had the advantage on the score of refinement. This was probably owing to the constant communication kept up with France and Spain.

Visitors to the capital describe it as having been a gay and charming city. In most ways it was superior to the Dublin of 1888. Men of rank and wealth resided there, and kept up state consistent with their position; it had not yet sunk to the level of a provincial town; and we get glowing accounts of the Duke of Leinster's stately dwelling in Kildare Street, and the decorations of Moira House, of Lord Charlemont's town house in Rutland Square, and his country place, Marino, at Clontarf; of "Buck" Whalley's residence in Stephen's Green, and the Earl of Meath's mansion close by, all of which, and many others, have now been transformed into convents, colleges, hospitals, government offices, or other public institutions. There were balls, dinners, recep- | tions, masquerades, operas, and concerts in abundance. Arthur Young says: "Dublin far exceeded my expectations. There is very good society there in a Parliamentary winter; a great round of dinners, and parties, and balls, and suppers every night in the week, some of which are very elegant."

Ridottos were held, to which the men subscribed two moidores apiece, and got in return two tickets to present to ladies of their acquaintance. There were also subscription concerts on the same plan, so that we are told "the women were at no expense for their entertainment." One curious custom is mentioned - namely, that on the 23d of October, the anniversary of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, open house was held at the Castle, and the numerous guests were sumptuously feasted. Dinner over, the doors were thrown open, and the crowd outside permitted to rush in, clear the dishes, and carry off the fragments.

We read with interest of a visit paid to the Irish House of Commons by two ladies, thus recorded by one of them:

We rose at nine o'clock, put on our genteel dishabille, and went to the Parliament House at eleven to hear an election determined. The parties were Brigadier Parker, the sitting member, and Mr. Ponsonby, the petitioner. Mr. Southwell's interest was the first, and the last was Sir Richard Meade's.. I believe

we were the most impartial hearers among

all

the ladies that were there, though rather in

clined to Sir Richard Meade's side. I was very well entertained. Mr. Hamilton brought us up chicken and ham and tongue, and everything we could desire. At four

o'clock the Speaker adjourned the House till five. We then were conveyed by some gentlemen of our acquaintance into the Usher of the Black Rod's room where we had a good the House reassembled we resumed our seats, fire, meat, tea, and bread-and-butter. When and stayed till eight.

Dublin was, however, at no period a typically Irish city, and if we seek traces of customs now obsolete, we must collect the traditions of the west and south-west, for there old ways lingered longest, and isolation from the busy world of fashion and politics tended to concentrate the interest of women in particular on their household affairs. Life in these remote districts, if sometimes painfully exciting, was not lively as a rule; but the people were always gay and light-hearted, until the famine of 1848, which changed at once and forever the national character. A ride of fifteen miles or thereabouts to a neighbor's house for dinner or a dance was quite an ordinary affair; every one was hospitable, and it was customary to set each day two or three extra places at table on the chance of stray guests. "They not only treat us magnificently," writes Mrs. Pendarves from Mayo, "but if we are to go to an inn, they constantly provide us with a basket crammed with good things. No people can be more hospitable or obliging, and there is not only great abundance, but great order and neatness. The roads are much better in Ireland than in England, mostly causeways, a little jumbling, but very safe." In all parts of which this last remark held good, the gentry kept handsome coaches or chariots, drawn by four or six horses, according to their rank and means; but in mountainous districts, where there were only rough bridle-paths, ladies rode on pillions behind a male relative or a groom, and continued the practice even when quite old women. It may be added, that until about seventy years ago horses were not clipped, while cobs were cropped

