poverty together. I can only reply that since that day I have never
been without money in my pocket, and that I soon acquired the means
of paying what I owed. Nevertheless, more than twelve years had to
pass over our heads before I received any payment for any literary
work which afforded an appreciable increase to our income.

Immediately after our marriage, I left the west of Ireland and the
hunting surveyor, and joined another in the south. It was a better
district, and I was enabled to live at Clonmel, a town of some
importance, instead of at Banagher, which is little more than a
village. I had not felt myself to be comfortable in my old residence
as a married man. On my arrival there as a bachelor I had been
received most kindly, but when I brought my English wife I fancied
that there was a feeling that I had behaved badly to Ireland
generally. When a young man has been received hospitably in an
Irish circle, I will not say that it is expected of him that he
should marry some young lady in that society;--but it certainly is
expected of him that he shall not marry any young lady out of it.
I had given offence, and I was made to feel it.

There has taken place a great change in Ireland since the days in
which I lived at Banagher, and a change so much for the better,
that I have sometimes wondered at the obduracy with which people
have spoken of the permanent ill condition of the country. Wages
are now nearly double what they were then. The Post Office, at any
rate, is paying almost double for its rural labour,--9s. a week
when it used to pay 5s., and 12s. a week when it used to pay 7s.
Banks have sprung up in almost every village. Rents are paid with
more than English punctuality. And the religious enmity between
the classes, though it is not yet dead, is dying out. Soon after I