n, and again on the other side to Castlerea and Ballyhaunis.
But this had been in their palmy days, long, long ago. When the
government, in consideration of past services, in the year 1800,
converted "the O'Kelly" into Viscount Ballindine, the family property
consisted of the greater portion of the land lying between the villages
of Dunmore and Ballindine. Their old residence, which the peer still
kept up, was called Kelly's Court, and is situated in that corner of
County Roscommnon which runs up between Mayo and Galway.

The first lord lived long enough to regret his change of title, and to
lament the increased expenditure with which he had thought it necessary
to accompany his more elevated rank. His son succeeded, and showed in
his character much more of the new-fangled viscount than of the ancient
O'Kelly. His whole long life was passed in hovering about the English
Court. From the time of his father's death, he never once put his foot
in Ireland. He had been appointed, at different times from his youth
upwards, Page, Gentleman in Waiting, Usher of the Black Rod, Deputy
Groom of the Stole, Chief Equerry to the Princess Royal, (which
appointment only lasted till the princess was five years old), Lord
Gold Stick, Keeper of the Royal Robes; till, at last, he had culminated
for ten halcyon years in a Lord of the Bedchamber. In the latter
portion of his life he had grown too old for this, and it was reported
at Ballindine, Dunmore, and Kelly's Court,--with how much truth I don't
know,--that, since her Majesty's accession, he had been joined with
the spinster sister of a Scotch Marquis, and an antiquated English
Countess, in the custody of the laces belonging to the Queen Dowager.

This nobleman, publicly useful as his life had no doubt been, had done
little for his own tenants, or his own property. On his father's death,
he had succeeded to about three thousand a-year, and he left about one;
and he would have spent or mortgaged this, had he not, on his marriage,
put it beyond his own power to do so. It was not only by thriftless
extravagance that he thus destroyed a property which, with care, and
without extortion, would have doubled its value in the thirty-five
years during which it was in his hands; but he had been afraid to come
to Ireland, and had been duped by his agent. When he came to the title,
Simeon Lynch had been recommended to him as a fit person to manage his
property, and look after his interests; and Simeo