CHAPTER XV.[25] * * * *--Mrs.Kavanagh was quite right when she told me at Borris in March that this country should be seen in June! The drive to this lovely place this morning was one long enchantment of verdure and hawthorn blossoms and fragrance.
I came over from London to bring to a head some inquiries which have too long delayed the publication of this diary.

My intention had been to go directly to Thurles, but a telegram which I received from the Archbishop of Cashel just before I left telling me that he could not be at home for the last three days of the week, I came directly here.

Nothing can be more utterly unlike the popular notions of Ireland and of Irish life than the aspect of this most smiling and beautiful region: nothing more thoroughly Irish than its people.
* * * who is one of the most active and energetic of Irish landlords, lives part of the year abroad, but keeps up his Irish property with care, at the expense, I suspect, of his estates elsewhere.
From a noble avenue of trees, making the highway like the main road of a private park, we turned into a literal paradise of gardens.

The air was balmy with their wealth of odours.

"Oh! yes, sir," said the coachman, with an air of sympathetic pride, "our lady is just the greatest lady in all this land for flowers!" And for ivy, he might have added.