had their camp and mustered their army before it set out to march upon the Boyne.

Memories of war—Pict and Connachtman contending for Cuchulain's head; the Dane plundering and trading; the Norman building his strongholds; the Scot heading Ireland's endeavour to shake off the Norman yoke; that other convulsion in 1641, and then new castles built; the Dutchman landing, and his triumphant march; and from the subdued Ireland, thousands, tens of thousands, of soldiers, gentle and simple, issuing forth to uphold the English name. Yes, but other memories are there too. Some maintain that here Patrick landed on his mission. But at all events at Faughart, in the fifth century, Brigid was born, the "Mary of the Gael", "mother of all the saints of Ireland". Her work was done in Leinster, but surely her birthplace here on the threshold of Ulster should not be overlooked.

"THE BLACK NORTH"

I shall assume that from Dundalk and its neighbouring beauty, that narrow lough winding among the hills, you go straight to Belfast, with the glorious range of Mourne Mountains on your right hand to make the journey attractive. At "Portadown upon the Bann", where the Pope has a bad name, you are not far from the focus of the industrial north—at all events of the great linen industry. From the train you will see fields white as snow with bleaching webs; and it is said that one cause of this trade's localization is a special suitability of climate, like that which makes Lancashire head of the world for cotton-spinning. Belgium can beat Ireland in producing flax—can get 50 per cent more for the same weight of finished fibre—but in the spinning and weaving Ulster is unapproachable. Unhappily, as in all textile trades, the individual withers and the machine grows more and more: hand-loom damask weavers, who can still make a product marvellous for craftsmanship, find their occupation gone—the machine runs them too close.

What the linen trade has been worth to Ulster can never be counted. It was the one industry which England's jealousy spared, and even (after long refusal) grudgingly fostered, in those very decades when her manufacturers were urging Parliament to stamp out and destroy the woollen trade. Its existence preserved in this corner of the country that industrial habit which means not only an inherited skill but the transmitted aptitude for factory work, with its regular hours and mechanical routine, so unlike the conditions of labour on the land, in which all the rest of Ireland has found—since 1800—its only resource.

Even agriculture has been helped by the proximity of towns where all, down to the labouring classes, have money to buy with. The district which centres about Portadown is to-day foremost of all Ireland for the culture of fruit and flowers, though neither climate nor soil specially favours it. One beauty that Ulster has far more generally than any other province is the flower-bordered cottage. They grow orange lilies in fine profusion, but they grow other and less emblematic blossoms as well.

CAVE HILL, BELFAST

Belfast—when you reach it—is not calculated to charm the eye. It has the features of any English manufacturing town so far as its buildings are concerned, and the finest structures it can show (without disparaging its handsome Town Hall) are the vast fabrics which rise in the dockyards, such ships as have never been built in the world before—marvels of symmetry and strength. To see them in the building up is to watch, perhaps, the most impressive exhibition of human skill and energy. Ireland, for all its defective development, can boast of heading the world in certain enterprises: Guinness's brewery, Harland and Wolff's engineering works, and Barbour's great net and rope factory at Lisburn are, each in its kind, the biggest and best in Europe, or out of it.

Once you get down to the water in Belfast, beauty is abundant, and for my part I like best the view from the docks. But Mr. Williams has chosen a distant indication of the town under the bold headland, at whose foot it lies so well. This aspect of Cave Hill does not show its strange feature—the vast Napoleonic profile flung up against an eastern sky. Time was when Belfast must have been curiously divided about that portent; for in the Revolution period northern Ireland was fiercely republican. It was on Cave Hill that Wolfe Tone, most formidable of all Irish rebels, with a group of young Ulster democrats, founded the Society of United Irishmen.

Belfast does not dwell much on these memories to-day, nor indeed on any memories; her interest is in the prosperous present, the growing future. And although it has its absurdities, notably in the claim to be more populous than Dublin (a result achieved by omitting Rathmines and Pembroke, townships separately governed, but as much part of Dublin as Kensington and Chelsea are of London), the strong pride of Belfast is amply justified. It is not its proximity to Scotch coalfields nor its moist climate (dear to spinners) which really makes its fortune, it is the hard-bitten, restless, courageous spirit of its people.

Like Dublin, it has close access to places of great natural charm. Just beyond Cave Hill, on the north shore of the lough, is Carrickfergus Castle, whose grim strength Mr. Williams has excellently suggested. It was built within six years of the Norman invasion, by de Courcy, first grantee of Ulster; and here, as at Carlingford, the invaders managed to retain their grip. The Bruces wrested it, after a fierce siege, from de Lacy, who then held it, Robert Bruce aiding his brother; but on Edward Brace's defeat it fell back to the English. In the ultimate conquest of Ireland it marked a great moment, for here William of Orange landed, and pious care has recorded the flagstone on which he first set his foot.

At Carrickfergus you are already well advanced on the prettiest road in all Ireland—that which skirts the northern shore of Belfast Lough, then, crossing the neck of Island Magee peninsula, carries you past Larne's inland water, and from Larne follows the cliffy shoreline up to where Fair Head marks the northern limit of Antrim's eastward-looking coast. Then, cutting in behind the Head, it emerges on the pleasant town of Ballycastle, sheltered in its bay, and so follows the coast again past the castles of Dunseverick and Dunluce, famous ruins, and past the Giant's Causeway, that still more famous piece of an older and more majestic architecture. Portrush ends your journey if you be a golfer; but dearer to me than the links at Portrush are the sandhills beyond Portstewart and the long strand at the entrance to Lough Foyle—ten miles of a stretch, but the Bann's outflow divides it. No other beach that I have known is rich in such a variety of shells; on no other sandhills do the little delicate sandflowers, ladies'-slipper, thyme, ladies'-bedstraw, and the rest, grow so charmingly.

Now, in all that long coastline what to write about? First, perhaps, its geography. A line of high hills, or low mountains, runs north from Belfast, and beyond Larne they approach close to the sea. Westward of them is prosperous industrial country, draining into Lough Neagh or the Bann—a country of thriving towns, Ballymena and Ballymoney, with many factories. But east of this is the marginal land, running steeply down with short watercourses to the sea, and this is the country of the Glens of Antrim; lordship of the