All the evictions have since been carried out, and the Land Corporation men are at work upon the estate!  Whom has all this advantaged?  The tenants?—­Certainly not.  The O’Grady?—­Certainly not.  The peace and order of Ireland?—­Certainly not.  But it has given the National League another appeal to the intelligent “sympathies” of England and America.  It has strengthened the revolutionary element in Irish society.  It has “driven another nail into the coffin” of Irish landlordism and of the private ownership of land throughout Great Britain.

Such at least is the opinion of Mr. Kavanagh.  If I were an Englishman or a Scotchman, I should be strongly inclined to take very serious account of this opinion in forecasting the future of landed property in England or Scotland.

CHAPTER XII.

GREENANE HOUSE, THOMASTOWN, March 5th.—­The breakfast-room at Borris this morning was gay with pink coats.  A meet was to come off at a place between Borris and Thomastown, and bidding fare-well to my cordial host and hostess, I set out at 11 o’clock for a flying visit to this quaint and charming house of Mr. Seigne, one of the best known and most highly esteemed agents in this part of Ireland.

My jarvey from Borris had an unusually neat and well-balanced car.  When I praised it he told me it was “built by an American,” not an Irish American, I understood him to say, but a genuine Yankee, who, for some mysterious reason, has established himself in this region, where he has prospered as a cart and car builder ever since.  “Just the best cars in all Ireland he builds, your honour!” Why don’t he naturalise them in America?

All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the hill scenery picturesque at every turn.  We looked out sharply for the hunt, but in vain.  My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them entirely.  And so we did.

The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as an emporium for the country about Kilkenny.  The river now is not navigable above Inistiogue.  But two martial square towers, one at either end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old times when the masters of Thomastown took toll and tribute of traders and travellers.  The lands about the place then belonged to the great monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting of their kind in this part of Ireland.  They have long made a part of the estate of the Butlers.  We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town, and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House.  The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas Fitz-Anthony