and leafy solitudes, now lost in shade, now emerging
again, to see the great river gliding along, the white sails dotting its
calm surface.

Well did Mr. Kennyfeck observe to Roland Cashel that it was the most
beautiful feature of his whole demesne, and that its possession by
another not only cut him off from the Shannon in its handsomest
part, but actually deprived the place of all pretension to extent and
grandeur. The spreading woods of Tubbermore were, as it seemed, the
background to the cottage scene, and possessed no character to show that
they were the property of the greater proprietor.

The house itself was not likely to vindicate the claim the locality
denied. It was built with a total disregard to aspect or architecture.
It was a large four-storied edifice, to which, by way of taking off from
the unpicturesque height, two wings had been planned: one of these only
was finished; the other, half built, had been suffered to fall into
ruin. At the back, a high brick wall enclosed a space intended for a
garden, but never put into cultivation, and now a mere nursery of tall
docks and thistles, whose gigantic size almost overtopped the wall.
All the dirt and slovenliness of a cottier habitant--for the house was
occupied by what is misnamed "a caretaker"--were seen on every hand. One
of the great rooms held the family; its fellow, on the opposite side of
the hall, contained a cow and two pigs; cabbage-stalks and half-rotting
potato-tops steamed their pestilential vapors beneath the windows;
while half-naked children added the discord, the only thing wanting
to complete the sum of miserable, squalid discomfort, so sadly general
among the peasantry.

If one needed an illustration of the evils of absenteeism, a better
could not be found than in the ruinous, damp, discolored building, with
its falling roof and broken windows. The wide and spreading lawn, thick
grown with thistles; the trees broken or barked by cattle; the
gates that hung by a single hinge, or were broken up piecemeal for
firing,--all evidenced the sad state of neglectful indifference by which
property is wrecked and a country ruined! Nor was the figure then seated
on the broken doorstep an unfitting accompaniment to such a scene,--a
man somewhat past the middle period of life, whose ragged, tattered
dress bespoke great poverty, his worn hat drawn down over his eyes so
as partly to conceal a countenance by no means prepossessing; beside him
lay a long