his thumb through the
rotting timbers, and knocking down partitions with a tick of
his foot, and exclaiming against the ignorance of the last
age of architects, who, I take it, were pretty much like
their successors, save in the thefts committed from Greek
and Roman models. This is not tempting, nor the remedy for
it easy. Stone and mortar are as great luxuries here as ice-
cream at Calcutta; there are no workmen, or the few are
merely artificers in mud. Timber is an exotic, glass and
iron are traditions; so that if you desire to be an Irish
country gentleman, your pursuit of territorial ascendancy
has all the merit of difficulty. Now, _que faire?_ Shall we
restore, or, rather, rebuild, or shall we put forty pounds
of Dartford gunpowder in one of the cellars, and blow the
whole concern to him who must have devised it? Such is the
course I should certainly adopt myself, and only feel regret
at the ignoble service of the honest explosive.

"Perystell, like all his tribe, is a pedant, and begins by
asking for two years, and I won't say how many thousand
pounds. My reply is, 'Months and hundreds, _vice_ years and
thousands'--and so we are at issue. I know your anxiety to
receive the people you have invited, and I feel how
fruitless it would be to tell you with what apologies I, if
in your place, should put them off; so pray instruct me how
to act. Shall I commission Perystell to go to work in all
form, and meanwhile make a portion of the edifice habitable?
or shall I--and I rather admire the plan--get a corps of
stage artificers from Drury Lane, and dress up the house as
they run up a provincial theatre? I know you don't care
about cost, which, after all, is the only real objection to
the scheme; and if you incline to my suggestion about the
fireworks for a finish, it will be perfectly appropriate.

"'My own cottage'--so far, at least, as I could see of it
without intruding on the present occupant--is very pretty:
roses, and honeysuckle, and jasmines, and such-like
ruralities, actually enveloping it. It is well placed, too,
in a snug little nook, sheltered from the north, and with a
peep at the river in front,--just the sort of place where
baffled ambition and disappointment would retire to; and
where, doubtless, some of these d