ornings, he rode
or walked with Lady Dashfort and Lady Isabel: Lady Dashfort, by way of
fulfilling her promise of showing him the people, used frequently to
take him into the cabins, and talk to their inhabitants. Lord and Lady
Killpatrick, who had lived always for the fashionable world, had taken
little pains to improve the condition of their tenants; the few attempts
they had made were injudicious. They had built ornamented, picturesque
cottages, within view of their demesne; and favourite followers of the
family, people with half a century's habit of indolence and dirt, were
PROMOTED to these fine dwellings. The consequences were such as Lady
Dashfort delighted to point out; everything let to go to ruin for the
want of a moment's care, or pulled to pieces for the sake of the most
trifling surreptitious profit; the people most assisted always appearing
proportionally wretched and discontented. No one could, with more ease
and more knowledge of her ground, than Lady Dashfort, do the DISHONOUR
of a country. In every cabin that she entered, by the first glance of
her eye at the head, kerchiefed in no comely guise, or by the drawn-down
corners of the mouth, or by the bit of a broken pipe, which in Ireland
never characterises STOUT LABOUR, or by the first sound of the
voice, the drawling accent on 'your honour,' or, 'my lady,' she could
distinguish the proper objects of her charitable designs, that is to
say, those of the old uneducated race, whom no one can help, because
they will never help themselves. To these she constantly addressed
herself, making them give, in all their despairing tones, a history
of their complaints and grievances; then asking them questions, aptly
contrived to expose their habits of self-contradiction, their servility
and flattery one moment, and their litigious and encroaching spirit
the next: thus giving Lord Colambre the most unfavourable idea of the
disposition and character of the lower class of the Irish people.

Lady Isabel the while standing by, with the most amiable air of pity,
with expressions of the finest moral sensibility, softening all her
mother said, finding ever some excuse for the poor creatures, and
following with angelic sweetness to heal the wounds her mother
inflicted.

When Lady Dashfort thought she had sufficiently worked upon Lord
Colambre's mind to weaken his enthusiasm for his native country, and
when Lady Isabel had, by the appearance of every virtue, added to
a deli