13]"/> You couldn’t tell who would be stepping in to us across the bog’.”

Leaving out of sight, because I must, the famous city of Kildare with its Cathedral (half-church, half-fortress); the broad lakes of West Meath, endeared by hope to patient anglers; the city of Kilkenny, where something of Ireland’s prosperity remains unbroken, where the Butlers’ Castle stands undestroyed, where are churches that were never ruined (almost a prodigy in Ireland); saying nothing of Lissoy, where Goldsmith lived in the village that his pen immortalized; briefly, dismissing about two-thirds of Leinster with a wave of the hand, let me come back to Dublin and its environment.

II

Of Dublin itself, what shall be said? A much-travelled Belgian priest told me recently that only in Naples had he seen such widespread marks of destitution, and in Naples they have little to suffer from cold. A young Irish nationalist, London-bred, describing the emotion with which he made his first visit to the country he had worked so hard for, said that his week in Dublin left one leading impression on his mind—the saddest people he had ever seen; nowhere had he heard so little laughter. He had lived near poverty all his life in London and yet had not seen so many pinched and drawn faces. All this is true, especially on the north bank of the Liffey. And yet an artist who came with me once to the city spent his days in rapture over the beauty of the public buildings. That also is true. The King’s Inns, the Four Courts, and the Custom House on the north side of the river; in College Green, the front of Trinity College and the old Parliament House, (still—in 1911—the Bank of Ireland), are all splendid examples of the severe Georgian style of architecture, which found even happier expression in many noble and nobly ornamented dwelling houses. All this building was done in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Dublin had its day, when it was in reality the capital of Ireland.

NEAR ABBEYLEIX, QUEEN’S CO

Traces of its earlier history are found in the Castle, Norman built, but standing where the Danish founders of the city set their stronghold by the ford above the tideway; and in Christ Church, first founded by the Danes when in the eleventh century they came over to Christianity. Skilful restoration of the cathedral has disclosed much of the early fabric—Norman work on Danish foundations. And yet that ancient Danish stronghold interests me no more than Cæsar’s Londinium; nor does the medieval city hold any charm for my mind—lying as it did outside the real life of Ireland, merely a fortress of a foreign power. Strongbow’s tomb is there to see in Christ Church, but to my thinking a far more significant monument is to be found in the other cathedral, St. Patrick’s. Dublin as we know it, the capital and centre of an English-speaking Ireland, really dates from the eighteenth century; and its first outstanding and notable figure was Jonathan Swift, the immortal Dean. The Deanery, in which were spent the most remarkable years of his splendid and sinister existence, stands outside the main entrance; near that entrance, in the south aisle, surmounted by a small bust, is the marble slab which enshrines his famous epitaph. I translate it:—

The liberty which Swift upheld was the liberty of Ireland. He sought to free Ireland from that system of laws restricting all industrial development, whose consequences are with us to-day. He came to Dublin in 1715, a politician in disgrace, and was hooted in the streets. Seven years later he was king of the mobs, and no jury could be bullied to convict, no informer could be bought to denounce, when Government sought the author of those pamphlets which every living soul knew to be his. He began the work which Grattan and the volunteers completed—yet he was an Englishman and no lover of Ireland. Born in Ireland by chance, bred there of necessity, consigned to a preferment there against his hope and will, he was spurred on to work for Ireland by that saeva indignatio which his epitaph speaks of, which he himself renders in this sentence of a letter:—

The greatest perhaps of British humorists, he died mad and miserable; and died as he expected to die. His other monument is Swift’s Hospital, built for a madhouse out of the money willed by him in a bequest, which his savage pen thus characterized:—

“He left the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad,
And showed by one satiric touch
No nation wanted it so much”.

In the north transept an epitaph written by Swift marks the tomb of “Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world by the name of ‘Stella’, under which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral”. The world has always wanted to know, and never will know for certain, whether she ought to have borne the name of him who celebrated her. But his bones were laid by hers, and still lie there, under a column in the nave; though the indecency of antiquarians dragged out their skulls when the cathedral was under restoration, made a show of them at parties, and preserved a memorial of this outrage in plaster casts, now deposited in the robing-room.

You can see also, in the vestry, not a cast, but the authentic skull of William’s General Schomberg, who fell in glory at the head of victorious troops crossing the Boyne. You can read also Swift’s epitaph on the tomb which Schomberg’s relatives and heirs declined to pay for, leaving the pious task to Swift and his chapter. The Latin sentence keeps the vibrant ring of Swift’s indignation. If only his ghost could write the epitaph of those who ransacked tombs and groped among mouldering relics of the immortal and unforgotten dead, to find objects for a peepshow! Yet after all it is in keeping with the story. In the dark end of Swift’s life, while he paced his guarded room between keepers, servants used to admit strangers for a fee, to see that white-haired body which had once housed so great and terrible a mind.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which Swift made famous, dates, like Christ Church, from Norman builders; but it was renovated fifty years ago at the cost of Sir Benjamin Guinness, head of the famous brewery. Christ Church, on the other hand, was rebuilt out of whisky—the restorer was Mr. Henry Roe. Broadly speaking, the century which began with the legislative Union was marked in Dublin by the growth of distilling and brewing and the decay of all other industries. Guinness’s is to-day one of the sights of the city, and admission by order, easily procurable, will take the visitor over the biggest thing of its kind anywhere to be seen—and, let it be said, one of the best managed. Nowhere are workmen better treated, and no rich manufacturers have made more public-spirited use of their wealth. Dublin owes to Lord Ardilaun not only the opening but the beautification of St. Stephen’s Green, once an enclosure but now a very attractive public park in the middle of the city’s finest square. We may well thank