then, a landsman finds out, after his first voyage, what "sea legs" on and sea legs off, that he has read of so much in books, mean.

He cannot get used to the steadiness of the ground, or rather, get at once rid of the unsteadiness of the ship. I found myself reeling from side to side on the sidewalk, and on entering the Queen's Hotel, holding on to a desk with one hand, to steady myself, while I wrote with the other. The rolling motion of the ship, to which you have become accustomed, is once more perceptible; and I knew one friend, who did not have a sick day on board ship, who was taken landsick two hours after stepping on shore, and had as thorough a casting up of accounts for an hour as any of us experienced on the steamer at sea. The Cunard steamers generally arrive at, or used to arrive at, Queenstown on Sunday mornings, and all who land are eager to get breakfast ashore. We tried the Queen's Hotel, where we got a very fair breakfast, and were charged six or eight shillings for the privilege of the ladies sitting in a room till the meal was ready for us—the first, and I think the only, positive swindle I experienced in Ireland. After breakfast the first ride on an English (or rather Irish) railway train took us to Cork. The road was through a lovely country, and, although it was the first of May, green with verdure as with us in June—no harsh New England east winds; and one can easily see in this country how May-day came to be celebrated with May-queens, dances, and May-poles.

To us, just landed from the close steamer, how grateful was the fragrance of the fresh earth, the newly-blossomed trees, and the hedges all alive with twittering sparrows! The country roads were smooth, hard, and clear as a ball-room floor; the greensward, fresh and bright, rolled up in luxuriant waves to the very foot of the great brown-trunked trees; chapel bells were tolling, and we saw the Irish peasantry trudging along to church, for all the world as though they had just stepped out of the pictures in the story-books. There were the women with blue-gray cloaks, with hoods at the back, and broad white caps, men in short corduroys, brogues, bobtail coats, caubeens and shillalah; then there was an occasional little tip-cart of the costermonger and his wife, drawn by a donkey; the jaunting-car, with half a dozen merry occupants, all forming the moving figures in the rich landscape of living green in herbage, and the soft brown of the half moss-covered stone walls, or the corrugated stems of the great trees.

We were on shore again; once more upon a footing that did not slide from beneath the very step, and the never-ending broad expanse of heaving blue was exchanged for the more grateful scene of pleasant fields and waving trees; the sufferings of a first voyage had already begun to live in remembrance only as a hideous nightmare.

A good hotel at Cork is the Imperial Hotel; the attendance prompt, the chamber linen fresh and clean, the viands well prepared.

The scenery around Cork is very beautiful, especially on the eastern side, on what is known as the upper and lower Glanmere roads, which command fine views. The principal promenade is a fine raised avenue, or walk, over a mile in length, extending through the meadows midway between two branches of the River Lee, and shaded by a double row of lofty and flourishing elms.

Our first walk in Ireland was from the Imperial Hotel to the Mardyke. Fifteen minutes brought us to the River Lee; and now, with the city proper behind us, did we enjoy the lovely scene spread out to view.

In the month of May one realizes why Ireland is called the Emerald Isle—such lovely green turf, thick, luxurious, and velvety to the tread, and so lively a green; fancy New England grass varnished and polished, and you have it. The shade trees were all in full leaf, the fruit trees in full flower; sheep and lambs gamboling upon the greensward, birds piping in the hedges, and such hedges, and laburnums, and clambering ivy, and hawthorn, the air perfumed with blossoms, the blue sky in the background pierced by the turrets of an old edifice surrounded by tall trees, round which wheeled circles of cawing rooks; the little cottages we passed, half shrouded in beautiful clambering Irish ivy, that was peopled by the nests of the brisk little sparrows, filling the air with their twitterings; the soft spring breeze, and the beautiful reach of landscape—all seemed a realization of some of those scenes that poets write of, and which we sometimes fancy owe their existence to the luxuriance of imagination.

Returning, we passed through another portion of the city, which gave us a somewhat different view; it was nearly a mile of Irish cabins. Of course one prominent feature was dirt, and we witnessed Pat in all his national glory. A newly-arrived American cannot help noticing the deference paid to caste and position; we, who treat Irish servants and laborers so well as we do, are surprised to see how much better they treat their employers in Ireland, and how little kind treatment the working class receive from those immediately above them.

The civil and deferential Pat who steps aside for a well-dressed couple to pass, and touches his hat, in Cork, is vastly different from the independent, voting Pat that elbows you off the sidewalk, or puffs his fragrant pipe into your very face in America. In Ireland he accepts a shilling with gratitude, and invocation of blessings on the donor; in America he condescends to receive two dollars a day! A fellow-passenger remarked that in the old country they were a race of Touch-hats, in the new one of Go to ——. I found them here obliging and civil, ready to earn an honest penny, and grateful for it, and much more inclined to "blarney" a little extra from the traveller than to swindle it out of him.

I made an arrangement with a lively driver to take us to the celebrated Blarney Castle in a jaunting-car—a delightful vehicle to ride in of a pleasant spring day, as it was on that of our excursion. The cars for these rides are hung on springs, are nicely cushioned, and the four passengers sit back to back, facing to the side; and there being no cover or top to the vehicle, there is every opportunity of seeing the passing landscape.

No American who has been interested in the beautiful descriptions of English and Irish scenery by the British poets can realize their truthfulness until he looks upon it, the characteristics of the scenery, and the very climate, are so different from our own. The ride to Blarney Castle is a delightfully romantic one, of about six miles; the road, which is smooth, hard, and kept in excellent order, winds upon a side hill of the River Lee, which you see continually flashing in and out in its course through the valley below; every inch of ground appears to be beautifully cultivated. The road is lined with old brown stone walls, clad with ivy of every variety—dark-green, polished leaf, Irish ivy, small leaf, heart leaf, broad leaf, and lance leaf, such as we see cultivated in pots and green-houses at home, was here flourishing in wild luxuriance.

The climate here is so moist that every rock and stone fence is clad with some kind of verdure; the whole seems to satisfy the eye. The old trees are circled round and round in the ivy clasp; the hedges are in their light-green livery of spring; there are long reaches of pretty rustic lanes, with fresh green turf underneath grand old trees, and there are whole banks of violets and primroses—yes, whole banks of such pretty, yellow primroses as we preserve singly in pots at home.

There are grand entrances to avenues leading up to stately estates, pretty ivy-clad cottages, peasants' miserable, thatched cabins, great sweeps of green meadow, and the fields and woods are perfectly musical with singing birds, so