XXVI. DUNDALK…

XXVI. DUNDALK

The stranger can’t fail to be struck with the look of Dundalk, as he has been with the villages and country leading to it, when contrasted with places in the south and west of Ireland. The coach stopped at a cheerful-looking Place, of which almost the only dilapidated mansion was the old inn at which it discharged us, and which did not hold out much prospect of comfort. But in justice to the King’s Arms, it must be said that good beds and dinners are to be obtained there by voyagers; and if they choose to arrive on days when his Grace the Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Armagh and R.C. Primate of Ireland is dining with his clergy, the house of course is crowded, and the waiters, and the boy who carries in the potatoes, a little hurried and flustered. When their reverences were gone, the laity were served; and I have no doubt, from the leg of a duck which I got, that the breast and wings must have been very tender.

Meanwhile, the walk was pleasant through the bustling little town. A grave old church, with a tall copper spire, defends one end of the main street; and a little way from the inn is the superb new chapel, which the architect, Mr. Duff, has copied from King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. The ornamental part of the interior is not yet completed; but the area of the chapel is spacious and noble, and three handsome altars of scagliola (or some composition resembling marble) have been erected of handsome and suitable form. When, by the aid of further subscriptions, the church shall be completed, it will be one of the handsomest places of worship the Roman Catholics possess in this country. Opposite the chapel stands a neat low black building--the gaol; in the middle of the building, and over the doorway, is an ominous balcony and window, with an iron beam overhead. Each end of the beam is ornamented with a grinning iron skull! Is this the hanging-place? and do these grinning cast-iron skulls facetiously explain the business for which the beam is there? For shame! for shame! Such disgusting emblems ought no longer to disgrace a Christian land. If kill we must, let us do so with as much despatch and decency as possible,--not brazen out our misdeeds and perpetuate them in this frightful satiric way.

A far better cast-iron emblem stands over a handsome shop in the place hard by--a plough namely, which figures over the factory of Mr. Shekelton, whose industry and skill seem to have brought the greatest benefit to his fellow-townsmen, of whom he employs numbers in his foundries and workshops. This gentleman was kind enough to show me through his manufactories, where all sorts of iron-works are made, from a steam-engine to a door-key; and I saw everything to admire, and a vast deal more than I could understand, in the busy, cheerful, orderly, bustling, clanging place. Steam-boilers were hammered here; and pins made by a hundred busy hands in a manufactory above. There was the engine-room, where the monster was whirring his ceaseless wheels and directing the whole operations of the factory, fanning the forges, turning the drills, blasting into the pipes of the smelting-houses: he had a house to himself, from which his orders issued to the different establishments round about. One machine was quite awful to me, a gentle cockney, not used to such things--it was an iron-devourer, a wretch with huge jaws and a narrow mouth, ever opening and shutting, opening and shutting. You put a half-inch iron plate between his jaws, and they shut not a whit slower or quicker than before, and bit through the iron as if it were a sheet of paper. Below the monster’s mouth was a punch that performed its duties with similar dreadful calmness, going on its rising and falling.

I was so lucky as to have an introduction to the Vicar of Dundalk, which that gentleman’s kind and generous nature interpreted into a claim for unlimited hospitality; and he was good enough to consider himself bound not only to receive me, but to give up previous engagements abroad in order to do so. I need not say that it afforded me sincere pleasure to witness, for a couple of days, his labours among his people; and indeed it was a delightful occupation to watch both flock and pastor. The world is a wicked, selfish, abominable place, as the parson tells us; but his reverence comes out of his pulpit and gives the flattest contradiction to his doctrine, busying himself with kind actions from morning till night, denying to himself, generous to others, preaching the truth to young and old, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, consoling the wretched, and giving hope to the sick;--and I do not mean to say that this sort of life is led by the Vicar of Dundalk merely, but do firmly believe that it is the life of the great majority of the Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy of the country. There will be no breach of confidence, I hope, in publishing here the journal of a couple of days spent with one of these reverend gentlemen, and telling some readers, as idle and profitless as the writer, what the clergyman’s peaceful labours are.

In the first place, we set out to visit the church--the comfortable copper-spired old edifice that was noticed two pages back. It stands in a green churchyard of its own, very neat and trimly kept, with an old row of trees that were dropping their red leaves upon a flock of vaults and tombstones below. The building being much injured by flame and time, some hundred years back, was repaired, enlarged, and ornamented--as churches in those days were ornamented--and has consequently lost a good deal of its Gothic character. There is a great mixture, therefore, of old style and new style and no style; but, with all this, the church is one of the most commodious and best appointed I have seen in Ireland. The vicar held a council with a builder regarding some ornaments for the roof of the church, which is, as it should be, a great object for his care and architectural taste, and on which he has spent a very large sum of money. To these expenses he is, in a manner bound, for the living is a considerable one, its income being no less than two hundred and fifty pounds a year; out of which he has merely to maintain a couple of curates and a clerk and sexton, to contribute largely towards schools and hospitals, and relieve a few scores of pensioners of his own who are fitting objects of private bounty.

We went from the church to a school, which has been long a favourite resort of the good vicar’s: indeed, to judge from the schoolmaster’s books, his attendance there is almost daily--and the number of the scholars some two hundred. The number was considerably greater until the schools of the Educational Board were established, when the Roman Catholic clergymen withdrew many of their young people from Mr. Thackeray’s establishment.

We found a large room with sixty or seventy boys at work; in an upper chamber were a considerable number of girls, with their teachers, two modest and pretty young women; but the favourite resort of the vicar was evidently the Infant School,--and no wonder: it is impossible to witness a more beautiful or touching sight.

Eighty of these little people, healthy, clean, and rosy--some in smart gowns and shoes and stockings, some with patched pinafores and little bare pink feet--sate upon a half-dozen low benches, and were singing, at the top of their fourscore fresh voices, a song when we entered. All the voices were hushed as the vicar came in, and a great bobbing and curtseying took place; whilst a hundred and sixty innocent eyes turned awfully towards the clergyman, who tried to look as unconcerned as possible, and began to make his little ones a speech. ‘I have brought,’ says he, ‘a gentleman from England, who has heard of my little children and their school, and hopes he will carry away a good account of it. Now, you know, we must all do our best to be kind and civil to strangers: what can we do here for this gentleman that he would like?--do you think he would like a song?’

All the Children.--‘We’ll sing to him!’

Then the schoolmistress, coming forward, sang the first words of a hymn, which at once eighty little voices took up, or near eighty--for some of the little things were too young to sing yet, and all they could do was to beat the measure with little red hands as the others sang. It was a hymn about heaven, with a chorus of ‘Will not that be joyful, joyful?’ and one of the verses beginning ‘Little children, too, are there.’ Some of my fair readers (if I have the honour to find such) who have been present at similar tender charming concerts, know the hymn, no doubt. It was the first time I had ever heard it; and I do not care to own that it brought tears to my eyes, though it is ill to parade such kind of sentiment in print. But I think I will never, while I live, forget that little chorus, nor would any man who has ever loved a child or lost one. God bless you, O little happy singers! What a noble and useful life is his, who, in place of seeking wealth or honour, devotes his life to such a service as this! And all through our country, thank God! in quiet humble corners that busy citizens and men of the world never hear of, there are thousands of such men employed in such holy pursuits, with no reward beyond that which the fulfilment of duty brings them. Most of these children were Roman Catholics. At this tender age the priests do not care to separate them from their little Protestant brethren: and no wonder. He must be a child-murdering Herod who would find the heart to do so.

After the hymn, the children went through a little scripture catechism, answering very correctly, and all in a breath, as the mistress put the questions. Some of them were, of course, too young to understand the words they uttered; but the answers are so simple that they cannot fail to understand them before long; and they learn in spite of themselves.

The catechism being ended, another song was sung; and now the vicar (who had been humming the chorus along with his young singers, and, in spite of an awful and grave countenance, could not help showing his extreme happiness) made another oration, in which he stated that the gentleman from England was perfectly satisfied; that he would have a good report of the Dundalk children to carry home with him; that the day was very fine, and the schoolmistress would probably like to take a walk; and, finally, would the young people give her a holiday? ‘As many,’ concluded he, ‘as will give the schoolmistress a holiday, hold up their hands!’ This question was carried unanimously.

But I am bound to say, when the little people were told that as many as wouldn’t like a holiday were to hold up their hands, all the little hands went up again exactly as before: by which it may be concluded either that the infants did not understand his reverence’s speech, or that they were just as happy to stay at school as to go and play; and the reader may adopt whichever of the reasons he inclines to. It is probable that both are correct.

The little things are so fond of the school, the vicar told me as we walked away from it, that on returning home they like nothing better than to get a number of their companions who don’t go to school, and to play at infant-school.

They may be heard singing their hymns in the narrow alleys and humble houses in which they dwell; and I was told of one dying who sang his song of ‘Will not that be joyful, joyful?’ to his poor mother weeping at his bedside, and promising her that they should meet where no parting should be.

‘There was a child in the school,’ said the vicar, ‘whose father, a Roman Catholic, was a carpenter by trade, a good workman, and earning a considerable weekly sum, but neglecting his wife and children and spending his earnings in drink. We have a song against drunkenness that the infants sing; and one evening, going home, the child found her father excited with liquor and ill-treating his wife. The little thing forthwith interposed between them, told her father what she had heard at school regarding the criminality of drunkenness and quarrelling, and finished her little sermon with the hymn. The father was first amused, then touched; and the end of it was that he kissed his wife, and asked her to forgive him, hugged his child, and from that day would always have her in his bed, made her sing to him morning and night, and forsook his old haunts for the sake of his little companion.’

He was quite sober and prosperous for eight months; but the vicar at the end of that time began to remark that the child looked ragged at school, and passing by her mother’s house, saw the poor woman with a black eye. ‘If it was any one but your husband, Mrs. C----, who gave you that black eye,’ says the vicar, ‘tell me; but if he did it, don’t say a word.’ The woman was silent, and soon after, meeting her husband, the vicar took him to task. ‘You were sober for eight months. Now tell me fairly, C----,’ says he, ‘were you happier when you lived at home with your wife and child, or are you more happy now?’ The man owned that he was much happier formerly, and the end of the conversation was, that he promised to go home once more and try the sober life again, and he went home and succeeded.

The vicar continued to hear good accounts of him; but passing one day by his house he saw the wife there looking very sad. Had her husband relapsed?--No, he was dead, she said--dead of the cholera; but he had been sober ever since his last conversation with the clergyman, and had done his duty to his family up to the time of his death. ‘I said to the woman,’ said the good old clergyman, in a grave low voice, ‘your husband is gone now to the place where, according to his conduct here, his eternal reward will be assigned him; and let us be thankful to think what a different position he occupies now, to that which he must have held had not his little girl been the means, under God, of converting him.’

Our next walk was to the County Hospital, the handsome edifice which ornaments the Drogheda entrance of the town, and which I had remarked on my arrival. Concerning this hospital, the governors were, when I passed through Dundalk, in a state of no small agitation; for a gentleman by the name of----, who, from being an apothecary’s assistant in the place, had gone forth as a sort of amateur inspector of hospitals throughout Ireland, had thought fit to censure their extravagance in erecting the new building, stating that the old one was fully sufficient to hold fifty patients, and that the public money might consequently have been spared. Mr.----‘s plan for the better maintenance of them in general is, that commissioners should be appointed to direct them, and not county gentlemen as heretofore; the discussion of which question does not need to be carried on in this humble work.

My guide, who is one of the governors of the new hospital, conducted me, in the first place, to the old one--a small dirty house in a damp and low situation, with but three rooms to accommodate patients, and these evidently not fit to hold fifty, or even fifteen patients. The new hospital is one of the handsomest buildings of the size and kind in Ireland; an ornament to the town, as the angry commissioner stated, but not after all a building of undue cost, for the expense of its erection was but £3000, and the sick of the county are far better accommodated in it than in the damp and unwholesome tenement regretted by the eccentric commissioner.

An English architect, Mr. Smith, of Hertford, designed and completed the edifice; strange to say, only exceeding his estimates by the sum of three-and-sixpence, as the worthy governor of the hospital with great triumph told me. The building is certainly a wonder of cheapness, and, what is more, so complete for the purpose for which it was intended, and so handsome in appearance, that the architect’s name deserves to be published by all who hear it; and if any country newspaper editors should notice this volume, they are requested to make the fact known. The house is provided with every convenience for men and women, with all the appurtenances of baths, water, gas, airy wards, and a garden for convalescents; and below, a dispensary, a handsome board-room, kitchen, and matron’s apartments, etc.--indeed, a noble requiring a house for a large establishment need not desire a handsomer one than this, at its moderate price of £3000. The beauty of this building has, as is almost always the case, created emulation, and a terrace in the same taste has been raised in the neighbourhood of the hospital.

From the Hospital we bent our steps to the Institution; of which place I give below the rules, and a copy of the course of study, and the dietary: leaving English parents to consider the fact, that their children can be educated at this place for thirteen pounds a year. Nor is there anything in the establishment savouring of the Dotheboys Hall.[30] I never saw, in any public school in England, sixty cleaner, smarter, more gentlemanlike boys than were here at work. The upper class had been at work on Euclid as we came in, and were set, by way of amusing the stranger, to perform a sum of compound interest of diabolical complication, which, with its algebraic and arithmetic solution, was handed up to me by three or four of the pupils; and I strove to look as wise as I possibly could. Then they went through questions of mental arithmetic with astonishing correctness and facility; and finding from the master that classics were not taught in the school, I took occasion to lament this circumstance, saying, with a knowing air, that I would like to have examined the lads in a Greek play.

Classics, then, these young fellows do not get. Meat they get but twice a week. Let English parents bear this fact in mind; but that the lads are healthy and happy, anybody who sees them can have no question; furthermore, they are well instructed in a sound practical education--history, geography, mathematics, religion. What a place to know of would this be for many a poor half-pay officer, where he may put his children in all confidence that they will be well cared for and soundly educated! Why have we not State Schools in England, where, for the prime cost--for a sum which never need exceed for a young boy’s maintenance £25 a year--our children might be brought up? We are establishing National Schools for the labourer; why not give education to the sons of the poor gentry--the clergyman whose pittance is small, and would still give his son the benefit of a public education--the artist--the officer--the merchant’s office-clerk, the literary man? What a benefit might be conferred upon all of us if honest Charter Schools could be established for our children, and where it would be impossible for Squeers to make a profit![31]

Our next day’s journey led us, by half-past ten o’clock, to the ancient town of Louth, a little poor village now, but a great seat of learning and piety, it is said, formerly, where there stood a university and abbeys, and where St. Patrick worked wonders. Here my kind friend, the rector, was called upon to marry a smart sergeant of police to a pretty lass, one of the few Protestants who attend his church; and, the ceremony over, we were invited to the house of the bride’s father hard by, where the clergyman was bound to cut the cake, and drink a glass of wine to the health of the new-married couple. There was evidently to be a dance and some merriment in the course of the evening; for the good mother of the bride (Oh, blessed is he who has a good mother-in-law!) was busy at a huge fire in the little kitchen, and along the road we met various parties of neatly-dressed people, and several of the sergeant’s comrades, who were hastening to the wedding. The mistress of the rector’s darling Infant School was one of the bridesmaids: consequently the little ones had a holiday.

But he was not to be disappointed of his Infant School in this manner; so, mounting the car again, with a fresh horse, we went a very pretty drive of three miles to the snug lone schoolhouse of Glyde-farm--near a handsome park, I believe of the same name, where the proprietor is building a mansion of the Tudor order.

The pretty scene of Dundalk was here played over again; the children sang their little hymns, the good old clergyman joined delighted in the chorus, the holiday was given, and the little hands held up, and I looked at more clean bright faces and little rosy feet--the scene need not be repeated in print, but I can understand what pleasure a man must take in the daily witnessing of it, and in the growth of these little plants, which are set and tended by his care. As we returned to Louth, a woman met us with a curtsey and expressed her sorrow that she had been obliged to withdraw her daughter from one of the rector’s schools, which the child was vexed at leaving too. But the orders of the priest were peremptory; and who can say they were unjust? The priest, on his side, was only enforcing the rule which the parson maintains as his:--the latter will not permit his young flock to be educated except upon certain principles and by certain teachers; the former has his own scruples unfortunately also--and so that noble and brotherly scheme of National Education falls to the ground. In Louth, the National School was standing by the side of the priest’s chapel--it is so almost everywhere throughout Ireland; the Protestants have rejected, on very good motives doubtless, the chance of union which the Education Board gave them--be it so: if the children of either sect be educated apart, so that they be educated, the education scheme will have produced its good, and the union will come afterwards.

The church at Louth stands boldly upon a hill looking down on the village, and has nothing remarkable in it but neatness, except the monument of a former rector, Dr. Little, which attracts the spectator’s attention from the extreme inappropriateness of the motto on the coat of arms of the reverend defunct. It looks rather unorthodox to read in a Christian temple, where a man’s bones have the honour to lie, and where, if anywhere, humility is requisite--that there is multum in parvo, ‘a great deal in Little.’ O Little, in life you were not much, and lo! you are less now; why should filial piety engrave that pert pun upon your monument, to cause people to laugh in a place where they ought to be grave? The defunct doctor built a very handsome rectory-house, with a set of stables that would be useful to a nobleman, but are rather too commodious for a peaceful rector who does not ride to hounds; and it was in Little’s time, I believe, that the church was removed from the old abbey, where it formerly stood, to its present proud position on the hill.

The abbey is a fine ruin, the windows of a good style, the tracings of carvings on many of them; but a great number of stones and ornaments were removed formerly to build farm-buildings withal, and the place is now as rank and ruinous as the generality of Irish burying-places seem to be. Skulls lie in clusters amongst nettle-beds by the abbey-walls; graves are only partially covered with rude stones; a fresh coffin was lying broken in pieces within the abbey; and the surgeon of the dispensary hard by might procure subjects here, almost without grave-breaking. Hard by the abbey is a building of which I beg leave to offer the following interesting sketch:--

The legend in the country goes that the place was built for the accommodation of Saint ‘Murtogh,’ who lying down to sleep here in the open fields, not having any place to house under, found to his surprise, on waking in the morning, the above edifice, which the angels had built. The angelic architecture, it will be seen, is of rather a rude kind; and the village antiquary, who takes a pride in showing the place, says that the building was erected two thousand years ago. In the handsome grounds of the rectory is another spot visited by popular tradition--a fairy’s ring: a regular mound of some thirty feet in height, flat and even on the top, and provided with a winding path for the foot-passenger to ascend. Some trees grew on the mound, one of which was removed in order to make the walk. But the country-people cried out loudly at this desecration, and vowed that the ‘little people’ had quitted the country side for ever in consequence.

