was the suppleness and strength of the limb at this point, that by an energetic side movement he could punish a horse as heavily as any ordinary rider. Magpie" knew this. Magpie was a hunter with a temper; and an eyewitness has described to us what a "leathering," as he termed it, he once saw administered by his master to this fractious quadruped. The unconquerable will, the iron nerve, the dauntless courage exhibited by Kavanagh, first in acquiring, and afterwards in exercising, these faculties, which, from the circumstances of his birth, would have seemed to be absolutely denied to him, as they cannot fail to excite the respect and admiration of the world, must be a source of pride to his own family, who will recognise hereafter in the bold sportsman and adventurous traveller, victorious over such formidable odds, the addition of another hero to the race which has produced so many. Kavanagh was likewise a capital seaman, and even after he had given up all other outdoor pleasures still clung to his yacht. He had studied navigation scientifically, and the description of a yacht-race, quoted by Mrs Steele from the Cruise of the Eva,' which Kavanagh published about five-and-twenty years ago, shows what an enthusiast he was :— "The G., fair reader, is, I think, as pretty a yacht as I would wish to and I would not deserve the see; name of even half a sailor if I did not love and admire my own. It now came on to blow harder. Up main tack, ease down the throat and peak halyards a foot or so!' This manœuvre eased her considerably, and we began to draw ahead, but had arranged before we started that at eight o'clock we were to show a light each to determine our relative positions then. Accordingly, as eight bells went, we showed our light, and had the satisfaction of being answered by our adversary-well astern! This was in November 1862 on his way to Albania for the woodcocks, and he stayed in the Mediterranean till the following March. Returning to Ireland in April, he first began to think seriously of public life, though it was not till three years afterwards that a vacancy occurring in the representation of Wexford enabled him to enter the field. In the meantime we may take a look at him at Borris, in the discharge of his duties as a landlord, a country gentleman, and a local ruler and administrator. The Mrs Kavanagh entered most warmly into all his projects for the good of his tenants and labourers, and the improvement of his property; and the first object of their care was the village of Borris itself. Always highly picturesque, the little hamlet now became neat and comfortable as well. Cabins were turned into cottages. walls were covered with creepers, and employment found for the women and children incompatible with the fixity of tenure hitherto enjoyed by the pig. Lady Harriet Kavanagh, when she accompanied her son to the Mediterranean, had been much struck with the specimens of old Greek lace which she found at Corfu. She brought some home with her, and having altered it to suit the fashion of the day, taught the mothers and daughters of the village to copy it. Under the superintendence of Mrs Kavanagh they attained a high degree of skill, and "Borris lace" soon became well known for its beautiful designs and delicate workmanship, not surpassed in its own style by any of the "cottage industries of Ireland." But even in the improvement of this little community, which lay at his very gates, he was encountered by the same obstacles which on a much larger scale exist throughout two-thirds of Ireland -the long leases held by peasant farmers, who resented interference and despised comfort. It is little known to the declaimers against English landlords to how great an extent the improvement of English cottages has been hindered by similar impediments. The traveller or tourist, as he rides, drives, or walks through many parts of rural England, comes across mud-hovels, with the windows tumbling out of their casements, the doors off their hinges, the chimneys in ruins, and the whole building infinitely inferior to the cow-house of a wellto-do farmer; and he forthwith launches out into diatribes against the squirearchy, and very likely writes to the newspapers to denounce their wickedness. A little inquiry on the spot would have taught him that the squirearchy had no more to do with these tenements than he had himself; that the people who lived in them owned them, and would not allow them to be touched. Kavanagh, however, succeeded in time both at Borris and also on his Kilkenny property at Ballyragget, where, in a feudal castle embosomed in groves of beech, lime, and ilex, and watered by the winding Nore, is said to have been passed the "careless childhood" of Ann Boleyn. But Kavanagh's conception of his duties did not stop here. In the true spirit of the feudal proprietor who built wharves, bridges, mills, market-places, &c., for the use of his vassals, he brought a railway from Bagnalstown to Borris, at a cost of £5000 to himself, besides the fourteen miles of land which were a free gift. In 1862 he saw what might be done by utilising the water-power of the Borris brook. He accordingly built a sawmill, to which he afterwards added turning - lathes, and enabled his people to accept contracts from English cotton factories for supplies of bobbins, the materials for which he furnished from his own woods. Well might Sir Charles Russell describe him as a landlord of landlords. He took a great interest in the question of replanting Ireland, but was prevented by still more urgent