four for the carriage, which, to their distress, was surrounded by rags exported for the use of the Irish beggars. Sir Walter "gave huge delight" by his attentions to the ladies, and his hobnobbing with an old Glasgow bailie, who quoted Nicol Jarvie's boast as to his capacity for brewing punch. punch. On landing they were much struck with the ragged condition of the common people in the most prosperous part of Ireland, and Scott said he wondered that none of the antiquaries had derived the Highland tartans from the tatters of the parent race of Erin. They were warned not to travel on the Drogheda road after sunset on account of robbers. A retired officer of Dragoons conducted the party over the battlefield of the Boyne, Sir Walter the while vigorously reciting The Crossing of the Water.

In St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, the "fond joy and pride" with which Sir Walter sat down for the first time at his son's table is particularly noted by Lockhart. He was overwhelmed with invitations from the Lord Lieutenant, the Provost of Trinity, the Archbishop of Dublin, and other big folk; and the crowds of lesser people who acclaimed him in the streets caused his carriage to move as though in a procession, and at the theatre in the evening the performance was stopped till he had made a short speech. The view of the cast taken of Swift's face after death, shown him one morning, would have reminded him, had he needed it, of the vanity of all such brief triumphs. He described himself as "almost killed with kindness," and gave Pat

the credit of having discovered something about his personality which he had himself never suspected. Dublin he found splendid beyond his utmost expectations.

Before going on to Edgeworthstown, the Scott party paid some visits in Wicklow. In one of his hosts, the then Irish Attorney-General (the great orator Plunkett), Scott found an old acquaintance. Among the "objects of interest" to which Plunkett conducted his guests was St. Kevin's Bed at Glendalough, the scene of the catastrophe in one of Moore's best-known ballads. It is a hole in a rock rising sheer above the lake; and Scott, seized with a return of his old spirit of enterprise, caused much anguish to his son-in-law by crawling along the precipice and getting into it. While he was there the female guide who accompanied the party, being told that he was a poet, indignantly remarked, "Poet-the divil a bit of 'em-but an honourable gintleman: he gave me half-a-crown." At length the travellers, with the addition of Captain Walter and his wife and the Irish Surgeon-General, reached Edgeworthstown in two carriages.

The home of Maria Edgeworth is situated almost in the middle of Ireland, in a district intimately associated with memories of Oliver Goldsmith. At Pallasmore on the Edgeworth estate he was born, and he went to school at Edgeworthstown itself. When the Scotts arrived, there was an educational establishment in the place, under the superintendence of the squire, Miss Edgeworth's father, in which the unusual spectacle

was seen of Protestants and Roman Catholics studying in company. The author of Castle Rackrent and her brother and sister accompanied the party on their expedition to Killarney, which deserved rather the name But the contrast between the lavish abundance of the great houses and the squalor which surrounded them and haunted the wayside, went some way towards marring the enjoyment of so humane an observer as Scott.

of a progress.

Yet the native humours checked anything like depression. At Limerick, for instance, where the great man of Scotland was received with peals from all the bells in the place, a brother poet, by name O'Kelly, submitted to him this brilliant pièce d'occasion:

"Three poets, of three different nations born,
The United Kingdom in this age adorn;
Byron of England, Scott of Scotia's blood,

And Erin's pride-O'Kelly, great and good."

Sir Walter willingly put down five shillings as guerdon,
and drew the same from Miss Edgeworth by pointing
to her name in a volume of O'Kelly's works.
couplet is too rich to escape quotation :—

"Scott, Morgan, Edgeworth, Byron, prop of Greece,
Are characters whose fame not soon will cease."

The

At a gentleman's seat, where the party were to have seen some pictures and curiosities, they found two undertaker's men with a whisky bottle between them mounting guard at the gate, and learnt that the proprietor was shortly to be buried. Soon a message came

from the widow, regretting that she could not show the pictures, as her husband had died the evening before of apoplexy, "which Mrs. the more regrets, as it will

prevent her having the honour to see Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth." This, said Scott, reminded him of a speech of a certain Fife woman: "Let me see, sirs; first we lost our wee callant-and then Jenny-and then the gudeman himsel died—and then the coo died too, poor hizzy; but, to be sure, her hide brought me fifteen shillings."

The travellers were astir by six or seven every day and "dog-weary every night," according to one of the company. The lakes of Killarney having been "done," they crossed the hills to Cork (of which Sir Walter received the freedom), and afterwards made another progress back to Dublin, taking on the way Fermoy, Lismore, Cashel (with its fine cathedral and castle perched on a rock), Kilkenny, and the cave of Dunmore, and Holycross, renowned for its ancient abbey. Scott duly visited the groves of Blarney and kissed the stone which removes bashfulness, as Maclise has depicted him. At a country house where the company was made up of a mixture of Catholics and Protestants, they noted the separation of the two sections after dinner into rival whisky parties, the former drinking only from a huge bottle labelled "Queen's," the latter from another marked "King's." The Protestant liquor alone had paid duty! Three days at Dublin sufficed for farewell calls, a visit to the observatory, and an audience of Lord Wellesley