h fine quick
hedges, is beautiful, and has some resemblance to the best parts of
Essex. Sir Robert Staple's improvements join this fine tract. They are
completed in a most perfect manner, the hedges well grown, cut, and in
such excellent order that I can scarcely believe myself to be in Ireland.
His gates are all of iron. These sylvan scenes continue through other
seats, beautifully situated amidst gentle declivities of the finest
verdure, full-grown woods, excellent hedges, and a pretty river winding
by the house. The whole environs of several would be admired in the best
parts of England.

Cross a great bog, within sight of Lord de Vesci's plantations. The road
leads over it, being drained for that purpose by deep cuts on either
side. I should apprehend this bog to be among the most improvable in the
country. Slept at Ballyroan, at an inn kept by three animals who call
themselves women; met with more impertinence than at any other in
Ireland. It is an execrable hole. In three or four miles pass Sir John
Parnel's, prettily situated in a neatly dressed lawn, with much wood
about it, and a lake quite alive with wild fowl.

Pass Monstereven, and cross directly a large bog, drained and partly
improved; but all of it bearing grass, and seems in a state that might
easily be reduced to rich meadow, with only a dressing of lime. Here I
got again into the road I had travelled before.

I must in general remark, that from near Urlingford to Dawson Court, near
Monstereven, which is completely across the Queen's County, is a line of
above thirty English miles, and is for that extent by much the most
improved of any I have seen in Ireland. It is generally well planted,
has many woods, and not consisting of patches of plantation just by
gentlemen's houses, but spreading over the whole face of the country, so
as to give it the richness of an English woodland scene. What a country
would Ireland be had the inhabitants of the rest of it improved the whole
like this!

PART II.

SECTION I.--Soil, Face of the Country, and Climate.

To judge of Ireland by the conversation one sometimes hears in England,
it would be supposed that one-half of it was covered with bogs, and the
other with mountains filled with Irish ready to fly at the sight of a
civilised being. There are people who will smile when they hear that, in
proportion to the size of the two countries, Ireland is more cultivated
than England, having much l