Away we drove, our horses being young, fresh, and in high condition. It was a glorious morning, and vainly did I strive not to admire the scenery, as one after another of the beautiful villas that adorn the Howth road gleamed out in the snowy whiteness that characterizes the houses there, generally embosomed in trees and surrounded by gardens on the rising grounds. We were descending the hilly road very rapidly, when by some means the horses took fright, and broke into a full-gallop, crossing and re-crossing the road in a fearful manner. The driver was thrown on the footboard, poor Tajo hung by his chain against the horses' legs, and our situation was most critical. I had suffered from one upset in America, and resolved not to encounter another; so quietly gathering my long riding-habit about me with one hand, and putting the other out at the window, I opened the door, and with one active spring flung myself out. You know the extreme peril, the almost certain destruction of such a leap from a carriage at full speed; I did not, or certainly I would not have taken it. However, at that very instant of time, the horses made a dead stop, and the chaise remained stationary only a few paces in advance of me.
Was not the hand of God here? Oh, surely it was, in the most marked and wonderful manner. No cause could be assigned for the arrest of the animals; the driver had lost the reins, and no one was near. I had fallen flat on the road-side, just grazing my gloves with the gravel and getting a good mouthful of the soil, with which my face was brought into involuntary contact. In a moment I sprung to my feet, and blowing it out, exclaimed with a laugh, "Oh well, I suppose I am to love this country after all, for I have kissed it in spite of me." I then ran to help my dog out of his disagreeable state of suspension, and returned to my friends, who were frightened and angry too, and who refused to let me into the chaise unless I positively promised not to jump out any more. To shorten the tale, I reached the Hibernian hotel, where my husband was, seized some money, and paid my expenses without any one having discovered that I was a complete bankrupt up to that minute.
I have been very prolix here; for I cannot overlook a single incident connected with this eventful journey. Never did any one less anticipate a blessing or look for happiness than I in visiting Ireland. I cannot enter into more particulars, because it would involve the names of friends who might not wish to figure in print; but if these pages ever meet the eyes of any who gave me the first day's welcome in Dublin, let them be assured that the remembrance of their tender kindness, the glowing warmth of their open hospitality, and their solicitude to make the poor stranger happy among them, broke through the ice of a heart that had frozen itself up in most unnatural reserve, and gave life to the first pulse that played within it of the love that soon pervaded its every vein—the love of dear, generous Ireland.
My first journey into the interior was to the King's county, where I passed some weeks in a house most curiously situated, with an open prospect of ten miles pure bog in front of it. Being newly built, nothing had yet had time to grow; but its owner, one of the most delightful old gentlemen I ever met with, had spared no cost to render it commodious and handsome. He was a fine specimen of the hospitable Irish gentleman, and took great pleasure in bringing me acquainted with the customs of a people and the features of a place so new to me. Indeed it was my first introduction to what was really Irish, for Dublin is too much of a capital to afford many specimens of distinct nationality. On that great festival of the peasantry, St. John's eve, Mr. C—— resolved on giving his tenants and neighbors a treat that should also enlighten me on one of their most singular relics of paganism. It is the custom at sunset on that evening to kindle numerous immense fires throughout the country, built like our bonfires to a great height, the pile being composed of turf, bog-wood, and such other combustibles as they can gather. The turf yields a steady, substantial body of fire, the bog-wood a most brilliant flame; and the effect of these great beacons blazing on every hill, sending up volumes of smoke from every point of the horizon, is very remarkable. Ours was a magnificent one, being provided by the landlord as a compliment to his people, and was built on the lawn, as close beside the house as safety would admit. Early in the evening the peasants began to assemble, all habited in their best array, glowing with health, every countenance full of that sparkling animation and excess of enjoyment that characterizes the enthusiastic people of the land. I had never seen anything resembling it, and was exceedingly delighted with their handsome, intelligent, merry faces; the bold bearing of the men, and the playful but really modest deportment of the maidens; the vivacity of the aged people, and the wild glee of the children. The fire being kindled, a splendid blaze shot up, and for a while they stood contemplating it, with faces strangely disfigured by the peculiar light first emitted when bog-wood is thrown on; after a short pause, the ground was cleared in front of an old blind piper, the very beau ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-replenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes, and the endless jig began.
An Irish jig is interminable, so long as the party holds together; for when one of the dancers becomes fatigued, a fresh individual is ready to step into the vacated place quick as thought, so that the other does not pause, until in like manner obliged to give place to a successor. They continue footing it, and setting to one another, occasionally moving in a figure, and changing places with extraordinary rapidity, spirit, and grace. Few indeed among even the very lowest of the most impoverished class have grown into youth without obtaining some lessons in dancing from the travelling dancing-masters of their district; and certainly, in the way they use it, many would be disposed to grant a dispensation to the young peasant, which they would withhold from the young peer. It is, however, sadly abused among them, to Sabbath-breakings, revellings, and the most immoral scenes, where they are congregated and kept together under its influence; and the same scene enacted a year afterwards would have awoke in my mind very different feelings from those with which I regarded this first spectacle of Irish hilarity, when I could hardly be restrained by the laughing remonstrances of "the quality" from throwing myself into the midst of the joyous group and dancing with them.
