True, the old landlords were harder on their tenants than any _dare_ now
to be;--true, they neither improved land, nor built cottages, nor
endowed schools, nor did one earthly thing to help the wretched and
starving people in the face of whose misery they flaunted their
splendor. But there was little or no bitterness of feeling toward them;
for their faults were those with which the people sympathized, and their
free-handed hospitality would have covered more sins even than they
committed. Perhaps one of the very reasons why, in these last years, the
never wholly quieted ground-swell of discontent has risen up in
Fenianism is this, that the whole generation of which we have spoken has
now utterly died out, and, since the Encumbered Estates Courts has done
its work, the families of landholders have undergone great changes, and,
where not changed in race, have wholly changed in habits and mode of
life. "Castle Rackrent" exists no more. Irish landlords have now neither
power nor inclination to hold free quarters for all comers. On the other
hand, (we speak it advisedly,) no class of men in Europe strive more
earnestly and self-denyingly to improve the condition of those dependent
on them, to build good houses for their tenants, open schools for the
children, and drain and fertilize the land. Let us hope that, as years
roll on, and generations pass, the tradition of imaginary wrongs, and
the unseen but too real results of actual ones, will both pass away, and
there may yet come a day in which it will not seem a satire to speak of
the land of the Fenian and the _Agrarian_ murderer as "The Isle of
Saints."

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.

V.

WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS.

The conversation on dress which I had held with Jennie and her little
covey of Birds of Paradise appeared to have worked in the minds of the
fair council, for it was not long before they invaded my study again in
a body. They were going out to a party, but called for Jennie, and of
course gave me and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them equipped
for conquest.

Latterly, I must confess, the mysteries of the toilet rites have
impressed me with a kind of superstitious awe. Only a year ago my
daughter Jennie had smooth dark hair, which she wreathed in various
soft, flowing lines about her face, and confined in a classical knot on
the back of her head. Jennie had rather a talent for _coiffure_, and the
arrangement of her hair was on