While walking in the town, a woman meets the rector with a number of curtseys and compliments, and vows that ‘tis your reverence is the friend of the poor, and may the Lord preserve you to us, and lady; and having poured out blessings innumerable, concludes by producing a paper for her son that’s in trouble in England. The paper ran to the effect, that ‘We, the undersigned, inhabitants of the parish of Louth, have known Daniel Horgan ever since his youth, and can speak confidently as to his integrity, piety, and good conduct.’ In fact, the paper stated that Daniel Horgan was an honour to his country, and consequently quite incapable of the crime of sack-stealing, I think, with which at present he was charged and lay in prison in Durham Castle. The paper had, I should think, come down to the poor mother from Durham, with a direction ready written to despatch it back again when signed, and was evidently the work of one of those benevolent individuals in assize-towns, who, following the profession of the law, delight to extricate unhappy young men of whose innocence (from various six-and-eightpenny motives) they feel convinced. There stood the poor mother, as the rector examined the document, with a huge wafer in her hand, ready to forward it so soon as it was signed; for the truth is, that ‘We, the undersigned,’ were as yet merely imaginary.

‘You don’t come to church,’ says the rector. ‘I know nothing of you or your son: why don’t you go to the priest?’

‘Oh, your reverence, my son’s to be tried next Tuesday,’ whimpered the woman; and then said the priest was not in the way, but as we had seen him a few minutes before, recalled the assertion, and she confessed that she had been to the priest, and that he would not sign; and fell to prayers, tears, and unbounded supplications to induce the rector to give his signature. But that hard-hearted divine, stating that he had not known Daniel Horgan from his youth upwards, that he could not certify as to his honesty or dishonesty, enjoined the woman to make an attempt upon the R.C. curate, to whose handwriting he would certify if need were.

The upshot of the matter was that the woman returned with a certificate from the R.C. curate as to her son’s good behaviour while in the village, and the rector certified that the handwriting was that of the R.C. clergyman in question, and the woman popped her big red wafer into the letter and went her way. Tuesday is passed long ere this: Mr. Horgan’s guilt or innocence is long since clearly proved, and he celebrates the latter in freedom, or expiates the former at the mill. Indeed, I don’t know that there was any call to introduce his adventures to the public, except, perhaps, it may be good to see how in this little distant Irish village the blood of life is running. Here goes a happy party to a marriage, and the parson prays a ‘God bless you!’ upon them, and the world begins for them. Yonder lies a stall-fed rector in his tomb, flaunting over his nothingness his pompous heraldic motto; and yonder lie the fresh fragments of a nameless deal coffin, which any foot may kick over. Presently you hear the clear voices of little children praising God; and here comes a mother wringing her hands and asking for succour for her lad, who was a child but the other day. Such motus animorum atque hoec certamina tanta are going on in an hour of an October day in a little pinch of clay in the county Louth.

Perhaps--being in the moralising strain--the honest surgeon at the dispensary might come in as an illustration. He inhabits a neat humble house, a story higher than his neighbours’, but with a thatched roof. He relieves a thousand patients yearly at the dispensary, he visits seven hundred in the parish, he supplies the medicines gratis; and receiving for these services the sum of about one hundred pounds yearly, some county economists and calculators are loud against the extravagance of his salary, and threaten his removal. All these individuals and their histories we presently turn our backs upon, for, after all, dinner is at five o’clock, and we have to see the new road to Dundalk, which the county has lately been making.

Of this undertaking, which shows some skilful engineering--some gallant cutting of rocks and hills, and filling of valleys, with a tall and handsome stone bridge thrown across the river, and connecting the high embankments on which the new road at that place is formed--I can say little, except that it is a vast convenience to the county, and a great credit to the surveyor and contractor too; for the latter, though a poor man, and losing heavily by his bargain, has yet refused to mulct his labourers of their wages; and, as cheerfully as he can, still pays them their shilling a day.

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XXVII. NEWRY, ARMAGH, BELFAST--FROM DUNDALK TO NEWRY

My kind host gave orders to the small ragged boy that drove the car to take ‘particular care of the little gentleman’; and the car-boy, grinning in appreciation of the joke, drove off at his best pace, and landed his cargo at Newry, after a pleasant two hours’ drive. The country for the most part is wild, but not gloomy--the mountains round about are adorned with woods and gentlemen’s seats; and the car-boy pointed out one hill--that of Slievegullion, which kept us company all the way--as the highest hill in Ireland. Ignorant or deceiving car-boy! I have seen a dozen hills, each the highest in Ireland, in my way through the country, of which the inexorable Guide-book gives the measurement and destroys the claim. Well, it was the tallest hill, in the estimation of the car-boy; and in this respect the world is full of car-boys. Has not every mother of a family a Slievegullion of a son, who, according to her measurement, towers above all other sons? Is not the patriot, who believes himself equal to three Frenchmen, a car-boy in heart? There was a kind young creature, with a child in her lap, that evidently held this notion. She paid the child a series of compliments, which would have led one to fancy he was an angel from heaven at the least; and her husband sate gravely by, very silent, with his arms round a barometer.

Beyond these there were no incidents or characters of note, except an old hostler that they said was ninety years old, and watered the horse at a lone inn on the road. ‘Stop!’ cries this wonder of years and rags, as the car, after considerable parley, got under weigh. The car-boy pulled up, thinking a fresh passenger was coming out of the inn.

‘Stop, till one of the gentlemen gives me something,’ says the old man, coming slowly up with us; which speech created a laugh, and got him a penny: he received it without the least thankfulness, and went away grumbling to his pail.

Newry is remarkable as being the only town I have seen which has no cabin suburb: strange to say, the houses begin all at once, handsomely coated and hatted with stone and slate; and if Dundalk was prosperous, Newry is better still. Such a sight of neatness and comfort is exceedingly welcome to an English traveller, who, moreover, finds himself, after driving through a plain bustling clean street, landed at a large plain comfortable inn, where business seems to be done, where there are smart waiters to receive him, and a comfortable warm coffee-room that bears no traces of dilapidation.

What the merits of the cuisine may be I can’t say for the information of travellers; a gentleman to whom I had brought a letter from Dundalk taking care to provide me at his own table, accompanying me previously to visit the lions of the town. A river divides it, and the counties of Armagh and Down: the river runs into the sea at Carlingford Bay, and is connected by a canal with Lough Neagh, and thus with the north of Ireland. Steamers to Liverpool and Glasgow sail continually. There are mills, foundries, and manufactories, of which the Guide-book will give particulars; and the town of 13,000 inhabitants is the busiest and most thriving that I have yet seen in Ireland.

Our first walk was to the church; a large and handsome building, although built in the unlucky period when the Gothic style was coming into vogue. Hence one must question the propriety of many of the ornaments, though the whole is massive, well-finished, and stately. Near the church stands the Roman Catholic chapel, a very fine building, the work of the same architect, Mr. Duff, who erected the chapel at Dundalk; but, like almost all other edifices of the kind in Ireland that I have seen, the interior is quite unfinished, and already so dirty and ruinous, that one would think a sort of genius for dilapidation must have been exercised in order to bring it to its present condition. There are tattered green-baize doors to enter at, a dirty clay floor, and cracked plaster walls, with an injunction to the public not to spit on the floor. Maynooth itself is scarcely more dreary. The architect’s work, however, does him the highest credit: the interior of the church is noble and simple in style; and one can’t but grieve to see a fine work of art, that might have done good to the country, so defaced and ruined as this is.

The Newry poorhouse is as neatly ordered and comfortable as any house, public or private, in Ireland: the same look of health which was so pleasant to see among the Naas children of the union-house, was to be remarked here: the same care and comfort for the old people. Of able-bodied there were but few in the house; it is in winter that there are most applicants for this kind of relief; the sunshine attracts the women out of the place, and the harvest relieves it of the men. Cleanliness, the matron said, is more intolerable to most of the inmates that any other regulation of the house; and instantly on quitting the house they relapse into their darling dirt, and of course at their periodical return are subject to the unavoidable initiatory lustration.

Newry has many comfortable and handsome public buildings; the streets have a business-like look, the shops and people are not too poor, and the southern grandiloquence is not shown here in the shape of fine words for small wares. Even the beggars are not so numerous, I fancy, or so coaxing and wheedling in their talk. Perhaps, too, among the gentry, the same moral change may be remarked, and they seem more downright and plain in their manner; but one must not pretend to speak of national characteristics from such a small experience as a couple of evenings’ intercourse may give.

Although not equal in natural beauty to a hundred other routes which the traveller takes in the south, the ride from Newry to Armagh is an extremely pleasant one, on account of the undeniable increase of prosperity which is visible through the country. Well-tilled fields, neat farmhouses, well-dressed people, meet one everywhere, and people and landscape alike have a plain, hearty, flourishing look.

The greater part of Armagh has the aspect of a good stout old English town, although round about the steep on which the cathedral stands (the Roman Catholics have taken possession of another hill, and are building an opposition cathedral on this eminence) there are some decidedly Irish streets, and that dismal combination of house and pig-sty which is so common in Munster and Connaught.

But the main streets, though not fine, are bustling, substantial, and prosperous; and a fine green has some old trees and some good houses, and even handsome stately public buildings, round about it, that remind one of a comfortable cathedral city across the water.

The cathedral service is more completely performed here than in any English town, I think. The church is small, but extremely neat, fresh, and handsome--almost too handsome; covered with spick-and-span gilding and carved-work in the style of the thirteenth century; every pew as smart and well-cushioned as my lord’s own seat in the country church; and for the clergy and their chief, stalls and thrones quite curious for their ornament and splendour. The Primate with his blue riband and badge (to whom the two clergymen bow reverently as, passing between them, he enters at the gate of the altar rail) looks like a noble Prince of the Church; and I had heard enough of his magnificent charity and kindness to look with reverence at his lofty handsome features.

Will it be believed that the sermon lasted only for twenty minutes? Can this be Ireland? I think this wonderful circumstance impressed me more than any other with the difference between north and south, and, having the Primate’s own countenance for the opinion, may confess a great admiration for orthodoxy in this particular.

A beautiful monument to Archbishop Stuart, by Chantrey; a magnificent stained window, containing the arms of the clergy of the diocese (in the very midst of which I was glad to recognise the sober old family coat of the kind and venerable Rector of Louth), and numberless carvings and decorations, will please the lover of church architecture here. I must confess, however, that in my idea the cathedral is quite too complete. It is of the twelfth century, but not the least venerable. It is as neat and trim as a lady’s drawing-room. It wants a hundred years at least to cool the raw colour of the stones, and to dull the brightness of the gilding; all which benefits, no doubt, time will bring to pass, and future cockneys setting off from London Bridge after breakfast in an aërial machine may come to hear the morning service here, and not remark the faults which have struck a too susceptible tourist of the nineteenth century.

Strolling round the town after service, I saw more decided signs that Protestantism was there in the ascendant. I saw no less than three different ladies on the prowl, dropping religious tracts at various doors; and felt not a little ashamed to be seen by one of them getting into a car with bag and baggage, being bound for Belfast.

* * * * *

The ride of ten miles from Armagh to Portadown was not the prettiest, but one of the pleasantest drives I have had in Ireland; for the country is well cultivated along the whole of the road, the trees in plenty, and villages and neat houses always in sight. The little farms, with their orchards and comfortable buildings, were as clean and trim as could be wished; they are mostly of one story, with long thatched roofs and shining windows, such as those that may be seen in Normandy and Picardy. As it was Sunday evening, all the people seemed to be abroad, some sauntering quietly down the roads--a pair of girls here and there pacing leisurely in a field, a little group seated under the trees of an orchard, which pretty adjunct to the farm is very common in this district; and the crop of apples seemed this year to be extremely plenty. The physiognomy of the people too has quite changed: the girls have their hair neatly braided up, not loose over their faces as in the south; and not only are bare feet very rare, and stockings extremely neat and white, but I am sure I saw at least a dozen good silk gowns upon the women along the road, and scarcely one which was not clean and in good order. The men for the most part figured in jackets, caps, and trousers, eschewing the old well of a hat which covers the popular head at the other end of the island, the breeches, and the long, ill-made tail-coat. The people’s faces are sharp and neat, not broad, lazy, knowing-looking, like that of many a shambling Diogenes who may be seen lounging before his cabin in Cork or Kerry. As for the cabins, they have disappeared; and the houses of the people may rank decidedly as cottages. The accent, too, is quite different; but this is hard to describe in print. The people speak with a Scotch twang, and, as I fancied, much more simply and to the point. A man gives you a downright answer, without any grin, or joke, or attempt at flattery. To be sure, these are rather early days to begin to judge of national characteristics; and very likely the above distinctions have been drawn after profoundly studying a Northern and a Southern waiter at the inn at Armagh.

At any rate, it is clear that the towns are vastly improved, the cottages and villages no less so; the people look active and well-dressed; a sort of weight seems all at once to be taken from the Englishman’s mind on entering the province, when he finds himself once more looking upon comfort, and activity, and resolution. What is the cause of this improvement? Protestantism is, more than one Church-of-England man said to me; but for Protestantism, would it not be as well to read Scotchism?--meaning thrift, prudence, perseverance, boldness, and common sense, with which qualities any body of men, of any Christian denomination, would no doubt prosper.

The little brisk town of Portadown, with its comfortable unpretending houses, its squares and market-place, its pretty quay with craft along the river,--a steamer building on the dock, close to mills and warehouses that look in a full state of prosperity,--was a pleasant conclusion to this ten miles’ drive, that ended at the newly opened railway-station. The distance hence to Belfast is twenty-five miles; Lough Neagh may be seen at one point of the line, and the Guide-book says that the station towns of Lurgan and Lisburn are extremely picturesque; but it was night when I passed by them, and after a journey of an hour and a quarter reached Belfast.

That city has been discovered by another eminent cockney traveller (for though born in America, the dear old Bow-bell blood must run in the veins of Mr. N. P. Willis), and I have met, in the periodical works of the country, with repeated angry allusions to his description of Belfast, the pink heels of the chambermaid who conducted him to bed (what business had he to be looking at the young woman’s legs at all?), and his wrath at the beggary of the town and the laziness of the inhabitants, as marked by a line of dirt running along the walls, and showing where they were in the habit of lolling.

These observations struck me as rather hard when applied to Belfast, though possibly pink heels and beggary might be remarked in other cities of the kingdom; but the town of Belfast seemed to me really to be as neat, prosperous, and handsome a city as need be seen; and, with respect to the inn, that in which I stayed, (Kearn’s) was as comfortable and well-ordered an establishment as the most fastidious cockney can desire, and with an advantage which some people perhaps do not care for, that the dinners which cost seven shillings at London taverns are here served for half a crown; but I must repeat here, in justice to the public, what I stated to Mr. William the waiter, viz., that half a pint of port wine does contain more than two glasses--at least it does in happy, happy England.... Only, to be sure, here the wine is good, whereas the port wine in England is not port, but, for the most part, an abominable drink of which it would be a mercy only to give us two glasses; which, however, is clearly wandering from the subject in hand.

They call Belfast the Irish Liverpool: if people are for calling names, it would be better to call it the Irish London at once--the chief city of the kingdom, at any rate. It looks hearty, thriving, and prosperous, as if it had money in its pockets and roast beef for dinner: it has no pretensions to fashion, but looks mayhap better in its honest broadcloth than some people in their shabby brocade. The houses are as handsome as at Dublin, with this advantage, that people seem to live in them. They have no attempt at ornament for the most part, but are grave, stout, red-brick edifices, laid out at four angles in orderly streets and squares.

The stranger cannot fail to be struck (and haply a little frightened) by the great number of meeting-houses that decorate the town, and give evidence of great sermonising on Sundays. These buildings do not affect the Gothic, like many of the meagre edifices of the Established and the Roman Catholic churches, but have a physiognomy of their own--a thick-set citizen look. Porticos have they, to be sure, and ornaments Doric, Ionic, and what not; but the meeting-house peeps through all these classical friezes and entablatures; and though one reads of ‘imitations of the Ionic Temple of Ilissus, near Athens,’ the classic temple is made to assume a bluff, downright, Presbyterian air, which would astonish the original builder, doubtless. The churches of the Establishment are handsome and stately;--the Catholics are building a brick cathedral, no doubt of the Tudor style. The present chapel, flanked by the National Schools, is an exceedingly unprepossessing building of the Strawberry Hill or Castle of Otranto Gothic; the keys and mitre figuring in the centre--‘The cross-keys and night-cap,’ as a hard-hearted Presbyterian called them to me, with his blunt humour.

The three churches are here pretty equally balanced--Presbyterians 25,000, Catholics 20,000, Episcopalians 17,000. Each party has two or more newspaper organs; and the wars between them are dire and unceasing, as the reader may imagine. For whereas, in other parts of Ireland where Catholics and Episcopalians prevail, and the Presbyterian body is too small, each party has but one opponent to belabour; here, the Ulster politician, whatever may be his way of thinking, has the great advantage of possessing two enemies on whom he may exercise his eloquence; and in this triangular duel all do their duty nobly. Then there are subdivisions of hostility. For the Church there is a High Church and a Low Church journal; for the Liberals there is a Repeal journal and a No-repeal journal. For the Presbyterians there are yet more varieties of journalist opinion, of which it does not become a stranger to pass a judgment. If the Northern Whig says that the Banner of Ulster ‘is a polluted rag, which has hoisted the red banner of falsehood’ (which elegant words may be found in the first-named journal of the 13th October), let us be sure the Banner has a compliment for the Northern Whig in return; if the Repeal Vindicator and the priests attack the Presbyterian journals and the Home Missions, the reverend gentlemen of Geneva are quite as ready with the pen as their brethren of Rome, and not much more scrupulous in their language than the laity. When I was in Belfast, violent disputes were raging between Presbyterian and Episcopalian Conservatives with regard to the Marriage Bill; between Presbyterians and Catholics on the subject of the Home Missions; between the Liberals and Conservatives, of course. ‘Thank God,’ for instance, writes a Repeal journal, ‘that the honour and power of Ireland are not involved in the disgraceful Afghan war!’--a sentiment insinuating Repeal and something more; disowning, not merely this or that ministry, but the sovereign and her jurisdiction altogether. But details of these quarrels, religious or political, can tend to edify but few readers out of the country. Even in it, as there are some nine shades of politico-religious differences, an observer pretending to impartiality must necessarily displease eight parties, and almost certainly the whole nine; and the reader who desires to judge the politics of Belfast must study for himself. Nine journals, publishing four hundred numbers in a year, each number containing about as much as an octavo volume: these, and the back numbers of former years, sedulously read, will give the student a notion of the subject in question. And then, after having read the statements on either side, he must ascertain the truth of them, by which time more labour of the same kind will have grown upon him, and he will have attained a good old age.

