s. All is unloveliness and squalor, even when
potatoes are plentiful and butter fetches a high price at Cork.

These thoughts were borne strongly in upon me during a visit to
"Paris." A drifting rain obscured the Skelligs, and drove me to take
shelter in a "Parisian" household. The house stood sound and square to
the wind with its slated roof and thick stone whitewashed walls,
whitewash being ordained by a Board of Works wildly striving for
cleanliness and health. The exterior of the house itself was well
enough, but alack for the approaches and the interior! Plunging
through mud I reached the door, and, glancing through the window,
descried the inevitable pig inside the kitchen. The people--to be just
to them--seemed a little fluttered, if not ashamed, of the plight in
which I found them. It was quite evident that since the new 80l. house
was built not a drop of water had been expended on its interior. The
wooden staircase leading to the bedrooms aloft was in such condition
that I shuddered to touch its sticky surface, the floor so filthy that
I instinctively gathered up the skirts of my overcoat, the bedsteads
filled up with blankets and odds and ends of unimaginable shades of
dirt colour.

Yet this apparently poverty-stricken home was already subdivided in
defiance of the conditions of tenancy. The eldest daughter had been
married some little time without the landlord or bailiff finding it
out, and there was the bridegroom established in half of the house and
endowed with half of the farm. He was at home too; a huge black-browed
fellow, doing nothing at all, after the manner of his kind. And this
was the outcome of an attempt to distribute the Valentians in holdings
of respectable size and to make them live in houses instead of hovels.
Two families were already established in the place of one, and the
house was already like unto a stye. The inhabitants, however, were
mighty civil when they recovered from their surprise, and spoke well
of their landlord and of everybody connected with him, especially of
the ladies of his family, who had done much to find paying employment
for the girls by getting them a market for knitted and other
needlework.

Pursuing my cruise in a Growler round the coast I came past some
magnificent scenery by Waterville, at the head of Ballinskelligs Bay
to Derrynane, once the abode of the "Liberator," and now occupied by
Mr. Daniel O'Connell, his grandson, who gave me a curious instance of
t