- that is, had their ears and tail docked, like terriers. Every lady, no matter how remote the place where she lived, wore at that period a silk gown when dressed for the day, it being an epoch when people kept things "for best." In the morning, and when occupied in household duties, woollen was in winter the favorite wear, and in summer, linen, stamped in gay colors like chintz, and very durable. The manufacture has since been discontinued, but it might with advantage be revived. Hunting and dancing were the favorite amusements, together with the national

game of hurling, a species of hockey. Great interest was taken in matches between opposing counties or baronies, and we even hear of games played in Paris by the Irish Jacobite exiles, wherein Munster was pitted against Leinster, and each side had its champion hurler. Nearly all the sons and daughters of the Irish Catholic gentry were educated abroad. They thus had engrafted on their Irish liveliness that stateliness and dignity characteristic of Continental society previous to the French Revolution. The difficulty was to get them safely away, to conceal their absence, and then to secure their return home. Jane O'Conor of Clonalis, great grandmother to the present writer, was brought back from her Parisian convent by the Rev. Dr. Clifford, a priest of the Sorbonne, and great danger to both was involved in the journey. Dr. Clifford's clerical character of course was concealed, and the girl, who rode behind him on a pillion through France and England, her maid similarly mounted on a groom's horse, doubtless passed for his daughter. All the upper classes spoke and wrote English. Irish was in general use for communicating with servants and tenants unacquainted with the Sassenach tongue. French or Spanish was naturally acquired by the upper classes while residing in the country where one or other was spoken; and Latin was a language familiar even to Kerry and Galway peasants, as we learn from the pope's Nuncio Rinuncini.

All the best Irish families were poor at any rate, all who were purely Irish, as distinguished from Anglo-Irish; but they were proud to a degree. They looked on most of their rich neighbors as parvenus, and received and exacted as much respect and homage as if still in possession of the estates that had fallen into other hands.

"My dear," said a Galway lady of the old school, speaking of a well-known nobleman, "you cannot say he is of ancient birth; why, his ancestor only came to this country in the reign of Henry II.!"-a fair record, some dukes might think, who trace no higher than the seventeenth century.

Áfter the invasion of Ireland in 1172, five families the O'Neills of Ulster, the O'Conors of Connaught, the O'Melachlins of Meath, the M'Morraghs of Leinster, and the O'Briens of Thomond - were granted a special charter allowing them the benefit of English laws, and were known as de quinque sanguinibus, or the "five bloods." In the eighteenth century the descendants of the first and last

named, Viscount O'Neill and Lord Inchiquin, bore English titles, but the representatives of the other three were men of fallen fortunes. Arthur Young, writing in 1779, says: "At Clonells (Clonalis), near Castlerea, lives O'Connor, the direct descendant of Roderick O'Connor, who was king of Ireland six or seven hundred years ago. There is a monument of him in Roscommon Church, with his sceptre, etc. I was told as a certainty that this family were here long before the coming of the Milesians. Their possessions, formerly so great, are much reduced... The common people pay him the greatest respect, and send him presents of cattle, etc., upon various occasions. They regard him as the prince of a people involved in one common ruin."

We are told of M'Dermot, known as the Prince of Coolavin, who belonged to one of the principal Connaught families, that his income in 1776 barely amounted to £100 a year, yet he never suffered his children to sit down in his presence. Lady Morgan adds that his daughter-in-law alone was permitted to eat at his table; even his wife was not accorded this privilege, as, though well-born, she was not of royal blood. When Lord Kingsborough, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. O'Hara, Mr. Sandford, and others, all men of position, came to see him, he only took notice of the two last-named, whom he thus addressed: "O'Hara, you are welcome! Sandford, I am glad to see your mother's son" (his mother was an O'Brien). "As to the rest of ye, come in as ye can." One more illustration, and we have done. A certain Mrs. D, a Roscommon woman, and a friend of the writer's family, died some eighteen or twenty years ago, being then an extremely old woman, but retaining her memory, her sharp tongue, and her grand manner to the last. Of her it was related that in her youth, being a noted beauty and toast, she was complimented by being requested to open a county ball. On her way to the entertainment some delay occurred through her carriage breaking down, and on arriving she found to her mortification that, having waited for her in vain, the stewards had called on a rival belle to lead off the first dance.

While accurate on the whole, Arthur Young, from not knowing Irish history, falis into two or three errors. The O'Conors are descended from Thorlough O'Conor, Roderick's father, through his second son, Cathal Cravdearg, or Charies of the Red Hand. Roderick is buried at Cong in County Galway. The monument in Roscommon Abbey is that of Felim O'Conor, the buried in the Dominican monastery he had founded son of Cathal Crovdearg, who died in 1265, and was ten years before.