Amongst the poor, the Catholics and Presbyterians are said to go in a pretty friendly manner to the National Schools; but among the Presbyterians themselves it appears there are great differences and quarrels, by which a fine institution, the Belfast Academy, seems to have suffered considerably. It is almost the only building in this large and substantial place that bears, to the stranger’s eye, an unprosperous air. A vast building, standing fairly in the midst of a handsome green and place, and with snug, comfortable red-brick streets stretching away at neat right angles all around, the Presbyterian College looks handsome enough at a short distance, but on a nearer view is found in a woful state of dilapidation. It does not possess the supreme dirt and filth of Maynooth--that can but belong to one place, even in Ireland; but the building is in a dismal state of unrepair, steps and windows broken, doors and stairs battered. Of scholars I saw but a few, and these were in the drawing academy. The fine arts do not appear as yet to flourish in Belfast. The models from which the lads were copying were not good: one was copying a bad copy of a drawing by Prout; one was colouring a print. The ragged children in a German National School have better models before them, and are made acquainted with truer principles of art and beauty.

Hard by is the Belfast Museum, where an exhibition of pictures was in preparation, under the patronage of the Belfast Art Union. Artists in all parts of the kingdom had been invited to send their works, of which the Union pays the carriage; and the porters and secretary were busy unpacking cases, in which I recognised some of the works which had before figured on the walls of the London Exhibition rooms.

The book-shops which I saw in this thriving town said much for the religions disposition of the Belfast public: there were numerous portraits of reverend gentlemen, and their works of every variety:--The Sinners’ Friend, The Watchman on the Tower, The Peep of Day, Sermons delivered at Bethesda Chapel, by so-and-so; with hundreds of the neat little gilt books with bad prints, scriptural titles, and gilt edges, that came from one or two serious publishing houses in London, and in considerable numbers from the neighbouring Scotch shores. As for the Theatre, with such a public the drama can be expected to find but little favour; and the gentleman who accompanied me in my walk, and to whom I am indebted for many kindnesses during my stay, said not only that he had never been in the playhouse, but that he never heard of any one going thither. I found out the place where the poor neglected dramatic Muse of Ulster hid herself; and was of a party of six in the boxes, the benches of the pit being dotted over with about a score more. Well, it was a comfort to see that the gallery was quite full, and exceedingly happy and noisy: they stamped, and stormed, and shouted, and clapped, in a way that was pleasant to hear. One young god, between the acts, favoured the public with a song--extremely ill sung, certainly, but the intention was everything; and his brethren above stamped in chorus with roars of delight.

As for the piece performed, it was a good old melodrama of the British sort, inculcating a thorough detestation of vice and a warm sympathy with suffering virtue. The serious are surely too hard upon poor playgoers. We never for a moment allow rascality to triumph beyond a certain part of the third act; we sympathise with the woes of young lovers--her in ringlets and a Polish cap, him in tights and a Vandyke collar; we abhor avarice or tyranny in the person of ‘the first old man’ with the white wig and red stockings, or of the villain with the roaring voice and black whiskers; we applaud the honest wag (he is a good fellow in spite of his cowardice) in his hearty jests at the tyrant before mentioned; and feel a kindly sympathy with all mankind as the curtain falls over all the characters in a group, of which successful love is the happy centre. Reverend gentlemen in meeting-house and church, who shout against the immoralities of this poor stage, and threaten all playgoers with the fate which is awarded to unsuccessful plays, should try and bear less hardly upon us.

An artist, who, in spite of the Art Union, can scarcely, I should think, flourish in a place that seems devoted to preaching, politics, and trade, has somehow found his way to this humble little theatre, and decorated it with some exceedingly pretty scenery--almost the only indication of a taste for the fine arts which I have found as yet in the country.

A fine night-exhibition in the town is that of the huge spinning-mills which surround it, and of which the thousand windows are lighted up at nightfall, and may be seen from almost all quarters of the city.

A gentleman to whom I had brought an introduction good-naturedly left his work to walk with me to one of these mills, and stated by whom he had been introduced to me to the mill-proprietor, Mr. Mulholland. ‘That recommendation,’ said Mr. Mulholland gallantly, ‘is welcome anywhere.’ It was from my kind friend Mr. Lever. What a privilege some men have, who can sit quietly in their studies and make friends all the world over!

Here is the figure of a girl sketched in the place; there are nearly five hundred girls employed in it. They work in huge long chambers, lighted by numbers of windows, hot with steam, buzzing and humming with hundreds of thousands of whirling wheels, that all take their motion from a steam-engine which lives apart in a hot cast-iron temple of its own, from which it communicates with the innumerable machines that the five hundred girls preside over. They have seemingly but to take away the work when done--the enormous monster in the cast-iron room does it all. He cards the flax, and combs it, and spins it, and beats it, and twists it; the five hundred girls stand by to feed him, or take the material from him, when he has had his will of it. There is something frightful in the vastness as in the minuteness of this power. Every thread writhes and twirls as the steam-fate orders it,--every thread, of which it would take a hundred to make the thickness of a hair.

I have seldom, I think, seen more good looks than amongst the young women employed in this place. They work for twelve hours daily, in rooms of which the heat is intolerable to a stranger; but in spite of it they looked gay, stout, and healthy; nor were their forms much concealed by the very simple clothes they wear while in the mill.

The stranger will be struck by the good looks not only of these spinsters, but of almost all the young women in the streets. I never saw a town where so many women are to be met--so many and so pretty--with and without bonnets, with good figures, in neat homely shawls and dresses. The grisettes of Belfast are among the handsomest ornaments of it; and as good, no doubt, and irreproachable in morals as their sisters in the rest of Ireland.

Many of the merchants’ counting-houses are crowded in little old-fashioned ‘entries,’ or courts, such as one sees about the Bank in London. In and about these, and in the principal streets in the daytime, is a great activity, and homely unpretending bustle. The men have a business look too, and one sees very few flaunting dandies, as in Dublin. The shopkeepers do not brag upon their signboards, or keep ‘emporiums,’ as elsewhere,--their places of business being for the most part homely; though one may see some splendid shops, which are not to be surpassed by London. The docks and quays are busy with their craft and shipping, upon the beautiful borders of the Lough;--the large red warehouses stretching along the shores, with ships loading, or unloading, or building, hammers clanging, pitch-pots flaming and boiling, seamen cheering in the ships, or lolling lazily on the shore. The life and movement of a port here give the stranger plenty to admire and observe. And nature has likewise done everything for the place--surrounding it with picturesque hills and water;--for which latter I must confess I was not very sorry to leave the town behind me, and its mills, and its meeting-houses, and its commerce, and its theologians, and its politicians.

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XXVIII. BELFAST TO THE CAUSEWAY

The Lough of Belfast has a reputation for beauty almost as great as that of the Bay of Dublin; but though, on the day I left Belfast for Larne, the morning was fine, and the sky clear and blue above, an envious mist lay on the water, which hid all its beauties from the dozen of passengers on the Larne coach. All we could see were ghostly-looking silhouettes of ships gliding here and there through the clouds; and I am sure the coachman’s remark was quite correct, that it was a pity the day was so misty. I found myself, before I was aware, entrapped into a theological controversy with two grave gentlemen outside the coach--another fog, which did not subside much before we reached Carrickfergus. The road from the Ulster capital to that little town seemed meanwhile to be extremely lively; cars and omnibuses passed thickly peopled. For some miles along the road is a string of handsome country-houses, belonging to the rich citizens of the town; and we passed by neat-looking churches and chapels, factories and rows of cottages clustered round them, like villages of old at the foot of feudal castles. Furthermore it was hard to see, for the mist which lay on the water had enveloped the mountains too, and we only had a glimpse or two of smiling comfortable fields and gardens.

Carrickfergus rejoices in a real romantic-looking castle jutting bravely into the sea, and famous as a background for a picture. It is of use for little else now, luckily, nor has it been put to any real warlike purposes since the day when honest Thurot stormed, took, and evacuated it. Let any romancer who is in want of a hero peruse the second volume, or it may be the third, of the Annual Register, where the adventures of that gallant fellow are related. He was a gentleman, a genius, and, to crown all, a smuggler. He lived for some time in Ireland, and in England, in disguise; he had love-passages and romantic adventures; he landed a body of his countrymen on these shores, and died in the third volume, after a battle gallantly fought on both sides, but in which victory rested with the British arms. What can a novelist want more? William III. also landed here; and as for the rest, ‘M’Skimin, the accurate and laborious historian of the town, informs us that the founding of the castle is lost in the depths of antiquity.’ It is pleasant to give a little historic glance at a place as one passes through. The above facts may be relied on as coming from Messrs. Curry’s excellent new Guide-book, with the exception of the history of Mons. Thurot, which is ‘private information,’ drawn years ago from the scarce work previously mentioned. By the way, another excellent companion to the traveller in Ireland is the collection of the Irish Penny Magazine, which may be purchased for a guinea, and contains a mass of information regarding the customs and places of the country. Willis’s work is amusing, as everything is, written by that lively author, and the engravings accompanying it as unfaithful as any ever made.

Meanwhile, asking pardon for this double digression, which has been made while the guard-coachman is delivering his mail-bags--while the landlady stands looking on in the sun, her hands folded a little below the waist--while a company of tall burly troops from the castle has passed by, ‘surrounded’ by a very mean, mealy-faced, uneasy-looking little subaltern--while the poor, epileptic idiot of the town, wallowing and grinning in the road, and snorting out supplications for a halfpenny, has tottered away in possession of the coin;--meanwhile, fresh horses are brought out, and the small boy who acts behind the coach, makes an unequal and disagreeable tootooing on a horn kept to warn sleepy carmen and celebrate triumphal entries into and exits from cities. As the mist clears up, the country shows round about wild but friendly; at one place we passed a village where a crowd of well-dressed people were collected at an auction of farm-furniture, and many more figures might be seen coming over the fields and issuing from the mist. The owner of the carts and machines is going to emigrate to America. Presently we come to the demesne of Red Hall, ‘through which is a pretty drive of upwards of a mile in length: it contains a rocky glen, the bed of a mountain stream--which is perfectly dry, except in winter--and the woods about it are picturesque, and it is occasionally the resort of summer-parties of pleasure.’ Nothing can be more just than the first part of the description, and there is very little doubt that the latter paragraph is equally faithful;--with which we come to Larne, a ‘most thriving town,’ the same authority says, but a most dirty and narrow-streeted and ill-built one. Some of the houses reminded one of the south, as thus--

A benevolent fellow-passenger said that the window was ‘a convanience’; and here, after a drive of nineteen miles upon a comfortable coach, we were transferred with the mail-bags to a comfortable car that makes the journey to Ballycastle. There is no harm in saying that there was a very pretty smiling buxom young lass for a travelling companion; and somehow, to a lonely person, the landscape always looks prettier in such society. The ‘Antrim coast road,’ which we now, after a few miles, begin to follow, besides being one of the most noble and gallant works of art that is to be seen in any country, is likewise a route highly picturesque and romantic; the sea spreading wide before the spectator’s eyes upon one side of the route;--the tall cliffs of limestone rising abruptly above him on the other. There are in the map of Curry’s Guide-book points indicating castle and abbey ruins in the vicinity of Glenarm; and the little place looked so comfortable as we abruptly came upon it round a rock, that I was glad to have an excuse for staying, and felt an extreme curiosity with regard to the abbey and the castle.

The abbey only exists in the unromantic shape of a wall; the castle, however, far from being a ruin, is an antique in the most complete order--an old castle repaired so as to look like new, and increased by modern wings, towers, gables, and terraces, so extremely old that the whole forms a grand and imposing-looking baronial edifice, towering above the little town which it seems to protect, and with which it is connected by a bridge and a severe-looking armed tower and gate. In the town is a town-house, with a campanile in the Italian taste, and a school or chapel opposite, in the Early English; so that the inhabitants can enjoy a considerable architectural variety. A grave-looking church, with a beautiful steeple, stands amid some trees hard by a second handsome bridge and the little quay; and here, too, was perched a poor little wandering theatre (gallery 1d., pit 2d.), and proposing that night to play ‘Bombastes Furioso, and the Comic Bally of Glenarm in an Uproar.’ I heard the thumping of the drum in the evening; but, as at Roundwood, nobody patronised the poor players: at nine o’clock there was not a single taper lighted under their awning, and my heart (perhaps it is too susceptible) bled for Fusbos.

The severe gate of the castle was opened by a kind, good-natured old porteress, instead of a rough gallowglass with a battle-axe and yellow shirt (more fitting guardian of so stern a postern), and the old dame insisted upon my making an application to see the grounds of the castle, which request was very kindly granted, and afforded a delightful half-hour’s walk. The grounds are beautiful, and excellently kept; the trees in their autumn livery of red, yellow, and brown, except some stout ones that keep to their green summer clothes, and the laurels and their like, who wear pretty much the same dress all the year round. The birds were singing with most astonishing vehemence in the dark glistening shrubberies; but the only sound in the walks was that of the rakes pulling together the falling leaves. There was of these walks one especially, flanked towards the river by a turreted wall covered with ivy, and having on the one side a row of lime-trees that had turned quite yellow, while opposite them was a green slope, and a quaint terrace-stair, and a long range of fantastic gables, towers, and chimneys;--there was, I say, one of these walks which Mr. Cattermole would hit off with a few strokes of his gallant pencil, and which I could fancy to be frequented by some of those long-trained, tender, gentle-looking young beauties whom Mr. Stone loves to design. Here they come talking of love in a tone that is between a sigh and a whisper, and gliding in rustling shot silks over the fallen leaves.

There seemed to be a good deal of stir in the little port, where, says the Guide-book, a couple of hundred vessels take in cargoes annually of the produce of the district. Stone and lime are the chief articles exported, of which the cliffs for miles give an unfailing supply; and, as one travels the mountains at night, the kilns may be seen lighted up in the lonely places, and flaring red in the darkness.

If the road from Larne to Glenarm is beautiful, the coast route from the latter place to Cushendall is still more so; and, except peerless Westport, I have seen nothing in Ireland so picturesque as this noble line of coast-scenery. The new road, luckily, is not yet completed, and the lover of natural beauties had better hasten to the spot in time, ere, by flattening and improving the road, and leading it along the sea-shore, half the magnificent prospects are shut out, now visible from along the mountainous old road; which, according to the good old fashion, gallantly takes all the hills in its course, disdaining to turn them. At three miles’ distance, near the village of Cairlough, Glenarm looks more beautiful than when you are close upon it; and, as the car travels on to the stupendous Garron Head, the traveller, looking back, has a view of the whole line of coast southward as far as Isle Magee, with its bays and white villages, and tall precipitous cliffs, green, white, and grey. Eyes left, you may look with wonder at the mountains rising above, or presently at the pretty park and grounds of Drumnasole. Here, near the woods of Nappan, which are dressed in ten thousand colours--ash-leaves turned yellow, nut-trees red, birch-leaves brown, lime-leaves speckled over with black spots (marks of a disease which they will never get over)--stands a school-house that looks like a French château, having probably been a villa in former days, and discharges, as we pass, a cluster of fair-haired children that begin running madly down the hill, their fair hair streaming behind them. Down the hill goes the car madly too, and you wonder and bless your stars that the horse does not fall, or crush the children that are running before, or you that are sitting behind. Every now and then, at a trip of the horse, a disguised lady’s-maid, with a canary-bird in her lap and a vast anxiety about her best bonnet in the bandbox, begins to scream; at which the car-boy grins, and rattles down the hill only the quicker. The road, which almost always skirts the hillside, has been torn sheer through the rock here and there; and immense work of levelling, shovelling, picking, blasting, filling, is going on along the whole line. As I was looking up a vast cliff, decorated with patches of green here and there at its summit, and at its base, where the sea had beaten until now, with long, thin, waving grass, that I told a grocer, my neighbour, was like mermaids’ hair (though he did not in the least coincide in the simile)--as I was looking up the hill, admiring two goats that were browsing on a little patch of green, and two sheep perched yet higher (I had never seen such agility in mutton)--as, I say once more, I was looking at these phenomena, the grocer nudges me and says, ‘Look on to this side--that’s Scotland yon,’ If ever this book reaches a second edition, a sonnet shall be inserted in this place, describing the author’s feelings on HIS FIRST VIEW OF SCOTLAND. Meanwhile, the Scotch mountains remain undisturbed, looking blue and solemn far away in the placid sea.

Rounding Garron Head, we come upon the inlet which is called Red Bay, the shores and sides of which are of red clay, that has taken the place of limestone, and towards which, between two noble ranges of mountains, stretches a long green plain, forming, together with the hills that protect it and the sea that washes it, one of the most beautiful landscapes of this most beautiful country. A fair writer, whom the Guide-book quotes, breaks out into strains of admiration in speaking of this district; calls it ‘Switzerland in miniature,’ celebrates its mountains of Glenariff and Lurgethan, and lauds, in terms of equal admiration, the rivers, waterfalls, and other natural beauties that lie within the glen.

The writer’s enthusiasm regarding this tract of country is quite warranted, nor can any praise in admiration of it be too high; but alas! in calling a place ‘Switzerland in miniature,’ do we describe it? In joining together cataracts, valleys, rushing streams, and blue mountains, with all the emphasis and picturesqueness of which type is capable, we cannot get near to a copy of Nature’s sublime countenance; and the writer can’t hope to describe such grand sights so as to make them visible to the fireside reader, but can only, to the best of his taste and experience, warn the future traveller where he may look out for objects to admire. I think this sentiment has been repeated a score of times in this journal; but it comes upon one at every new display of beauty and magnificence, such as here the Almighty in His bounty has set before us; and every such scene seems to warn one, that it is not made to talk about too much, but to think of, and love, and be grateful for.

Rounding this beautiful bay and valley, we passed by some caves that penetrate deep into the red rock, and are inhabited--one by a blacksmith, whose forge was blazing in the dark; one by cattle; and one by an old woman that has sold whisky here for time out of mind. The road then passes under an arch cut in the rock by the same spirited individual who has cleared away many of the difficulties in the route to Glenarm, and beside a conical hill, where for some time previous have been visible the ruins of the ‘ancient ould castle’ of Red Bay. At a distance, it looks very grand upon its height; but on coming close it has dwindled down to a mere wall, and not a high one. Hence, quickly we reach Cushendall, where the grocer’s family are on the look-out for him; the driver begins to blow his little bugle, and the disguised lady’s-maid begins to smooth her bonnet and hair.

