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THE LAKES OF KILLARNEY.

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We have not alluded to "bitter" thoughts unadvisedly. An eloquent and philospohical French writer has described the physical contrasts which the neighbourhood of Killarney presents :-"On approaching the Lakes of Killarney, and halting near the Abbey of Mucruss, we look upon two scenes essentially different. one side, uncultivated fields, sterile bogs, monotonous plains, where feeble rushes and consumptive pines gloomily vegetate, wide stretches of heath, intersected here and there by low rocks, this unvarying aspect, destitute of all beauty in its wildness, proclaims only the poverty of Nature. It is impossible to imagine a more barren and desolate tract. But on the other side, a totally different prospect bursts on the view. At the foot of a chain of mountains, of gracefully varied outline, separated from each other by a succession of charming lakes, are spread rich and fertile plains, green and smiling meadows, forests, gay with ferns and verdant undergrowth; here, cool shades, secret grottos, mysterious caverns,-there, wide vistas, bold summits, an unbounded horizon; the margin of the silver streams covered with luxuriant shrubs,-everywhere, abundance, richness, grace,-every where the extraordinary accident of Nature at once most beauteous and most fruitful. Thus, at one and the same time, two aspects present themselves to the eye which are absolutely opposed-here the perfection of abundance, there the extremity of barrenness."

But the "bitter" thoughts have their source in feelings kindred to the analogy which M. Gustave de Beaumont sees in this his picture of Killarney. He says, "IT IS THE IMAGE OF IRELAND." The physical contrasts are here somewhat overcharged; but the contrast that forces itself upon our mind, between the exquisite loveliness of the inanimate creation and the debased condition of a portion of the noblest of God's works that we trace here and all around, mixes up the people mournfully in all remembrances of the scenery. The great question of the condition of Ireland is not to be under

stood in a rapid transit through a small portion of the country; but he that has looked upon any of the more afflicted districts of that land with his own eyes, however imperfectly, is in a better position than before to weigh the mass of evidence, embarrassing and contradictory as it is, as to the extent, and causes, and possible remedies, of Ireland's great social disease. He will have learned one thing at least,-that the word 'famine' is not a metaphorical expression which means considerable distress, but the term which alone conveys the real state of human beings who would die for want of food, if help were not bestowed upon them. Good God that there should be the bulk of a nation that cannot say, in holy trust, "Give us this day our daily bread!"

The journey from Dublin to Killarney is accomplished in less than thirteen hours. The Great Southern and Western Railway carries you a hundred and forty-five miles, from Dublin to Mallow, in seven hours and a half. This steady progress of twenty miles an hour enables the traveller to see the country more advantageously than in an English express-train. Yet what can we see worth recording in the rapid and monotonous transit by the iron road? We first roll on through a tolerably fertile country, not badly cultivated, but presenting few remarkable objects. The Wicklow mountains linger in our view, with no rivals to break the monotony of the level. We pass through the Curragh of Kildare, and then gaze upon the ruined Cathedral and the mysterious Round Tower by its side. Now and then we descry a mansion on a hill slope, with fair plantations and smiling meadows, and a hamlet at its feet that we might fancy the abode of peace, did we not know what Irish hamlets for the most part are. In the distance is the famous Rock of Dunamase, crowned with the ruins of the castle of Strongbow, the great English earl, who won the fortress, not by the strength of his arm, but by marriage with the daughter of Mac Murrough, king of Leinster. It is strange that, with these marriages and intermarriages, in the early times of the conquest, there should have been six centuries of hatred between the Celt and the Saxon. Saxons and Normans became one race in a century or two. But the Rock of Dunamase may solve the mystery. The wars of conquest were succeeded by the wars of religion; the castle of Strongbow was battered into ruin by the cannon of Cromwell. We ride on, through large tracts of peat moss; but the distance is varied by the bold outlines of the Slievebloom and the Devil's-Bit mountains. It is a bleak country, with occasional patches of fertility. There are towns about the line,-most with small trade, some dilapidated, all somnolent. They have to be awakened by the inevitable course of agricultural improvement,

when thousands of acres shall no longer be untilled, while Labour folds her hands and starves. At a hundred and seven miles from Dublin we reach the Limerick junction. Some twenty miles beyond is Kilmallock, the stronghold of the great Desmonds. Thirteen miles further, and we are near Buttevant, the land in which dwelt Edmund Spenser,-where

"Mulla mine whose waves I whilom taught to weep," still flows,-where the Castle of Kilcoleman still exhibits a blackened ruin, telling of fire and slaughter rather than of the immortal' Faery Queen.' We have sad thoughts; and they are not brightened by the portentous beggary that we encounter when the train rests at Mallow.