calls upon him from bringing any scheme before the public. Had he done so, it would probably have been much misrepresented - who can gauge the mingled credulity and suspiciousness of democracies? When suggested in parts of Wales, the plan was at once denounced a game-preserver's dodge in disguise. In 1862 Kavanagh was appointed chairman of the New Ross Board of Guardians, and one of his first acts was proof of that liberality of sentiment which he afterwards displayed upon the land question. At this time in the Union workhouse there were three or four hundred Roman Catholics to only five or six of other denominations. But the former had no chapel, and Mass was celebrated in the dininghall, sometimes before the meals were cleared away. When chapel was proposed the guardians objected to the expense, but were at once overruled by Kavanagh, and the chapel was built, being "the first of its kind in Ireland." a not only hunted with the Carlow and Kilkenny hounds, but kept also a pack of harriers of his own, and these on non-hunting days he always exercised before breakfast. With his after-breakfast cigar he was to be found every morning in the courtyard of the house, where, beneath an ancient oak standing in the middle of it, he sat to administer justice and judgment to all comers. Here came the farmers and the peasantry to ask advice in their difficulties, or to invoke arbitration in their quarrels. And he who has had any opportunity of studying the kind of grievances which the Irish peasantry are or were accustomed to bring before their landlords, can easily picture to himself the scene. The court was for the trial of civil as well as criminal cases, and his decision was accepted in disputes about property with as much readiness as in feuds arising out of broken heads or "" splighted" ears. This primitive tribunal was also a court of Hymen :"There came to him many a maiden Whose eyes had forgot to shine; But not for his coal-black wine." The maiden's eyes regained their lustre, and the widow put off her weeds under the old oak-tree. Here, we may suppose, lovers' quarrels were adjusted, faithless swains admonished, and the dulces Amaryllidis ira restrained within proper bounds. Existing engagements were considered, and fresh ones planned, in consultation with the matrons of the village under the oaken canopy, and Tim's prospects on the land, or Nora's capacity for the dairy, duly examined and appraised by this experienced matchmaker. We may call in the aid of a little imagination on such VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCV. occasions. Yet if that old tree had been Tennyson's talking oak, such, or something very like them, are, we may reasonably suppose, the tales he would have had to tell us. "Old oak, I love thee well," must have been the burden of the song in many a rural mouth in the happy days before the flood. It We know not whether Kavanagh's system was unique or not, but we have never met with anything like Mrs Steele's description of it. Of course wherever there is a territorial aristocracy there will be plenty of good landlords living and dying among their own people, advising them to the best of their ability in all the affairs of life, adjusting their differences, helping them in time of trouble, and taking a lively and sympathetic interest in their social arrangements. is Kavanagh's patriarchal court that is so interesting-his sitting in the gate, so to speak, like an Eastern caliph in his long black robe, and deciding the multifarious questions brought before him offhand with autocratic authority. The courtyard of the old grey mansion, the venerable oak, which had witnessed two sieges, had seen Coote's Saxon pikemen break the ranks of the besiegers in 1641, and Kavanagh's yeomanry scattering the rebels like chaff in 1798; the peasant groups, male and female, assembled in its shadow, pleading their respective causes with all the humour and eloquence of their nation: all these accessories, which our fancy may embellish at will, add to the romance and picturesqueness of the scene; but they can add nothing to the historical and practical significance of the work done there a work which, had it always been performed in a similar spirit by the great body of Irish landlords, would have left England no Irish ques 2 F tion to deal with. Kavanagh's devotion to the interests of his tenantry was rewarded by the consciousness that he possessed their entire confidence. Many of them on their deathbeds appointed him the guardian of their daughters, convinced that in his wisdom, integrity, and kindness lay the best possible securities for their future welfare. But it was not only over serious business that the old oak stretched his hospitable arms. Here were distributed the Christmas beef and blankets; and when the poor for whom they were intended lived too far off to come to the trystingtree themselves, Kavanagh used to carry out the doles himself, and was never happier than when, hoisted on to "Miss Nolan," a favourite brown mare, with innumerable packages strapped all round his saddle, he rode out of the courtyard, and set his face towards the mountains. In the summer-time it saw another sight. Every Sunday after luncheon, the whole party staying in the house adjourned to the oak-tree, when Kavanagh, on Miss Nolan's back, and with his favourite terrier by his side, led them a long round by the junction of the brook with the river, through the woods and deer park, across the lawns, and so back in time for evening service in the chapel. At other