is the creation of his son, the artistic bachelor Duke, to whom England owes the Crystal Palace and all the other outcomes of Sir Joseph Paxton’s industry and enterprise.  His kinsman and successor, the present Duke, used to visit Lismore regularly down to the time of the atrocious murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and many of the beautiful walks and groves which make the place lovely are due, I believe, to his taste and his appreciation of the natural charms of Lismore.  I dismissed my car at the “Devonshire Arms,” an admirable little hotel near the river, and having ordered my dinner there, walked down to the castle, almost within the grounds of which the hotel stands.  It is impossible to imagine a more picturesque site for a great inland mansion.  The views up and down the Blackwater from the drawing-room windows are simply the perfection of river landscape.  The grounds are beautifully laid out, one secluded garden-walk, in particular, taking you back to the inimitable Italian garden-walks of the seventeenth century.  In the vestibule is the sword of state of the Corporation of Youghal, a carved wooden cradle for which still stands in the church at that place, and over the great gateway are the arms of the great Earl of Cork, but these are almost the only outward and visible signs of the historic past about the castle.  Seen from the graceful stone bridge which spans the river, its grey towers and turrets quite excuse the youthful enthusiasm with which the Duke of Connaught, who made a visit here when he was Prince Arthur, is said to have written to his mother, that Lismore was “a beautiful place, very like Windsor Castle, only much finer.”

Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion.

The hostess of the “Devonshire Arms” gave me some excellent salmon, fresh from the river, and a very good dinner.  She bewailed the evil days on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle used to mean to the people.  Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to have her come there.  “It would be a great thing for the country if all the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to.  It did nobody any good, least of all the poor people.”

From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy.

CHAPTER IX.