All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the hill scenery picturesque at every turn. We looked out sharply for the hunt, but in vain. My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them entirely. And so we did.
The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as an emporium for the country about Kilkenny. The river now is not navigable above Inistiogue. But two martial square towers, one at either end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old times when the masters of Thomastown took toll and tribute of traders and travellers. The lands about the place then belonged to the great monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting of their kind in this part of Ireland. They have long made a part of the estate of the Butlers. We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town, and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House. The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas Fitz-Anthony the Norman came into the land. The ruins of this castle still stand some half a mile away. "We call the place Candahar," said Mr. Seigne, as he came up with two ladies from the meadows below the house, "because you come into it so suddenly, just as you do into that Oriental town." But what a charming occidental place it is! It stands well above the river, the slope adorned with many fine old trees, some of which grow, and grow prosperously, in the queerest and most improbable forms, bent double, twisted, but still most green and vigorous. They have no business under any known theory of arboriculture to be beautiful, but beautiful they are. The views of the bridge, of the towers, and of the river, from this slope would make the fortune of the place in a land of peace and order.
A most original and delightful lady of the country lunched with us,--such a character as Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen might have drawn. Shrewd, humorous, sensible, fearless, and ready with impartial hand to box the ears alike of Trojan and of Tyrian. She not only sees both sides of the question in Ireland as between the landlords and the tenants, but takes both sides of the question. She holds lands by inheritance, which make her keenly alive to the wrongs of the landlords, and she holds farms as a tenant, which make her implacably critical as to their claims. She mercilessly demolished in one capacity whatever she advanced in the other, and all with the most perfect nonchalance and good faith. This curiously dual attitude reminded me of the confederate General, Braxton Bragg, of whom his comrades in the old army of the United States used to say that he once had a very sharp official correspondence with himself. He happened to hold a staff appointment, being also a line officer. So in his quality of a staff officer, he found fault with himself in his capacity as a line officer, reprimanded himself sharply, replied defiantly to the reprimand, and eventually reported himself to himself for discipline at head-quarters. She told an excellent story of a near kinsman of hers who, holding a very good living in the Protestant Irish Church, came rather unexpectedly by inheritance into a baronetcy, upon which his women-folk insisted that it would be derogatory to a baronet to be a parson. "Would you believe it, the poor man was silly enough to listen to their cackle, and resign seven hundred a year!"