Mr. Cameron, the Town Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, met me at the station, in accordance with a promise which he kindly made when I saw him several weeks ago at Cork; and this morning he took me all over the city.  It is very well laid out, in the new quarters especially, with broad avenues and spacious squares.  In fact, as a local wag said to me to-day at the Ulster Club, “You can drive through Belfast without once going into a street”—­most of the thoroughfares which are not called “avenues” or “places” being known as “roads.”  It is, of course, an essentially modern city.  When Boate made his survey of Ireland two centuries ago, Belfast was so small a place that he took small note of it, though it had been incorporated by James I. in 1613 in favour of the Chichester family, still represented here.  In a very careful Tour in Ireland, published at Dublin in 1780, the author says of Belfast, “I could not help remarking the great number of Scots who reside in this place, and who carry on a good trade with Scotland.”  It seems then to have had a population of less than 20,000 souls, as it only touched that number at the beginning of this century.  It has since then advanced by “leaps and bounds,” after an almost American fashion, till it has now become the second, and bids fair at no distant day to become the first, city in Ireland.  Few of the American cities which are its true contemporaries can be compared with Belfast in beauty.  The quarter in which my host lives was reclaimed from the sea marshes not quite so long ago, I believe, as was the Commonwealth Avenue quarter of Boston, and though it does not show so many costly private houses perhaps as that quarter of the New England capital, its “roads” and “avenues” are on the whole better built, and there is no public building in Boston so imposing as the Queen’s College, with its Tudor front six hundred feet in length, and its graceful central tower.  The Botanic Gardens near by are much prettier and much better equipped for the pleasure and instruction of the people than any public gardens in either Boston or New York.  These American comparisons make themselves, all the conditions of Belfast being rather of the New World than of the Old.  The oldest building pointed out to me to-day is the whilom mansion of the Marquis of Donegal, now used as offices, and still called the Castle.

This stands near Donegal Square, a fine site, disfigured by a quadrangle of commonplace brick buildings, occupied as a sort of Linen Exchange, concerning which a controversy rages, I am told.  They are erected on land granted by Lord Donegal to encourage the linen trade, and the buildings used to be leased at a rental of L1 per window.  The present holders receive L10 per window, and are naturally loath to part with so good a thing, though there is an earnest desire in the city to see these unsightly structures removed, and their place taken by stately municipal buildings more in key with the