I suppose every one expects to find Ireland the land of the unlooked-for. I did, at any rate, but was by no means prepared for several of the surprises which greeted me. For instance, the best arranged, and for its size and scope the most interesting, National Gallery I have ever seen. It is only forty years old (incorporated in 1854), a date since which one would have thought it scarcely possible to get together genuine specimens of all the great schools of art, from the well “picked-over” marts of England and the Continent. But the feat has been accomplished, mainly, I believe, by the entire devotion and fine taste and judgment of the late director, Mr. Henry E. Doyle. His untimely death in the spring of this year has left a blank, social and artistic, which it will be hard to fill; but happily his great work for Irish art was done, and all that his successors will have to do will be to follow his lead faithfully. Irish Art owes much to his family, for he was the son of H. B., and the younger brother of the immortal “Dicky,” while, I believe, Mr. Conan Doyle is his nephew.

But it is not the general collection of pictures, remarkable as that is, which differentiates the Irish from other national galleries known to me. It is the happy arrangement which has set apart a fourth of the whole space for a collection of portraits, and authentic historical pictorial records, comprising not only the portraits of eminent Irishmen and Irishwomen, but also of statesmen and others who were politically or socially connected with Ireland, or whose lives serve in any way to illustrate her history, or throw light on her social or literary or artistic records. I think I may safely venture the assertion—for I spent the greater part of two afternoons in this historical and portrait department—that there is Scarcely a man or woman, from the time of Elizabeth to that of O’Connell and Lord Melbourne, of whom one would be glad to know more, with whom one does not leave it, feeling far better acquainted. And then they are so admirably and often pathetically grouped, e.g. Charles I., Cromwell, and R. Cromwell, on a line, all full of character, and Strafford hard by, with the look of “thorough” on his brow and mouth as no other portrait I have ever seen has given. Then there are “Erin’s High Ormonde,” Sir Walter Raleigh, by Zuccaro, painted between his two imprisonments, and coming down later, Lords Wellesley and Hastings, and groups of great nobles and Lords-Lieutenant. For fighting men, William III. as a boy; Walker, the defender of Derry; the Duke, the Lawrences, Lord Gough, and a score of other gallant Irishmen. The terrible Dean stands out amongst the literary men, and near him Sir R. Steele and Sterne, and (longo intervallo, except on shelves) Tom Moore, Croker, Lever, etc. Then come the “patriots” of all schools: Lord E. Fitzgerald, and Grattan, and E. Hudson, Secretary of the United Irishmen in 1784; Wolfe Tone, and Daniel O’Connell; half a dozen Ponsonbys of different ranks, and several pictures of Burke, one of which especially (said to be by Angelica Kauffmann) is, to my mind, quite invaluable. Burke stands upright, his side-face towards you, sublime, as he looked, I am sure, when he was making his immortal speech at Bristol. By his side, at right angles, so that you get his full face, is Charles Fox, one hand on Burke’s shoulder, the other on a table on which he is leaning. You can hear him saying as plainly as if you were there one hundred years ago, “Now, my dear Edmund, if you say that in the House, you’ll upset the coach.” Fox has evidently dined well, and Burke is fasting from all but indignation. The portraits of women are as interesting, such as Miss Farren, afterwards Lady Derby; Mrs. Norton, by Watts, which is worth a visit to Dublin to see, etc. But I must not run on, and will only note one lesson I carried away. There are two portraits, and three engravings from portraits, by N. Hone, R.A., an Irishman, but one of our original Royal Academicians. You will remember what Peter Pindar says of that painter in his Odes to the Royal Academicians”:—

And as for Mr. Nathan Hone,

In portraits he’s as much alone

As in his landscape stands the unrivalled Claude.

Of pictures I have seen enough,

Vile, tawdry, execrable stuff,

But none so bad as thine, I vow to God.

I have always till now maintained that Peter, with all his cynicism, was the best art critic, the Ruskin, shall we say, of his time. Now I give him up. N. Hone was no doubt quarrelsome and disagreeable, but he was a very considerable portrait-painter.

I had noted Derry as one of the places to be seen on account of the siege, and accordingly went there, to get another startling sensation. Like most other folk, I suppose, I had always looked on the story as interesting and heroic, and had wondered in a vague way how some 30,000 men, commanded by a distinguished French soldier, and a considerable part of them at any rate well-equipped regular troops, could have been kept at bay for ten months by a mere handful of regulars, backed by the ’prentice boys of the town and neighbourhood. Religious zeal was no doubt a strong factor on the side of the town, and Parson Walker, a born leader of men, “with a bugle in his throat,” like “Bobs.” But when one remembers that no provision had been made for a siege, that many of the leading men were for opening the gates, and indeed that the French officers and James’s deputy were actually within 300 yards in their boats, to accept the surrender, when the ’prentices rushed down and shut and manned the gates, and then looks at the scene on the spot, one is really dumbfounded, and wanders back in thought to King Hezekiah and Jerusalem. From the Cathedral, which dominates the city, you can trace distinctly the line of the old walls, and can hardly believe your eyes. The space enclosed cannot be more than a quarter of a mile in length, by some 300 yards in breadth (I could not get exact measurements), and in it, including garrison and the country folk who had flocked in, were more than 30,000 people. It was bombarded for eight months, during at least the last four of which famine and pestilence were raging. No wonder that the parish registers tell of more than 9000 burials in consecrated ground, while “the practice of burial in the backyards became unavoidable!” Where can such another story be found in authentic history? Parson Walker, let us say, fairly earned his monument.

I must own to grievous disappointment as to the farming in Ulster. All through the South and Centre I had seen the hay in the fields in small cocks in September, and the splendid ripe crops of oats and barley uncut, or, if cut, left in sheaf, or being carried in a leisurely fashion, which was quite provoking, while tall, yellow ragweed was growing in most of the pastures in ominous abundance. That will all be altered, I thought, when I cross “Boyne Water.” Not a bit of it! Here and there, indeed, I saw a good rick-yard and clean fields, but scarcely oftener than about Cork or Killarney, and no one seemed to mind any more than the pure southern Celts. One man said, when I mourned over the ragweed three feet or four feet high, that he did not mind it, as it showed the land was good! As to leaving hay in cock, well that was the custom—they would get it into stack after harvest, any way before Christmas; as to dawdling over cutting and carrying, well, with prices at present rates, what use in hurrying? There was a comic song called “Clear the Kitchen,” popular half a century ago, which ran—

I saw an old man come riding by.

Says I, “Old man, your horse will die”;

Says he, “If he dies I’ll tan his skin,

And if he lives I’ll ride him agin.”

It fits the Irish temper, North and South, pleasant enough to travel amongst, but bad, I should think, to live with.