This morning at 7.25 A.M.  I left Dublin with Lord Ernest Hamilton for Strabane.  My attention was distracted from the reports of the great meeting by the varied and picturesque beauty of the landscape, through which we ran at a very respectable rate in a very comfortable carriage.  We passed Dundalk, where Edward Bruce got himself crowned king of Ireland, after his brother Robert had won a throne in Scotland.

These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, worked out the problem of “satisfied nationalities” much more successfully and simply than Napoleon III. in our own day.  If Edward Bruce broke down where Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worth considering even now by people who have set themselves the task in our times of establishing “an Irish nationality.”  Leaving out the Cromwellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who have done for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very much the same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed to fashion.

Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows the Boyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe.  Here, two years after the discovery of America, Poyning’s Parliament enacted that all laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the English Privy Council.  I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this form of Home Rule for Ireland now.  Earl Grey’s recent suggestion that Parliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which I heard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin, involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from the problem of government in Ireland.  As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke’s magnificent presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of the mist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to be forgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir Arthur Ashton’s garrison, when “for the glory of God,” and “to prevent the further effusion of blood,” Oliver ordered all the officers to be knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes.  But how different was the spirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that in which the “popular orators,” scattering firebrands and death, delight to dwell upon them!

At Strabane station we found a handsome outside car waiting on us, and drove off briskly for this charming place, the home of one of the most active and prosperous manufacturers in Ireland.  A little more than half way between the station and Sion House, Mr. Herdman met us afoot.  We jumped off and walked up with him.  Sion House, built for him by his brother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion.  It stands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides.  Below it, and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which