to spot, shook gate-posts, and gazed up at the
wondrous altitude of trees. He walked out
to the moorlands, looked here and there, at
the hills, upon the lake on the heath, to the
woods enveloping the house, asked a thousand
questions of the grey-brown coated Irish
driver, and again said, "God bless me!"
That done, he went off again, dug with a small
spade as deep as he could into the ground,
first in one place and then in another, and
looked at the soil upon it as though he
expected to see particles of gold. Then he
bustled away to the rich meadows below the
woods; tracked the margin of the river which
bounded them; again thrust in his divining
rod; then gazed upon the decaying old hall;
dark, grand, and melancholy, without one
living smoke in its score of chimneys. Once
more the stranger exclaimed, "God bless
me!"

He evidently had some design on the old,
widowed, and desolate Sporeen. Had he
fallen in love with her? It seemed very likely;
for he came again—and, in a short time,
again. He mounted a horse. He rode round
the woods, along the moorlands, away to the
distant hills. He sat for many hours on a
great stone on a heathy slope, some quarter of
a mile from the hall, and wrote in his
memorandum-book. Was he a poet? and had
the spot inspired him? He did not look like one.

Some weeks afterwards there came a
handsome brougham, driven by a servant in
livery, with another person by his side, on the
box. It made its way directly to the hall of
Sporeen: and out of it got the same blue-
coated, white-hatted, easy-fitting-yellow-waistcoated
Englishman. What! does that farmer-like,
hard-headed man own an equipage
like that? and is he a poet, after all?

But stop! another follows him—a tall,
middle-aged, slender man, with the
unmistakeable impress of a gentleman.
He looks round with an eye-glass. He, too,
stands on those formerly fatal steps, and
says, " But, Mr. Goodacre- how very desolate!"

"Ay," returns Mr. Goodacre "but what
fertility! what wood! what meadows! what
moorlands! Why, Sir Thomas, I engage that
in less than a twelvemonth, you shall say it
is one of the finest places in the three king-
doms. A thousand acres of enclosure (two
hundred of it of fattest meadows) and three
thousand acres of moorland! Why, it is a
princely bargain. I engage, Sir Thomas, that
the enclosed land shall yield an immediate
rent of thirty shillings per acre, and that two
thousand acres of the moorland shall be
fenced in a couple of years, and yield from
thirteen to fifteen shillings per acre; neither
will the remaining thousand for planting
prove unprofitable. Say the word, and I will
take the bargain off your hands, though I
borrow two-thirds of the money."

Sir Thomas continues to look round through
his glass, and makes remarks; though he is
silent on Mr. Goodacre's proposal. "Why,
Mr. Goodacre," he continues, "the house
seems to me thoroughly rotten— it must come
down, stick and stone.'

"Excuse me, Sir Thomas," replies Mr.
Goodacre, "but not a brick of it must be
moved. The shell is as sound as an acorn.
Strip the roof, examine its timbers, and make
all safe there with wood and slate- scour and
paint the outside—re-glaze and refit within—
and you will see it come out as noble a
house as a prince royal need have. That,
Sir Thomas, is your chief expense. See what
wood you have for making your enclosures!
A few scores of Irish men at a shilling a day
will do wonders."

"But they are a desperate race," said Sir
Thomas; " they murdered the former
proprietor, and what if they should murder us?
They tell me that they have no sense of
benefits, and that they shoot their best friends
from behind hedges from sheer blood-thirstiness."

The yellow- waistcoated steward, looked not
at Sir Thomas as he talked, but stretched his
eyes over the landscape. " Sir Thomas," he
replied, " don't imagine Irishmen such geese.
I have seen a good deal of Ireland since I
was on the look-out for land, and I find them
'cute fellows. They understand a benefit as
well as you or I; but for that reason no man
on earth can persuade them to mistake a
mischief for a good turn. They won't work,
people say. No, certainly not, when they
get nothing for it. But I will show you, Sir
Thomas, what wonders a shilling a day
will do. I have seen Irishmen working on
scores of those estates which have been
bought out of the Encumbered Estates Court,
and I never saw men work better. When a man
had his potato plot for ten pounds per acre,
and was expected to work all the year round
for it—when he never from year's end to
year's end saw the shine of money for his
labour— why, naturally, he became
downhearted and dogged. To work!—as the
Scotch poet said when he was asked why he
did not get up in a morning— "he had nae
motive." In Ireland, Irishmen have no motive.
But, Sir, they have long worked in England
as reapers, as navvies, as bricklayer's clerks,
as anything where they get money-wages
The Irishman works in America. He is, they
say, a new creature there; for he exists under
totally new circumstances; and more, he
saves! The Irishman saves! He sends over
hither every year large sums to his relatives,
to help them in their misery, or to help them
out of it. During the famine, Irishmen in
America sent over not less than four hundred
thousand pounds to assist their friends in
their sufferings, or to help them across the
Atlantic."

"Is that true?" said Sir Thomas, taking
down his eye-glass, and looking long at Mr.
Goodacre.

"True as I stand here," said the steward;
"and such a people must have prime good stuff