ywhere received with the greatest courtesy by
all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting
illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with
matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish
priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do
so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would
receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never
declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Viceroy
accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who
afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His
Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these
incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon's
determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the
Liberals!

CORK, _Sunday, Feb. 26._--I went out to-day with Mr. Cameron to see
Blarney Castle and St. Anne's Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the
country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A "light railway," of the
sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to
Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these
railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those
defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which
are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Report
of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper
to-day points this out sharply.

In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a
magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height,
and dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the
victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it
best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to "slight" it,
little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are
some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along
and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got
out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone
does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of
the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once
fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally
set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that
to kis