dlord had he not possessed ample means not invested in this
particular estate? And what has been the result to the tenants of this
conflict into which it seems clear that they were led, less to protect
any direct interest of their own than to jeopardise their homes and
their livelihood for the promotion of a general agrarian agitation? It
is not clear that they are absolutely so far out of pocket, for I find
that the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Inch and Gorey rose from
L3699, 5s. 4d. in 1880 to L5308, 13s. in 1887, showing an increase of
L1609, 7s. 8d. But they are out of house and home and work, entered
pupils in that school of idleness and iniquity which has been kept by
one Preceptor from the beginning of time.

CHAPTER XV.[25]

* * * *--Mrs. Kavanagh was quite right when she told me at Borris in
March that this country should be seen in June! The drive to this lovely
place this morning was one long enchantment of verdure and hawthorn
blossoms and fragrance.

I came over from London to bring to a head some inquiries which have too
long delayed the publication of this diary. My intention had been to go
directly to Thurles, but a telegram which I received from the Archbishop
of Cashel just before I left telling me that he could not be at home for
the last three days of the week, I came directly here. Nothing can be
more utterly unlike the popular notions of Ireland and of Irish life
than the aspect of this most smiling and beautiful region: nothing more
thoroughly Irish than its people.

* * * who is one of the most active and energetic of Irish landlords,
lives part of the year abroad, but keeps up his Irish property with
care, at the expense, I suspect, of his estates elsewhere.

From a noble avenue of trees, making the highway like the main road of a
private park, we turned into a literal paradise of gardens. The air was
balmy with their wealth of odours. "Oh! yes, sir," said the coachman,
with an air of sympathetic pride, "our lady is just the greatest lady in
all this land for flowers!"

And for ivy, he might have added. We drove between green walls of ivy up
to a house which seemed itself to be built of ivy, like that wonderful
old mansion of Castle Leod in Scotland. Here, plainly, is another centre
of "sweetness and light," the abolition of which must make, not this
region alone, but Ireland poorer in that precise form of wealth, which,
as Laboulaye has shown in one of the best of his lect