with roses when ye sit in the sates of glory!" and "The
Lord be good to ye, and sind ye a duke for a husband!" We felt more than
repaid for our impulsive interest, and as we disappeared from sight a
last 'Bannact dea leat!' ('God's blessing be on your way!') was wafted
to our ears.

I seem to have known all these people before, and indeed I have met them
between the covers of a book; for Connemara has one prophet, and her
name is Jane Barlow. In how many of these wild bog-lands of Connaught
have we seen a huddle of desolate cabins on a rocky hillside, turf
stacks looking darkly at the doors, and empty black pots sitting on the
thresholds, and fancied we have found Lisconnel! I should recognise
Ody Rafferty, the widow M'Gurk, Mad Bell, old Mrs. Kilfoyle, or Stacey
Doyne, if I met them face to face, just as I should know other real
human creatures of a higher type,--Beatrix Esmond, Becky Sharp, Meg
Merrilies, or Di Vernon.

Chapter XXIII. Beams and motes.

'Mud cabins swarm in
This place so charming,
With sailor garments
Hung out to dry;
And each abode is
Snug and commodious,
With pigs melodious
In their straw-built sty.'
Father Prout.

'"Did the Irish elves ever explain themselves to you, Red Rose?"

'"I can't say that they did," said the English Elf. "You can't call it
an explanation to say that a thing has always been that way, just: or
that a thing would be a heap more bother any other way."'

The west of Ireland is depressing, but it is very beautiful; at least
if your taste includes an appreciation of what is wild, magnificent,
and sombre. Oppressed you must be, even if you are an artist, by its
bleakness and its dreariness, its lonely lakes reflecting a dull, grey
sky, its desolate boglands, its solitary chapels, its wretched cabins
perched on hillsides that are very wildernesses of rocks. But for cloud
effects, for wonderful shadows, for fantastic and unbelievable sunsets,
when the mountains are violet, the lakes silver with red flashes, the
islets gold and crimson and purple, and the whole cloudy west in a
flame, it is unsurpassed; only your standard of beauty must not be a
velvet lawn studded with copper beeches, or a primary-hued landscape
bathed in American sunshine. Connemara is austere and gloomy under a
dull sky, but it has the poetic charm that belongs to all mystery,
and its bare cliffs and ridges are delicately penc