grounds are very bold and various,
rising round the castle in noble hills or beautiful inequalities of
surface, with an outline of flourishing plantations. Under the castle
flows the Boyne, in a reach broken by islands, with a very fine shore of
rock on one side, and wood on the other. Through the lower plantations
are ridings, which look upon several beautiful scenes formed by the
river, and take in the distant country, exhibiting the noblest views of
waving Cultinald hills, with the castle finely situated in the midst of
the planted domain, through which the Boyne winds its beautiful course.

Under Mr. Lambert's house on the same river is a most romantic and
beautiful spot; rocks on the side, rising in peculiar forms very boldly;
the other steep wood, the river bending short between them like a
land-locked basin.

Lord Conyngham's keeping up Slaine Castle, and spending great sums,
though he rarely resides there, is an instance of magnificence not often
met with; while it is so common for absentees to drain the kingdom of
every shilling they can, so contrary a conduct ought to be held in the
estimation which it justly deserves.

June 30. Rode out to view the country and some improvements in the
neighbourhood: the principal of which are those of Lord Chief Baron
Foster, which I saw from Glaston hill, in the road from Slaine to
Dundalk.

In conversation with Lord Longford I made many inquiries concerning the
state of the lower classes, and found that in some respects they were in
good circumstances, in others indifferent; they have, generally speaking,
such plenty of potatoes as always to command a bellyful; they have flax
enough for all their linen, most of them have a cow, and some two, and
spin wool enough for their clothes; all a pig, and numbers of poultry,
and in general the complete family of cows, calves, hogs, poultry, and
children pig together in the cabin; fuel they have in the utmost plenty.
Great numbers of families are also supported by the neighbouring lakes,
which abound prodigiously with fish. A child with a packthread and a
crooked pin will catch perch enough in an hour for the family to live on
the whole day, and his lordship has seen five hundred children fishing at
the same time, there being no tenaciousness in the proprietors of the
lands about a right to the fish. Besides perch, there is pike upwards of
five feet long, bream, tench, trout of ten pounds, and as red as salmon,
and fine eels.