At this place a good dinner of fresh whiting, broiled bacon, and small beer was served up to me for the sum of eightpence, while the lady’s-maid in question took her tea. ‘This town is full of Papists,’ said her ladyship, with an extremely genteel air; and, either in consequence of this, or because she ate up one of the fish, which she had clearly no right to, a disagreement arose between us, and we did not exchange another word for the rest of the journey. The road led us for fourteen miles by wild mountains, and across a fine aqueduct to Ballycastle; but it was dark as we left Cushendall, and it was difficult to see more in the grey evening but that the country was savage and lonely, except where the kilns were lighted up here and there in the hills, and a shining river might be seen winding in the dark ravines. Not far from Ballycastle lies a little old ruin, called the Abbey of Bonamargy: by it the Margy river runs into the sea, upon which you come suddenly; and on the shore are some tall buildings and factories, that looked as well in the moonlight as if they had not been in ruins; and hence a fine avenue of limes leads to Ballycastle. They must have been planted at the time recorded in the Guide-book, when a mine was discovered near the town, and the works and warehouses on the quay erected. At present, the place has little trade, and half a dozen carts with apples, potatoes, dried fish, and turf, seem to contain the commerce of the market.

The picturesque sort of vehicle which is here designed, is said to be going much out of fashion in the country, the solid wheels giving place to those common to the rest of Europe. A fine and edifying conversation took place between the designer and the owner of the vehicle. ‘Stand still for a minute, you and the car, and I will give you twopence!’ ‘What do you want to do with it?’ says the latter. ‘To draw it.’ ‘To draw it?’ says he, with a wild look of surprise, ‘and is it you’ll draw it?’ ‘I mean, I want to take a picture of it; you know what a picture is?’ ‘No, I don’t.’ ‘Here’s one,’ says I, showing him a book. ‘Oh, faith, sir,’ says the carman, drawing back rather alarmed, ‘I’m no scholar!’ And he concluded by saying, ‘Will you buy the turf, or will you not? by which straightforward question he showed himself to be a real practical man of sense; and, as he got an unsatisfactory reply to this query, he forthwith gave a lash to his pony, and declined to wait a minute longer. As for the twopence, he certainly accepted that handsome sum, and put it into his pocket, but with an air of extreme wonder at the transaction, and of contempt for the giver, which very likely was perfectly justifiable. I have seen men despised in genteel companies with not half so good a cause.

In respect to the fine arts, I am bound to say that the people in the south and west showed much more curiosity and interest with regard to a sketch and its progress than has been shown by the badauds of the north; the former looking on by dozens, and exclaiming, ‘That’s Frank Mahony’s house!’ or, ‘Look at Biddy Mullins and the child!’ or ‘He’s taking off the chimney now!’ as the case may be; whereas, sketching in the north, I have collected no such spectators, the people not taking the slightest notice of the transaction.

The little town of Ballycastle does not contain much to occupy the traveller: behind the church stands a ruined old mansion with round turrets, that must have been a stately tower in former days. The town is more modern, but almost as dismal as the tower. A little street behind it slides off into a potato-field--the peaceful barrier of the place; and hence I could see the tall rock of Bengore, with the sea beyond it, and a pleasing landscape stretching towards it.

Dr. Hamilton’s elegant and learned book has an awful picture of yonder head of Bengore; and hard by it the Guide-book says is a coal-mine, where Mr. Barrow found a globular stone hammer, which, he infers, was used in the coal-mine before weapons of iron were invented. The former writer insinuates that the mine must have been worked more than a thousand years ago, ‘before the turbulent chaos of events that succeeded the eighth century.’ Shall I go and see a coal-mine that may have been worked a thousand years since? Why go see it? says idleness. To be able to say that I have seen it. Sheridan’s advice to his son here came into my mind;[32] and I shall reserve a description of the mine, and an antiquarian dissertation regarding it, for publication elsewhere.

Ballycastle must not be left without recording the fact that one of the snuggest inns in the country is kept by the postmaster there; who has also a stable full of good horses for travellers who take his little inn on the way to the Giant’s Causeway.

The road to the Causeway is bleak, wild, and hilly. The cabins along the road are scarcely better than those of Kerry, the inmates as ragged, and more fierce and dark-looking. I never was so pestered by juvenile beggars as in the dismal village of Ballintoy. A crowd of them rushed after the car, calling for money in a fierce manner, as if it was their right; dogs as fierce as the children came yelling after the vehicle; and the faces which scowled out of the black cabins were not a whit more good-humoured. We passed by one or two more clumps of cabins, with their turf and corn-stacks lying together at the foot of the hills; placed there for the convenience of the children, doubtless, who can thus accompany the car either way, and shriek out their ‘Bonny gantleman, gie us a hap’ny.’ A couple of churches, one with a pair of its pinnacles blown off, stood in the dismal open country, and a gentleman’s house here and there: there were no trees about them, but a brown grass round about--hills rising and falling in front, and the sea beyond. The occasional view of the coast was noble; wild Bengore towering eastwards as we went along; Raghery Island before us, in the steep rocks and caves of which Bruce took shelter when driven from yonder Scottish coast, that one sees stretching blue in the north-east.

I think this wild gloomy tract through which one passes is a good prelude for what is to be the great sight of the day, and got my mind to a proper state of awe by the time we were near the journey’s end; and turning away shorewards by the fine house of Sir Francis Macnaghten, went towards a lone handsome inn, that stands close to the Causeway. The landlord at Ballycastle had lent me Hamilton’s book, to read on the road; but I had not time then to read more than half a dozen pages of it. They described how the author, a clergyman distinguished as a man of science, had been thrust out of a friend’s house by the frightened servants one wild night, and butchered by some White Boys, who were waiting outside, and called for his blood. I had been told at Belfast that there was a corpse in the inn: was it there now? It had driven off, the car-boy said, ‘in a handsome hearse and four to Dublin the whole way.’ It was gone, but I thought the house looked as if the ghost was there. See, yonder are the black rocks stretching to Portrush; how leaden and grey the sea looks! how grey and leaden the sky! You hear the waters roaring evermore, as they have done since the beginning of the world. The car drives up with a dismal grinding noise of the wheels to the big lone house; there’s no smoke in the chimneys; the doors are locked; three savage-looking men rush after the car: are they the men who took out Mr. Hamilton--took him out and butchered him in the moonlight? Is everybody, I wonder, dead in that big house? Will they let us in before those men are up? Out comes a pretty smiling girl, with a curtsey, just as the savages are at the car, and you are ushered into a very comfortable room; and the men turn out to be guides. Well, thank Heaven it’s no worse! I had fifteen pounds still left; and, when desperate, have no doubt should fight like a lion.

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XXIX. THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY--COLERAINE--PORTRUSH

The traveller no sooner issues from the inn by a back door, which he is informed will lead him straight to the Causeway, than the guides pounce upon him, with a dozen rough boatmen who are likewise lying in wait; and a crew of shrill beggar-boys, with boxes of spars, ready to tear him and each other to pieces seemingly, yell and bawl incessantly round him. ‘I’m the guide Miss Henry recommends,’ shouts one. ‘I’m Mr. Macdonald’s guide,’ pushes in another. ‘This way,’ roars a third, and drags his prey down a precipice; the rest of them clambering and quarrelling after. I had no friends: I was perfectly helpless. I wanted to walk down to the shore by myself, but they would not let me, and I had nothing for it but to yield myself into the hands of the guide who had seized me, who hurried me down the steep to a little wild bay, flanked on each side by rugged cliffs and rocks, against which the waters came tumbling, frothing, and roaring furiously. Upon some of these black rocks two or three boats were lying: four men seized a boat, pushed it shouting into the water, and ravished me into it. We had slid between two rocks, where the channel came gurgling in; we were up one swelling wave that came in a huge advancing body ten feet above us, and were plunging madly down another (the descent causes a sensation in the lower regions of the stomach which it is not at all necessary here to describe), before I had leisure to ask myself why the deuce I was in that boat, with four rowers hurrooing and bounding madly from one huge liquid mountain to another--four rowers whom I was bound to pay. I say, the query came qualmishly across me why the devil I was there, and why not walking calmly on the shore.

The guide began pouring his professional jargon into my ears. ‘Every one of them bays,’ says he, ‘has a name (take my place, and the spray won’t come over you): that is Port Noffer, and the next, Port na Gange; them rocks is the Stookawns (for every rock has his name as well as every bay); and yonder--give way, my boys,--hurray, we’re over it now; has it wet you much, sir?--that’s the little cave; it goes five hundred feet under ground, and the boats goes in it easy of a calm day.’

‘Is it a fine day or a rough one now?’ said I; the internal disturbance going on with more severity than ever.

‘It’s betwixt and between; or, I may say, neither one nor the other. Sit up, sir; look at the entrance of the cave: don’t be afraid, sir; never has an accident happened in any one of these boats, and the most delicate ladies has rode in them on rougher days than this. Now, boys, pull to the big cave; that, sir, is six hundred and sixty yards in length, though some says it goes for miles inland, where the people sleeping in their houses hears the waters roaring under them.’

The water was tossing and tumbling into the mouth of the little cave. I looked,--for the guide would not let me alone till I did,--and saw what might be expected: a black hole of some forty feet high, into which it was no more possible to see than into a millstone. ‘For Heaven’s sake, sir,’ says I, ‘if you’ve no particular wish to see the mouth of the big cave, put about and let us see the Causeway and get ashore.’ This was done, the guide meanwhile telling some story of a ship of the Spanish Armada having fired her guns at two peaks of rock, then visible, which the crew mistook for chimney-pots--what benighted fools these Spanish Armadilloes must have been--it is easier to see a rock than a chimney-pot; it is easy to know that chimney-pots do not grow on rocks:--but where, if you please, is the Causeway?

‘That’s the Causeway before you,’ says the guide.

‘Which?’

‘That pier which you see jutting out into the bay right ahead.’

‘Mon Dieu! and have I travelled a hundred and fifty miles to see that?’

I declare, upon my conscience, the barge moored at Hungerford Market is a more majestic object, and seems to occupy as must space. As for telling a man that the Causeway is merely a part of the sight; that he is there for the purpose of examining the surrounding scenery; that if he looks to the westward he will see Portrush and Donegal Head before him; that the cliffs immediately in his front are green in some places, black in others, interspersed with blotches of brown and streaks of verdure;--what is all this to a lonely individual lying sick in a boat, between two immense waves that only give him momentary glimpses of the land in question, to show that it is frightfully near, and yet you are an hour from it? They won’t let you go away--that cursed guide will tell out his stock of legends and stories. The boatmen insist upon your looking at boxes of ‘specimens,’ which you must buy of them; they laugh as you grow paler and paler; they offer you more and more ‘specimens’; even the dirty lad who pulls number three, and is not allowed by his comrades to speak, puts in his oar, and hands you over a piece of Irish diamond (it looks like half-sucked alicompayne), and scorns you. ‘Hurray, lads, now for it, give way!’ how the oars do hurtle in the rullocks, as the boat goes up an aqueous mountain, and then down into one of those cursed maritime valleys where there is no rest as on shore!

At last, after they had pulled me enough about, and sold me all the boxes of specimens, I was permitted to land at the spot whence we set out, and whence, though we had been rowing for an hour, we had never been above five hundred yards distant. Let all cockneys take warning from this; let the solitary one caught issuing from the back door of the hotel, shout at once to the boatmen to be gone--that he will have none of them. Let him, at any rate, go first down to the water to determine whether it be smooth enough to allow him to take any decent pleasure by riding on its surface. For after all, it must be remembered that it is pleasure we come for--that we are not obliged to take those boats.--Well, well! I paid ten shillings for mine, and ten minutes before would cheerfully have paid five pounds to be allowed to quit it; it was no hard bargain after all. As for the boxes of spar and specimens, I at once, being on terra firma, broke my promise, and said I would see them all ---- first. It is wrong to swear, I know; but sometimes it relieves one so much!

The first act on shore was to make a sacrifice to Sanctissima Tellus; offering up to her a neat and becoming Taglioni coat, bought for a guinea in Covent Garden only three months back. I sprawled on my back on the smoothest of rocks that is, and tore the elbows to pieces: the guide picked me up; the boatmen did not stir, for they had had their will of me; the guide alone picked me up, I say, and bade me follow him. We went across a boggy ground in one of the little bays, round which rise the green walls of the cliff, terminated on either side by a black crag, and the line of the shore washed by the poluphlosboiotic, nay, the poluphlosboiotatotic sea. Two beggars stepped over the bog after us, howling for money, and each holding up a cursed box of specimens. No oaths, threats, entreaties, would drive this vermin away; for some time the whole scene had been spoilt by the incessant and abominable jargon of them, the boatmen, and the guides. I was obliged to give them money to be left in quiet, and if, as no doubt will be the case, the Giant’s Causeway shall be a still greater resort of travellers than ever, the county must put policemen on the rocks to keep the beggars away, or fling them in the water when they appear.

And now, by force of money, having got rid of the sea and land beggars, you are at liberty to examine at your leisure the wonders of the place. There is not the least need for a guide to attend the stranger, unless the latter have a mind to listen to a parcel of legends, which may be well from the mouth of a wild simple peasant who believes in his tales, but are odious from a dullard who narrates them at the rate of sixpence a lie. Fee him and the other beggars, and at last you are left tranquil to look at the strange scene with your own eyes, and enjoy your own thoughts at leisure.

That is, if the thoughts awakened by such a scene may be called enjoyment; but for me, I confess, they are too near akin to fear to be pleasant; and I don’t know that I would desire to change that sensation of awe and terror which the hour’s walk occasioned, for a greater familiarity with this wild, sad, lonely place. The solitude is awful. I can’t understand how those chattering guides dare to lift up their voices here, and cry for money.

It looks like the beginning of the world, somehow: the sea looks older than in other places, the hills and rocks strange, and formed differently from other rocks and hills--as those vast dubious monsters were formed who possessed the earth before man. The hilltops are shattered into a thousand cragged fantastical shapes; the water comes swelling into scores of little strange creeks, or goes off with a leap, roaring into those mysterious caves yonder, which penetrate who knows how far into our common world. The savage rock-sides are painted of a hundred colours. Does the sun ever shine here? When the world was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the bit over--a remnant of chaos! Think of that!--it is a tailor’s simile. Well, I am a cockney: I wish I were in Pall Mall! Yonder is a kelp-burner: a lurid smoke from his burning kelp rises up to the leaden sky, and he looks as naked and fierce as Cain. Bubbling up out of the rocks at the very brim of the sea rises a little crystal spring: how comes it there? and there is an old grey hag beside it, who has been there for hundreds and hundreds of years, and there sits and sells whisky at the extremity of creation! How do you dare to sell whisky there, old woman? Did you serve old Saturn with a glass when he lay along the Causeway here? In reply, she says, she has no change for a shilling: she never has; but her whisky is good.

This is not a description of the Giant’s Causeway (as some clever critic will remark), but of a Londoner there, who is by no means so interesting an object as the natural curiosity in question. That single hint is sufficient; I have not a word more to say. ‘If,’ says he, ‘you cannot describe the scene lying before us--if you cannot state from your personal observation that the number of basaltic pillars composing the Causeway has been computed at about forty thousand, which vary in diameter, their surface presenting the appearance of a tesselated pavement of polygonal stones--that each pillar is formed of several distinct joints, the concave end of the one being accurately fitted into the concave of the next, and the length of the joints varying from five feet to four inches--that although the pillars are polygonal, there is but one of three sides in the whole forty thousand (think of that!), but three of nine sides, and that it may be safely computed that ninety-nine out of one hundred pillars have either five, six, or seven sides;--if you cannot state something useful, you had much better, sir, retire and get your dinner.’

Never was summons more gladly obeyed. The dinner must be ready by this time; so, remain you, and look on at the awful scene, and copy it down in words if you can. If at the end of the trial you are dissatisfied with your skill as a painter, and find that the biggest of your words cannot render the hues and vastness of that tremendous swelling sea--of those lean solitary crags standing rigid along the shore, where they have been watching the ocean ever since it was made--of those grey towers of Dunluce standing upon a leaden rock, and looking as if some old, old princess, of old, old fairy times, were dragon-guarded within--of yon flat stretches of sand where the Scotch and Irish mermaids hold conference--come away too, and prate no more about the scene! There is that in nature, dear Jenkins, which passes even our powers. We can feel the beauty of a magnificent landscape, perhaps; but we can describe a leg of mutton and turnips better. Come, then, this scene is for our betters to depict. If Mr. Tennyson were to come hither for a month, and brood over the place, he might, in some of those lofty heroic lines which the author of the ‘Morte d’Arthur’ knows how to pile up, convey to the reader a sense of this gigantic desolate scene. What! you too are a poet? Well then, Jenkins, stay! but believe me, you had best take my advice, and come off.

* * * * *

The worthy landlady made her appearance with the politest of bows and an apology,--for what does the reader think a lady should apologise in the most lonely rude spot in the world?--because a plain servant-woman was about to bring in the dinner, the waiter being absent on leave at Coleraine! O heaven and earth! where will the genteel end? I replied philosophically that I did not care twopence for the plainness or beauty of the waiter, but that it was the dinner I looked to, the frying whereof made a great noise in the huge lonely house; and it must be said, that though the lady was plain, the repast was exceedingly good. ‘I have expended my little all,’ says the landlady, stepping in with a speech after dinner, ‘in the building of this establishment; and though to a man its profits may appear small, to such a being as I am it will bring, I trust, a sufficient return’; and on my asking her why she took the place, she replied that she had always, from her earliest youth, a fancy to dwell in that spot, and had accordingly realised her wish by building this hotel--this mausoleum. In spite of the bright fire, and the good dinner, and the good wine, it was impossible to feel comfortable in the place; and when the car-wheels were heard, I jumped up with joy to take my departure and forget the awful lonely shore, that wild, dismal, genteel inn. A ride over a wide gusty country, in a grey, misty, half-moonlight, the loss of a wheel at Bushmills, and the escape from a tumble, were the delightful varieties after the late awful occurrences. ‘Such a being’ as I am, would die of loneliness in that hotel; and so let all brother cockneys be warned.

Some time before we came to it, we saw the long line of mist that lay above the Bann, and coming through a dirty suburb of low cottages, passed down a broad street with gas and lamps in it (thank Heaven, there are people once more!), and at length drove up in state, across a gas-pipe, in a market-place, before an hotel in the town of Coleraine, famous for linen and for Beautiful Kitty, who must be old and ugly now, for it’s a good five-and-thirty years since she broke her pitcher, according to Mr. Moore’s account of her. The scene as we entered the Diamond was rather a lively one--a score of little stalls were brilliant with lights; the people were thronging in the place making their Saturday bargains; the town clock began to toll nine; and hark! faithful to a minute, the horn of the Derry mail was heard tootooing, and four commercial gentlemen, with Scotch accents, rushed into the hotel at the same time with myself.

