have a kind of gallantry, and now the foray-most inspiring of them all, as having in it something of adventure and the risk of war-was shown as commonplace and mean. Macgregor and his men, outnumbered, seemed to take the situation almost meekly. For two days and a night they had not tasted food, they said, except one hurried meal for which they bled the cattle. In an onset with the sword, or seen, plaid-wrapped and singly on the hill, or peeping from the edge of some lone wood, they might have kept for him the spirit of his boyish fancy, but not as they were now. Barisdale went down the water-side to see about the trimming of his booty, and Ninian took the chance to talk apart a little with Macgregor, who, he found, was on his way for Badenoch when this misfortune came to him. His men, he said, were scalagslandless folk of Cluny's country, and Barisdale he soundly cursed for robbing them of what had been a hard-won spoil. "Ye're a bonny pair, as the crow said to his feet," cried Ninian. "But, man! I'm vexed for ye." "Ye're not with him, then?" said Macgregor, looking first at him and then at Æneas curiously. "I never saw the man between the eyes until he burst upon us here this morning on "You have me!" Ninian answered, and Æneas was astonished at his risking the confession. "I'm telling it to you because you are Macgregor like myself, and both of us a bit below the cloud. All the waters in the world will not wash out our kinship." "Does Barisdale know ye?" asked the Gregaroch. "No," said Ninian, still more to Eneas's surprise. "But he is keener to keep me company than I am keen for his, and I doubt we'll have to fit for't early in the morning; we are going by Ben Alder. The trouble is to get a start without the long one knowing, and you're the very man to help me.' Thereupon he laid before the Gregaroch a plan to stay about the neighbourhood till five. o'clock the following morning. He and Æneas would then come out and join him and his fellows and go in their convoy as far as Badenoch, and he slipped a little money in Macgregor's hand. (To be continued.) OLD COUNTRY HOUSES IN IRELAND. BY J. P. MAHAFFY. WHEN the Georgian Society undertook to give the history of the splendid old mansions in Dublin, and illustrate the text with suitable pictures, it soon transpired that there was a vast material under their hands. Nor was this material to be found in Dublin only. Most of the owners of city mansions also had houses in the country, and it was a very natural extension of the work to include typical examples of Georgian house building throughout the outlying counties. The 5th and last vol. of the publication of the Society will therefore be devoted to this subject. But in the course of our inquiry it also came to light that there were many still extant houses dating from the seventeenth century, and these are so important that they will be treated in a separate volume by some of our younger members who have helped to edit the present series. To me, the fascinating side of the task is to weigh the evidence which architectural work and its æsthetical decoration gives us of the social condition of the country, and in this inquiry I was surprised to find that the historians of Ireland had either ignored or misstated many important evidences. Perhaps I need not have been surprised, for the history of Ireland has been almost ex clusively written either by politicians or ecclesiastics, and such people are seldom historians in the proper sense. Putting aside dreams of a golden age in prehistoric Ireland, it is well worth considering: When was the country so quieted and civilised that people could build houses where they pleased, and live in them safely? The medieval castles which once studded the country, of which many traces and even some specimens remain, were intended, in the first instance, for security, and not for comfort. The Georgian mansions, which took their place, were intended primarily for comfort, and were not even capable of being defended against violence. If we can determine when the former gave place to the latter, we shall also determine when the country became safe, and when wealthy people could live in isolated houses without the danger of being raided by robbers or outlaws. Thus the building of great English mansions in the days of Elizabeth implies the quietness of the country, and the absence of such house-building elsewhere shows that this condition had not been attained. People not rich enough to dwell in castles had to collect in walled towns, country life in our modern sense was still impossible. I ask myself, therefore: When did the general safety of the country parts of Ireland induce and encourage the building of country houses of the manor-house type, which were meant for comfort, and were ill adapted for defence? For they had frequently two entrances, and many windows within reach of the ground, and they were not surrounded by walls, with flankers, loopholes, &c., in case of a sudden attack. I will not take account of two such houses which were very old Elizabethan and Caroline, because the first (Jigginstown) is too far gone to make any inference uncertain. But we know it was being built by Lord Strafford with Dutch bricks in Co. Kildare for the purpose of receiving King Charles I., should he be compelled to visit Ireland. But Strafford was such dominating person that during his rule there was no fear of his house being molested. a The second is a more interesting case the small manor - house built by the Earl of Ormond, it is said, to receive his intimate friend, Queen Elizabeth. That house is still standing, though dismantled by the present Marquis, and is certainly a house not defensible from within. But it adjoins the old castle which guarded the ford of the Suir at Carrick, so that its occupants had a safe retreat close beside them. There may be other manor-houses as early, and near Dublin, but I am not acquainted with them. a In land which has very few, and very imperfect, county histories, and hardly any local antiquaries, it is well-nigh impossible to prove the negative. The wars which began in 1641, and the Cromwellian Settlement that followed, gave little encouragement to the building of country houses. And yet no sooner is Charles II. proclaimed than we find people beginning to build brick houses, in many cases (as was the case with Strafford) using Dutch bricks as their material. On this there is not only very consistent and credible tradition, but documentary evidence. In the first first place, the Records of Dublin show that at this point the walls of Dublin were obsolete and neglected, and proved an obstacle to the increasing