iser;
and, instead of trying to defeat him by coolness or insolence, he would
at once tell him of all his intentions, explain to him exactly how
matters stood, and prove his good resolutions by offering to take
whatever steps the earl might recommend about the horses. This final
determination made him easier in this mind, and, as he entered the
gates of Grey Abbey Park, he was tolerably comfortable, trusting to his
own good resolutions, and the effect which he felt certain the
expression of them must have on Lord Cashel.

Grey Abbey is one of the largest but by no means one of the most
picturesque demesnes in Ireland. It is situated in the county of
Kildare, about two miles from the little town of Kilcullen, in a
flat, uninteresting, and not very fertile country. The park itself is
extensive and tolerably well wooded, but it wants water and undulation,
and is deficient of any object of attraction, except that of size and
not very magnificent timber. I suppose, years ago, there was an Abbey
here, or near the spot, but there is now no vestige of it remaining. In
a corner of the demesne there are standing the remains of one of those
strong, square, ugly castles, which, two centuries since, were the real
habitations of the landed proprietors of the country, and many of which
have been inhabited even to a much later date. They now afford the
strongest record of the apparently miserable state of life which even
the favoured of the land then endured, and of the numberless domestic
comforts which years and skill have given us, apt as we are to look
back with fond regret to the happy, by-gone days of past periods.

This old castle, now used as a cow-shed, is the only record of
antiquity at Grey Abbey; and yet the ancient family of the Greys have
lived there for centuries. The first of them who possessed property in
Ireland, obtained in the reign of Henry II, grants of immense tracts of
land, stretching through Wicklow, Kildare, and the Queen's and King's
Counties; and, although his descendants have been unable to retain,
through the various successive convulsions which have taken place in
the interior of Ireland since that time, anything like an eighth of
what the family once pretended to claim, the Earl of Cashel, their
present representative, has enough left to enable him to consider
himself a very great man.

The present mansion, built on the site of that in which the family had
lived till about seventy years since, is, li