and uninteresting road" than he had ever before seen. That road brought him "through the old, inconvenient, ill-built and ugly town of Athlone.' The painter would find here, however, some good subjects for his sketch-book in spite of the com mination of the Guide-Book. Here, too," Thackeray continues, "great improvements are taking place for the Shannon navigation, which will render the town not so inconvenient as at present it is stated to be; and hard by lies a little village that is known and loved by all the world where English is spoken. It is called Lishoy, but its Another familiar figure in this dream-world of ours is the village schoolmaster. As he takes his place in the morning at his rude desk we see the anxious faces of his pupils upturned in an eager scrutiny; well skilled are they by rueful experience in determining from his first looks whether the day is to be one of calm or storm. If he cracks a joke, the laughter is out of all proportion to the wit; if he argues in words of "learned length and thundering sound" the amazed rustics marvel that so small a head should hold such a portentous store of knowledge. From the village school the memory passes to the village ale-house, with its "White-washed wall, and nicely sanded floor, The varnished clock that clicked behind the door." Here are the sage statesmen of the rural world, who solve with narrow-visioned ignorance problems such as burden their more responsible prototypes with anxious days and sleepless nights. But where is this village to be found, and what is its name? To attempt to answer that twofold question is to tackle a knotty point of literary criticism. When Thackeray roamed through the Green Isle in search of material for his "Irish SketchBook," his route led him along a "more dismal |