Indeed, my Lord, it is a felicity to be able to attest, from experience, and now to record, the pretensions of your Grace to the gratitude of your country and the love of mankind.

To the wisdom of your administration was committed a great and important, but a much neglected portion of the United Empire. You became the ruler of a country long oppressed, wickedly calumniated, and still bleeding from many a wound. Soon after the elevation of your Grace to this august situation, public symptoms appeared which called for sagacity and energy of no ordinary nature. Instead of listening, in the sunshine of vice-regal magnificence, to the vague reports of the idle, the ignorant, or the mischievous, you penetrated into the wild recesses of that distracted country, reputed to contain the hot-bed of insurrection; you personally contemplated the character of the poor, suffering Irish peasant, in all its rough but affecting simplicity; you beheld a fellow-being possessed of affections easily to be won by ten

DEDICATION.

derness, of a vivid imagination, and quick and ardent susceptibility, cloathed in rags, and living in common with the beast of the field, in a state of penury and wretchedness, unknown to the miserable and oppressed of any other region. To see, to feel, and to meditate relief were all simultaneous in the mind of your Grace. When some partial excesses at length broke out, when the violent and the intolerant clamorously demanded the terrible inflictions of military law, you firmly, wisely, and most humanely resolved upon surrendering up the guilty to the laws of their country, without delivering over their unoffending vicinage to the savage dominion of the bullet, and the bayonet. The noble experiment answered, and your Grace lost no portion of your popularity, in the very spot where dire necessity compelled you to offer up victims to justice. Your conduct on that occasion, even in the absence of every other laudable event of your life, is sufficient to sweeten it to its latest period.

A great and unexpected political change rendered the administration of your Grace too brief to execute the enlightened and salutary plans which you had conceived for the amelioration of Ireland; but it was of sufficient duration to afford opportunities of displaying those qualities of the head and of the heart, which will endear your memory to that unhappy country for ever, and you have left to it the benefits of a brilliant example.

That your illustrious successor may adopt the same clemency and wisdom which your Grace so efficaciously exhibited; and that he may complete the measures which extraordinary political events prevented your Grace from perfecting, is the cordial prayer of him who is an enthusiastic well-wisher to Ireland, and who, with great respect, has the honor to subscribe himself, My Lord, your Grace's

Most obliged obedient servant,

2, Garden-Court, Temple.

18th May, 1907.

JOHN CARR.

TO THE READER.

IT is with infinite gratification that I acknowledge the obligation I am under to William Daniell, jun. Esq. for the engravings which embellish this work. The celebrity of that Gentleman, as well as of his uncle, Thomas Daniell, Esq. R. A. so well known for their faithful and beautiful delineations of oriental scenery, can derive no augmentation from any commendation of mine. I am also indebted for some interesting anecdotes of the most eminent Painters of the Dutch and Flemish School to the authors of the Abregé de la Vie des Peintres, to Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, and to the elegant and witty D'Israeli.

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I had no companion with me during the greater part of the Tour described in the following pages, which was taken amidst many untoward and embarrassing circumstances, the melancholy effects of war, and which, for that reason, will, I hope, be favored with the indulgent candour of my friends and of the Public.