Among the beauties of Coleraine may be mentioned the price of beef, which a gentleman told me may be had for fourpence a pound; and I saw him purchase an excellent codfish for a shilling. I am bound, too, to state, for the benefit of aspiring Radicals, what two Conservative citizens of the place stated to me, viz.:--that though there were two Conservative candidates then canvassing the town, on account of a vacancy in the representation, the voters were so truly liberal that they would elect any person of any other political creed, who would simply bring money enough to purchase their votes. There are 220 voters, it appears; of whom it is not, however, necessary to ‘argue’ with more than fifty, who alone are open to conviction; but as parties are pretty equally balanced, the votes of the quinquagint, of course, carry an immense weight with them. Well, this is all discussed calmly standing on an inn steps, with a jolly landlord and a professional man of the town to give the information. So, Heaven bless us, the ways of London are beginning to be known even here. Gentility has already taken up her seat in the Giant’s Causeway, where she apologises for the plainness of her look; and, lo! here is bribery as bold as in the most civilised places--hundreds and hundreds of miles away from St. Stephen’s and Pall Mall. I wonder, in that little island of Raghery, so wild and lonely, whether civilisation is beginning to dawn upon them?--whether they bribe and are genteel? But for the rough sea of yesterday, I think I would have fled thither to make the trial.

The town of Coleraine, with a number of cabin suburbs belonging to it, lies picturesquely grouped on the Bann river; and the whole of the little city was echoing with psalms as I walked through it on the Sunday morning. The piety of the people seems remarkable; some of the inns even will not receive travellers on Sunday; and this is written in an hotel, of which every room is provided with a Testament, containing an injunction on the part of the landlord to consider this world itself as only a passing abode. Is it well that Boniface should furnish his guest with Bibles as well as bills, and sometimes shut his door on a traveller, who has no other choice but to read it on a Sunday? I heard of a gentleman arriving from shipboard at Kilrush on a Sunday, when the pious hotel-keeper refused him admittance; and some more tales, which to go into would require the introduction of private names and circumstances, but would tend to show that the Protestant of the north is as much priest-ridden as the Catholic of the south;--priest and old-woman-ridden, for there are certain expounders of doctrine in our Church, who are not, I believe, to be found in the Church of Rome; and woe betide the stranger who comes to settle in these parts, if his ‘seriousness’ be not satisfactory to the heads (with false fronts to most of them) of the congregations.

Look at that little snug harbour of Portrush; a hideous new castle standing on a rock protects it on one side, a snug row of gentlemen’s cottages curve round the shore facing northwards, a bath-house, an hotel, more smart houses, face the beach westward, defended by another mound of rocks. In the centre of the little town stands a new-built church; and the whole place has an air of comfort and neatness which is seldom seen in Ireland. One would fancy that all the tenants of these pretty snug habitations, sheltered in this nook far away from the world, have nothing to do but to be happy, and spend their little comfortable means in snug little hospitalities among one another, and kind little charities among the poor. What does a man in active life ask for more than to retire to such a competence, to such a snug nook of the world; and there repose with a stock of healthy children round the fireside, a friend within call, and the means of decent hospitality wherewith to treat him?

Let any one meditating this pleasant sort of retreat, and charmed with the look of this or that place as peculiarly suited to his purpose, take a special care to understand his neighbourhood first, before he commit himself by lease-signing or house-buying. It is not sufficient that you should be honest, kind-hearted, hospitable, of good family--what are your opinions upon religious subjects? Are they such as agree with the notions of old Lady This, or Mrs. That, who are the patronesses of the village? If not, woe betide you! you will be shunned by the rest of the society, thwarted in your attempts to do good, whispered against over evangelical bohea and serious muffins. Lady This will inform every new arrival that you are a reprobate, and lost; and Mrs. That will consign you and your daughters, and your wife (a worthy woman, but, alas! united to that sad worldly man!) to damnation. The clergyman who partakes of the muffins and bohea before mentioned, will very possibly preach sermons against you from the pulpit: this was not done at Portstewart to my knowledge, but I have had the pleasure of sitting under a minister in Ireland who insulted the very patron who gave him his living, discoursing upon the sinfulness of partridge-shooting, and threatening hell-fire as the last ‘meet’ for fox-hunters; until the squire, one of the best and most charitable resident landlords in Ireland, was absolutely driven out of the church where his fathers had worshipped for hundreds of years, by the insults of this howling evangelical inquisitor.

So much as this I did not hear at Portstewart; but I was told that at yonder neat-looking bath-house a dying woman was denied a bath on a Sunday. By a clause of the lease by which the bath-owner rents his establishment, he is forbidden to give baths to any one on the Sunday. The landlord of the inn, forsooth, shuts his gates on the same day, and his conscience on week-days will not allow him to supply his guests with whisky or ardent spirits. I was told by my friend, that because he refused to subscribe for some fancy charity, he received a letter to state that ‘he spent more in one dinner than in charity in the course of the year.’ My worthy friend did not care to contradict the statement, as why should a man deign to meddle with such a lie? But think how all the fishes, and all the pieces of meat, and all the people who went in and out of his snug cottage by the seaside must have been watched by the serious round about! The sea is not more constant roaring there, than scandal is whispering. How happy I felt, while hearing these histories (demure heads in crimped caps peering over the blinds at us as we walked on the beach), to think I am a cockney, and don’t know the name of the man who lives next door to me!

I have heard various stories, of course from persons of various ways of thinking, charging their opponents with hypocrisy, and proving the charge by statements clearly showing that the priests, the preachers, or the professing religionists in question, belied their professions wofully by their practice. But in matters of religion, hypocrisy is so awful a charge to make against a man, that I think it is almost unfair to mention even in the cases in which it is proven, and which,--as, pray God, they are but exceptional,--a person should be very careful of mentioning, lest they be considered to apply generally. Tartuffe has been always a disgusting play to me to see, in spite of its sense and its wit; and so, instead of printing, here or elsewhere, a few stories of the Tartuffe kind which I have heard in Ireland, the best way will be to try and forget them. It is an awful thing to say of any man walking under God’s sun by the side of us, ‘You are a hypocrite, lying as you use the Most Sacred Name, knowing that you lie while you use it.’ Let it be the privilege of any sect that is so minded, to imagine that there is perdition in store for all the rest of God’s creatures who do not think with them; but the easy countercharge of hypocrisy, which the world has been in the habit of making in its turn, is surely just as fatal and bigoted an accusation as any that the sects make against the world.

What has this disquisition to do à propos of a walk on the beach at Portstewart? Why, it may be made here as well as in other parts of Ireland, or elsewhere as well, perhaps, as here. It is the most priest-ridden of countries; Catholic clergymen lord it over their ragged flocks, as Protestant preachers, lay and clerical, over their more genteel co-religionists. Bound to inculcate peace and goodwill, their whole life is one of enmity and distrust.

Walking away from the little bay and the disquisition which has somehow been raging there, we went across some wild dreary highlands to the neighbouring little town of Portrush, where is a neat town and houses, and a harbour, and a new church too, so like the last-named place that I thought for a moment we had only made a round, and were back again at Portstewart. Some gentlemen of the place, and my guide, who had a neighbourly liking for it, showed me the new church, and seemed to be well pleased with the edifice; which is, indeed, a neat and convenient one, of a rather irregular Gothic. The best thing about the church, I think, was the history of it. The old church had lain some miles off, in the most inconvenient part of the parish, whereupon the clergyman and some of the gentry had raised a subscription in order to build the present church. The expenses had exceeded the estimates, or the subscriptions had fallen short of the sums necessary; and the church, in consequence, was opened with a debt on it, which the rector and two more of the gentry had taken on their shoulders. The living is a small one; the other two gentlemen going bail for the edifice not so rich as to think light of the payment of a couple of hundred pounds beyond their previous subscriptions--the lists are therefore still open; and the clergyman expressed himself perfectly satisfied either that he would be reimbursed one day or other, or that he would be able to make out the payment of the money for which he stood engaged. Most of the Roman Catholic churches that I have seen through the country have been built in this way,--begun when money enough was levied for constructing the foundation, elevated by degrees as fresh subscriptions came in, and finished--by the way, I don’t think I have seen one finished--but there is something noble in the spirit (however certain economists may cavil at it) that leads people to commence these pious undertakings with the firm trust that ‘Heaven will provide.’

Eastwards from Portrush, we came upon a beautiful level sand which leads to the White Rocks, a famous place of resort for the frequenters of the neighbouring watering-places. Here are caves, and for a considerable distance a view of the wild and gloomy Antrim coast as far as Bengore. Midway, jutting into the sea (and I was glad it was so far off), was the Causeway; and nearer, the grey towers of Dunluce.

Looking north, were the blue Scotch hills and the neighbouring Raghery Island. Nearer Portrush are two rocky islands, called the Skerries, of which a sportsman of our party vaunted the capabilities, regretting that my stay was not longer, so that I might land and shoot a few ducks there. This unlucky lateness of the season struck me also as a most afflicting circumstance. He said also that fish were caught off the island--not fish good to eat, but very strong at pulling, eager of biting, and affording a great deal of sport. And so we turned our backs once more upon the Giant’s Causeway, and the grim coast on which it lies; and as my taste in life leads me to prefer looking at the smiling fresh face of a young cheerful beauty, rather than at the fierce countenance and high features of a fierce dishevelled Meg Merrilies, I must say again that I was glad to turn my back on that severe part of the Antrim coast, and my steps towards Derry.

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XXX. PEG OF LIMAVADDY

Between Coleraine and Derry there is a daily car (besides one or two occasional queer-looking coaches), and I had this vehicle, with an intelligent driver, and a horse with a hideous raw on his shoulder, entirely to myself for the five-and-twenty miles of our journey. The cabins of Coleraine are not parted with in a hurry, and we crossed the bridge, and went up and down the hills of one of the suburban streets, the Ban flowing picturesquely to our left; a large Catholic chapel, the before-mentioned cabins, and farther on, some neat-looking houses and plantations, to our right. Then we began ascending wide lonely hills, pools of bog shining here and there amongst them, with birds, both black and white, both geese and crows, on the hunt. Some of the stubble was already ploughed up, but by the side of most cottages you saw a black potato-field that it was time to dig now, for the weather was changing and the winds beginning to roar. Woods, whenever we passed them, were flinging round eddies of mustard-coloured leaves; the white trunks of lime and ash trees beginning to look very bare. Then we stopped to give the raw-backed horse water; then we trotted down a hill with a noble bleak prospect of Lough Foyle and the surrounding mountains before us, until we reached the town of Newtown Limavaddy, where the raw-backed horse was exchanged for another not much more agreeable in his appearance, though, like his comrade, not slow on the road.

Newtown Limavaddy is the third town in the county of Londonderry. It comprises three well-built streets, the others are inferior; it is, however, respectably inhabited; all this may be true, as the well-informed Guide-book avers, but I am bound to say that I was thinking of something else as we drove through the town, having fallen eternally in love during the ten minutes of our stay. Yes, Peggy of Limavaddy, if Barrow and Inglis have gone to Connemara to fall in love with the Misses Flynn, let us be allowed to come to Ulster and offer a tribute of praise at your feet--at your stockingless feet, O Margaret! Do you remember the October day (‘twas the first day of the hard weather), when the way-worn traveller entered your inn? But the circumstances of this passion had better be chronicled in deathless verse.

PEG OF LIMAVADDY

Riding from Coleraine (Famed for lovely Kitty), Came a cockney bound Unto Derry city; Weary was his soul, Shivering and sad he Bump’d along the road Leads to Limavaddy.

Mountains stretch’d around, Gloomy was their tinting, And the horse’s hoofs Made a dismal clinting; Wind upon the heath Howling was and piping, On the heath and bog, Black with many a snipe in: ‘Mid the bogs of black, Silver pools were flashing, Crows upon their sides Picking were and splashing. Cockney on the car Closer folds his plaidy, Grumbling at the road Leads to Limavaddy.

Through the crashing woods Autumn brawl’d and bluster’d, Tossing round about Leaves the hue of mustard; Yonder lay Lough Foyle, Which a storm was whipping, Covering with mist Lake, and shores, and shipping. Up and down the hill (Nothing could be bolder), Horse went with a raw, Bleeding on his shoulder. ‘Where are horses changed?’ Said I to the laddy Driving on the box: ‘Sir, at Limavaddy.’

Limavaddy inn’s But a humble baithouse, Where you may procure Whisky and potatoes; Landlord at the door Gives a smiling welcome To the shivering wights Who to his hotel come. Landlady within Sits and knits a stocking, With a wary foot Baby’s cradle rocking.

To the chimney nook, Having found admittance, There I watch a pup Playing with two kittens; (Playing round the fire, Which of blazing turf is, Roaring to the pot Which bubbles with the murphies); And the cradled babe Fond the mother nursed it, Singing it a song As she twists the worsted!

Up and down the stair Two more young ones patter (Twins were never seen Dirtier nor fatter); Both have mottled legs, Both have snubby noses, Both have--Here the host Kindly interposes: ‘Sure you must be froze With the sleet and hail, sir, So will you have some punch, Or will you have some ale, sir?’

Presently a maid Enters with the liquor, (Half a pint of ale Frothing in a beaker). Gods! I didn’t know What my beating heart meant, Hebe’s self I thought Enter’d the apartment. As she came she smiled, And the smile bewitching, On my word and honour, Lighted all the kitchen!

With a curtsey neat Greeting the new-comer, Lovely, smiling Peg Offers me the rummer; But my trembling hand Up the beaker tilted, And the glass of ale Every drop I spilt it; Spilt it every drop (Dames, who read my volumes, Pardon such a word) On my whatd’yecall’ems!

Such a silver peal! In the meadows listening, You who’ve heard the bells Ringing to a christening; You who ever heard Caradori pretty, Smiling like an angel Singing ‘Giovinetti,’ Fancy Peggy’s laugh, Sweet, and clear, and cheerful, At my pantaloons With half-a-pint of beer full!

Witnessing the sight Of that dire disaster, Out began to laugh Missis, maid, and master; Such a merry peal, ‘Specially Miss Peg’s was (As the glass of ale Trickling down my legs was), That the joyful sound Of that ringing laughter Echoed in my ears Many a long day after.

When the laugh was done. Peg, the pretty hussy, Moved about the room Wonderfully busy; Now she looks to see If the kettle keep hot, Now she rubs the spoons, Now she cleans the teapot: Now she sets the cups Trimly and secure, Now she scours a pot, And so it was I drew her.

Thus it was I drew her Scouring of a kettle,[33] (Faith! her blushing cheeks Redden’d on the metal!) Ah! but ‘tis in vain That I try to sketch it; The pot perhaps is like, But Peggy’s face is wretched. No: the best of lead, And of Indian rubber, Never could depict That sweet kettle-scrubber!

See her as she moves! Scarce the ground she touches, Airy as a fay, Graceful as a duchess; Bare her rounded arm, Bare her little leg is, Vestris never show’d Ankles like to Peggy’s; Braided is her hair, Soft her look and modest, Slim her little waist Comfortably boddiced.

This I do declare, Happy is the laddy Who the heart can share Of Peg of Limavaddy; Married if she were, Blest would be the daddy Of the children fair Of Peg of Limavaddy; Beauty is not rare In the land of Paddy, Fair beyond compare Is Peg of Limavaddy.

Citizen or squire, Tory, Whig, or Radical would all desire Peg of Limavaddy. Had I Homer’s fire, Or that of Sergeant Taddy, Meetly I’d admire Peg of Limavaddy. And till I expire, Or till I grow mad, I Will sing unto my lyre Peg of Limavaddy!

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XXXI. TEMPLEMOYLE--DERRY

From Newtown Limavaddy to Derry, the traveller has many wild and noble prospects of Lough Foyle and the plains and mountains round it, and of scenes which may possibly in this country be still more agreeable to him--of smiling cultivation, and comfortable well-built villages, such as are only too rare in Ireland. Of a great part of this district, the London Companies are landlords--the best of landlords, too, according to the report I could gather; and their good stewardship shows itself especially in the neat villages of Muff and Ballikelly, through both of which I passed. In Ballikelly, besides numerous simple, stout, brick-built dwellings for the peasantry, with their shining windows and trim garden-plots, is a Presbyterian meeting-house, so well-built, substantial and handsome, so different from the lean, pretentious, sham-Gothic ecclesiastical edifices which have been erected of late years in Ireland, that it can’t fail to strike the tourist who has made architecture his study or his pleasure. The gentlemen’s seats in the district are numerous and handsome; and the whole movement along the road betokened cheerfulness and prosperous activity.

As the carman had no other passengers but myself, he made no objection to carry me a couple of miles out of his way, through the village of Muff, belonging to the Grocers of London (and so handsomely and comfortably built by them as to cause all cockneys to exclaim, ‘Well done our side!’), and thence to a very interesting institution, which was established some fifteen years since in the neighbourhood--the Agricultural Seminary of Templemoyle. It lies on a hill in a pretty wooded country, and is most curiously secluded from the world by the tortuousness of the road which approaches it.

Of course it is not my business to report upon the agricultural system practised there, or to discourse on the state of the land or the crops; the best testimony on this subject is the fact, that the Institution hired, at a small rental, a tract of land, which was reclaimed and farmed, and that of this farm the landlord has now taken possession, leaving the young farmers to labour on a new tract of land, for which they pay five times as much rent as for their former holding. But though a person versed in agriculture could give a far more satisfactory account of the place than one to whom such pursuits are quite unfamiliar, there is a great deal about the establishment which any citizen can remark on; and he must be a very difficult cockney indeed who won’t be pleased here.

After winding in and out, and up and down, and round about the eminence on which the house stands, we at last found an entrance to it, by a courtyard, neat, well-built, and spacious, where are the stables and numerous offices of the farm. The scholars were at dinner off a comfortable meal of boiled beef, potatoes, and cabbages, when I arrived; a master was reading a book of history to them; and silence, it appears, is preserved during the dinner. Seventy scholars were here assembled, some young, and some expanded into six feet and whiskers--all, however, are made to maintain exactly the same discipline, whether whiskered or not.

The ‘head farmer’ of the school, Mr. Campbell, a very intelligent Scotch gentleman, was good enough to conduct me over the place and the farm, and to give a history of the establishment and the course pursued there. The Seminary was founded in 1827, by the North-West of Ireland Society, by members of which and others about three thousand pounds were subscribed, and the buildings of the school erected. These are spacious, simple, and comfortable; there is a good stone house, with airy dormitories, schoolrooms, etc., and large and convenient offices. The establishment had, at first, some difficulties to contend with, and for some time did not number more than thirty pupils. At present, there are seventy scholars, paying ten pounds a year, with which sum, and the labour of the pupils on the farm, and the produce of it, the school is entirely supported. The reader will, perhaps, like to see an extract from the Report of the school, which contains mere details regarding it.

