What if one of those lovely arbutus-wooded islands at the foot of M'Gillicuddy's Reeks were fitted with a Swiss cottage for the Queen?
Or if Bantry Bay supplied its marble for a royal castle near Cape Clear?
Or if the railroad to Galway were supplied with a gilt carriage or two to waft Majesty and children to some western palace in Connemara?
Think you such gleams of sunshine wouldn't fertilise that poor neglected field, nor make its crops abundant, and its peasants happy?
Think you that the gold mine of Royal bounty, and the graciousness of Royal favour, would not work a blessed change for grateful Ireland?
Try it, O good Queen!--a Viceregal Court, excellent as ours is now, is but a sorry substitute for the real Majesty, nickel for silver, electrotyped plate instead of the true golden buffet: not without snobbism too, and toadyism and vulgarism and other detestable small heresies.

If but once in three years Victoria's rural Court were housed in an Irish palace, her presence would do more for happiness, prosperity, and patriotism than all of these that Maynooth grants have ever hindered.
* * * * * Thus AEsop Smith in 1858 delivered his mind on the matter.

It is by no means pretended or supposed that a palatial residence would of itself cure Irish evils and misfortunes; but it might be a step towards this good result, and at any rate would remove one very allegible accusation of neglect: Ireland should enjoy the like privileges with her sister kingdoms England and Scotland: and however inadequate, _per se_, such a simple prescription may seem as "AEsop Smith" suggests, his advice contains at least one very obvious and easy cure for Irish disaffection; and I am not aware that either by pamphlet or in Parliament it has yet been seriously mooted.

The Celts are a folk of essentially loyal instincts; but (much as Americans often are heard to complain in their own behalf) they have, as an independent nation, no seen and known object for their loyalty.

Since the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853: yet even in the Georgian instance, unfavourable as personally it must have been, the enthusiastic reception he met with some sixty years ago at the hands of his Irish subjects is still remembered after two generations with a grateful and effusive loyalty.