gladly subsidised by State pay, which would have kept them independent of the seditious politics. and agrarian agitations of their parishioners. We neglected the opportunity of securing them; and their successors, from the archbishops downwards, being independent of the British Government, are become the enemies of the British connection, or at the best, and very exceptionally, its lukewarm friends. No longer the supreme masters of their flocks, they must dance to the popular tunes that are piped by the people who pay them. If "his Riverence" is to get his dues, he must not go against the movement for prairie rents" which is set afoot and subsidised by the American Irish. And while his pecuniary interests sway him irresistibly to the popular side, now his sympathies go naturally in the same direction. The new generation of priests is sprung almost entirely from the small farmers and the provincial tradesmen. It has endured their griefs, it has adopted their class-hatreds, and has sucked in their prejudices with its mother's milk. It takes the chair at the National meetings; it addresses oratorical rhapsodies with practised volubility to inflammable audiences; it would level all secular accumulations of property down to the low-water mark ; it sets its face against the Union and against Imperial ascendancy; and it throws the sacred

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vestments of the Church over questionable causes and criminal projects. In short, we have to reckon with a new and formidable power that might once have been easily engaged to befriend us, and thereby our relations to Ireland have become very seriously and permanently complicated.

CHAPTER XXV.

CHANGES IN IRELAND.

HERE have been many changes in Ireland

THERE

in the last fifty years, but surely none so great as in the national temperament. The Irishman of fifty years ago was invariably described by travellers, tourists, memoir writers, and novelists, as the soul of fun and frolic. Though his rags might be skewered on his body by pins; though his heart might be "clean broke with his sorrows," he was always ready with his jest, and he shone in natural repartee. The stranger and the Saxon was considered fair game, especially if he gave himself airs of superiority; and from Kingston to Killarney, in the castle, the inn, or the cottage, he was perpetually made the victim of extravagant hoaxes. When the natives had no "foreigners' to practise upon, they kept their hands in by playing jests on each other; and the reckless indulgence of their very practical wit ended in

personal encounters with the pistol or the shillelah, which were considered as capping the joke. The humours of Donnybrook Fair were typical of the characteristics of a country which was always on the broad grin. There may have been exaggeration, but there was undoubtedly truth, in these humorous pictures which have been lovingly elaborated by so many patriotic artists. It is as certain that they would give the falsest possible notion of the Irish character of to-day. Now, the Irishman of the lower orders seems scarcely to have a laugh left in him. You may talk to the carmen and the peasantry from Malin Head to Cape Clear, and never find it needful to take out your note-book, should you be touring in search of traits of Hibernian humour. I do not mean to say that you may not sometimes be struck by a quaint or a shrewd saying. But the humour that entertains you is altogether involuntary, and is the chance flash of the brilliant Celtic fancy that is original in its views of life as in its expressions. The spirit of hoaxing still prevails, but it is so sobered down into circumstantial dulness, that it might pass for deliberate mendacity were it not often inspired by civility and the desire to make things pleasant. Ask an Irishman of the lower ranks the simplest question, and he will answer falsely or at random, rather than not answer at all. He has no de

liberate desire to deceive, but he is anxious to make himself agreeable. If he is driving you through an unknown district, he feels he is bound to do the honours, and gives his imagination free play. He will narrate the story of some outrage, or some fight over an eviction, with such dramatic effect, that you are bound to believe everything except his assertion that he was not an eyewitness; and that is the origin of many of the wonderful tales which Englishmen bring back with them for English consumption. Though, should you chance to engage the same raconteur again, and carry him back to the tale that had affected you so deeply, you catch him out in so many changes and fantastic contradictions, that you can only admire his talent for romance. We used to read of rollicking fun and devilry; of twinkling eyes in haggard countenances; of peals of merry laughter from the hangers-on round the hospitable doors of the squire and in the yard of the village hostelry. Now, the whole population has a serious air which is often saturnine, more often sullen. They all look as if they were calculating ways and means,—reckoning the shillings they are owing to the landlord or the shopkeeper, or discounting the prospects of national "indipindence."

And possibly that may be partly the explanation. For cares come necessarily with increasing