemen are seen looking sharp in the dim distance. He showed us his sketches, which were cleverly and elaborately worked off. He had avoided the trail of Bartlett and Mrs. S. C. Hall, and had adorned

his card-board with the seats of such noblemen and gentlemen as are well known in London and English life ("A clever dodge," quoth Captain Basil). I saw the ornée stables which line the avenue leading up to the small rectangular keep of the old Le Poers, and connected with which is the princely house and park of Curraghmore. I recognised snug and old-fashioned Besborough, and its neighbour, Castletown, the seat of Mr. Villiers Stuarta noble palazzo-like mansion, rich and perfect in its classical proportions, and towering amidst magnificent park timber. Leap Castle, too, was there, standing dark and heavy against its fine background of ancient trees and deep-blue mountains.

We debouched to the left, near Mr. Chetwode's gate, leaving Garry hinch and all its woods behind us. Our artist was anxious to see Emo Park and Castle, and we had the means of succeeding with us. This is a truly beautiful place, and kept in great order.

Some years ago, before the present Earl had come to reside here, I had driven through this park; and though at that time there was an appearance of something even worse than neglect both in the house and demesne, yet I greatly admired the lake, and heronry, and trees, and the graceful undulations of the ground. Lord and Lady Portarlington now reside much here, and are anxious to do all possible good among their tenantry. This family are connected, by blood or through marriage, with senatorial, poetic, forensic, artistic, literary and travelled and military eminence, all of the first order for they can number among their ancestors or connexions, John, third Earl of Bute; the poet Parnell; the witty and eloquent judge, Lord Erskine; the fair statuary, the Hon. Mrs. Damer; Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who introduced inoculation into Britain from the East, and of whom Pope, her despised lover, said or sung (before he was despised):

"For beauty and wit,
No mortal e'er yet

To question your empire has dared;"

and the late Marquis of Londonderry, as fearless and as brilliant a soldier as ever cheered on a brigade of cavalry, and led them dashingly in person even to "the cannon's mouth."

I think it pleasant to be able to col