in a very short space of time to a handsome door, where I arrived at exactly ten minutes after midnight. "Would your Arn'r like to take anything?" said the voice of a waiter, almost before I was within the threshold. "Yes," I replied, "a bedroom candle;" and with the assistance of its friendly light, on being conducted into a clean, well-furnished room, I managed to unpack what was requisite, and in due time, in utter darkness, found myself between the linen sheets of a comfortable bed.

"Well," said I to myself, "it's certainly rather a clever feat to have got into a four-post bed in Dublin without having bothered oneself with the old-fashioned controversial comparison between the beauty of its bay and that of Naples! Here I am, snug in the heart of a great country, of which I have not even seen an extremity-in fact," I gravely reflected," although I am in the metropolis of Ireland, I know no more about it than a newly appointed Secretary of State, on luxuriously sitting down on his large roomy chair in Downing-street, knows of the names, position, climate, soil, and character of the inhabitants of the innumerable colonies he is required to govern; and as he is not afraid of being alone in moral darkness, neither ought I." And with this sentiment, as well as a few others, indolently mixing, staggering, and then fainting away together in my mind, I gradually and insensibly dropped off to sleep.

In the morning, which was beautifully fine, after a good breakfast I mounted a horse, which I thought would be the most daring, independent, and least fatiguing mode of looking about me, and I was slowly

riding I knew not where, nor indeed did I care, when I heard behind me the pattering of a pair of naked human feet.

"Wull yere Arn'r give me a jarb?" said a nicelooking lad, with a very small piece of shirt sticking out of a slight hole in his trowsers behind. I thought he took me for a farmer, so at once, to get rid of him, I very simply confided to him that I was a stranger, and had no "job" to give him. With a smile he repeated his request. Can you give me a jarb?" "No!" I replied, rather sternly.

"Yere Arn'r might be getting off!" he explained. "Does yere Arn'r want a boy?" said a gruff voice. On turning towards it I saw a man very poorly clad, of about forty-five years of age. "Ha'nt your Arn'r a bit of a jarb for me?" Before I could reply I observed another real boy coming after me, no doubt whatever for a "jarb." Now what I wanted was quietly to be enabled to observe a little without being observed; but as it was evident that, unless I at once came to some decisive arrangement, the fact of my having "arrived that morning at ten minutes past midnight" would as it were be placarded on my back, I resolved, out of the three candidates, to enlist one; and, moreover, in order that my first act in Ireland might be a just one, I selected the boy who had come first.

"Now keep close to this stirrup," said I to him as soon as I had got rid of the rest; "and if any one else comes after me, tell him at once I am engaged to you.'

"I wull, yere Arn'r!" he replied, with a very decisive nod.

Unassailed and unnoticed by any one, my horse sometimes walked, sometimes trotted, and sometimes for a few seconds stood still, according as the objects I successively encountered more or less attracted my attention.

"This, yere Arn'r!" said my guide, extending his right arm as he pointed to a large edifice, "is called "-

"Never mind about its name!" I replied, interrupting him; for as I merely wanted to take a general view of a city into which I had as it were just dropped from the clouds, I did not approve of being instructed before its public by a bare-footed professor.

As we were proceeding, a gentleman inquired of him the way to some point? "Ye'll go along Nassau Street," he replied, "till ye come to King Willium a horseback; you'll see ut thin on yere lift hand!"

"I hope yere Arn'r will give me a copper!" said the feeble voice of a poor old woman, who, availing herself of the stoppage, had hobbled up to me; "I'm wake wi' the hunger!" she added.

In passing the Ordnance-Office I sent in my aide-decamp to inquire for the address of the Commanding Engineer. A grey-headed man instantly came out and told me, very civilly, it was 40, Lower Mount Street. My attendant led me there; but, on its proving to be an empty house, I ascertained from the next door that the individual I was in search of lived at No. 40 in Upper Mount Street.

"I knew it was in the upper strate," said my conductor.

"Then why did you bring me here?" I asked angrily.

"Yere Arn'r!" he replied, "the boy (aged 60) said it was in the lower strate, and I thought shure he'd know best."

As we were migrating from the one locality to the other I rode into a large square of about a dozen acres of grass, of such a lovely emerald hue that I was really almost startled at beholding it, and, seeing written up on one of its corners "MERRION SQUARE," I instantly desired my conductor to lead me to the house formerly occupied by the Great Liberator; and I was wondering who might be the successful candidate for so renowed a habitation, when, on pulling up my horse before it, I own I was astonished to see not only

O'CONNELL

on a brass plate, but in the window a large placard which looked as if it had just been issued by him. Instead, however, of advertising a public meeting on College Green, I read the melancholy words—

"TO BE SOLD OR LET."

There was his mansion-his name-his own printed order of "Ring the bell"—the brass handle by which on leaving the house he had always closed its door behind him-there were the stone steps so often trod by his feet; and yet all had lost their magic value, and the bricks, stone, and brass of the Agitator are at this moment in Dublin vainly petitioning to every passing stranger "to be sold or let!"

All of a sudden, as I was riding along, I came to a fine open space, in the centre of which, with an extensive macadamised road on each side, was a deep and broad channel, apparently bisecting the city. The dark

coloured peat-water rushing within at once announced to me it was the Liffey, retained within the limits described by handsome walls of hewn stone, on which high-water mark was very legibly denoted by a deep black stain, perforated every here and there, at about four feet from the bottom, with square black drainageholes.

Across this arterial river there has been constructed, some quite new, some older, and some exceedingly infirm, a series of thoroughfares, as if to demonstrate that in bridges, as in man, there are between their cradles and their graves seven ages.

The sun was shining bright, and beneath each bridge was to be seen its reflection in the water; just beyond the most eastern of these arched communications there

appeared to have sprung up a fine commercial crop of masts of vessels of different sizes. As the tide had nearly ebbed, the water in the Liffey was shallow, and, seeing a crowd of people very intently looking down into it, I perceived, standing in the water up to their knees, two boys wrestling together for a piece of stick which had just floated into the possession of one of them. While they were so engaged, a bigger boy, with trowsers pushed up as high as they could go, walked slowly towards the combatants, and by way of settling their dispute he tripped up the biggest, who, disappearing for a few seconds, came up with his whole body, and especially his head and long hair, dripping wet with a fluid of the dark origin I have described. The author of the exploit good-humouredly laughed at the successful result of his arbitration, and, confident of approbation, he then looked up to the