The indignant fair one was equal to the emergency. She promptly desired the attendants, who dared not disobey, to place benches across the assembly room, so as to cut off the party dancing at the upper end, and sent a peremptory order to the musicians to cease playing until she gave a signal. Then taking up her position with her friends outside the barrier she had created, she announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, the ball will now begin; and you will please remember that wherever Mrs. D- of C― stands, is the head of the room!"

At all times the Irish carefully traced and preserved their pedigrees, the Ollams, or Seanchaidhe, being especially devoted to genealogy before the advent of the Normans. Yet while haughtiness of manner and family pride were characteristic of the eighteenth century, these people were kindly, warm-hearted, sympathetic to their equals and to those admittedly their inferiors. The consciousness of having, through no fault of theirs, lost land, money, and position, occasioned and excused many outbursts of self-assertion, that under happier circumstances would have been unpardonable.

We have said that women found their chief interest and occupation in household affairs. They attended to many details now delegated to servants, and frequently, like the gentlewomen of the Middle Ages, led a secluded life spinning or embroidering with their maids. Numerous attendants were de rigueur at the period of which we write. Wages were low, and food was plentiful, so the kitchens of country-houses were filled with troops of sturdy, red-armed, bare-footed lasses, who carried home peat, the sole fuel, drew water in pitchers from the well, ground corn in a stone quern as Eastern women still do, milked the cows and helped about the dairy in summer; prepared flax, cleaned and scutched it, and spun it into thread during the long winter evenings, by the glare of a bog-wood torch or the feebler light of rush candles.

Bad to have many horses without ploughing to do;

Bad to have many maidens without spinning to do,

says a Kerry proverb.

Rough lads were always to be found hanging about the stable-yard, ready to run errands or lead round a visitor's horse. Besides these irregulars, there was a staff of upper servants who waited at table, cooked, washed, did fine sewing, and all

the lighter work of the establishment. The men were provided with livery; the women were neatly dressed, and wore shoes and stockings. Families of any position kept a butler; each lady had her own maid, each gentleman his man, these being, as a rule, foster-sister and fosterbrother to those they served. The ties of fosterage were considered in Ireland to be as sacred as those of blood; and as all children of the better classes were given out to nurse, they had a number of quasi relations amongst their tenants and dependants. We frequently hear of one foster-brother giving his life for another, and of a young man of family joining the Irish brigade in France, or Spain, or Austria, accompanied by the son of his peasant fosterer, who would fight as a private in the regiment his master commanded, and die if need be at his side. In the romantic family traditions common in Ireland, when a beautiful girl falls in love with one who differs from her in rank, creed, or politics, a foster-sister is almost invariably reported to have been her messenger and confidant.

A well-known character in Irish country-houses was the old sportsman or keeper, who could do a little of everything; who knew the bend of the river where salmon rose freely or trout lurked behind stones, the coppice where a litter of foxes was hidden, the corner of the plantation nearest the oat-field beloved by the pheasants; who was an authority on bait, traps, and snares, and whose principal duty was to keep his master's table supplied with game and fish.

The cost of living was less than in England at the same period. We hear of a wife, three children, a nurse, three maids, three men, a good table, a carriage and four horses, being kept for £500 a year.

Servants in the last century were not highly paid. Fifteen shillings to a pound a year was all the rougher domestics received, in addition to food and clothing. A footman earned from four to six guineas per annum; a professed woman-cook might be had for six guineas, a good housemaid for three pounds, a kitchenmaid for two pounds or less; and a butfrom ten to twelve pounds a year. Their ler, the best paid of all, was happy with food was plain but abundant. For break. fast they had porridge or "brick bread" and milk. Brick bread consisted of whole meal coarsely ground and made into flat round cakes, baked on a griddle over peat embers; it probably derived its name from the Irish word brack, speckled. For dinner there was salt meat and vegetables,