imself; but these mean
little or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has done
and is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an amusing
illustration of the sort of terrorism formerly established by the local
organisations, that when she met two of the labourers on the place
together, they used to pretend to be very busy and not to see her. But
if she met one alone, he greeted her just as respectfully as ever.

The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which she
encourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be a
temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of
laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women
should ever go "out of fashion" would be amazing if anything in the
vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish
ladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny's exquisite _Lime
d'Heures_, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle,
drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against
despair in respect to this industry. In one of the large rooms of her
own house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school of
carving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school of
civilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts of
design, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon as
they begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busy
at home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them are
already beginning to earn money by their work.

What I have seen at Adare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl of
Dunraven educated all the workmen employed on that mansion as
stone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of this
country have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs in
the relics of early Irish art.

Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel
Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum,
with camels across the desert--a marvellous piece of military work. I
find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant
before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present.
He there formed what seem to me very sound and just views as to the
ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil
War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of G