times he would take the lead of a water party down the river to a fishing lodge which had been built upon its banks, "half hidden by trees and half covered with roses," steering the boat himself, and the life and soul of the picnic which was part of the day's entertainment. Kavanagh was fond of society; and such, we have been told, was the intense individuality and power of the man, and the interest he inspired in all who came across him, that no one was five minutes in his company without forgetting all his peculiarities. When visitors came, he used to be brought into the room on the shoulders of his special body-servant. But if he desired a chat with any one at a distance, and the servant did not happen to be at hand, he would descend from his chair and cross the room unaided, by a succession of springs or jumps, keeping all the time an upright position. In the house he always wore a long black robe, which was exchanged for a white one in the saddle; and he used to be fond of representing his want of legs as a great advantage to him out hunting, because, if his horse came down, he had no limbs to be crushed under him. Thus he carried off all his defects with a good grace and a high spirit, and was bent upon demonstrating how little they prevented him from doing what other people did. At luncheon, for instance, there was always soup, and Kavanagh insisted on sitting at the bottom of the table and helping it himself, which we are assured he did most dexterously. He wrote a capital hand (if one may say so), and was an admirable amateur artist both with pencil and paint-brush. There were many parts of Ireland in which the famine of 1846 and the rebellion of 1848 had not materially affected the relations between landlord and tenant. During the twelve or fifteen years immediately following these calamities, Ireland was steadily advancing in prosperity and contentment; and it was not till 1862, when Kavanagh had been in possession of the property for eight years, that the spirit which had been arrested but not eradicated fourteen years before began to show itself again, and the low-muttered growl of Fenianism was borne upon the wind from America. It was longer still, however, before the effects of it were felt at Borris; and when Mr Kavanagh decided in 1866 to come forward for the county of Wexford, he was supported at the poll by as loyal a body of tenantry as could be found in England. His opponent on this occasion was Mr, now Sir, J. Pope Hennessey, who found it vain to contend against the superior resources and local influence of his adversary. In 1868 he was returned for Carlow unopposed, and held his seat till, in the general shipwreck which terminated Lord Beaconsfield's Ministry, his vessel went down with many another gallant ship. Kavanagh entered Parliament, as we have seen, in 1866. In the winter of that year the Fenian insurrection broke out, and Kavanagh victualled and fortified Borris against another siege. He resumed the solitary nocturnal rides which he had practised in 1848, and made himself well acquainted with the movements of the insurgents in his own neighbourhood. Of course the Fenians in turn were equally on the watch for Kavanagh, and his approach was signalled by the scouts from hill-top to hill-top. In spite of these precautions, however, Kavanagh, by his knowledge of the country, and the jumping powers of his Irish hunter, succeeded in getting inside their outposts, and taking his own observations without being caught, though the breakneck gallops to which he was frequently driven would have startled some of the best goers in the Quorn or Pytchley. It must have been grand fun for a daring rider like Kavanagh on a fine moonlight night,-over the stone walls, down the mountain-side, making the stones fly at every stride, across the brook, and through the swamp, till he had fairly baffled all pursuit, and could sit still and laugh at his ease. When Kavanagh took his seat, we were on the eve of the political deluge which Lord Palmerston had predicted, and of that immortal fight between the two great leaders of debate which will never be forgotten while parliamentary government survives. He took no part in the debates of 1867 and 1868, but he distinguished himself by one achievement,-he regained for members of the House of Commons the right of having their yachts moored in the river alongside the Houses of Parliament. He continued to be a silent member till April 1869, when he spoke against a bill for extending the principle of Union chargeability to the Irish poor - law. Here he was on his own ground, probably knowing more about the subject than any other man in that House. At all events his speech was felt to be unanswerable, and the bill was rejected. He took no part, however, in the Irish Church debates of that year, though after the bill had become law he became the inspiring spirit of the Irish Church Committee, on which his business talents and knowledge of finance were found invaluable. On other Irish questions he was less retiring, and sometimes stood alone among Irish Conservatives in advocating changes then considered the exclusive note of Liberalism or Radicalism. He supported the famous compensation clause in Mr Gladstone's Land Act, on the ground that it did no more than legalise the Ulster custom which had existed for centuries, without af fecting the relations between landlord and tenant. In 1875 he supported the Sunday Closing Bill for Ireland, in the conviction that drunkenness and agitation were the two chief causes of the condi |