The passage from Scotland to Ireland was effected on a bright day in about three hours. My traveling companions were a gentleman and his wife from Girvan, and much talk was indulged in about Scotland and the Scotch, more especially the Highlanders. Reference was made to the popular belief that a curse has followed the descendants of the authors and perpetrators of the massacre of Glencoe, and I was told, with every appearance of sincerity, that the family of Stair, who reside near Stranraer, are to this day regarded with aversion, their ancestor having ordered that frightful butchery. This, considering that Stranraer is far distant from the scene of the crime, and that two centuries have elapsed since Lord Stair planned the extermination of the Macdonalds, is certainly treasuring up wrong with a vengeance. My informant, however, appeared to entertain no doubt as to the existence of the feeling and its cause.

The coast of Ireland must, I believe, be one of the most uniformly beautiful in the world. It certainly looked very bright to me when first I saw it in the south, and it was just as bright when I came in sight of it in the north. The expression "Gem of the Sea" is certainly not a great exaggeration when applied to Ireland as seen from the sea.

Larne is a small but well-built town, but nobody stops there, it being merely a sort of side-door to Belfast. The last-named town is exceedingly well built, and the use of red brick, as in America, relieved the place of the heavy look of English and Scotch cities of the same class. There was little in the town that brought up the popular idea of Ireland, except the enormous number of barefooted girls one met in the streets. I do not believe I ever saw the female foot in its natural form (except in the

case of two very young girl babies in whom I had an interest), until I went to Ireland. Here are plenty of feet that have apparently never known the weight of a shoe, and this illustrated the great doctrine of compensation. The poor Irish people have suffered from war, pestilence and politicians, but heaven has mercifully spared them from corns.

Belfast interested me as the capital of the Scotch-Irish, a race of people who have left a deep mark on the United States. It was odd, so far from home, to be constantly reminded of Western Pennsylvania. Here were the same names-Antrim, Coleraine, Sligo, and so on-and among the people are to be found the same cast of features and the same accent, to say nothing of the same Presbyterianism, that have existed in the country of which Pittsburgh may be said to be the capital, for I do not know how long. Dwelling with these people is a very considerable Catholic population, and the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne was formerly celebrated by annual revivals of the case of Fist vs. Skull, but I believe the fighting has lacked somewhat in liveliness and interest of late years. I suppose the row in New York, a few years since, over the same question, so far eclipsed the Irish efforts that they were suspended. Thus does American enterprise everywhere assert itself. At any rate, the only trace of the ancient animosity I saw in Ulster was the sentence, "No Pope here," scribbled on the ceiling of a railroad car.

I looked about Belfast four or five hours, and was greatly pleased with the public buildings, evidently planned by a person greatly needed by the Government of the United States, viz., an architect. Belfast has a plentiful supply of churches, some of them extremely handsome. There may have been monuments to

Nelson and Wellington, but, fortunately, if they existed, I failed to see them, and enjoyed my meals better in consequence.

In journeying from Belfast, I traveled with a car full of men who might have been taken for residents of Blair county, Pennsylvania. One sandy-bearded young fellow devoted himself to my instruction, but the amount of the remarkably robust Irish whisky (which grows very large in Ulster) which he had concealed about his person before leaving Belfast, somewhat interfered with the clearness, order and lucidity of his remarks. I gathered from him, however, that Ulster was the finest country in the world, and that County Antrim was the finest part of Ulster. This somewhat surprised me, for I had been led to believe, from the statements of my old friend, Judge Christian, of Cowley, that the Irish garden of Eden was located in County Down.

I regret that the scene before me did not justify my companion's encomiums. While Ireland-Ulster, at least is not the "most distressful country that ever yet was seen”—that spot being located in the Ozark Mountains—it is undoubtedly far from rivaling England or even Scotland. It struck me as a naturally good country, which had suffered from several centuries of carelessness. The land was cut up into numberless little patches, of every conceivable size and shape, divided by hedges; and these, unlike the almost painful trimness of English hedges, looked broken and unkempt. I have seldom seen worse in Kansas, and this is saying a good deal. The turf was a brilliant green, but it was a sort of wild turf, and the frequent pools dug in the fields for the purpose of soaking flax, the water gleaming dimly in the light of the sinking sun, conveyed a desolate feeling. Bogs were passed at frequent intervals, where the peat, black as ink, had

been excavated to a considerable depth, and was piled in great stacks here and there. There were potato-fields, of course, the potatoes being planted in a fashion new to me, in what looked like long, narrow garden beds, separated by trenches, and in these trenches there were rows of cabbages. The grain harvest was in progress, and the majority of the laborers appeared to be women and girls. The pastures were small, and filled with cattle which did not appear to have the least trace of blood, as unlike the English and Scotch cattle as possible. Nevertheless, the Irish cattle trade is important, and the boats which run to Liverpool are always full of these four-footed "exiles of Erin."

The towns Antrim, Ballymena, Coleraine, and several smaller places, appeared more thrifty than the country about them. The linen industry is very considerable, and builds up the towns. There are few prettier little sights than a bleaching-green, with the long strips of white linen extended line after line on the brilliant turf. All these towns have a history, a part of the long and troublous story of Ireland. At Antrim was fought one of the most destructive engagements in the rebellion of 1798; but it's a long story, and everybody is referred to Mr. Froude and Father Burke, who, from the two extremes of the "Irish Question," have battled over it with rare learning, ingenuity and force.

The people in the cars seemed of one sort-simply ScotchIrish-sturdy, Presbyterian sort of men, with one exception. At one station, there hopped into the car a man who actually seemed of another race. His long hair hanging on his shoulders, his sharp black eyes, his thin features, the complicated mass of rags that extended from his neck to his bare feet, fitted him to go on the stage and play the "Shaughraun" without any further "mak

ing up." If he spoke English, it was after a fashion unintelligible to me. His movements were as agile as those of a cat, and as he rode from one station to the next, I had abundant occupation in studying him. Except in Boucicault's plays, I never saw his like.

At last hedges, bleaching-greens, potato-fields, peat-stacks, bogs and the "Shaughraun" were, if not out of mind, out of sight; and I found "rest and a light, and food and fire" at Coleman's Hotel in Portrush. The fire was welcome in this northernmost spot of north Ireland; and as ruddy as the firelight and stalwart as a “bold dragoon" was my fireside companion, Mr. Anthony O'Neil, who is connected with all my memories of the place and its vicinity. Mr. O'Neil, a Dublin man by birth, and a town councillor of his native place, belonged, as may be supposed, to the old religion and the old race. His recollection went back to the days of O'Connell and "repeal;" and very interesting were his reminiscences of the great agitator, who, in my judgment, was possessed of more practical sense than all the rest of the Irish politicians before or since.

Morning dawned on Portrush with a wind and sky that betokened rain; but the councillor was up early, and we inspected Portrush quite thoroughly before breakfast. It is a little town built on a sandy shelf above a very beautiful beach. In a waste spot of ground is the one monument of the place, commemorating the life and services of Dr. Adam Clarke, the commentator, who was "brought up," the inscription says, at Portstewart, a little town a few miles away. Most of the houses of Portrush are let for the accommodation of people who come to the place to bathe; to enjoy the sea-water, to wade in it and swim in it, and soak in