We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we should find the hotel.  We were very civilly directed to “The Register’s Office over the way.”  This seemed odd enough.  But reaching it we were further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a “coach-builder”!  However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have “whatever we liked” for luncheon.  We liked what we found we could get—­chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green dado to a scarlet and silver frieze.  There were five times as many potatoes served to us as two men could possibly eat, and not one of them was half-boiled.  But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service excellent.  Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord Carysfort, the owner of the property, thinking, so our hostess said, that “there were too many licences in the town already.”  Lord Carysfort is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to the detriment of his own property.

Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house.  He was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in.

His study was that of a man of letters and of politics.  Blue-books and statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the March numbers of the Nineteenth Century, and the Contemporary Review.

“You are abreast of the times, I see,” I said to him, pointing to these periodicals.

“Yes,” he replied, “they have just come in; and there is a capital paper by Mr. John Morley in this Nineteenth Century.”

Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon’s interest in all that is going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions, or more terse and clear than his way of putting them.  He agreed entirely with Father O’Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants, not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them.

“Two of the most respectable of them,” said Dr. Dillon, “went to see Mr. Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn’t listen to them.  On the contrary, he absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to say."[22]

I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm believer in the doctrine of the “nationalisation of the land.”  “It is certain to come,” he said, “as certain to come in Great Britain as in Ireland, and the sooner the better.  The movement about the sewerage rates in London,” he added, “is the first symptom of the land war in London.  It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in the British metropolis.”