In the evening came, with other guests, Dr. Webb, Q.C., Regius Professor of Laws and Public Orator of Trinity at Dublin, well known both as a Grecian capable of composing “skits” as clever as the verses yclept Homerstotle—­in which the Saturday Review served up the Donnelly nonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare—­and as a translator of Faust.  He was abused by the Loyalists at Dublin, in 1884, for his defence of P.N.  Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croke so badly at Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court judge in Donegal.  He finds this post no sinecure.  “I do as much work in five days,” he said to-night, “as the Superior Judges do in five weeks.”

He is a staunch Unionist, and laughs at the notion that the Irish people care one straw for a Parliament in Dublin.  “Why should they?” he said.  “What did any Parliament in Dublin ever do to gratify the one real passion of the Irish peasant—­his hunger for a bit of land?  So far as the Irish people are concerned, Home Rule means simply agrarian reform.  Would they get that from a Parliament in Dublin?  If the British Parliament evicts the landlords and makes the tenants lords of the land, they will be face to face with Davitt’s demand for the nationalising of the land.  Do you suppose they will like to see the lawyers and the politicians organising a labour agitation against the ‘strong farmers’?  The last thing they want is a Parliament in Dublin.  Lord Ashbourne’s Act carries in its principle the death-warrant of the ‘National League.’”

Some excellent stories were told in the picturesque smoking-room after dinner, one of a clever and humorous, sensible and non-political priest, who, being taken to task by some of his brethren for giving the cold shoulder to the Nationalist movement, excused himself by saying, “I should like to be a patriot; but I can’t be.  It’s all along of the rheumatism which prevents me from lying out at nights in a ditch with a rifle.”  The same priest being reproached by others of the cloth with a fondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in his neighbourhood, replied, “It’s in the blood, you see.  My poor mother, God rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality.  As for my dear father, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest of ye!”

GWEEDORE, Saturday, 4th Feb.—­A good day’s work to-day!

We left our hospitable friends at Sion House early in the morning.  The sun was shining brightly; the air so soft and bland that the thrushes were singing like mad creatures in the trees and the shrubbery; and the sky was more blue than Italy.  “A foine day it is, sorr,” said our jarvey as we took our seats on the car.  There is some point in the old Irish sarcasm that English travellers in Ireland only see one side of the country, because they travel through it on the outside car.  But