We have now forty miles to travel over by coach or car. In the immediate neighbourhood of Mallow the road is very beautiful, running by "hedge-rows green," with occasional glimpses of the Blackwater river. About eight or ten miles beyond Mallow we enter the mountainous district. The only stage between Mallow and Killarney is Millstreet; and here the coach stops for a quarter of an hour, while the famished passengers groan over chops unrivalled in their grease and toughness, and ham that has been metamorphosed into solid salt. A dreary quarter of an hour!-disappointment within-an army of mendicants without! However hungry, we have consolation in the mountains before us; and soon the Paps lift their conical heads; and then the Reeks tower over the plain in solemn grandeur; and we fancy that the Lakes are at hand. But we

have still some miles of dreary bog to pass through, till at length the road is bounded by branching trees, and there are signs of opulence around us. But as yet we see no Lakes. At a turn of the road we are in a long street, filled with gaping and importunate crowds:

it is Killarney. Here is want, and the simulation of want. According to Colonel Clarke, an Inspector of Unions in the West of Ireland, the beggars or Killarney have the faculty of thriving anyhow: "There is a regular class of professionals at Killarney, who have been supported by the public visiting there for many years: they prefer begging to going into the workhouse, or receiving out-door relief; their condition has not materially deteriorated since the period of the distress; they pick up sufficient from a certain number of people about the country. A kind of freemasonry has always existed among the beggars of Killarney; they do not allow interlopers." In five minutes we are out of the hubbub, galloping on a real ricketty Irish car towards the Victoria Hotel. The gates of an avenue fly open, the Lake is at our feet. The most charming of inns is before us,-and the kindest of hostesses accords us a welcome that makes us at home in a moment. And now for dinner in right earnest.

A gray evening. In the constant twilight of June we can dimly trace the outlines of the mountains long after sunset. Thin clouds float slowly beneath their heads, and seem almost to kiss the lake. The moon is climbing the sky, "with how sad steps." Ever and anon the quiet water is bright with one long silver

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streak. But how small the lake looks; how close seem the mountains. Islands! they appear no bigger than buoys! Will the morning light give breadth and grandeur to the scene?

of the beings that we saw would have been in their graves but for the pound of Indian meal a day that a humane law was allowing them during the terrible season of scarcity that precedes the harvest. It is a Sleep-the sleep of fatigue for a few hours-and mystery. There is grievous error somewhere-perchance then reveries and sorrowful remembrances. Faces, guilt. Faces, guilt. We fear that the bulk of happier English are such as we never saw till this day, array themselves not wholly guiltless. We have not denied our purses, before us. Sounds, such as we have heard in the but we have not probed the evil. We have shut our solitary wail of some one of the unhappy, but never eyes. We have dozed over the thrice-told tale. It is before in the fearful clamour of a multitude, ring in time we were awake, and searching into the root of our ears. There is speechless gesticulation, too, more the matter. dread to recall than any sound. We used to read of Irish beggary as a compound of misery and fun. At Mallow, and Millstreet, and Killarney, there were professional beggars in abundance; but even with them the fun was gone. There were other beggars-pallid girls, boys prematurely old, tall skeletons of men bending with inanition and not with years, mothers with unsmiling infants vainly stretching towards the fevered breast. And yet the workhouses, we were told, were open to all, and they were not filled. Many

Broad day. We look out upon the Lake in its beautiful repose beneath the shadows of the mountains, and the distempered dreams are fled, to suggest serious and abiding thoughts.

At some half mile from the Victoria Inn there is a considerable hill, upon which stand the remains of the church of Aghadoe. (Cut, No. 1.) It is the most accessible eminence from which we can obtain an adequate view of the Lower Lake. At the corner of the lane which leads to the hill, a guide presented himself-a sorrow

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stricken man. This was not a man of song and legend, of mirth and obsequiousness. He lived in a hovel, at the foot of the hill: he clung to his potato-holdinghis potatoes had failed-and the dole of Indian meal was therefore withheld from him, under the clause of the Poor-Law Extension Act, which requires that no occupier of more than a quarter of an acre shall obtain outdoor relief. He was a fitting guide to a deserted church and a populous cemetery, where skulls and coffin-planks are scattered about in wild confusion,one tenant of "the house appointed for all living" evicting another, as if the land-struggle were never to end. Within that mouldering doorway, the sole monument of the elaborate architecture of the old abbey, all is now a scene of desecration. The peasant kneels in pious agony at the head-stone of his father's grave;-in a few years his father's bones are bleaching in the mountain wind.

Yes! Killarney is magnificent!

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In the distance Heaven is blue above
Mountains where sleep the unsunn'd tarns."

On the opposite shore of the lake beneath us, gigantic
hills, clothed with magnificent timber to the water's edge,
with "cloud-capp'd" heads, Toomies and Glena; rising
over these, the glowing Purple Mountain and the
mighty Reeks; the Lake studded with green islands;
every variety of outline-every combination of colour.
Let us away, and look into the inmost bosom of this
enchanting region! A boat!-a boat!

This is, indeed, a "trim-built wherry," and a fitting crew-four" boys," with frank Irish faces, that will light up under a joke. They have had a hard time, poor fellows! Colonel Clarke, in his examination before the Lords' Committee of the present year, on the operation of the Irish Poor-Law, told a sad tale :-"This last summer the unfortunate state of the country entirely deterred persons from visiting Killarney; and so far from benefit being derived there, I was informed that the proprietor of the Victoria Hotel was a dead loser of £1000 by the season. . . . . . I believe there were a great many boatmen thrown out of business. The visitors were so few at Killarney last summer, that, in fact, there was nothing doing of any sort." Out of their privations, past and present, may they learn the rare virtue of prudence. Gerald Griffin has described them, in 'The Collegians :'-"Them boatmen arn't allowed to dhrink anything while they're upon the lake, except at the stations but then, to make up for that, they all meet at night at a hall in town, where they stay dancing and dhrinking all night, till they spend whatever the quollity gives 'em in the day. Luke Kennedy (that's this boy) would like to save, if he could; but the rest wouldn't pull an oar with him, if he didn't do as they do. So that's the way of it. And sometimes afther being up all night a'most, you'll see 'em out again at the first light in the mornin'."

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quietly told us what we were going to see; and when we saw it had no superfluous raptures to bestow upon the "genius loci,"-an excellent fellow, from the beginning to the end of our four days' experience. Our crew, till we became better acquainted, were silent and reserved. We had a very light infliction, throughout our stay, of what Gerald Griffin describes as "the teasing of the guides, and the lies of the boatmen." Innisfallen! Coleridge says, "Expectation is far higher than surprise;" and who has not had "expectation" raised by the name of Innisfallen? We pulled through a heavy swell from the west, which gave us some faint notion of the occasional dangers of the Lower Lake, and soon neared the famous islet. There it rests-one mass of brilliant green on the bosom of the dark wave. As we come nearer and nearer we trace the exquisite forms of its woods, in all their wondrous variety of foliage, dropping to the water's edge. One gleam of sun to light up the brilliant mass, and then a mist creeps down from the mountains, and Innisfallen is in her tearful mood. (Cut No. 2.) Half an hour's ramble, in spite of mist or shower, o'ercanopied by elm and ash as we tread the dewy greensward, or looking out from some little bay, bright with holly and arbutus, over the bright lake-and we leave Innisfallen-happily without knowing that some of the trees have been cut down since a lady tourist first visited it, and that she last saw it "with soreness of spirit:"

"Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well!

May calm and sunshine long be thine:
How fair thou wert let others tell,

While but to feel how fair is mine!"

And now our little craft is steered across the Lake, that we may land at O'Sullivan's Cascade. O'Sullivan, and more especially O'Donaghue, will soon be "familiar in our mouths," when our boatmen become talkative-but not as yet. We land at a little cove, and find ourselves in a thick covert, treading upon soft moss, as we ascend a gentle hill. Gradually the path grows narrower-the plash of waters fall on the eara rapid rivulet is beneath, dashing through the underwood-and at length we stand before the solitary Fall. Here is no basin where the troubled waters may rest in their course, as at the Lower Fall of Rydal. The torrent rushes on, hiding itself in the green banks, as if glad to escape from noise and light, into silence and mystery. This is indeed a charming Fall-severe in its beauty-unspoiled by art-especially solemn now the mist is on the hill. Here the botanist may revel in the search for plants which belong only to the West-mosses and ferns little known in our southern woods and water courses. Bree's Fern (Lastrea Recurva), according to Mr. Newman, is the admiration of botanists in the neighbourhood of Killarney; and at O'Sullivan's Cascade he observed it in the most graceful and beautiful luxuriance. To the of a unscientific eye, the prodigality of growth exhibited He by these feathery forms-dark purple stems, contrasting

At the helm of our boat sits what is here termed a bugle." John Spillane, one of the sons famous sire, was our musician and our steersman.

with the brightest green of the crisped leaves-is sufficiently striking. The foliage around us is quivering with approaching steps. We look about expectingly. But no

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Satyrs and sylvan boys are seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green."

Two emaciated little girls, preternaturally pallid, have watched the arrival of the stranger, and are come to offer their gleanings of the woods-a hart's horn-a wild nosegay. Poor wretched children-all mirth of childhood is vanished from their faces. In the mountain-hovel where they crouch, there has been grievous want. They have become acquainted with the bitterness of life very early. And we are pleasure seeking! We are surrendering ourselves to all sweet thoughts and influences! "The sunshine of the breast" is driving out all remembrances of fear and trouble. But now, when we think of that quiet place in the luxuriant woods, the faces of these poor children still haunt the spot, and make us sad. We understand now, when we read the evidence of a resident in the county of Mayo, the exact meaning of his words:

hands of the clergy; notwithstanding which, we find the abbey was plundered in this year by Maolduin, son of Daniel O'Donaghue. Many of the clergy were slain, and even in their cemetery, by the Mac Carthys." But the O'Donaghue, whose legends are associated with every island of these lakes, and of whom we are now beginning to hear unceasingly, was (at some dateless period) the lord of Ross-brave and wise, beautiful and generous. Unfortunate, of course, he was, so one of the islands is O'Donaghue's prison;—a mighty leader of chivalry, so another is O'Donaghue's horse ;-learned, and therefore a rock must be O'Donaghue's library;jovial and hospitable, so a cave is O'Donaghue's cellar. On every May morning he is seen gliding over the lake on a white steed, and he has a palace under the of waters, whence he issues to gladden the eyes many who have actually beheld him. Philosophy has discovered that the appearance of the O'Donaghue is an optical illusion, and that the boatmen do not wholly palm their stories upon the credulity of the stranger. Such an illusion, if we may venture to say so, is the spirit which is just now attempting to raise up a

"Will you describe the condition of the infants and nationality out of Celtic remains, and Irish literature. young children?"

"They look very bad indeed: they seem almost like animals of a lower class; they are wasted and wan."

There is direct testimony that in the Killarney district this terrible indication of the ravages of famine is too apparent. A competent witness speaks of "the wretched emaciated appearance of the children." Other tourists will see these very children; and, perhaps, will come home and talk of Irish beggary. "Take physic, Pomp." May these heirs of misfortune live to see brighter days! May they, escaped from pinching want, surround the stranger, as he was wont to be surrounded, with smiling faces, unheedful of naked feet or scanty drapery-such a group as Ireland has often shown to the delighted artist-joyous and graceful in the simple labours of happy poverty! (Cut No. 3.) We run up the Lake under the shadow of Glena, and look back lingeringly upon Innisfallen. There is the little ruined oratory which gave us shelter from the passing shower-a relic of the abbey which existed, according to the Annals of Innisfallen,' twelve centuries ago. The material works of the monks have perished, but their higher labours tell of ancient learning and its isolated civilization. The Annals' have been translated and printed as recently as 1825;-one of the original copies is in the British Museum. No one of the population speaks of the humble labourers in the arts of peace who dwelt here for ages; and whose records, combined with those of their country, come down to the fourteenth century. But the memories of the barbarous chieftains who once ruled over these lakes and mountains in devastating power, linger still in music and legend. One of the records in the 'Annals' is to this effect:-"Anno, 1180; this abbey of Innisfallen being ever esteemed a paradise and a secure sanctuary, the treasure and the most valuable effects of the whole country were deposited in the

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The antiquities of every country are full of instruction, and Irish antiquities especially so. They tell of past ages of feudal barbarism; but these are associated with the song of the bard and the learning of the priest. On every side there are ruined castles, dilapidated abbeys, mysterious towers, cairns and cromlechs. Most wisely has the hand of taste and public spirit interfered to prevent the lamentable desecration of all these objects which had been going on for many a year. Translate the old popular songs, cherish the native music, search into the ancient annals of the countrybut let not the men of ability and various knowledge who are labouring at this good work believe that a true nationality is to be founded upon the memories of the times which preceded the English conquest. We may be prejudiced; but to us it appears little better than the weakness of a false enthusiasm to lament over the decay of the Irish language; and to stigmatize the efforts to disseminate the use of English, as a tyrannous and selfish policy. Upon what do we Englishmen found our nationality? Not upon the legends of Arthur, or the victories of Athelstan-the learning of Eadmer or the verses of Cædmon. We read the Saxon war-song of the battle of Brunanburgh with antiquarian delight,-but when we hope to be "free or die" we think of "the tongue which Shakspere spake." In our view, the true Irish nationality had better be raised upon the great names in literature of Swift, and Berkeley, and Burke, and Goldsmith, and Edgeworth, and Moore, and a hundred other illustrious, than upon the relics of the old bards, pagan or Christian;-and one lesson from the real civilizer, "the man who makes two blades of corn grow where one grew before," is to our minds more precious than all the dreams of the barbaric splendour of the Mac Murroughs and O'Neals, and all the glories of the hill of Tara. We have seen The shower is of short duration.

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