ioners. There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court
valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in
several cases. There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all.
There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are
Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the
property.

There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and
seventy-seven hold from year to year.

The gross rental is a little over L2000 a year of which one-half goes to
Mr. Brooke's mother. Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of
the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has
repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it.

The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the
road. "Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn't he, in America?"
asked an ingenuous inquirer. I avowed my ignorance on this point. "Oh,
well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for
now the first time in forty years."

We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police
barracks there. These were formerly the quarters of the troops. Arklow
was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland
under Henry II., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now
obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been
erected in his time. The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper
and lead ore to South Wales. The houses are rather neat and well kept;
but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants.

We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we
should find the hotel. We were very civilly directed to "The Register's
Office over the way." This seemed odd enough. But reaching it we were
further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a "coach-builder"!
However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who
assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have
"whatever we liked" for luncheon. We liked what we found we could
get--chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these
were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural
ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the
modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green
dado to a scarlet and silver frieze. There were five times as many
potatoes served to us as two men