CHAPTER XI.

BORRIS, Friday, March 2d.—­This is the land of the Kavanaghs, and a lovely, picturesque, richly-wooded land it is.  I left Dublin with Mr. Gyles by an afternoon train; the weather almost like June.  We ran from the County of Dublin into Kildare, and from Kildare into Carlow, through hills; rural scenery quite unlike anything I have hitherto seen in Ireland.  At Bagnalstown, a very pretty place, with a spire which takes the eye, our host joined us, and came on with us to this still more attractive spot.  Borris has been the seat of his family for many centuries.  The MacMorroghs of Leinster, whom the Kavanaghs lineally represent, dwelt here long before Dermot MacMorrogh, finding his elective throne in Leinster too hot to hold him, went off into Aquitaine, to get that famous “letter of marque” from Henry II. of England, with the help of which this king without a kingdom induced Richard de Clare, an earl without an earldom, to lend him a hand and bring the Normans into Ireland.  Many of this race lie buried in the ruins of St. Mullen’s Abbey, on the Barrow, in this county.  But none of them, I opine, ever did such credit to the name as its present representative, Arthur MacMorrogh Kavanagh.

I had some correspondence with Mr. Kavanagh several years ago, when he sent me, through my correspondent for publication in New York, a very striking statement of his views on the then condition of Irish affairs—­views since abundantly vindicated; and like most people who have paid any attention to the recent history of Ireland, I knew how wonderful an illustration his whole career has been of what philosophers call the superiority of man to his accidents, and plain people the power of the will.  But I knew this only imperfectly.  His servant brought him up to the carriage and placed him in it.  This it was impossible not to see.  But I had not talked with him for five minutes before it quite passed out of my mind.  Never was there such a justification of the paradoxical title which Wilkinson gave to his once famous book, The Human Body, and its Connexion with Man,—­never such a living refutation of the theory that it is the thumb which differentiates man from the lower animals.  Twenty times this evening I have been reminded of the retort I heard made the other day at Cork by a lawyer, who knows Mr. Kavanagh well, to a priest of “Nationalist” proclivities, who knows him not at all.  Some allusion having been made to Borris, the lawyer said to me, “You will see at Borris the best and ablest Irishman alive.”  On this the priest testily and tartly broke in, “Do you mean the man without hands or feet?”

“I mean,” replied the lawyer, very quietly, “the man in whom all that has gone in you or me to arms and legs has gone to heart and head!”

Borris House stands high in the heart of an extensive and nobly wooded park, and commands one of the finest landscapes I have seen in Ireland.  As we stood and gazed upon it from the hall door, the distant hills were touched with a soft purple light such as transfigures the Apennines at sunset.