bog mould. I of course could not
resist such temptation, and entered the demesne. The road was nearly
covered with that short dry grass which stones seem to throw up, when
no longer polished by the wealthier portion of man or brute kind.

About thirty feet from the gap a tall fir had half fallen, and lay
across the road, so that a man should stoop to walk under it; it was
a perfect barrier to any equipage, however humble, and the roots had
nearly refixed themselves in their reversed position, showing that
the tree had evidently been in that fallen state for years.

The usual story, thought I, of Connaught gentlemen; an extravagant
landlord, reckless tenants, debt, embarrassment, despair, and ruin.
Well, I walked up the deserted avenue, and very shortly found myself
in front of the house. Oh, what a picture of misery, of useless
expenditure, unfinished pretence, and premature decay!

The house was two stories high, with large stone steps up to the
front door, with four windows in the lower, and six in the upper
story, and an area with kitchens, &c., below. The entire roof was
off; one could see the rotting joists and beams, some fallen, some
falling, the rest ready to fall, like the skeleton of a felon left
to rot on an open gibbet. The stone steps had nearly dropped through
into the area, the rails of which had been wrenched up. The knocker
was still on the door,--a large modern lion-headed knocker; but half
the door was gone; on creeping to the door-sill, I found about six
feet of the floor of the hall gone also--stolen for fire wood. But
the joists of the flooring were there, and the whitewash of the walls
showed that but a few, a very few years back, the house had been
inhabited. I leaped across the gulf, at great risk of falling into
the cellar, and reached the bottom of the stairs; here my courage
failed me; all that was left was so damp and so rotten, so much had
been gradually taken away, that I did not dare to go up: the doors on
the ground floor would not open; the ceiling above me was all gone,
and I could see the threatening timbers of the roof, which seemed
only hanging till they had an opportunity of injuring some one by
their fall. I crept out of the demi-door again, and down the ruined
steps, and walked round the mansion; not only was there not a pane of
glass in the whole, but the window frames were all gone; everything
that wanted keeping was gone; everything that required care to
preserve it had pe