am
lifts, a kitchen at the top of the lofty edifice heated by steam from
the great engine-room in the cellars, and furnishing meals to the
employees, attest the energy and enterprise of the firm. The most
delicate of the linen fabrics sold here are made, I was informed, all
over the north country. The looms, three or four of which are kept going
here in a great room to show the intricacy and perfection of the
processes, are supplied by the firm to the hand-workers on a system
which enables them, while earning good wages from week to week, to
acquire the eventual ownership of the machines. The building is crowned
by a sort of observatory, from which we enjoyed a noble prospect
overlooking the whole city and miles of the beautiful country around. A
haze on the horizon hid the coast of Scotland, which is quite visible
under a clear sky. The Queen's Bridge over the Lagan, built in 1842
between Antrim and Down, was a conspicuous feature in the panorama. Its
five great arches of hewn granite span the distance formerly traversed
by an older bridge of twenty-one arches 840 feet in length, which was
begun in 1682, and finished just in time to welcome Schomberg and King
William.

The not less imposing warehouse of Richardson and Co., built of a
singularly beautiful brown stone, and decorated with equal taste and
liberality, adjoins that of Robinson and Cleaver. The banks, the public
offices, the clubs, the city library, the museum, the Presbyterian
college, the principal churches, all of them modern, all alike bear
witness to the public spirit and pride in their town of the good people
of Belfast. With more time at my disposal I would have been very glad to
visit some of the flax-mills called into being by the great impulse
which the cotton famine resulting from our Civil War gave to the linen
manufactures of Northern Ireland, and the famous shipyards of the Woolfs
on Queen's Island, As things are, it was more to my purpose to see some
of the representative men of this great Protestant stronghold.

I passed a very interesting hour with the Rev. Dr. Hanna, who is reputed
to be a sort of clerical "Lion of the North," and whom I found to be in
almost all respects a complete antitype of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore.

Dr. Hanna is not unjustly proud of being at the head of the most
extensive Sunday-school organisation in Ireland, if not in the world;
and I find that the anniversary parade of his pupils, appointed for
Saturday, Jun