degrees more princely or kingly than the craft itself.

We had intended, too, to make our own comparison of the Bay of
Dublin and the Bay of Naples, because every traveller, from Charles
Lever's Jack Hinton down to Thackeray and Mr. Alfred Austin has
always made it a point of honour to do so. We were balked in our
conscientious endeavour, because we arrived at the North Wall forty
minutes earlier than the hour set by the steamship company. It is
quite impossible for anything in Ireland to be done strictly on the
minute, and in struggling not to be hopelessly behind time, a
'disthressful counthry' will occasionally be ahead of it. We had
been told that we should arrive in a drizzling rain, and that no one
but Lady Dufferin had ever on approaching Ireland seen the 'sweet
faces of the Wicklow mountains reflected in a smooth and silver
sea.' The grumblers were right on this special occasion, although
we have proved them false more than once since.

I was in a fever of fear that Ireland would not be as Irish as we
wished it to be. It seemed probable that processions of prosperous
aldermen, school directors, contractors, mayors, and ward
politicians, returning to their native land to see how Herself was
getting on, the crathur, might have deposited on the soil successive
layers of Irish-American virtues, such as punctuality, thrift, and
cleanliness, until they had quite obscured fair Erin's peculiar and
pathetic charm. We longed for the new Ireland as fervently as any
of her own patriots, but we wished to see the old Ireland before it
passed. There is plenty of it left (alas! the patriots would say),
and Dublin was as dear and as dirty as when Lady Morgan first called
it so, long years ago. The boat was met by a crowd of ragged
gossoons, most of them barefooted, some of them stockingless, and in