‘TEMPLEMOYLE WORK AND SCHOOL TABLE

‘From 20th March to 23rd September

‘Boys divided into two classes, A and B

Hours. At work. At school.

5-1/2 All rise. 6-8 ....................... A ................... B 8-9 Breakfast. 9-1 ....................... A ................... B 1-2 Dinner and recreation. 2-6 ....................... B ................... A 6-7 Recreation. 7-9 Prepare lessons for next day. 9 To bed.

‘On Tuesday B commences work in the morning and A at school, and so on alternate days.

‘Each class is again subdivided into three divisions, over each of which is placed a monitor, selected from the steadiest and best-informed boys; he receives the Head Farmer’s directions as to the work to be done, and superintends his party while performing it.

‘In winter the time of labour is shortened according to the length of the day, and the hours at school increased.

‘In wet days, when the boys cannot work out, all are required to attend school.

‘DIETARY

‘Breakfast.--Eleven ounces of oatmeal made in stirabout, one pint of sweet milk.

‘Dinner.--Sunday--Three-quarters of a pound of beef stewed with pepper and onions, or one-half pound of corned beef with cabbage, and three and one-half pounds of potatoes.

‘Monday--One-half pound of pickled beef, three and a half pounds of potatoes, one pint of buttermilk.

‘Tuesday--Broth made of one-half pound of beef, with leeks, cabbage, and parsley, and three and a half pounds of potatoes.

‘Wednesday--Two ounces of butter, eight ounces of oatmeal made into bread, three and one-half pounds of potatoes, and one pint of sweet milk.

‘Thursday--Half a pound of pickled pork, with cabbage or turnips, and three and a half pounds of potatoes.

‘Friday--Two ounces of butter, eight ounces wheat meal made into bread, one pint of sweet milk or fresh buttermilk, three and a half pounds of potatoes.

‘Saturday--Two ounces of butter, one pound of potatoes mashed, eight ounces of wheat meal made into bread, two and a half pounds of potatoes, one pint of buttermilk.

‘Supper.--In summer, flummery made of one pound of oatmeal seeds, and one pint of sweet milk. In winter, three and a half pounds of potatoes, and one pint of buttermilk or sweet milk.

‘RULES FOR THE TEMPLEMOYLE SCHOOL

‘1. The pupils are required to say their prayers in the morning, before leaving the dormitory, and at night, before retiring to rest, each separately, and after the manner to which he has been habituated.

‘2. The pupils are required to wash their hands and faces before the commencement of business in the morning, on returning from agricultural labour, and after dinner.

‘3. The pupils are required to pay the strictest attention to their instructors, both during the hours of agricultural and literary occupation.

‘4. Strife, disobedience, inattention, or any description of riotous or disorderly conduct, is punishable by extra labour or confinement, as directed by the Committee, according to circumstances.

‘5. Diligent and respectful behaviour, continued for a considerable time, will be rewarded by occasional permission for the pupil so distinguished to visit his home.

‘6. No pupil, on obtaining leave of absence, shall presume to continue it for a longer period than that prescribed to him on leaving the Seminary.

‘7. During their rural labour, the pupils are to consider themselves amenable to the authority of their Agricultural Instructor alone, and during their attendance in the schoolroom, to that of their Literary Instructor alone.

‘8. Non-attendance during any part of the time allotted either for literary or agricultural employment, will be punished as a serious offence.

‘9. During the hours of recreation the pupils are to be under the superintendence of their Instructors, and not suffered to pass beyond the limits of the farm, except under their guidance, or with a written permission from one of them.

‘10. The pupils are required to make up their beds, and keep those clothes not in immediate use neatly folded up in their trunks, and to be particular in never suffering any garment, book, implement, or other article belonging to or used by them, to lie about in a slovenly or disorderly manner.

‘11. Respect to superiors, and gentleness of demeanour, both among the pupils themselves and towards the servants and labourers of the establishment, are particularly insisted upon, and will be considered a prominent ground of approbation and reward.

‘12. On Sundays the pupils are required to attend their respective places of worship, accompanied by their Instructors or Monitors; and it is earnestly recommended to them to employ a part of the remainder of the day in sincerely reading the Word of God, and in such other devotional exercises as their respective ministers may point out.’

* * * * *

At certain periods of the year, when all hands are required, such as harvest, etc., the literary labours of the scholars are stopped, and they are all in the field. On the present occasion we followed them into a potato-field, where an army of them were employed digging out the potatoes; while another regiment were trenching-in elsewhere for the winter: the boys were leading the carts to and fro. To reach the potatoes we had to pass a field, part of which was newly ploughed: the ploughing was the work of the boys, too; one of them being left with an experienced ploughman for a fortnight at a time, in which space the lad can acquire some practice in the art. Amongst the potatoes and the boys digging them, I observed a number of girls taking them up as dug and removing the soil from the roots. Such a society for seventy young men would, in any other country in the world, be not a little dangerous: but Mr. Campbell said that no instance of harm had ever occurred in consequence, and I believe his statement may be fully relied on: the whole country bears testimony to this noble purity of morals. Is there any other in Europe which in this point can compare with it?

In winter the farm-works do not occupy the pupils so much, and they give more time to their literary studies. They get a good English education; they are grounded in arithmetic and mathematics; and I saw a good map of an adjacent farm, made from actual survey by one of the pupils. Some of them are good draughtsmen likewise, but of their performances I could see no specimen, the artists being abroad, occupied wisely in digging the potatoes.

And here, à propos, not of the school but of potatoes, let me tell a potato story, which is, I think, to the purpose, wherever it is told. In the county of Mayo a gentleman by the name of Crofton is a landed proprietor, in whose neighbourhood great distress prevailed among the peasantry during the spring and summer, when the potatoes of the last year were consumed, and before those of the present season were up; Mr. Crofton, by liberal donations on his own part, and by a subscription which was set on foot among his friends in England as well as in Ireland, was enabled to collect a sum of money sufficient to purchase meal for the people, which was given to them, or sold at very low prices, until the pressure of want was withdrawn, and the blessed potato-crop came in. Some time in October, a smart night’s frost made Mr. Crofton think that it was time to take in and pit his own potatoes, and he told his steward to get labourers accordingly.

Next day, on going to the potato-grounds, he found the whole fields swarming with people; the whole crop was out of the ground, and again under it, pitted and covered, and the people gone, in a few hours. It was as if the fairies that we read of in the Irish legends, as coming to the aid of good people and helping them in their labours, had taken a liking to this good landlord, and taken in his harvest for him. Mr. Crofton, who knew who his helpers had been, sent the steward to pay them their day’s wages, and to thank them at the same time for having come to help him at a time when their labour was so useful to him. One and all refused a penny; and their spokesman said, ‘They wished they could do more for the likes of him or his family.’ I have heard of many conspiracies in this country; is not this one as worthy to be told as any of them?

Round the house of Templemoyle is a pretty garden, which the pupils take pleasure in cultivating, filled not with fruit (for this, though there are seventy gardeners, the superintendent said somehow seldom reached a ripe state), but with kitchen herbs, and a few beds of pretty flowers, such as are best suited to cottage horticulture. Such simple carpenters’ and masons’ work as the young men can do is likewise confided to them; and though the dietary may appear to the Englishman as rather a scanty one, and though the English lads certainly make at first very wry faces at the stirabout porridge (as they naturally will when first put in the presence of that abominable mixture), yet after a time, strange to say, they begin to find it actually palatable; and the best proof of the excellence of the diet is, that nobody is ever ill in the institution: colds and fevers, the ailments of lazy gluttonous gentility, are unknown; and the doctor’s bill for the last year, for seventy pupils, amounted to thirty-five shillings. O beati agricoliculæ! You do not know what it is to feel a little uneasy after half a crown’s worth of raspberry-tarts, as lads do at the best public schools; you don’t know in what majestic polished hexameters the Roman poet has described your pursuits; you are not fagged and flogged into Latin and Greek at the cost of two hundred pounds a year. Let these be the privileges of your youthful betters; meanwhile content yourselves with thinking that you are preparing for a profession, while they are not; that you are learning something useful, while they, for the most part, are not; for after all, as a man grows old in the world, old and fat, cricket is discovered not to be any longer very advantageous to him--even to have pulled in the Trinity boat does not in old age amount to a substantial advantage; and though to read a Greek play be an immense pleasure, yet it must be confessed few enjoy it. In the first place, of the race of Etonians, and Harrovians, and Carthusians that one meets in the world, very few can read the Greek; of those few--there are not, as I believe, any considerable majority of poets. Stout men in the bow-windows of clubs (for such young Etonians by time become) are not generally remarkable for a taste for Æschylus.[34] You do not hear much poetry in Westminster Hall, or I believe at the bar-tables afterwards; and if occasionally, in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel lets off a quotation--a pocket-pistol wadded with a leaf torn out of Horace--depend on it, it is only to astonish the country gentlemen who don’t understand him: and it is my firm conviction that Sir Robert no more cares for poetry than you or I do.

Such thoughts will suggest themselves to a man who has had the benefit of what is called an education at a public school in England, when he sees seventy lads from all parts of the empire learning what his Latin poets and philosophers have informed him is the best of all pursuits,--finds them educated at one-twentieth part of the cost which has been bestowed on his own precious person; orderly without the necessity of submitting to degrading personal punishment; young, and full of health and blood, though vice is unknown among them; and brought up decently and honestly to know the things which it is good for them in their profession to know. So it is, however: all the world is improving except the gentleman. There are at this present writing five hundred boys at Eton, kicked, and licked, and bullied by another hundred--scrubbing shoes, running errands, making false concords, and (as if that were a natural consequence!) putting their posteriors on a block for Dr. Hawtrey to lash at; and still calling it education. They are proud of it--good heavens!--absolutely vain of it; as what dull barbarians are not proud of their dulness and barbarism? They call it the good old English system: nothing like classics, says Sir John, to give a boy a taste, you know, and a habit of reading--(Sir John, who reads the Racing Calendar, and belongs to a race of men of all the world the least given to reading!)--it’s the good old English system; every boy fights for himself--hardens ‘em, eh, Jack? Jack grins, and helps himself to another glass of claret, and presently tells you how Tibs and Miller fought for an hour and twenty minutes ‘like good uns.’ ... Let us come to an end, however, of this moralising; the car-driver has brought the old raw-shouldered horse out of the stable, and says it is time to be off again.

Before quitting Templemoyle, one thing more may be said in its favour. It is one of the very few public establishments in Ireland where pupils of the two religious denominations are received, and where no religious disputes have taken place. The pupils are called upon, morning and evening, to say their prayers privately. On Sunday each division, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and Episcopalian, is marched to its proper place of worship. The pastors of each sect may visit their young flock when so inclined; and the lads devote the Sabbath evening to reading the books pointed out to them by their clergymen.

Would not the Agricultural Society of Ireland, the success of whose peaceful labours for the national prosperity every Irish newspaper I read brings some new indication, do well to show some mark of its sympathy for this excellent institution of Templemoyle? A silver medal given by the Society to the most deserving pupil of the year, would be a great object of emulation amongst the young men educated at the place, and would be almost a certain passport for the winner in seeking for a situation in after life. I do not know if similar seminaries exist in England. Other seminaries of a like nature have been tried in this country, and have failed: but English country gentlemen cannot, I should think, find a better object of their attention than this school; and our farmers would surely find such establishments of great benefit to them: where their children might procure a sound literary education at a small charge, and at the same time be made acquainted with the latest improvements in their profession. I can’t help saying here, once more, what I have said à propos of the excellent school at Dundalk, and begging the English middle classes to think of the subject. If Government will not act (upon what never can be effectual, perhaps, until it become a national measure), let small communities act for themselves, and tradesmen and the middle classes set up CHEAP PROPRIETARY SCHOOLS. Will country newspaper editors, into whose hands this book may fall, be kind enough to speak upon this hint, and extract the tables of the Templemoyle and Dundalk establishments, to show how, and with what small means, boys may be well, soundly, and humanely educated--not brutally, as some of us have been, under the bitter fagging and the shameful rod? It is no plea for the barbarity that use has made us accustomed to it; and in seeing these institutions for humble lads, where the system taught is at once useful, manly, and kindly, and thought of what I had undergone in my own youth,--of the frivolous monkish trifling in which it was wasted, of the brutal tyranny to which it was subjected,--I could not look at the lads but with a sort of envy: please God, their lot will be shared by thousands of their equals and their betters before long!

It was a proud day for Dundalk, Mr. Thackeray well said, when, at the end of one of the vacations there, fourteen English boys, and an Englishman with his little son in his hand, landed from the Liverpool packet, and, walking through the streets of the town, went into the schoolhouse quite happy. That was a proud day in truth for a distant Irish town, and I can’t help saying that I grudge them the cause of their pride somewhat. Why should there not be schools in England as good, and as cheap, and as happy?

With this, shaking Mr. Campbell gratefully by the hand, and begging all English tourists to go and visit his establishment, we trotted off for Londonderry, leaving at about a mile’s distance from the town, and at the pretty lodge of St. Columb’s, a letter, which was the cause of much delightful hospitality.

St. Columb’s Chapel, the walls of which still stand picturesquely in Sir George Hill’s park, and from which that gentleman’s seat takes its name, was here since the sixth century. It is but fair to give precedence to the mention of the old abbey, which was the father, as it would seem, of the town. The approach to the latter from three quarters, certainly, by which various avenues I had occasion to see it, is always noble. We had seen the spire of the cathedral peering over the hills for four miles on our way: it stands, a stalwart and handsome building, upon an eminence, round which the old-fashioned stout red houses of the town cluster, girt in with the ramparts and walls that kept out James’s soldiers of old. Quays, factories, huge red warehouses, have grown round this famous old barrier, and now stretch along the river. A couple of large steamers and other craft lay within the bridge; and, as we passed over that stout wooden edifice, stretching eleven hundred feet across the noble expanse of the Foyle, we heard along the quays a great thundering and clattering of iron-work in an enormous steam frigate which has been built in Derry, and seems to lie alongside a whole street of houses. The suburb, too, through which we passed was bustling and comfortable; and the view was not only pleasing from its natural beauties, but has a manly, thriving, honest air of prosperity, which is no bad feature, surely, for a landscape.

Nor does the town itself, as one enters it, belie, as many other Irish towns do, its first flourishing look. It is not splendid, but comfortable; a brisk movement in the streets; good downright shops, without particularly grand titles; few beggars. Nor have the common people, as they address you, that eager smile,--that manner of compound fawning and swaggering, which an Englishman finds in the townspeople of the west and south. As in the North of England, too, when compared with other districts, the people are greatly more familiar, though by no means disrespectful to the stranger.

On the other hand, after such a commerce as a traveller has with the race of waiters, postboys, porters, and the like (and it may be that the vast race of postboys, etc., whom I did not see in the north, are quite unlike those unlucky specimens with whom I came in contact), I was struck by their excessive greediness after the traveller’s gratuities, and their fierce dissatisfaction if not sufficiently rewarded. To the gentleman who brushed my clothes at the comfortable hotel at Belfast, and carried my bags to the coach, I tendered the sum of two shillings, which seemed to me quite a sufficient reward for his services: he battled and bawled with me for more, and got it too; for a street-dispute with a porter calls together a number of delighted bystanders, whose remarks and company are by no means agreeable to a solitary gentleman. Then, again, was the famous case of Boots of Ballycastle, which, being upon the subject, I may as well mention here: Boots of Ballycastle, that romantic little village near the Giant’s Causeway, had cleaned a pair of shoes for me certainly, but declined either to brush my clothes, or to carry down my two carpet-bags to the car; leaving me to perform those offices for myself, which I did: and indeed they were not very difficult. But immediately I was seated on the car, Mr. Boots stepped forward, and wrapped a mackintosh very considerately round me, and begged me at the same time to ‘remember him.’

There was an old beggar-woman standing by, to whom I had a desire to present a penny: and having no coin of that value, I begged Mr. Boots, out of sixpence which I tendered to him, to subtract a penny, and present it to the old lady in question. Mr. Boots took the money, looked at me, and his countenance, not naturally good-humoured, assumed an expression of the most indignant contempt and hatred as he said, ‘I’m thinking I’ve no call to give my money away. Sixpence is my right for what I’ve done.’

‘Sir,’ says I, ‘you must remember that you did but black one pair of shoes, and that you blacked them very badly too.’

‘Sixpence is my right,’ says Boots; ‘a gentleman would give me sixpence!’ and, though I represented to him that a pair of shoes might be blacked in a minute--that fivepence a minute was not usual wages in the country--that many gentlemen, half-pay officers, briefless barristers, unfortunate literary gentlemen, would gladly black twelve pairs of shoes per diem if rewarded with five shillings for so doing, there was no means of convincing Mr. Boots. I then demanded back the sixpence, which proposal, however, he declined, saying, after a struggle, he would give the money, but a gentleman would have given sixpence; and so left me with furious rage and contempt.

As for the city of Derry, a carman who drove me one mile out to dinner at a gentleman’s house, where he himself was provided with a comfortable meal, was dissatisfied with eighteenpence, vowing that a ‘dinner job’ was always paid half-a-crown, and not only asserted this, but continued to assert it for a quarter of an hour with the most noble though unsuccessful perseverance. A second car-boy, to whom I gave a shilling for a drive of two miles altogether, attacked me because I gave the other boy eighteenpence; and the porter who brought my bags fifty yards from the coach, entertained me with a dialogue that lasted at least a couple of minutes, and said, ‘I should have had sixpence for carrying one of ‘em.’

For the car which carried me two miles the landlord of the inn made me pay the sum of five shillings. He is a godly landlord, has Bibles in the coffee-room, the drawing-room, and every bedroom in the house, with this inscription--

UT MIGRATURUS HABITA

THE TRAVELLER’S TRUE REFUGE

Jones’s Hotel, Londonderry

This pious double or triple entendre, the reader will, no doubt, admire--the first simile establishing the resemblance between this life and an inn; the second allegory showing that the inn and the Bible are both the traveller’s refuge.

In life we are in death--the hotel in question is about as gay as a family vault: a severe figure of a landlord, in seedy black, is occasionally seen in the dark passages or on the creaking old stairs of the black inn. He does not bow to you--very few landlords in Ireland condescend to acknowledge their guests--he only warns you--a silent solemn gentleman who looks to be something between a clergyman and a sexton--‘ut migraturus habita!’--the ‘migraturus’ was a vast comfort in the clause.

