CHAPTER XIV. 



THE COUNTRY HOUSE AND THE INDEPENDENT 



RESIDENT. 



It has been the fashion of what miirht be 

 termed Victorian writers to extol the influence 

 of the country house and to give it a place 

 which it no longer occupies in the destiny of 

 rural England. In Ireland there is a section 

 of the landowning class who are doing every- 

 thing within their power, short of the great 

 Tolstoyan requital, to improve the condition 

 of their tenants and to pass on to them some 

 of the knowledge which they have acquired at 

 Dublin or at Oxford. 



When I was in Ireland I was given a 

 vivid description by a Nationalist of a httle 

 titled lady — aged fourteen — acting the blue- 

 stocking mentor to raw Irish youths of eighteen 

 in the evening class room. In England similar 



289 19 



