When the celebrated Mrs. Delany, then Mrs. Pendarves, first saw it,
the centre was a swamp, where in winter a quantity of snipe
congregated, and Harris in his History of Dublin alludes to the
presence of snipe and swamp as an agreeable and uncommon
circumstance not to be met with perhaps in any other great city in
the world.

A double row of spreading lime-trees bordered its four sides, one of
which, known as Beaux' Walk, was a favourite lounge for fashionable
idlers. Here stood Bishop Clayton's residence, a large building
with a front like Devonshire House in Piccadilly: so writes Mrs.
Delany. It was splendidly furnished, and the bishop lived in a
style which proves that Irish prelates of the day were not all given
to self-abnegation and mortification of the flesh.

A long line of vehicles, outside-cars and cabs, some of them
battered and shaky, others sufficiently well-looking, was gathering
on two sides of the Green, for Dublin, you know, is 'the car-
drivingest city in the world.' Francesca and I had our first
experience yesterday in the intervals of nursing, driving to Dublin
Castle, Trinity College, the Four Courts, and Grafton Street (the
Regent Street of Dublin). It is easy to tell the stranger, stiff,
decorous, terrified, clutching the rail with one or both hands, but
we took for our model a pretty Irish girl, who looked like nothing
so much as a bird on a swaying bough. It is no longer called the
'jaunting,' but the outside car and there is another charming word
lost to the world. There was formerly an inside-car too, but it is
almost unknown in Dublin, though still found in some of the smaller
towns. An outside-car has its wheels practically inside the body of