ivisional Magistrates,
I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant,
under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as a
ruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as a
sympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be a
conscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts upon
the plain lines of his executive duty.

I dined to-night at the Castle, not in the great hall or banqueting-room
of St. Patrick, which was designed by that connoisseur in magnificence,
the famous Lord Chesterfield, during his Viceroyalty, but in a very
handsome room of more moderate dimensions. Much of the semi-regal state
observed at the Castle in the days of the Georges has been put down with
the Battle-Axe Guards of the Lord-Lieutenant, and with the
basset-tables of the "Lady-Lieutenant," as the Vice-queen used to be
called. At dinner the Viceroy no longer drinks to the pious and immortal
memory of William III., or to the "1st of July 1690." No more does the
band play "Lillibullero," and no longer is the pleasant custom
maintained, after a dinner to the city authorities of Dublin, of a
"loving cup" passed around the table, into which each guest, as it
passed, dropped a gold piece for the good of the household. Only so much
ceremonial is now observed as suffices to distinguish the residence of
the Queen's personal representative from that of a great officer of
State, or an opulent subject of high rank.

Dublin Castle indeed is no more of a palace than it is of a castle. Its
claim to the latter title rests mainly on the fine old "Bermingham"
tower of the time of King John; its claim to the former on the Throne
Room, the Council Chamber, and the Hall of St. Patrick already
mentioned. This last is a very stately and sumptuous apartment. Just
twenty years ago the most brilliant banquet modern Dublin has seen was
given in this hall by the late Duke of Abercorn to the Prince and
Princess of Wales, to celebrate the installation of the Prince as a
Knight of St. Patrick. It is a significant fact, testified to by all
the most candid Irishmen I have ever known, that upon the occasion of
this visit to Ireland in 1868 the Prince and Princess were received with
unbounded enthusiasm by the people of all classes. Yet only the year
before, in 1867, the explosion of some gunpowder at Clerkenwell by a
band of desperadoes, to the death and wounding of many innocent peop