I mentioned this interesting fact, one evening, to a Dublin woman of my acquaintance, and she laughed.
"'Tis true they are impatient," she agreed. "But perhaps they will quiet down once the government stops calling O'Connell Street by a wrong name."
"Where is O'Connell Street?" I asked, for I had failed to notice it.
"Your hotel faces it; but the government names it after a viceroy whom nobody has thought of for a hundred years."
It was then I understood the confusion of the man who had carried our bags up from the station; for to every good Irishman Sackville Street is always O'Connell Street, in honour of the patriot whose monument adorns it. That it is still known officially as Sackville Street is probably due to the inertia of a government always suspicious of change, rather than to any desire to honour a forgotten viceroy, or hesitation to add another leaf to O'Connell's crown of laurel. O'Connell himself, in some critical quarters, is not quite the idol he once was; but Irishmen agree that the wide and beautiful street which is the centre of Dublin should be named after him, and his monument, at one end of it, is still the natural rallying-place for the populace, whose orators love to illustrate their periods by pointing to the figure of Erin breaking her fetters at its base.
At the other end of the street is a very noble memorial of another patriot—Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell's fame burns brighter and clearer with the passing years, and this memorial, so simple, so dignified, and yet so full of meaning, is one which no American can contemplate without a thrill of pride, for it is the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens—a consummate artist, American to the marrow, though Dublin-born, of a French father and an Irish mother.
Midway of this great thoroughfare, rises the Nelson Pillar—a fluted column springing a hundred and fifty feet into the air, dominating the whole town. I do not understand why Nelson should have been so signally honoured in the Irish capital, for there was nothing Irish about him, either in birth or temperament. Perhaps that is the reason. Stranger things have happened in Ireland. And indeed it is no stranger than the whim which set another statue to face the old Parliament House—a gilded atrocity representing William of Orange, garbed as a Roman emperor in laurel-wreath and toga, bestriding a sway-backed horse!
The Home Rule Parliament will no doubt promptly change the street signs along the broad thoroughfare which forms the heart of Dublin; but meanwhile everybody agrees in calling the bridge O'Connell's monument faces by his name. A very handsome bridge it is, and there is a beautiful view from it, both up and down the river. Dublin is like Paris, in that it is built on both sides of a river, and the view from this point reminds one somewhat of the view along the Seine. There are many bridges, and many domed buildings, many boats moored to the quays—and many patient fishermen waiting for a bite!
A short distance beyond the bridge is the great granite structure with curving façade and rain-blackened columns, a queer but impressive jumble of all the Greek orders, which now houses the Bank of Ireland. Time was when it housed the Irish Parliament, and that time may come again; meanwhile it stands as a monument to the classical taste of the eighteenth century and its fondness for allegorical sculpture—Erin supported by Fidelity and Commerce, and Fortitude supported by Justice and Liberty! Those seem to me to be mixed allegories, but never mind.
Those later days of the eighteenth century were the days of Dublin's glory, for then she was really, as well as sentimentally, the capital of Ireland. Her most beautiful public buildings date from that period, and all her fine spacious dwelling-houses. After the Union, nobody built wide spacious dwellings, but only narrow mean ones, to suit the new spirit; and the new spirit was so incapable of living in the lovely old houses that it turned them into tenements, and put a family in every room, without any sense of crowding! I sometimes fear that the old spirit is gone for good, and that not even independence can bring it back to Dublin.