population of the city, which was bursting the old compass of these walls. They disappear almost silently during the reign of Charles II. Then we have Lord Conway and Killultagh (the ancestor of Lord Hertford) building his great house at Lisburn (near Belfast) in the years 1665-7, whereon there are many letters from his agent, Sir G. Rawson, giving details of the building, in the published Calendar of Irish State Papers for these years. The importation of "painted bricks" from Ostend, vid Cork and Dublin (by sea), to Belfast, is often mentioned, but also the burning of bricks on the site of the proposed pigeon-house, which was then an ordinary annexe to country houses. Tradition further asserts that Beaulieu (on the north bank of the Boyne below Drogheda) and French Park (the seat of Lord de Freyne English and Dutch settlers, in Co. Roscommon) were and this, be it remembered, built before 1667, in which before the advent of the Dutch year their owners and alleged William III. builders died. The latter, which is built of Dutch bricks, is said to have had these bricks carried by land from Galway, which is at least fifty miles off, across what is even now a wild and boggy country. The waterway up the Shannon might have brought them within ten miles to Carrickon - Shannon, with only one trans-shipment at the rapids of Killaloe. But the tradition of the family is quite definite and uniform. The next evidence I can quote is that of the traveller Thomas Dinely, who visited Ireland in 1679-80, and who has not only recorded his impressions, but given pen-andink sketches of the houses he saw in various parts of Ireland.1 He saw in 1680 many local castles, mostly small, with a group of low and apparently mean buildings nestling round the principal keep or towers. In some cases a dwelling-house of modern aspect is annexed to the towers. In others the castle is gone and a mansion takes its place, with merely a walled courtyard attached, generally in front of the house. He tells us that these dwellings had been recently rehandled. He mentions the enterprise of ་ From this time onward the building of indefensible country houses became common in Ireland. And here we may pause for a moment and inquire how it happened that with the Restoration such a feeling of security spread over Ireland. It was surely not owing to any special confidence in the new monarch, though his advent heralded some definite settlement. But the sense of security in the far country parts must have been of more gradual growth, and I am disposed to attribute it to the strong hand of the Cromwellians, who kept order in the land. So did Stafford before them, and consequently travellers during his rule have told us how they rode about the country in perfect safety. Winter, the Cromwellian Provost of Trinity College, declares to us the same state of things, and he went north and south reviewing the College estates, and performing the rites of the Church for the tenants of the College (1655-60).2 The Cromwellians were therefore the pacifiers of Ireland. It will be said at once in the words of Tacitus - solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. But this epigram was no more true of the 1 His MS. has been partially published by the late Ev. Ph. Shirley in The Transactions of the Kilkenny Archæological Society,' and reprinted (inaccurately) in the Appendix to Frost's History of the County Clare.' Both books are out of print, and only accessible in libraries or on the shelves of some collector of books on Ireland. The same Dinely also wrote for the Duke of Beaufort an account of a feast at Badminton, with his pen-and-ink illustrations, which has been beautifully reproduced in facsimile by the late Duke's liberality. 2 I have stated the evidence fully in my Epoch of Irish History,' p. 307. Cromwellians than it was of the Romans, to whom it was first applied. On this the evidence I have quoted from Winter's notebook is quite conclusive. It is a mere accident that we cannot now find a house dated 1680-90, for there are several built in the latter year which are still extant-Mr Hodder's house in Co. Cork, with 1690 in the brick wall; Platten, near the battle of the Boyne, into which Schomberg's body was carried after the conflict; Eyre Court (Co. Galway), which John Steven tells us (in his diary) "that he passed it on his march with King James II.'s troops from Limerick to Aughrim, where the final struggle took place," all in 1690. He marches by the new house built by Mr Eyre, and more admired in the neighbourhood (he thinks) than it deserves. That house, known as Eyre Court, has been inhabited by the same family ever since. There are undated houses whose style persuades us that they are of about the same age, though often subject to later additions. There is Rosannagh, the brick house of the Tighe family in Co. Wicklow; there is the beautiful Santry Court near Dublin, the seat of the Lords Santry, and afterwards of the Domviles, who still own it. But an enumeration of the mere names of these houses is not interesting. It is better to pass on to the next epoch of manor-houses, of which we have fine specimens ranging from 1725 to 1750, and of which the moving spirit is the once famous builder Richard VOL. CXCIV.-NO. MCLXXIV. Cassels, or Castle, who has left his mark all over Ireland. He did not find a perfectly open field for his genius. There were noble public buildings, such as Burgh's Library of Trinity College (1709) and Pearce's Parliament Houses (1724), which show that Ireland was awake to fine building. Of one of the finest of our country mansions, Castletown (1724), in Co. Kildare, it is expressly told us that it was not built by Cassels. Still, his influence was such that even Pearce's Parliament House was commonly supposed to be his design, though the other received the thanks of Parliament and a reward of £2000 for his work. We know, in addition to the work he did in Trinity College (such as the Printing House, 1734), some dozen of mansions erected by him, mostly in the counties of Dublin, Meath, and Kildare, but also including specimens in Mayo and Sligo. He died suddenly while superintending the new buildings and decoration of Carton, the seat of the Earl of Kildare (now Duke of Leinster). He was not the inventor of a new type, for Castletown, built before his advent, shows it fully developed. So do even some of the brick houses of the previous century. Looking at the front, there is always a main block, with the doorway in the centre, very simple, and sometimes approached by broad stone steps, sometimes (as at Powerscourt) on the ground level, there being a basement story under it. The block, N |