rished. Time had not touched it. Time had evidently
not yet had leisure to do his work. He is sure, but slow. Ruin works
fast enough unaided, where once he puts his foot. Time would have
pulled down the chimneys--Ruin had taken off the slates; Time would
have bulged the walls--Ruin brought in the rain, rotted the timbers,
and assisted the thieves. Poor old Time will have but little left him
at Ballycloran! The gardens had been large; half were now covered by
rubbish heaps, and the other half consisted of potato patches; and
round the out-houses I saw clustering a lot of those wretched cabins
which the poor Irish build against a deserted wall, when they can
find one, as jackdaws do their nests in a superannuated chimney.
In the front there had been, I presume, a tolerably spacious lawn,
with a drive through it, surrounded on all sides, except towards the
house, by thick trees. The trees remained, but the lawn, the drive,
and the flower patches, which of course once existed there, were now
all alike, equally prolific in large brown dock weeds and sorrels.
There were two or three narrow footpaths through and across the
space, up to the cabins behind the house, but other marks of humanity
were there none.

A large ash, apparently cut down years ago, with the branches still
on it, was stretched somewhat out of the wood: on this I sat, lighted
a cigar, and meditated on this characteristic specimen of Irish life.
The sun was setting beautifully behind the trees, and its imperfect
light through the foliage gave the unnatural ruin a still stronger
appearance of death and decay, and brought into my mind thoughts of
the wrong, oppression, misery, and despair, to which some one had
been subjected by what I saw before me.

I had not been long seated, when four or five ragged boys and girls
came through the wood, driving a lot of geese along one of the
paths. When they saw me, they all came up and stood round me, as if
wondering what I could be. I could learn nothing from them--the very
poor Irish children will never speak to you; but a middle aged man
soon followed them. He told me the place was called Ballycloran: "he
did not know who it belonged to; a gintleman in Dublin recaved the
rints, and a very stiff gintleman he was too; and hard it was upon
them to pay two pound tin an acre for the garden there, and that
half covered with the ould house and the bricks and rubbish, only
on behalf of the bog that was convaynient, and plint