phal arches of flowering May;
the hills were very far away, but the lovely lights and scents were all
about and made our journey charming. Maynooth was a fragrant vision as
we flew past, of vast gardens wall-enclosed, of stately buildings.
The whole line of railway was sweet with the May flowers, and with the
pungent and refreshing scent of the turf-bogs. The air was so clear and
so limpid that we could see for miles, and short-sighted eyes needed no
glasses to admire with. Here and there a turf cabin, now and then a lake
placidly reflecting the sky. The country seemed given over to silence,
the light sped unheeded across the delicate browns and greens of the
bog-fields; or lay on the sweet wonderful green of the meadows. One
dazzling field we saw full of dancing circles of little fairy pigs
with curly tails. Everything was homelike but NOT England, there was
something of France, something of Italy in the sky; in the fanciful
tints upon the land and sea, in the vastness of the picture, in the
happy sadness and calm content which is so difficult to describe or to
account for. Finally we reached our journey's end. It gave one a real
emotion to see EDGEWORTHSTOWN written up on the board before us, and
to realise that we were following in the steps of those giants who had
passed before us. The master of Edgeworthstown kindly met us and drove
us to his home through the outlying village, shaded with its sycamores,
underneath which pretty cows were browsing the grass. We passed
the Roman Catholic Church, the great iron crucifix standing in the
churchyard. Then the horses turned in at the gate of the park, and there
rose the old home, so exactly like what one expected it, that I felt as
if I had been there before in some other phase of existence.

It is certainly a tradition in the family to welcome travellers! I
thought of the various memoirs I had read, of the travellers arriving
from the North and the South and the West; of Scott and Lockhart, of
Pictet, of the Ticknors, of the many visitants who had come up in turn;
whether it is the year 14, or the year 94, the hospitable doors open
kindly to admit them. There were the French windows reaching to the
ground, through which Maria used to pass on her way to gather her roses;
there was the porch where Walter Scott had stood; there grew the quaint
old-fashioned bushes with the great pink peonies in flower, by those
railings which still divide the park from the meadows beyond; the