It was built in 1843, and was originally calculated to hold 845 inmates, but has been since enlarged, so as to contain 1100. At the time of my visit, there were only 228 persons in the house, all those able to work being now employed on the harvest. But during the whole of the year, the number in the house has been small. Before harvest began, in June, there were only 299 inmates. During the last four years there have never been above 400 in the house. According to the official report, there were on the books in April 1848, 807. The proportion of persons professing the two religions, is usually about two thirds Protestants, and one third Catholics. The number of children at present in the school is about 45 of each sex.

Like the other workhouses in this county, the dietary is here somewhat better than in the other parts of Ireland visited by me; the inmates of all classes having three meals, and a small portion of meat in their vegetable soup three days in the week The bread in ordinary use is made entirely of flour; the stirabout is sometimes made of Indian meal and sometimes of oatmeal; the supper always consisting of stirabout made of Indian meal, and the breakfast of oatmeal.

In and around Antrim and Randalstown, I found, as indeed everywhere in this county, the opinions very strong respecting Tenant-right; and as these views were explained to me, I seldom found them unreasonable, as in the following case of a small

farmer near Randalstown. This man was a Catholic, seventy years of age, and succeeded his father in his farm many years since; his father having occupied it all his lifetime. Neither of them ever had any lease. All the houses now on the farm had been erected by his father or himself, and were in tolerable order. The extent of his farm was thirty-five acres, and his rent was moderate (I forget the exact amount). A good many years since, the present occupier had added to his father's farm another holding adjoining, and had paid the outgoing tenant 501. for his improvements. He is a tenant of Lord O'Neil, an excellent landlord, and has no fear of being turned out while Lord O'Neil lives; but as Lord O'Neil is a very old man, he is fearful of losing his farm at his death. He is therefore desirous of obtaining a lease to enable him to work out of his farm the value of his improvements and outlay, or to be secured some compensation in the event of losing it. He considered that he and his father had sunk 350l. on the farm.

Near this good man's farm I visited a much smaller tenement-of seven acres-and found everything in and about it indicative of poverty and misery, and affording a striking illustration of the evils that must often follow in the train of Emigration. The tenant had recently gone to America, leaving his wife and four children nothing to live on but the crop of potatoes in the ground. He had sold the cow to supply the means of emigration.

His departure was too recent for his family to have received any money from him, or, indeed, any account of him. Fortunately for the poor family, the potatoes, though injured, were better in this neighbourhood than they had been for some years previously.

Throughout the county of Antrim, and, indeed, I may say throughout Ireland, I found the subject of tenant-right, or perhaps I should here only say the subject of leases, as strongly advocated, on political as on social grounds. The no-lease system is regarded as necessarily depriving tenants of every shade of independence, the fear of ejection from their farms binding them all as surely to follow the dictation of their landlords in giving their votes at elections, as if they were legally compelled to do so. In the rare instances in which tenants have been found to go against their landlords at the poll, they have seldom found any safety in their landlords' magnanimity. I think it was also very generally believed, by the more intelligent, that even the granting of leases would be insufficient guaranty for the independence of the voters, without the additional security of the ballot, on the same grounds, I suppose, as were enunciated in the apophthegm of my honest mason of Limerick— "that a sally landlord will break an oaken tenant."

On Monday morning we left Belfast for Armagh, and took advantage of the railway the whole dis

tance, being desirous of reaching Newry and Rostrevor the same day. The country between Belfast and Armagh (a distance of thirty-one Irish miles), is well cultivated and rich, with frequent enclosures of quick, and patches of wood here and there-all in the English style.

Armagh is remarkable, in a historical point of view, as the birth-place, nursery, residence, or final resting-place of many great men; and as the theatre on which not a few great actions have been performed. It claims the honour of having been founded (in the year 445) by Saint Patrick himself, and to have been constituted by him the great Primatial See and Metropolis of Ireland. He is said to have built its first Cathedral, and to have himself been its first Archbishop; and also to have established in it the College which afterwards became famous throughout Europe; besides Abbeys and Convents, which continued long to illustrate and dignify his favorite city. Armagh also claims the honour of being the burial-place of the great King of Ireland, BRIAN BOROIHME, who was slain in his eighty-eighth year, in the great battle of Clontarf, won by him over the Danes in the year 1014. In the ancient annals of Ireland he is thus made to declare on the battle-field, immediately before his death, his preference for Armagh :"Announce (he said) that I bequeath my soul to God and to the intercession of Saint Patrick, my body to Armagh, and my blessing to my son

Denis O'Brian.

I moreover bequeath twelve

score of oxen to Armagh."

But Armagh has to boast, in more modern times, of a son whose honour and glory, though won in a different sphere, may even vie with those of the saints and heroes of old. Dr. Richard Robinson, Archbishop of Armagh, from 1765 to 1794, was one of that rare class of men whose indomitable energy and enterprise inevitably impress-and usually dominate and change-the sphere in which they live, whether that sphere be small or great. Fortunately for Armagh, the ambitious activity of its noble Primate, took the form of public improvement in all its forms-in things intellectual and moral as well as physical; and this spirit, exerted only for the short period of thirty years, sufficed to convert Armagh, from "a collection of mud cabins" to an elegant town, almost such as we see it at present: nay more, enriched and adorned it and its neighbourhood with almost every public institution which a civilised community requires.

The following are some of Dr. Robinson's public acts, set down in the order of their performance:he first completely renewed the Archbishop's-house in the town; and afterwards, in 1770, raised from its foundations the present noble palace, in its splendid demesne, overlooking the town. In 1781, he built a beautiful chapel near the palace. In 1783, he erected in the Archiepiscopal Park that noble obelisk, 114 feet in height, which shows so