a spaciousness about those people, a
disregard of forms and conventions, a habit of thinking and acting for
themselves which really came down from a long tradition of interpreting
the law to their own liking. Miss Somerville and her comrade knew the
type in its fullest development, for both grew up in far-out
Atlantic-bordering regions--Carbery of West Cork, Connemara of West
Galway--where the countryside knew scarcely "any inhabitants but the
gentry and their dependents. 'Where'd we be at all if it wasn't for the
Colonel's Big Lady?' said the hungry country-women, in the Bad Times,
scurrying, barefooted, to her in any emergency to be fed and doctored
and scolded." So writes Miss Somerville of her mother; so might Martin
Ross have written of her father, who was, so far as in him lay, a
Providence for his tenantry. Yet there is a story told of Mr. Martin
that throws a flood of light on the whole position of affairs. Who were
indeed the dependents? And on what did they depend? The story tells of a
widow down by Lough Corrib, long in arrears with her rent.

The Master sent to her two or three times, and in the end he walked
down himself, after his breakfast, and he took Thady (the steward)
with him. Well, when he went into the house, she was so proud to
see him, and "Your Honour is welcome," says she, and she put a
chair for him. He didn't sit down at all, but he was standing up
there with his back to the dresser, and the children were sitting
down one side the fire. The tears came from the Master's eyes,
Thady seen them fall down the cheek. "Say no more about the rent,"
says the Master to her, "you need say no more about it till I come
to you again." Well, it was the next winter, men were working in
Gurthnamuckla and Thady with them, and the Master came to the wall
of the field, and a letter in his hand, and he called Thady over to
him. What had he to show but the widow's rent that her brother in
America sent her.

Martin Ross, writing in the light of to-day, makes this comment:--

It will not happen again; it belongs to an almost forgotten regime,
that was capable of abuse, yet capable too of summoning forth the
best impulses of Irish hearts.

War, famine and pestilence--all these are capable of summoning forth
splendid impulses; but society should not be organised to give play to
these hazards of feeling. The fundamental truth about