the castle finely situated in the midst of the planted domain, through which the Boyne winds its beautiful course.

Under Mr. Lambert’s house on the same river is a most romantic and beautiful spot; rocks on the side, rising in peculiar forms very boldly; the other steep wood, the river bending short between them like a land-locked basin.

Lord Conyngham’s keeping up Slaine Castle, and spending great sums, though he rarely resides there, is an instance of magnificence not often met with; while it is so common for absentees to drain the kingdom of every shilling they can, so contrary a conduct ought to be held in the estimation which it justly deserves.

June 30.  Rode out to view the country and some improvements in the neighbourhood: the principal of which are those of Lord Chief Baron Foster, which I saw from Glaston hill, in the road from Slaine to Dundalk.

In conversation with Lord Longford I made many inquiries concerning the state of the lower classes, and found that in some respects they were in good circumstances, in others indifferent; they have, generally speaking, such plenty of potatoes as always to

command a bellyful; they have flax enough for all their linen, most of them have a cow, and some two, and spin wool enough for their clothes; all a pig, and numbers of poultry, and in general the complete family of cows, calves, hogs, poultry, and children pig together in the cabin; fuel they have in the utmost plenty.  Great numbers of families are also supported by the neighbouring lakes, which abound prodigiously with fish.  A child with a packthread and a crooked pin will catch perch enough in an hour for the family to live on the whole day, and his lordship has seen five hundred children fishing at the same time, there being no tenaciousness in the proprietors of the lands about a right to the fish.  Besides perch, there is pike upwards of five feet long, bream, tench, trout of ten pounds, and as red as salmon, and fine eels.  All these are favourable circumstances, and are very conspicuous in the numerous and healthy families among them.

Reverse the medal: they are ill clothed, and make a wretched appearance, and what is worse, are much oppressed by many who make them pay too dear for keeping a cow, horse, etc.  They have a practice also of keeping accounts with the labourers, contriving by that means to let the poor wretches have very little cash for their year’s work.  This is a great oppression, farmers and gentlemen keeping accounts with the poor is a cruel abuse: so many days’ work for a cabin; so many for a potato garden; so many for keeping a

horse, and so many for a cow, are clear accounts which a poor man can understand well, but farther it ought never to go; and when he has worked out what he has of this sort, the rest of his work ought punctually to be paid him every Saturday night.  Another circumstance mentioned was the excessive practice they have in general of pilfering.  They steal everything they can lay their hands on, and I should remark, that this is an account which has been very generally given me: all sorts of iron hinges, chains, locks, keys, etc.; gates will be cut in pieces, and conveyed away in many places as fast as built; trees as big as a man’s body, and that would require ten men to move, gone in a night.  Lord Longford has had the new wheels of a car stolen as soon as made.  Good stones out of a wall will be taken for a fire-hearth, etc., though a breach is made to get at them.  In short, everything, and even such as are apparently of no use to them; nor is it easy to catch them, for they never carry their stolen goods home, but to some bog-hole.  Turnips are stolen by car-loads, and two acres of wheat plucked off in a night.  In short, their pilfering and stealing is a perfect nuisance.  How far it is owing to the oppression of laws aimed solely at the religion of these people, how far to the conduct of the gentlemen and farmers, and how far to the mischievous disposition of the people themselves, it is impossible for a passing traveller to ascertain.  I am apt to believe that a better system of law and

management would have good effects.  They are much worse treated than the poor in England, are talked to in more opprobrious terms, and otherwise very much oppressed.

Left Packenham Hall.

Two or three miles from Lord Longford’s in the way to Mullingar the road leads up a mountain, and commands an exceeding fine view of Lock Derrevaragh, a noble water eight miles long, and from two miles to half a mile over; a vast reach of it, like a magnificent river, opens as you rise the hill.  Afterwards I passed under the principal mountain, which rises abruptly from the lake into the boldest outline imaginable.  The water there is very beautiful, filling up the steep vale formed by this and the opposite hills.

Reached Mullingar.

It was one of the fair days.  I saw many cows and beasts, and more horses, with some wool.  The cattle were of the same breed that I had generally seen in coming through the country.

July 5.  Left Mullingar, which is a dirty ugly town, and taking the road to Tullamore, stopped at Lord Belvidere’s, with which place I was as much struck as with any I had ever seen.  The house is perched on the crown of a very beautiful little hill, half surrounded with others, variegated and melting into one another.  It is one of the most singular places that is

anywhere to be seen, and spreading to the eye a beautiful lawn of undulating ground margined with wood.  Single trees are scattered in some places, and clumps in others; the general effect so pleasing, that were there nothing further, the place would be beautiful, but the canvas is admirably filled.  Lake Ennel, many miles in length, and two or three broad, flows beneath the windows.  It is spotted with islets, a promontory of rock fringed with trees shoots into it, and the whole is bounded by distant hills.  Greater and more magnificent scenes are often met with, but nowhere a more beautiful or a more singular one.

From Mullingar to Tullespace I found rents in general at twenty shillings an acre, with much relet at thirty shillings, yet all the crops except bere were very bad, and full of weeds.  About the latter-named place the farms are generally from one hundred to three hundred acres; and their course: 1. fallow; 2. bere; 3. oats; 4. oats; 5. oats.  Great quantities of potatoes all the way, crops from forty to eighty barrels.

The road before it comes to Tullamore leads through a part of the bog of Allen, which seems here extensive, and would make a noble tract of meadow.  The way the road was made over it was simply to cut a drain on each side, and then lay on the gravel, which, as fast as it was laid and spread, bore the ears.  Along the edges is fine white clover.

In conversation upon the subject of a union with

Great Britain, I was informed that nothing was so unpopular in Ireland as such an idea; and that the great objection to it was increasing the number of absentees.  When it was in agitation, twenty peers and sixty commoners were talked of to sit in the British Parliament, which would be the resident of eighty of the best estates in Ireland.  Going every year to England would, by degrees, make them residents; they would educate their children there, and in time become mere absentees: becoming so they would be unpopular, others would be elected, who, treading in the same steps, would yield the place still to others; and thus by degrees, a vast portion of the kingdom now resident would be made absentees, which would, they