ted in thirty-four deaths.

Terrible as were the results of the Abergele accident, they might have
been more disastrous still, for both lines were torn up, and the up
Irish mail from Holyhead, which would be travelling at a great pace
down the steep bank from Llandulas, was due at any moment. The front
guard of our train had been killed by the collision, and the rear guard
was seriously hurt, so there was no one to give orders. It occurred at
once to my eldest brother, the late Duke, that as the train was
standing on a sharp incline, the uninjured carriages would, if
uncoupled, roll down the hill of their own accord. He and some other
passengers accordingly managed to undo the couplings, and the uninjured
coaches, detached from the burning ones, glided down the incline into
safety. From the half-stunned guard my brother learned that the nearest
signal-box was at Llandulas, a mile away. He ran there at the top of
his speed, and arrived in time to get the up Irish mail and all other
traffic stopped. On his return my brother had a prolonged fainting fit,
as the strain on his heart had been very great. It took the doctors
over an hour to bring him round, and we all thought that he had died.

I was eleven years old at the time, and the shock of the collision, the
sight of the burning coaches, the screams of the women, the wreckage,
and my brother's narrow escape from death, affected me for some little
while afterwards.

It was the custom then for the Lord-Lieutenant to live for three months
of the winter at the Castle, where a ceaseless round of entertainments
went on. The Castle was in the heart of Dublin, and only boasted a dull
little smoke-blackened garden in the place of the charming grounds of
the Lodge, still there was plenty going on there. A band played daily
in the Castle Yard for an hour, there was the daily guard-mounting, and
the air was thick with bugle calls and rattling kettle-drums.

At "Drawing Rooms" it was still the habit for all ladies to be kissed
by the Lord-Lieutenant on being presented to him, and every lady had to
be re-presented to every fresh Viceroy. This imposed an absolute orgy
of compulsory osculation on the unfortunate Lord-Lieutenant, for if
many of the ladies were fresh, young and pretty, the larger proportion
of them were very distinctly the reverse.

There is a very fine white-and-gold throne-room in Dublin, decorated in
the heavy but effective style of George IV., and it certainly co