of one of those strong, square, ugly castles, which, two centuries since, were the real habitations of the landed proprietors of the country, and many of which have been inhabited even to a much later date.  They now afford the strongest record of the apparently miserable state of life which even the favoured of the land then endured, and of the numberless domestic comforts which years and skill have given us, apt as we are to look back with fond regret to the happy, by-gone days of past periods.

This old castle, now used as a cow-shed, is the only record of antiquity at Grey Abbey; and yet the ancient family of the Greys have lived there for centuries.  The first of them who possessed property in Ireland, obtained in the reign of Henry II, grants of immense tracts of land, stretching through Wicklow, Kildare, and the Queen’s and King’s Counties; and, although his descendants have been unable to retain, through the various successive convulsions which have taken place in the interior of Ireland since that time, anything like an eighth of what the family once pretended to claim, the Earl of Cashel, their present representative, has enough left to enable him to consider himself a very great man.

The present mansion, built on the site of that in which the family had lived till about seventy years since, is, like the grounds, large, commodious, and uninteresting.  It is built of stone, which appears as if it had been plastered over, is three stories high, and the windows are all of the same size, and at regular intervals.  The body of the house looks like a huge, square, Dutch old lady, and the two wings might be taken for her two equally fat, square, Dutch daughters.  Inside, the furniture is good, strong, and plain.  There are plenty of drawing-rooms, sitting-rooms, bed-rooms, and offices; a small gallery of very indifferent paintings, and a kitchen, with an excellent kitchen-range, and patent boilers of every shape.

Considering the nature of the attractions, it is somewhat strange that Lord Cashel should have considered it necessary to make it generally known that the park might be seen any day between the hours of nine and six, and the house, on Tuesdays and Fridays between the hours of eleven and four.  Yet such is the case, and the strangeness of this proceeding on his part is a good deal diminished by the fact that persons, either induced by Lord Cashel’s good nature, or thinking that any big house must be worth seeing, very frequently pay half-a-crown to the housekeeper for the privilege of being dragged through every room in the mansion.

There is a bed there, in which the Regent slept when in Ireland, and a room which was tenanted by Lord Normanby, when Lord Lieutenant.  There is, moreover, a satin counterpane, which was made by the lord’s aunt, and a snuff-box which was given to the lord’s grandfather by Frederick the Great.  These are the lions of the place, and the gratification experienced by those who see them is, no doubt, great; but I doubt if it equals the annoyance and misery to which they are subjected in being obliged to pass one unopened door—­that of the private room of Lady Selina, the only daughter of the earl at present unmarried.