The district in which Moira House stands has long ceased to be fashionable.  The mansion stands close to the Liffey, a few yards back from the road.  An elderly man who has charge of the mendicity institution for whose purposes the house is at present used, told me that he remembered it when kept up by the family, although its members were not actually residing there.  What is now a fearfully dreary courtyard, where the outcasts of Dublin disport themselves, was then, he said, a fine garden with splendid mulberry trees, which he, being a favorite with the gardener, was permitted to climb—­a circumstance which had naturally impressed itself on his childish memory.  I told him that I had heard that long after the difficulties of the first marquis—­who lent one hundred thousand pounds to George the Magnificent when that glorious prince was at the last gasp for L s. d.—­had compelled him to part with his large estates; in the county Down, he had retained possession of this mansion, and that it had even descended to the last marquis, whose wild career concluded when he was only six-and-twenty; but the old man thought it had passed from them long before.  He remembered, he said, the last peer (with whom the title became extinct) coming to Dublin, because he had an interview with him about some furniture for his yacht, my informant being at that time in business, and he thought he should have heard if the property had been still retained.  I asked if the marquis had exhibited any interest as to the old historical mansion of his family.  “Not the slightest,” he replied.

Hardy, in his well-known life of Lord Charlemont, says:  “His (Lord Moira’s) house will be long, very long, remembered:  it was for many years the seat of refined hospitality, of good nature and of good conversation.  In doing the honors of it, Lord Moira had certainly one advantage above most men, for he had every assistance that true magnificence, the nobleness of manners peculiar to exalted birth, and talents for society the most cultivated, could give him in his illustrious countess.”

Powerscourt House, a really noble mansion in St. Andrew street, is now used by a great wholesale firm, but is so little altered that it could be fitted for a private residence again in a very brief time.  The staircase is grand in proportion, and the steps and balustrades are of polished mahogany, the last being richly carved.

Tyrone House is now the Education Office, and Mornington House, where Wellington’s father resided, and where or at Dangan—­for it is a doubtful point—­the duke was born, is also used for government purposes.