the police out of the place.”  He told me, too, that not long ago the soldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in the Court-house, “but they were soon sent away for that same.”  On the other hand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries about the transmission of an important paper to the United States in time to catch to-morrow’s steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulers almost with ferocity, and thought the “Coercion” Government at Dublin ought to be called the “Concession” Government.  He was quite indignant that the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublin should not have been “forbidden.”

There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of the best of them says all this agitation has “killed the trade of the place.”  I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families are beginning seriously to demand that the “reduction screw” shall be applied to other things besides rent.  “A very decent farmer,” he says, “only last week stood up in the shop and said it was ’a shame the shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to sixpence!’”

This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of his brethren.  He finds them equally deserted.  In his own he has had to dismiss a number of his attendants.  “When a man finds he is taking in ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but pull up pretty short?” As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the mechanics.  “They are losing custom all the time.  You see the tenants are expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on painting or improvements.  The money goes into the bank.  It don’t go to the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we?  Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin’s house, we used regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets and other things given away.  Now the house is shut up and we make nothing!”

It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis to Edenvale—­and Edenvale itself is not ill-named.  The park is a true park, with fine wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees.  A swift river flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house—­a river alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs of herons build.  A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the storks in Holland.  Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore.  Deer come down to the further bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes.