sides well covered with trees; gray crags protruding from leafy canopies, or soft sunny slopes of brightest verdure. On either side other valleys open and exhibit fresh beauties. In the distance are mountain summits clad in aërial hues, and the higher grounds are equally delightful. It is as sweet a spot wherein to spend a summer with good company as even a poet could desire. The castellated mansion seen on the hill is CastleHoward, the seat of Sir Ralph Howard-a modern structure, more eminent for its noble site than for its beauty. The views from it and from the grounds are, as will be readily imagined, of surpassing beauty. Our way onward lies along the Vale of Avon; the tourist may pass through the demesne of Avondale, which is three miles long, and very charming, with the Avonmore winding through the midst the whole distance. Thence he passes by Rathdrum, and along the road which keeps above the Avonmore to Laragh. There is another road from the Meetings Bridge to Rathdrum along the higher grounds by Castle-Howard, which, though perhaps not so beautiful as that through Avondale, is shorter, and affords wider and very fine prospects. GLENDALOUGH. Very striking is the first glimpse of Glendalough. You proceed from Laragh up a mountain road, which appears to have an outlet only by a narrow pass at the further end; but a slight turn brings before you first a few rude cottages, then a round tower, which rears its tall head beyond, with apparently several ruined buildings spread around it; and as a back-ground is a dark hollowed coomb, formed by perpendicular rocks of great altitude, which then fall back into mountain slopes. It is not till you are nearer that the lakes become visible:-unless, indeed, you ascend the hillside somewhat-a point from which as good a general conception of the whole glen, and lakes, and antiquities, can be obtained as anywhere. (Cut, No. 8.) Long before you get near the ruins a crowd of beggars has beset you, intreating alms by the recital of every kind of distress; others beg you to purchase fragments of rock or crystal. Next come some two or three wild-looking fellows, who each assures you that he is the best possible guide, and no other knows anything in comparison with him, and, moreover, he won't deceive your honour with any false lies at all. You will do well to escape from the annoyance by selecting one; let him lead you round to all the sights, tell you all the legends, induct you into St. Kevin's Bed, and persuade you, if he can, that you are one of the knowingest gentlemen and best walkers he has been along with in all the years he has been there submit to it all patiently, and you will then be left to stroll about in quiet and at leisure afterwards and see things for yourself. Some of the books have recommended particular guides; and the men themselves boast of the great folks and fine writers they have conducted. "And it's myself that was Mrs. Hall's guide, God bless her! and more power to her! and many a good word she has bestowed upon me therefore," says one; while another claims Sir Walter Scott, and a third is content with Mr. Fraser. On the whole, there is not much choice between the three, for just so many there are. We tried two, and gossipped with the third, and moreover climbed into St. Kevin's Bed, and therefore are privileged to speak authoritatively. We would just as soon credit one as the other; their power in fabling appearing, as far as we could judge, nearly balanced-the older one had the larger store and more experience, but the younger was the more vivacious. The name is suggestive of the character of the place; Glen-da-lough, is the glen of the two lakes. The lakes lie in a deep hollow between immense mountains, whose sides rise bare and precipitous from the valley to the height of some three or four hundred feet. The further end seems entirely closed in, but there is a narrow and almost impassable ravine, down whose rugged bed the Glenealo, the chief feeder of the lakes, forces its way. The other stream which supplies the lakes has to leap over a lofty wall of rock, forming a waterfall, called from it the Poolanas. The glen is about three miles long; the upper lough is a mile long, and nearly a quarter of a mile wide. It is around this lough that the wilder features of the glen are combined; and nothing hardly can be finer or more sublime than the scene from its bosom as night is setting in, and heavy storm-clouds are gathering over the mountain summits, and thin gray mists are creeping along the sides of the cliffs which rise in frowning blackness at once from the water, and the deep purple waves are curling up and lashing menacingly against the boat, as the wind sweeps along in a hollow prolonged sough. It is here that some little height up the rock is the famous Bed of St. Kevin. It is a hole piercing into the rock far enough and large enough to admit two or three persons at a time. Here it was that the famous St. Kevin retreated, in order to escape from the persecutions of love and the allurements of the world. The reader of course knows the legend-all the world knows it-as told by Moore, how "By that lake, whose gloomy shore What that wily sex can do!" The rest it is needless to repeat. Since St. Kevin so ungallantly hurled the fair Kathleen from his chamber into the deep waters below-and it is fourteen hundred years ago-every lady who has ventured there has borne a charmed life, for so the good saint in his remorse prayed it might be. More than a few fair ladies have tested the charm in our day by scrambling into the Bed, and all have returned in safety. But besides the immunity purchased at so costly a price by that Kathleen, there is a living Kathleen here, as guardian angel of the rock, whose whole care is to avert all chances of a mishap in the adventure. This Kathleen is unhappily not so lovely as her namesake, but she has (what is of more importance here) a strong hand and a steady foot. She lives in a dog-hole of a cabin up among the rocks, and gets a living by helping all hardy adventurers into St. Kevin's bed. She has been here, she says, for above thirty years. The scramble into the Bed is certainly rather a rough one, and it looks dangerous, as you have to crawl along a narrow ledge of rocks which overhangs the water: but the danger is merely in appearance; by the assistance of the guide, and the help of Kathleen's hand at the critical point, the least skilful climber might get up without difficulty. Inside the cave are numerous names and initials of those who have accomplished the feat: among others, Kate will point out that of Sir Walter Scott, though it is not easy to decipher it. Scott's ascent into the Bed is told by Lockhart, in a letter. printed in the Life.' The danger, he says, has been exaggerated; "Yet I never was more pained than when, in spite of all remonstrances, he would make his way to it, crawling along the precipice. He succeeded, and got in; the first lame man that ever tried it. After he was gone, Mr. Plunkett told the female guide he was a poet. Kathleen treated this with indignation, as a quiz of Mr. Attorney's. 'Poet!' said she: the devil a bit of him; but an honourable gentleman: he gave me halfa-crown."" There is a marvellously fine echo in this glen. One of the guides, a man of Stentorian voice and leathern lungs, chaunts, in a delectable sort of slow sing-song, that might be heard a mile almost, Moore's legend of St. Kevin, and the echo rings it out again to the last syllable clear as a bell. Pat then shouts a heap of nonsense, adds some Irish, and winds up with an Hibernian 'Och, arrah!' All this is duly returned, and the Irish is done as sharply, and the brogue hit off as nicely as though native to it. The Seven Churches, as the ruins are called (and oftentimes the whole place is so named from them), are at the lower end of the glen. They consist chiefly of what is called the cathedral; of the chapel of the Virgin; a church, with a turret at the end, which is commonly called St. Kevin's Kitchen: these, with some other remains of buildings, and the vestiges of several stone crosses, are, with a round tower, contained within an enclosure which is still used as a grave-yard. Other ruins of churches are to be seen within a short distance. Why such buildings, and so many of them, should be placed in a spot like this, seems quite unaccountable; but there is evidence that there was an ecclesiastical establishment here in the fifth or sixth century, and that it was several times plundered and devastated in succeeding years. Glendalough was early constituted a bishopric, and it so continued till it was united with the see of Dublin: even now the full title of the Metropolitan is Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough. The ruins are remarkable, and have been the subject of much inquiry. We cannot afford space to enter loftiest points, and then as the effect of his beams became felt, the mists seemed to sink into the gloomy hollow, a darker and heavier shadow settled on the valley, the mists steamed upwards, just catching as they ascended a momentary glance of the sun, and then vanishing; the tops of the precipices became tenderly illuminated-and suddenly the glen was spanned by a rainbow that seemed melting into the tinted haze that clung about it. All the forms of the hills and cliffs and lakes were there, but all evanescent. It was one of the marvellous pictures of Turner changed into reality. The visitor may not see it thus, but he may see it under some equally grand effect of sun and shadow. Lough Dan and Lough Tay, two of the largest of the Wicklow lakes, are usually visited from the Roundwood Inn at Togher, a house much frequented by tourists, on account of its serving as a convenient centre from which to visit, besides Luggala and the Loughs, the Devil's Glen and the Seven Churches. But we may proceed to the Loughs direct from Glendalough. The way thither is by the rough mountain road which at Laragh turns northward behind the barracks. As there is a meeting of roads at Laragh, the pedestrian must be careful not to take the