There is much of interest in the house in the shape of portraits, and those of seven generations, whose owners had passed their lives here, looked down upon us while at dinner. I fear I appear morose and a bad guest for I cannot keep my eyes and thoughts from these old portraits, wondering what the lives of their owners were and how I shall feel if ever my painted face looks down from some shadowy canvas on a company at dinner a century or two hence. If such portrait should exist it will probably be marked "Portrait of a gentleman" as one so often reads in a catalogue when name and owner are long, long forgotten as of no importance. How poor a thing is earthly immortality and yet how we all long for it, how we dread to be amongst those "forgotten." But they are not "forgotten" in Mantua House, as I was told the names and dates of all of them. Later, in the glow of the turf fire, those around us in the spacious hall almost quicken into life and gaze into its glowing depths as we are doing and as they have each in turn done in the old mansion, until the bell of time sounded for them and they passed away into shadowland. I think that for glowing warmth and depth of colour a turf fire surpasses all others. The brown earth burns deeply but glows to its very heart, and as it burns throws off a pungent smoke which recalls to your memory the "Princess of Thule," and finally getting into your brain drives you off to bed and the mantle of sleep falls upon the "House in the Bog."
It is a misty morning in which we bid our hosts good-bye but not to be too hard upon us the sun shines now and then as we roll off between the dripping hedgerows whose boughs, reaching at us as though endeavouring to stay our progress, scrape the top of our hood as the car glides onward. As I have stated, the county of Roscommon suffers more than any other section of Ireland in these days of "cattle driving." Here it is first impressed upon the traveller that there is trouble abroad. Numbers of men with lowering glances loaf around doing nothing save smoke their stumpy pipes and all the rich land hereabouts stands neglected and deserted.
As to this driving of the cattle which is the cause of most of the trouble, the landowners generally rent their fields for grazing, but the people are determined that they shall sell them their lands and at prices dictated not by the owners, but by the purchaser. This being refused, they will not allow the grazing, and drive a man's cattle back to him, leaving the land of no profit to its owner, and hoping thereby to force him to their methods. There would appear to be small justice in all this.
There is much trouble of this description all over the island but it is only in Roscommon that the fact has impressed itself upon us and we hear of it constantly. One man told me that he had been out with seven packs of hounds which had been poisoned and related the story of a landlord who spent not less than forty thousand pounds a year on his estate keeping it and his tenantry in the best of conditions. He was waited upon by a committee from the League, who informed him that if he allowed certain men, all his friends, to hunt with his hounds, he and his pack would be boycotted. He replied that he lived in the country because he considered it his duty to do so, that he spent all his money here for the same reason, giving employment to hundreds, keeping all in plenty, but that if such a threat was carried out, he would sell everything and leave. It was carried out, and he closed his estate, sold his horses and hounds in England, and left this island, the loss to his section being enormous, and all for the sake, as in most of our "strikes," of a few ringleaders who fatten on the poor men they hoodwink, while their families starve.
At present a man may go into many sections of Ireland and demand land, placing his own price thereon and the owner has got to accept it. What an opportunity for dishonesty lies there! It is so common for all Europe, and I have noticed several very bitter "communications" in the Irish press lately—to point to the so-called lawlessness of America, i.e., the United States, that it is something to note the present state of affairs in parts of Ireland. For instance, here in Roscommon, no man has been convicted of murder for years, yet there have been many terrible crimes of that sort committed; one where a son and daughter murdered their old father on his doorstep that they might get the little place. They were tried and acquitted. Again every one has heard of the case of Mr. and Mrs. Blake which occurred but lately in Galway. Refusing to sell their lands they were both fired upon and wounded while returning from mass and almost under the walls of the church. The people standing round simply roared with laughter. No one was apprehended for that crime though every one in the country could tell who were the assailants.
It is scarcely just for an outsider to pass upon the affairs of a foreign country, but when, as I have stated, one's own land is constantly held up to the most violent criticism, while at the same time the daily press of our critics teems with reports of like and worse in their own country, one cannot be blamed for so doing.