hs back it was the theme of all their praises. Landscape-painters
and photographers were invited specially to catch its first morning
tints, its last mellow glow at sunset. The old Lord said it was finer
than Sorrento, equal to anything in Greece. If the Mediterranean
were bluer, where was there such emerald verdure,--where such blended
coloring of heaths, purple and blue and violet,--in what land did the
fragrance of the white thorn so load the warm atmosphere? Such, and such
like, were the encomiums they were wont to utter; and wherefore was
it that they uttered them no more? The explanation is a brief one. A
commission, or a deputation, or a something as important, had come down
to examine Bantry Bay, and investigate its fitness to become a packet
station for America. In the course of this examination, a scientific
member of the body had strayed down to Glengariff, where, being of
a speculative as well as of a scientific turn, he was struck by its
immense capabilities. What a gem it was, and what might it not be made!
It was Ireland in the tropics,--"the Green Isle" in the Indian Ocean!
Only imagine such a spot converted into a watering-place! With a lodge
for the Queen on that slope sheltered by the ilex-copse, crescents, and
casinos, and yacht stations, and ornamental villas rose on every side
by his descriptive powers, and the old Earl--for he was dining with
him--saw at one glance how he had suddenly become a benefactor of
mankind and a millionnaire. "That little angle of the shore yonder, my
Lord,--the space between the pointed rock and the stone-pine trees,--is
worth fifty thousand pounds; the crescent that would stand there would
leave many an untenanted house at Kemp Town. I 'll engage myself to get
you a thousand guineas for that small bit of tableland to the right; the
Duke of Uxmore is only waiting to hit upon such a spot. Here, too, where
we sit, must be the hydropathic establishment. You can't help it, my
Lord, you must comply. This park will bring you in a princely revenue.
It is gold,--actual gold,--every foot of it! There 's not a Swiss
cottage in these woods won't pay cent per cent!"

Mr. Galbraith--such was his name--was of that pictorially gifted
order of which the celebrated George Robins was once chief. He knew how
to dress his descriptions with the double attraction of the picturesque
and the profitable, so that trees seemed to bend under golden fruit, and
the sea-washed rocks looked like "nugget