who hits
his harrowing anguish to a hair. He folds his hands and looks about,
uncertain what to do next. His rent has been lowered by 35 per cent.,
he has compensation for improvements, fixity of tenure, and may borrow
money to buy the land outright at a percentage, which will amount to
less than his immortal Rint. What is the unhappy man to do? His
grievances have been his sole theme from boyhood's happy days, the
basis of his conversation, his actuating motive, the very backbone of
his personal entity. Now they are gone, the fine gold has become dim,
and the weapons of war have perished. Once he could walk abroad with
the proud consciousness that he was a wronged man, a martyr, a brave
patriot struggling nobly against the adverse fates, a broth of a boy,
whose melancholy position was noted by the gods, and whose manly
bearing under proffered slavery established a complete claim to high
consideration in Olympus. But now, with heart bowed down with grief
and woe, he walks heavily, and even as a man who mourneth for his
mother, over the enfranchised unfamiliar turf. He peeps into the
bog-hole, and does not recognise himself. He could pay the rent twice
over, but he hates conventionalities, and would rather keep the money.
He is constructed to run on grievances, and in no other grooves, and
the strangeness of his present position is embarrassing. The tenants
of Lord Leitrim, Lord Lifford, and the Duke of Abercorn make no
complaint of their landlords. On the contrary, they distinctly state
that all are individually kind and reasonable men, and while
attributing their own improved position to the various Land Acts given
to Ireland, which leave the actual possessor of the land small option
in the matter, they freely admit that these gentlemen willingly do
more than is ordained by any act of Parliament, and that over and
above the provisions of the law, all three are fair-minded men,
desirous of doing the right thing by their people and the country at
large. Other landlords there were on whose devoted heads were breathed
curses both loud and deep.

The late Lord Leitrim was exalted to the skies, but his murdered
father was visited with blackest malediction. At Clones, in the County
Monaghan, I met a sort of roadside specimen of the _Agricola
Hibernicus_, who explained his position thus:--"Ye see, we wor
rayduced 35 per cent., an' 'tis thrue what ye say; but then produce is
rayduced 50 per cent., so we're 15 per cent. worse