It must, however, be said, for the consolation of future travellers, that when at evening, in the old lonely parlour of the inn, the great gaunt fireplace is filled with coals, two dreary funereal candles and sticks glimmering upon the old-fashioned round table, the rain pattering fiercely without, the wind roaring and thumping in the streets, this worthy gentleman can produce a pint of port wine for the use of his migratory guest, which causes the latter to be almost reconciled to the cemetery in which he is resting himself, and he finds himself, to his surprise, almost cheerful. There is a mouldy-looking old kitchen, too, which, strange to say, sends out an excellent comfortable dinner, so that the sensation of fear gradually wears off.

As in Chester, the ramparts of the town form a pleasant promenade; and the batteries, with a few of the cannon, are preserved, with which the stout ‘prentice boys of Derry beat off King James in ‘88. The guns bear the names of the London Companies--venerable cockney titles! It is pleasant for a Londoner to read them, and see how, at a pinch, the sturdy citizens can do their work.

The public buildings of Derry are, I think, among the best I have seen in Ireland; and the Lunatic Asylum, especially, is to be pointed out as a model of neatness and comfort. When will the middle classes be allowed to send their own afflicted relatives to public institutions of this excellent kind, where violence is never practised--where it is never to the interest of the keeper of the asylum to exaggerate his patient’s malady, or to retain him in durance, for the sake of the enormous sums which the sufferer’s relatives are made to pay? The gentry of three counties which contribute to the Asylum have no such resource for members of their own body, should any be so afflicted--the condition of entering this admirable Asylum is, that the patient must be a pauper, and on this account he is supplied with every comfort and the best curative means, and his relations are in perfect security. Are the rich in any way so lucky?--and if not, why not?

The rest of the occurrences at Derry belong, unhappily, to the domain of private life, and though very pleasant to recall, are not honestly to be printed. Otherwise, what popular descriptions might be written of the hospitalities of St. Columb’s, of the jovialities of the mess of the--th Regiment, of the speeches made and the songs sung, and the devilled turkey at twelve o’clock, and the headache afterwards; all which events could be described in an exceedingly facetious manner. But these amusements are to be met with in every other part of her Majesty’s dominions; and the only point which may be mentioned here as peculiar to this part of Ireland, is the difference of the manner of the gentry to that in the South. The Northern manner is far more English than that of the other provinces of Ireland--whether it is better for being English is a question of taste, of which an Englishman can scarcely be a fair judge.

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XXXII. DUBLIN AT LAST

A wedding-party that went across Derry Bridge to the sound of bell and cannon, had to flounder through a thick coat of frozen snow, that covered the slippery planks, and the hills round about were whitened over by the same inclement material. Nor was the weather, implacable towards young lovers and unhappy buck-skinned postillions shivering in white favours, at all more polite towards the passengers of her Majesty’s mail that runs from Derry to Ballyshannon.

Hence the aspect of the country between those two places can only be described at the rate of nine miles an hour, and from such points of observation as may be had through a coach window, starred with ice and mud. While horses were changed we saw a very dirty town called Strabane; and had to visit the old house of the O’Donnels in Donegal during a quarter of an hour’s pause that the coach made there--and with an umbrella overhead. The pursuit of the picturesque under umbrellas let us leave to more venturesome souls: the fine weather of the finest season known for many long years in Ireland was over, and I thought with a great deal of yearning of Pat the waiter, at the Shelbourne Hotel, Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and the gas-lamps, and the covered cars, and the good dinners to which they take you.

Farewell, then, O wild Donegal! and ye stern passes through which the astonished traveller windeth! Farewell, Ballyshannon, and thy salmon-leap, and thy bar of sand, over which the white head of the troubled Atlantic was peeping! Likewise, adieu to Lough Erne, and its numberless green islands, and winding river-lake, and wavy fir-clad hills! Good-bye, moreover, neat Enniskillen, over the bridge and churches whereof the sun peepeth as the coach starteth from the inn! See, how he shines now on Lord Belmore’s stately palace and park, with gleaming porticoes and brilliant grassy chases: now, behold he is yet higher in the heavens, as the twanging horn proclaims the approach to beggarly Cavan, where a beggarly breakfast awaits the hungry voyager. Snatching up a roll wherewith to satisfy the pangs of hunger, sharpened by the mockery of breakfast, the tourist now hastens in his arduous course, through Virginia, Kells, Navan, by Tara’s threadbare mountain, and Skreen’s green hill; day darkens, and a hundred thousand lamps twinkle in the grey horizon--see above the darkling trees a stumpy column rise, see on its base the name of Wellington (though this, because ‘tis night, thou canst not see), and cry, ‘It is the Phaynix!’--On and on, across the iron bridge, and through the streets (dear streets, though dirty, to the citizen’s heart how dear you be!), and, lo, now with a bump, the dirty coach stops at the seedy inn, six ragged porters battle for the bags, six wheedling carmen recommend their cars, and (giving first the coachman eighteenpence) the cockney says, ‘Drive, car-boy, to the Shelbourne.’

And so having reached Dublin--and seeing the ominous 565 which figures upon the last page, it becomes necessary to curtail the observations which were to be made upon that city: which surely ought to have a volume to itself--the humours of Dublin at least require so much space. For instance, there was the dinner at the Kildare Street Club, or the Hotel opposite,--the dinner in Trinity College Hall,--that at Mr.----, the publisher’s, where a dozen of the literary men of Ireland were assembled,--and those (say fifty) with Harry Lorrequer himself, at his mansion of Templeogue. What a favourable opportunity to discourse upon the peculiarities of Irish character! to describe men of letters, of fashion, and university dons! Sketches of these personages may be prepared, and sent over, perhaps, in confidence to Mrs. Sigourney in America (who will of course not print them)--but the English habit does not allow of these happy communications between writers and the public; and the author who wishes to dine again at his friend’s cost, must needs have a care how he puts him in print.

Suffice it to say, that at Kildare Street we had white neckcloths, black waiters, wax-candles, and some of the best wine in Europe; at Mr.----, the publisher’s, wax-candles, and some of the best wine in Europe; at Mr. Lever’s, wax-candles, and some of the best wine in Europe; at Trinity College--but there is no need to mention what took place at Trinity College; for on returning to London, and recounting the circumstances of the repast, my friend B----, a Master of Arts of that University, solemnly declared the thing was impossible:--no stranger could dine at Trinity College; it was too great a privilege--in a word, he would not believe the story, nor will he to this day; and why, therefore, tell it in vain? I am sure if the Fellows of Colleges in Oxford and Cambridge were told that the Fellows of T. C. D. only drink beer at dinner, they would not believe that. Such, however, was the fact: or may be it was a dream, which was followed by another dream of about four-and-twenty gentlemen seated round a common-room table after dinner; and, by a subsequent vision of a tray of oysters in the apartments of a tutor of the University, some time before midnight. Did we swallow them or not?--the oysters are an open question.

Of the Catholic College of Maynooth, I must likewise speak briefly, for the reason that an accurate description of that establishment would be of necessity so disagreeable, that it is best to pass it over in a few words. An Irish union-house is a palace to it. Ruin so needless, filth so disgusting, such a look of lazy squalor, no Englishman who has not seen can conceive. Lecture-room and dining-hall, kitchen and students’ room, were all the same. I shall never forget the sight of scores of shoulders of mutton lying on the filthy floor in the former, or the view of a bed and dressing-table that I saw in the other. Let the next Maynooth grant include a few shillings’-worth of whitewash and a few hundred-weights of soap; and if to this be added a half-score of drill-sergeants, to see that the students appear clean at lecture, and to teach them to keep their heads up and to look people in the face, Parliament will introduce some cheap reforms into the seminary, which were never needed more than here. Why should the place be so shamefully ruinous and foully dirty? Lime is cheap, and water plenty at the canal hard by. Why should a stranger, after a week’s stay in the country, be able to discover a priest by the scowl on his face, and his doubtful downcast manner? Is it a point of discipline that his reverence should be made to look as ill-humoured as possible? And I hope these words will not be taken hostilely. It would have been quite as easy, and more pleasant, to say the contrary, had the contrary seemed to me to have been the fact; and to have declared that the priests were remarkable for their expression of candour, and their college for its extreme neatness and cleanliness.

This complaint of neglect applies to other public institutions besides Maynooth. The Mansion-house, when I saw it, was a very dingy abode for the Right Honourable Lord Mayor, and that Lord Mayor Mr. O’Connell. I saw him in full council, in a brilliant robe of crimson velvet, ornamented with white satin bows and sable collar, in an enormous cocked-hat, like a slice of an eclipsed moon--in the following costume in fact.

The Aldermen and Common Council, in a black oak parlour and at a dingy green table, were assembled around him, and a debate of thrilling interest to the town ensued. It related, I think, to water-pipes. The great man did not speak publicly, but was occupied chiefly at the end of the table, giving audiences to at least a score of clients and petitioners.

The next day I saw him in the famous Corn Exchange. The building without has a substantial look, but the hall within is rude, dirty, and ill kept. Hundreds of persons were assembled in the black, steaming place; no inconsiderable share of frieze-coats were among them; and many small Repealers, who could but lately have assumed their breeches, ragged as they were. These kept up a great chorus of shouting, and ‘hear, hear!’ at every pause in the great Repealer’s address. Mr. O’Connell was reading a report from his Repeal-wardens; which proved that when Repeal took place, commerce and prosperity would instantly flow into the country; its innumerable harbours would be filled with countless ships, its immense water-power would be directed to the turning of myriads of mills: its vast energies and resources brought into full action. At the end of the report three cheers were given for Repeal, and in the midst of a great shouting Mr. O’Connell leaves the room.

‘Mr. Quiglan! Mr. Quiglan!’ roars an active aide-de-camp to the doorkeeper, ‘a covered kyar for the Lard Mayre.’ The covered car came; I saw his Lordship get into it. Next day he was Lord Mayor no longer; but Alderman O’Connell in his state-coach, with the handsome greys whose manes were tied up with green ribbon, following the new Lord Mayor to the right honourable inauguration. Javelin-men, city-marshals (looking like military undertakers), private carriages, glass coaches, cars, covered and uncovered, and thousands of yelling ragamuffins, formed the civic procession of that faded, worn-out, insolvent old Dublin Corporation.

The walls of this city had been placarded with huge notices to the public, that O’Connell’s rent-day was at hand; and I went round to all the chapels in town on that Sunday (not a little to the scandal of some Protestant friends), to see the popular behaviour. Every door was barred, of course, with plate-holders; and heaps of pence at the humble entrances, and bank-notes at the front gates, told the willingness of the people to reward their champion. The car-boy who drove me had paid his little tribute of fourpence at morning mass; the waiter who brings my breakfast had added to the national subscription with his humble shilling; and the Catholic gentleman with whom I dined, and between whom and Mr. O’Connell there is no great love lost, pays his annual donation, out of gratitude for old services, and to the man who won Catholic Emancipation for Ireland. The piety of the people at the chapels is a sight, too, always well worthy to behold. Nor indeed is this religious fervour less in the Protestant places of worship: the warmth and attention of the congregation, the enthusiasm with which hymns are sung and responses uttered, contrast curiously with the cool formality of worshippers at home.

The service at St. Patrick’s is finely sung; and the shameless English custom of retreating after the anthem, is properly prevented by locking the gates, and having the music after the sermon. The interior of the cathedral itself, however, to an Englishman who has seen the neat and beautiful edifices of his own country, will be anything but an object of admiration. The greater part of the huge old building is suffered to remain in gaunt decay, and with its stalls of sham Gothic, and the tawdry old rags and gimcracks of the ‘most illustrious order of St. Patrick’ (whose pasteboard helmets, and calico banners, and lath swords, well characterise the humbug of chivalry which they are made to represent), looks like a theatre behind the scenes. ‘Paddy’s Opera,’ however, is a noble performance; and the Englishman may here listen to a half-hour sermon, and in the anthem to a bass singer whose voice is one of the finest ever heard.

The Drama does not flourish much more in Dublin than in any other part of the country. Operatic stars make their appearance occasionally, and managers lose money. I was at a fine concert, at which Lablache and others performed, where there were not a hundred people in the pit of the pretty theatre, and where the only encore given was to a young woman in ringlets and yellow satin, who stepped forward and sung ‘Coming through the rye,’ or some other scientific composition, in an exceedingly small voice. On the nights when the regular drama was enacted, the audience was still smaller. The theatre of Fishamble Street was given up to the performances of the Rev. Mr. Greg and his Protestant company, whose soirées I did not attend; and, at the Abbey Street Theatre, whither I went in order to see, if possible, some specimens of the national humour, I found a company of English people ranting through a melodrama, the tragedy whereof was the only laughable thing to be witnessed.

Humbler popular recreations may be seen by the curious. One night I paid twopence to see a puppet-show--such an entertainment as may have been popular a hundred and thirty years ago, and is described in the Spectator. But the company here assembled were not, it scarcely need be said, of the genteel sort. There were a score of boys, however, and a dozen of labouring men, who were quite happy and contented with the piece performed, and loudly applauded. Then in passing homewards of a night, you hear, at the humble public-houses, the sound of many a fiddle, and the stamp of feet dancing the good old jig, which is still maintaining a struggle with Teetotalism, and, though vanquished now, may rally some day and overcome the enemy. At Kingstown, especially, the old ‘fire-worshippers’ yet seem to muster pretty strongly; loud is the music to be heard in the taverns there, and the cries of encouragement to the dancers.

Of the numberless amusements that take place in the Phaynix, it is not very necessary to speak. Here you may behold garrison races, and reviews; lord-lieutenants in brown greatcoats; aides-de-camp scampering about like mad in blue; fat colonels roaring ‘charge’ to immense heavy dragoons; dark riflemen lining woods and firing; galloping cannoneers banging and blazing right and left. Here comes his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, with his huge feathers, and white hair, and hooked nose; and yonder sits his Excellency the Ambassador from the republic of Topinambo in a glass coach, smoking a cigar. The honest Dublinites make a great deal of such small dignitaries as his Excellency of the glass coach; you hear everybody talking of him, and asking which is he; and when presently one of Sir Robert Peel’s sons makes his appearance on the course, the public rush delighted to look at him.

They love great folks, those honest Emerald Islanders, more intensely than any people I ever heard of, except the Americans. They still cherish the memory of the sacred George IV. They chronicle genteel small beer with never-failing assiduity. They go in long trains to a sham court--simpering in tights and bags, with swords between their legs. O heaven and earth, what joy! Why are the Irish noblemen absentees? If their lordships like respect, where would they get it so well as in their own country?

The Irish noblemen are very likely going through the same delightful routine of duty before their real sovereign--in real tights and bagwigs, as it were, performing their graceful and lofty duties, and celebrating the august service of the throne. These, of course, the truly loyal heart can only respect; and I think a drawing-room at St. James’s the grandest spectacle that ever feasted the eye or exercised the intellect. The crown, surrounded by its knights and nobles, its priests, its sages, and their respective ladies; illustrious foreigners, men learned in the law, heroes of land and sea, beef-eaters, gold-sticks, gentlemen-at-arms, rallying round the throne and defending it with those swords which never knew defeat (and would surely, if tried, secure victory): these are sights and characters which every man must look upon with a thrill of respectful awe, and count amongst the glories of his country. What lady that sees this will not confess that she reads every one of the drawing-room costumes, from Majesty down to Miss Anna Maria Smith; and all the names of the presentations, from Prince Baccabocksky (by the Russian Ambassador) to Ensign Stubbs on his appointment?

We are bound to read these accounts. It is our pride, our duty as Britons. But though one may honour the respect of the aristocracy of the land for the sovereign, yet there is no reason why those who are not of the aristocracy should be aping their betters; and the Dublin Castle business has, I cannot but think, a very high-life-below-stairs look. There is no aristocracy in Dublin. Its magnates are tradesmen--Sir Fiat Haustus, Sir Blacker Dosy, Mr. Serjeant Bluebag, or Mr. Counsellor O’Fee. Brass plates are their titles of honour, and they live by their boluses or their briefs. What call have these worthy people to be dangling and grinning at lord-lieutenants’ levees, and playing sham aristocracy before a sham sovereign? Oh that old humbug of a Castle! It is the greatest sham of all the shams in Ireland.

Although the season may be said to have begun, for the courts are opened, and the noblesse de la robe have assembled, I do not think the genteel quarters of the town look much more cheerful. They still, for the most part, wear their faded appearance and lean half-pay look. There is the beggar still dawdling here and there. Sound of carriages or footmen do not deaden the clink of the burly policeman’s boot-heels. You may see, possibly, a smutty-faced nursemaid leading out her little charges to walk; or the observer may catch a glimpse of Mick the footman lolling at the door, and grinning as he talks to some dubious tradesman. MICK and JOHN are very different characters externally and inwardly;--profound essays (involving the history of the two countries for a thousand years) might be written regarding Mick and John, and the moral and political influences which have developed the flunkeys of the two nations. The friend, too, with whom Mick talks at the door is a puzzle to a Londoner. I have hardly ever entered a Dublin house without meeting with some such character on my way in or out. He looks too shabby for a dun, and not exactly ragged enough for a beggar--a doubtful, lazy, dirty family vassal--a guerilla footman. I think it is he who makes a great noise, and whispering, and clattering, handing in the dishes to Mick from outside of the dining-room door. When an Irishman comes to London he brings Erin with him; and ten to one you will find one of these queer retainers about his place.

London one can only take leave of by degrees: the great town melts away into suburbs, which soften, as it were, the parting between the cockney and his darling birthplace. But you pass from some of the stately fine Dublin streets straight into the country. After No. 46 Eccles Street, for instance, potatoes begin at once. You are on a wide green plain, diversified by occasional cabbage-plots, by drying-grounds white with chemises, in the midst of which the chartered wind is revelling; and though in the map some fanciful engineer has laid down streets and squares, they exist but on paper; nor, indeed, can there be any need of them at present, in a quarter where houses are not wanted so much as people to dwell in the same.

If the genteel portions of the town look to the full as melancholy as they did, the downright poverty ceases, I fear, to make so strong an impression as it made four months ago. Going over the same ground again, places appear to have quite a different aspect; and, with their strangeness, poverty and misery have lost much of their terror. The people, though dirtier and more ragged, seem certainly happier than those in London.

