(This last
topic seems to appeal to Salemina particularly.) He also alludes to
Tories and Rapparees, Rousseau and Thomas Paine and Owen Roe
O'Neill, but I have entirely forgotten their connection with the
subject. Francesca and I are thoroughly enjoying ourselves, as only
those people can who never take notes, and never try, when Pandora's
box is opened in their neighbourhood, to seize the heterogeneous
contents and put them back properly, with nice little labels on
them.
Ireland is no longer a battlefield of English parties, neither is it
wholly a laboratory for political experiment; but from having been
both the one and the other, its features are a bit knocked out of
shape and proportion, as it were. We have bought two hideous
engravings of the Battle of the Boyne and the Secret of England's
Greatness; and whenever we stay for a night in any inn where
perchance these are not, we pin them on the wall, and are received
into the landlady's heart at once. I don't know which is the finer
study: the picture of his Majesty William III. crossing the Boyne,
or the plump little Queen presenting a huge family Bible to an
apparently uninterested black youth. In the latter work of art the
eye is confused at first as the three principal features approach
each other very nearly in size, and Francesca asked innocently,
"Which IS the secret of England's greatness--the Bible, the Queen,
or the black man?"
This is a thriving town, and we are at a smart hotel which had for
two years an English manager.
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