ed, never more to be seen. Whether she
disappeared in the peat-smoke or sank gracefully into the parent bog
it is impossible to decide; but it is quite certain that she has faded
out of sight. Poor Mountain Sylph! When she grows older, and goes out
to earn money as a work-girl in Ballina, she will no longer appear
picturesque, but ridiculous. She will wear a cheap gown, but of the
latest fashion, and a knowing-looking hat flung on at a killing angle;
and she will don smart boots while she is in Ballina, and will take
them off before she is far on her way to Cloontakilla, and trudge
along the road as barefooted as of old. But she will never more be a
Mountain Sylph--only a young woman proudly wearing a bonnet and mantle
at which Whitechapel would turn up its nose in disdain. But the Sylph
has gone, and in her place stands the Irreconcilable himself--a
grey-haired man with bent shoulders and well-cut features, which
account for the good looks of the Sylph. He is a sorrowful man; but,
like all Irishmen, especially when in trouble, is not wanting in
loquacity. He shows me his "far-r-rum," as he calls it, and it is a
poor place. He has had a good harvest enough; but what does it all
amount to? An acre (English) of oats, mayhap a couple of acres of
potatoes and cabbages, and the rest pasture, except a little patch on
which, he tells me, he grew vetches in summer for sale as green feed
for cattle. Of beasts he has none, except dogs of some breed unknown
either to dog-fanciers or naturalists, and an ass--the unfortunate
creature who is made to drink the dregs of any sorrow falling upon
Western Ireland. Put to work when not more than a year old, the poor
animal becomes a stunted, withered phantasm of the curled darlings of
the London costermongers which excited the kindly feelings of Lord
Shaftesbury and the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

A Mayo donkey is a wretched creature, and Mr. Browne has a very poor
specimen of an under-fed, overworked race. But there is a cow browsing
in the field, and the tenant hastens to explain that she is not his
own, but the absolute property of his sister-in-law. I must confess
that I cool somewhat after this--inwardly that is--towards the
Irreconcilable in battered corduroys who amuses me with a string of
stories more or less veracious. I am required to believe that "bating
the ass," no living beast on the five-acre farm belongs to the tenant.
The turkeys belong to a neighbour, as do the geese, and th