Near to the King’s Court, for instance (a noble building, as are almost all the public edifices of the city), is a straggling green suburb, containing numberless little shabby, patched, broken-windowed huts, with rickety gardens dotted with rags that have been washed, and children that have not; and thronged with all sorts of ragged inhabitants. Near to the suburb, in the town, is a dingy, old, mysterious district, called Stoneybatter, where some houses have been allowed to reach an old age, extraordinary in this country of premature ruin, and look as if they had been built some six score years since. In these and the neighbouring tenements, not so old, but equally ruinous and mouldy, there is a sort of vermin swarm of humanity: dirty faces at all the dirty windows; children on all the broken steps; smutty slipshod women clacking and bustling about, and old men dawdling. Well, only paint and prop the tumbling gates and huts in the suburb, and fancy the Stoneybatterites clean, and you would have rather a gay and agreeable picture of human life--of workpeople and their families reposing after their labours. They are all happy, and sober, and kind-hearted,--they seem kind, and playing with the children--the young women having a gay good-natured joke for the passer-by; the old seemingly contented, and buzzing to one another. It is only the costume, as it were, that has frightened the stranger, and made him fancy that people so ragged must be unhappy. Observation grows used to the rags as much as the people do, and my impression of the walk through this district, on a sunshiny, clear autumn evening, is that of a fête. I am almost ashamed it should be so.

Near to Stoneybatter lies a group of huge gloomy edifices--an hospital, a penitentiary, a madhouse, and a poorhouse. I visited the latter of these, the North Dublin Union-house, an enormous establishment, which accommodates two thousand beggars. Like all the public institutions of the country, it seems to be well conducted, and is a vast, orderly, and cleanly place, wherein the prisoners are better clothed, better fed, and better housed than they can hope to be when at liberty. We were taken into all the wards in due order--the schools and nursery for the children; the dining-rooms, day-rooms, etc., of the men and women. Each division is so accommodated, as also with a large court or ground to walk and exercise in.

Among the men, there are very few able-bodied; the most of them, the keeper said, having gone out for the harvest-time, or as soon as the potatoes came in. If they go out, they cannot return before the expiration of a month: the guardians have been obliged to establish this prohibition, lest the persons requiring relief should go in and out too frequently. The old men were assembled in considerable numbers in a long day-room that is comfortable and warm. Some of them were picking oakum by way of employment, but most of them were past work; all such inmates of the house as are able-bodied being occupied upon the premises. Their hall was airy and as clean as brush and water could make it: the men equally clean, and their grey jackets and Scotch caps stout and warm. Thence we were led, with a sort of satisfaction, by the guardian, to the kitchen--a large room, at the end of which might be seen certain coppers, emitting, it must be owned, a very faint inhospitable smell. It was Friday, and rice-milk is the food on that day, each man being served with a pint-canful, of which cans a great number stood smoking upon stretchers--the platters were laid, each with its portion of salt, in the large clean dining-room hard by. ‘Look at that rice,’ said the keeper, taking up a bit; ‘try it, sir, it’s delicious.’ I’m sure I hope it is.

The old women’s room was crowded with, I should think, at least four hundred old ladies--neat and nice, in white clothes and caps--sitting demurely on benches, doing nothing for the most part; but some employed, like the old men, in fiddling with the oakum. ‘There’s tobacco here,’ says the guardian, in a loud voice; ‘who’s smoking tobacco?’ ‘Fait, and I wish dere was some tabacky here,’ says one old lady, ‘and my service to you, Mr. Leary, and I hope one of the gentlemen has a snuff-box, and a pinch for a poor old woman.’ But we had no boxes; and if any person who reads this visit, goes to a poorhouse or lunatic asylum, let him carry a box, if for that day only--a pinch is like Dives’s drop of water to those poor limboed souls. Some of the poor old creatures began to stand up as we came in--I can’t say how painful such an honour seemed to me.

There was a separate room for the able-bodied females; and the place and courts were full of stout, red-cheeked, bouncing women. If the old ladies looked respectable, I cannot say the young ones were particularly good-looking; there were some Hogarthian faces amongst them--sly, leering, and hideous. I fancied I could see only too well what these girls had been. Is it charitable or not to hope that such bad faces could only belong to bad women?

‘Here, sir, is the nursery,’ said the guide, flinging open the door of a long room. There may have been eighty babies in it, with as many nurses and mothers. Close to the door sat one with as beautiful a face as I almost ever saw: she had at her breast a very sickly and puny child, and looked up, as we entered, with a pair of angelical eyes, and a face that Mr. Eastlake could paint--a face that had been angelical that is; for there was the snow still, as it were, but with the footmark on it. I asked her how old she was--she did not know. She could not have been more than fifteen years, the poor child. She said she had been a servant--and there was no need of asking anything more about her story. I saw her grinning at one of her comrades as we went out of the room; her face did not look angelical then. Ah, young master or old, young or old villain, who did this!--have you not enough wickedness of your own to answer for, that you must take another’s sins upon your shoulders; and be this wretched child’s sponsor in crime?...

But this chapter must be made as short as possible; and so I will not say how much prouder Mr. Leary, the keeper, was of his fat pigs than of his paupers--how he pointed us out the burial-ground of the family of the poor--their coffins were quite visible through the niggardly mould; and the children might peep at their fathers over the burial-ground-playground wall--nor how we went to see the Linen Hall of Dublin--that huge, useless, lonely, decayed place, in the vast windy solitudes of which stands the simpering statue of George IV., pointing to some bales of shirting, over which he is supposed to extend his august protection.

The cheers of the rabble hailing the new Lord Mayor were the last sounds that I heard in Dublin: and I quitted the kind friends I had made there with the sincerest regret. As for forming ‘an opinion of Ireland,’ such as is occasionally asked from a traveller on his return--that is as difficult an opinion to form as to express; and the puzzle which has perplexed the gravest and wisest, may be confessed by a humble writer of light literature, whose aim it only was to look at the manners and the scenery of the country, and who does not venture to meddle with questions of more serious import.

To have ‘an opinion about Ireland,’ one must begin by getting the truth; and where is it to be had in the country? Or rather, there are two truths, the Catholic truth and the Protestant truth. The two parties do not see things with the same eyes. I recollect, for instance, a Catholic gentleman telling me that the Primate had forty-three thousand five hundred a year; a Protestant clergyman gave me, chapter and verse, the history of a shameful perjury and malversation of money on the part of a Catholic priest; nor was one tale more true than the other. But belief is made a party business; and the receiving of the archbishop’s income would probably not convince the Catholic, any more than the clearest evidence to the contrary altered the Protestant’s opinion. Ask about an estate, you may be sure almost that people will make misstatements, or volunteer them if not asked. Ask a cottager about his rent, or his landlord: you cannot trust him. I shall never forget the glee with which a gentleman in Munster told me how he had sent off MM. Tocqueville and Beaumont ‘with such a set of stories.’ Inglis was seized, as I am told, and mystified in the same way. In the midst of all these truths, attested with ‘I give ye my sacred honour and word,’ which is the stranger to select? And how are we to trust philosophers who make theories upon such data?

Meanwhile it is satisfactory to know, upon testimony so general as to be equivalent almost to fact, that, wretched as it is, the country is steadily advancing, nor nearly so wretched now as it was a score of years since; and let us hope that the middle class, which this increase of prosperity must generate (and of which our laws have hitherto forbidden the existence in Ireland, making there a population of Protestant aristocracy and Catholic peasantry), will exercise the greatest and most beneficial influence over the country. Too independent to be bullied by priest or squire--having their interest in quiet, and alike indisposed to servility or to rebellion; may not as much be hoped from the gradual formation of such a class, as from any legislative meddling? It is the want of the middle class that has rendered the squire so arrogant, and the clerical or political demagogue so powerful; and I think Mr. O’Connell himself would say that the existence of such a body would do more for the steady acquirement of orderly freedom, than the occasional outbreak of any crowd, influenced by any eloquence from altar or tribune.

THE END

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen:

‘By your angel flown away just like a dove, By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed, Pardon yet once more! Pardon in the name of the tomb! Pardon in the name of the cradle!’

[2] In order to account for these trivial details, the reader must be told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact; and that the little sketch in this page was taken from nature. The letter was likewise a copy from one found in the manner described.

[3] This reply, and indeed the whole of the story, is historical. An account, by Charles Nodier, in the Revue de Paris, suggested it to the writer.

[4] These countries are, to be sure, inundated with the productions of our market, in the shape of ‘Byron Beauties,’ reprints from the ‘Keepsakes,’ ‘Books of Beauty,’ and such trash; but these are only of late years, and their original schools of art are still flourishing.

[5] Almost all the principal public men had been most ludicrously caricatured in the Charivari: those mentioned above were usually depicted with the distinctive attributes mentioned by us.

[6] It is not necessary to enter into descriptions of these various inventions.

[7] We have given a description of a genteel Macaire in the account of M. de Bernard’s novels.

[8] He always went to mass; it is in the evidence.

[9] This sentence is taken from another part of the ‘acte d’accusation.’

[10] ‘Peytel,’ says the act of accusation, ‘did not fail to see the danger which would menace him, if this will (which had escaped the magistrates in their search for Peytel’s papers) was discovered. He, therefore, instructed his agent to take possession of it, which he did, and the fact was not mentioned for several months afterwards. Peytel and his agent were called upon to explain the circumstance, but refused, and their silence for a long time interrupted the “instruction” (getting up of the evidence). All that could be obtained from them was an avowal that such a will existed, constituting Peytel his wife’s sole legatee; and a promise, on their parts, to produce it before the court gave its sentence.’ But why keep the will secret? The anxiety about it was surely absurd and unnecessary: the whole of Madame Peytel’s family knew that such a will was made. She had consulted her sister concerning it, who said--‘If there is no other way of satisfying him, make the will;’ and the mother, when she heard of it, cried out--‘Does he intend to poison her?’

[11] M. Balzac’s theory of the case is, that Rey had intrigued with Madame Peytel; having known her previous to her marriage, when she was staying in the house of her brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard, where Rey had been a servant.

[12] The italics are the author’s own.

[13] It is fine to think that, in the days of his youth, his Majesty Louis XIV. used to powder his wig with gold-dust.

[14] I think it is in the amusing Memoirs of Madame de Créqui (a forgery, but a work remarkable for its learning and accuracy) that the above anecdote is related.

[15] They made a Jesuit of him on his death-bed.

[16] Saint Simon’s account of Lauzun, in disgrace, is admirably facetious and pathetic; Lauzun’s regrets are as monstrous as those of Raleigh when deprived of the sight of his adorable queen and mistress, Elizabeth.

[17] A pair of diamond earrings, given by the King to La Vallière, caused much scandal; and some lampoons are extant, which impugn the taste of Louis XIV. for loving a lady with such an enormous mouth.

[18] In the diamond-necklace affair.

[19] He was found hanging in his own bedroom.

[20] Among the many lovers that rumour gave to the Queen, poor Ferscu is the most remarkable. He seems to have entertained for her a high and perfectly pure devotion. He was the chief agent in the luckless escape to Varennes; was lurking in Paris during the time of her captivity; and was concerned in the many fruitless plots that were made for her rescue. Ferscu lived to be an old man, but died a dreadful and violent death. He was dragged from his carriage by the mob, in Stockholm, and murdered by them.

[21] The two men were executed pursuant to sentence, and both persisted solemnly in denying their guilt. There can be no doubt of it: but it appears to be a point of honour with these unhappy men to make no statement which may incriminate the witnesses who appeared on their behalf, and on their part perjured themselves equally.

[22] The only instance of intoxication that I have heard of as yet, has been on the part of two ‘cyouncillors,’ undeniably drunk and noisy yesterday after the bar dinner at Waterford.

[23] The suspicion turned out to be very correct. The gentleman is the respected cook of C----, as I learned afterwards from a casual Cambridge man.

[24] By the help of an Alexandrine, the names of these famous families may also be accommodated to verse.

‘Athey, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Deane, Dorsey, Frinche, Joyce, Morech, Skereth, Fonte, Kirowan, Martin, Lynche.’

[25] If the rude old verses are not very remarkable in quality, in quantity they are still more deficient, and take some dire liberties with the laws laid down in the Gradus and the Grammar:--

‘Septem ornant montes Romam, septem ostia Nilum, Tot rutilis stellis splendet in axe Polus. Galvia, Polo Niloque bis æquas. Roma Conachtæ, Bis septem illustres has colit illa tribus. Bis urbis septem defendunt mœnia turres, Intus et en duro est marmore quæque domus. Bis septem portæ sunt, castra et culmina circum, Per totidem pontum permeat unda vias. Principe bis septem fulgent altaria templo, Quævis patronæ est ara dicata suo. Et septem sacrata Deo cœnobia, patrum, Fœminei et sexus, tot pia tecta tenet.’

[26] First edition “The Irish Sketch Book, 1843.”

An allusion has been made in the first chapter of this volume to a frontispiece which was originally intended for it. But an accident happened to the plate, which has compelled the author to cancel it, and insert that which at present appears.

[27] This epithet is applied to the party of a Colonel somebody, in a Dublin paper.

[28] Here is an extract from one of the latter--

‘Hasten to some distant isle, In the bosom of the deep, Where the skies for ever smile, And the blacks for ever weep.’

Is it not a shame that such nonsensical false twaddle should be sung in a house of the Church of England, and by people assembled for grave and decent worship?

[29] It must be said, for the worthy fellow who accompanied us, and who acted as cicerone previously to the great Willis, the great Hall, the great Barrow, that though he wears a ragged coat his manners are those of a gentleman, and his conversation evinces no small talent, taste, and scholarship.

[30] ‘Boarders are received from the age of eight to fourteen at £12 per annum, and £1 for washing, paid quarterly in advance.

‘Day Scholars are received from the age of ten to twelve at £2, paid quarterly in advance.

‘The Incorporated Society have abundant cause for believing that the introduction of Boarders into their Establishments has produced far more advantageous results to the public than they could, at so early a period, have anticipated; and that the election of boys to their Foundations only after a fair competition with others of a given district, has had the effect of stimulating masters and scholars to exertion and study, and promises to operate most beneficially for the advancement of religious and general knowledge.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ARRANGEMENT OF SCHOOL BUSINESS IN DUNDALK INSTITUTION | ---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+ Hours | Monday, Wednesday, | Tuesday | Saturday. | | and Friday. | and Thursday. | | ---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+ 6 to 7 | Rise, wash, etc. | Rise, wash, etc. | Rise, wash, etc. | | | | | 7 “ 7-1/2 |{Scripture by the |{Scripture by the |{Scripture by the | |{Master, and prayer.|{Master, and prayer.|{Master and prayer. | | | | | 7-1/2 “ 8-1/2 |{Reading, History, |{Reading, History, |{Reading, History, | |{etc. |{etc. |{etc. | | | | | 8-1/2 “ 9 | Breakfast. | Breakfast. | Breakfast. | | | | | 9 “ 10 | Play. | Play. | Play. | | | | | 10 “ 10-1/2 | English Grammar. | Geography. |}10 to 11 | 10-1/2 “ 11-1/4| Algebra. | Euclid. |}repetition. | | | | | | |{Lecture on |}11 to 12, | 11-1/4 “ 12 | Scripture. |{principles |}Use of | | |{of Arithmetic. |}Globes. | | | | | 12 “ 12-3/4 | Writing. | Writing. |{12 to 1, Catechism | | | |{and Scripture | |{Arithmetic at | |{by the Catechist. | 12-3/4 “ 2 |{Desks, and | Mensuration. | | |{Bookkeeping. | | | | | | | 2 “ 2-1/2 | Dinner. | Dinner. | Dinner. | | | | | 2-1/2 “ 5 | Play. | Play. |{The remainder of | | | |{this day is devoted| |{Spelling, Mental |{Spelling, Mental |{to exercise till | 5 “ 7-1/2 |{Arithmetic, and |{Arithmetic, and |{the hour of Supper,| |{Euclid. |{Euclid. |{after which the | | | |{Boys assemble in | 7-1/2 “ 8 | Supper. | Supper. |{the Schoolroom | | | |{and hear a portion | 8 “ 8-1/2 | Exercise. | Exercise. |{of Scripture read | | | |{and explained by | |{Scripture by the |{Scripture by the |{the Master, as on | 8-1/2 “ 9 |{Master, and prayer |{Master, and prayer |{other days, and | |{in Schoolroom. |{in Schoolroom. |{conclude with | | | |{prayer. | 9 | Retire to bed. | Retire to bed. | | ---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+ The sciences of Navigation and practical Surveying are taught in the | Establishment; also a selection of the Pupils, who have a taste for it, are | instructed in the art of Drawing. | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ DIETARY | | =Breakfast=.--Stirabout and Milk, every Morning. | | =Dinner=.--On Sunday and Wednesday, Potatoes and Beef; 10 ounces of the | latter to each boy. On Monday and Thursday, Bread and Broth; 1/2 lb. of the | former to each boy. On Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, Potatoes and Milk; | 2 lbs. of the former to each boy. | | =Supper=.--1/2 lb. of Bread with Milk, uniformly, except on Monday and | Thursday; on these days, Potatoes and Milk. | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

‘The districts for eligible Candidates are as follow:--

‘Dundalk Institution embraces the counties of Louth and Down, because the properties which support it lie in this district.

‘The Pococke Institution, Kilkenny, embraces the counties of Kilkenny and Waterford, for the same cause.

‘The Ranelagh Institution, the towns of Athlone and Roscommon, and three districts in the counties of Galway and Roscommon, which the Incorporated Society hold in fee, or from which they receive impropriate tithes.

(Signed) CÆSAR OTWAY, Secretary.’

[31] The Proprietary Schools of late established have gone far to protect the interests of parents and children; but the masters of these schools take boarders, and of course draw profits from them. Why make the learned man a beef and mutton contractor? It would be easy to arrange the economy of a school so that there should be no possibility of a want of confidence, or of peculation, to the detriment of the pupil.

[32] ‘I want to go into a coal-mine,’ says Tom Sheridan, ‘in order to say I have been there.’ ‘Well, then, say so,’ replied the admirable father.

[33] The late Mr. Pope represents Camilla as ‘scouring the plain,’ an absurd and useless task. Peggy’s occupation with the kettle is much more simple and noble. The second line of this poem (whereof the author scorns to deny an obligation) is from the celebrated “Frithiof” of Esaias Tigner. A maiden is serving warriors to drink, and is standing by a shield--Und die Runde des Schildes ward wie das Mägdelein roth,”--perhaps the above is the best thing in both poems.

[34] And then, how much Latin and Greek does the public schoolboy know? Also, does he know anything else, and what? Is it history, or geography, or mathematics, or divinity?

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

holdiug converse with each other.=> holding converse with each other. {pg 176}

philosophic apophthegms=> philosophic apothegms {pg 367}

so pulled to the middle or Turk lake=> so pulled to the middle of Turk lake {pg 375}

Does it strenghten a man=> Does it strengthen a man {pg 500}

scolloped sleeves=> scalloped sleeves {pg 504}

in throuble in England=> in trouble in England {pg 517}

middle in the rapid strame=> middle in the rapid stream {footnote pg 424}

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