wrong, which it is very easy to do, as the right one hardly looks like a road, and one or two of the others seem to lie nearly in the required direction. Laragh, we may remark in passing, is a rude, poor village, but not unpicturesque; and its cabins and their inhabitants would supply some good studies to a sketcher. into an examination of them,—and indeed to attempt | sun began to touch with a straggling ray upon the to do so would involve an amount of antiquarian detail that would be quite out of place here. We may just notice in a few words the Round Tower, as that is a kind of structure always regarded with curiosity. This tower is fifteen feet in diameter at the base, and tapers very gradually to the summit; it is 110 feet high. Originally it was crowned by a conical roof, but that is gone. The entrance is by a narrow arched doorway, the bottom of which is eleven feet from the ground. The upper windows are very narrow. It is constructed of rubble stones of different sizes, but arranged in regular courses. The question, What could these towers have been intended for? has always been a hard problem for antiquaries. Many solutions have been proposed, but none is yet admitted as demonstrable. It has been suggested that they were beacons, dwelling-places for anchorites, sepulchres, and many other things even stranger than these, till some were ready to believe, as an Irishman hinted, that they were just built "to puzzle posterity." The opinion that seemed most to prevail among the learned was, that they were 'Fire-towers,' where the sacred fire was kept alive and it has been said that this opinion is countenanced by vague traditions still existing among the peasantry. But since the publication of Mr. Petrie's Essay on the Round Towers of Ireland, that hypothesis is less stoutly maintained, and there is a growing belief that they were erected by the Christian ecclesiastics who were settled in Ireland at a very early period. Mr. Petrie thinks they were intended to serve at once for keeps, or places of security from marauders, and for belfries. That they were meant to serve as strongholds we have very little doubt. Their position, too, always in connection with an ecclesiastical establishment, would seem to indicate that they were used as places of refuge by the ecclesiastics. The character and style of construction of the buildings prove, as we think, that they are of a later date than the worship of Baal. In a word, we believe that they were certainly the keeps of religious establishments; but of their other use or uses we are not so well satisfied. Mr. Petrie has laboriously and with great acumen investigated the matter, and he is convinced that they are belfries; and his opinion is entitled to the greatest respect. If the visitor is disposed to stay here a day or two to examine these various objects at leisure, and to explore the neighbourhood (which is very grand), he will find decent accommodation at the little inn just by the church. It is well to spend a night here. The gloomy lake, grand as it appears in the day, becomes infinitely more so as the sun is sinking behind the hills, just glancing upon their summits, and leaving in deepest gloom the glen and the lakes. Having stayed at night in the glen as long as we could discern an object, we resolved to see it by the earliest dawn in the morning. Long before the sun we were there, and truly the spectacle that greeted us was a glorious one. The atmosphere was charged with a heavy mist, which settled low and thick in the glen; but by-and-by the At Oldbridge, just at the foot of Lough Dan, will be seen a small farm-house with an uncommon cheerful English well-to-do' aspect; here a boat may be hired to carry you over the Lough: it is only by means of a boat that Lough Dan can be properly seen. Lough Dan is not very large, being only a mile and three quarters long, and nowhere half-a-mile across: but it is set within a frame of rugged mountains, which impart to it a sufficiently wild character. Slieve Bukh is its boundary on the eastern side, the Scar Mountain on the west, while directly in front rises the broken peak of the lofty Knocknacloghole. From the comparative narrowness of the Lough and its winding course, it has somewhat the character of a broad, still river. The sides of the mountains, except at the Oldbridge end, are bare, rugged, and steep. Masses of blue crag project boldly from among the furze-clad wastes and the broken and scattered grassy slopes, where a few sheep find scanty pasturage. As you sail in the morning over the black water, while the mists are slowly breaking away from the mountain sides, all seems to wear an air of desolate majesty. In order to visit Luggala you land where the Avonmore enters the Lough; but you should not land without first rowing to the head of the lake, as that is perhaps, the very finest part of it. Let us add, for the sake of Waltonian tourists, that although the trout are not large, there are plenty of them in Lough Dan, and some good fishing may be had there. A narrow wind |