But something was to follow that puzzled me not a little; when the fire had burned for some hours and got low, an indispensable part of the ceremony commenced. Every one present of the peasantry passed through it, and several children were thrown across the sparkling embers; while a wooden frame of some eight feet long, with a horse's head fixed to one end and a large white sheet thrown over it, concealing the wood and the man on whose head it was carried, made its appearance. This was greeted with load shouts as the "white horse;" and having been safely carried by the skill of its bearer several times through the fire with a bold leap, it pursued the people, who ran screaming and laughing in every direction. I asked what the horse was meant for, and was told it represented all cattle. Here was the old pagan worship of Baal, if not of Moloch too, carried on openly and universally in the heart of a nominally Christian country, and by millions professing the Christian name. I was confounded, for I did not then know that Popery is only a crafty adaptation of pagan idolatries to its own scheme; and while I looked upon the now wildly excited people with their children, and in a figure all their cattle, passing again and again through the fire, I almost questioned in my own mind the lawfulness of the spectacle, considered in the light that the Bible must, even to the natural heart, exhibit it in to those who confess the true God. There was no one to whom I could breathe such thoughts, and they soon faded from my mind: not so the impression made on it by this fair specimen of a population whom I had long classed with the savage inhabitants of barbarous lands, picturing them to myself as dark, ferocious, discontented, and malignant. That such was the reverse of their natural character I now began to feel convinced; and from that evening my heart gradually warmed towards a race whom I found to be frank, warm, and affectionate, beyond any I had ever met with.
My interest in them, however, was soon to be placed on another and a firmer basis. I took up my permanent abode in a neighboring county; and within six months after that celebration of St. John's eve, I experienced the mighty power of God in a way truly marvellous. Great and marvellous are all his works, in creating, in sustaining, in governing this world of wonderful creatures; but Oh, how surpassingly marvellous and great in redeeming lost sinners, in taking away the heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh, and making his people willing in the day of his power! I have carefully abstained from any particulars respecting myself that could either cast a reproach on the dead or give pain to the living; I shall do so still, and merely remark, that as far as this world was concerned, my lot had no happiness mingled in it, and that my only solace under many grievous trials consisted in two things: one was a careful concealment of whatever might subject my proud spirit to the mortification of being pitied when I desired rather to be envied; and the other a confident assurance, that in suffering afflictions silently, unresistingly, and uncomplainingly, I was making God my debtor to a large amount. What desperate wickedness of a deceived and deceitful heart was this! The very thing in which I so arrogantly vaunted myself before God was the direct result of personal pride, in itself a great sin; and thus I truly gloried in my shame. I never looked beyond the rod to Him who had appointed it; but satisfying myself that I had not merited from man any severity, my demerits at the hand of the Most High were wholly put out of the calculation. Thus, of course, every stroke drove me further from the only Rock of refuge, and deeper into the fastness of my own vain conceits. Added to this, I was wholly shut out from all the ordinary means by which the Lord usually calls sinners to himself. There was no gospel ministry then within my reach; nor could I, if it were provided, have profited by it, owing to my infirmity, (deafness.) Into Christian society I had never entered, nor had the least glimmer of spiritual light shone into my mind. My religion was that of the Pharisee, and my addresses to God included, like his, an acknowledgment that it was by divine favor I was so much better than my neighbors. Reality had so far chased away romance, that my old favorite authors had little power to charm me; and the hollowness of my affected gayety and ease made society a very sickening thing. * * *
At the time I am now to speak of, I was living in perfect seclusion, and uninterrupted solitude. Captain —— was always in Dublin, and my chief occupation was in hunting out, and transcribing and arranging matter for the professional gentlemen conducting the lawsuit, from a mass of confused family papers and documents. Our property consisted of a large number of poor cabins with their adjoining land, forming a complete street on the outskirts of the town, which was greatly in arrear to the head landlords, and a periodical "distress" took place. On these occasions a keeper was set over the property, some legal papers were served, and the household goods—consisting of iron kettles, wooden stools, broken tables, a ragged blanket or two, and the little store of potatoes, the sole support of the wretched inhabitants—were brought out, piled in a long row down the street, and "canted," that is, put up to sale, for the payment of perhaps one or two per cent. of the arrears. This horrified me beyond measure: I was ashamed to be seen among the people who were called our tenants, though this proceeding did not emanate from their immediate landlord; and every thing combined to render the seclusion of my own garden more congenial to me than any wider range.
It was then that I came to the resolution of being a perfect devotee in religion: I thought myself marvellously good; but something of monastic mania seized me. I determined to emulate the recluses of whom I had often read; to become a sort of Protestant nun; and to fancy my garden, with its high stone-walls and little thicket of apple-trees, a convent enclosure. I also settled it with myself to pray three or four times every day, instead of twice; and with great alacrity entered upon this new routine of devotion.
Here God met and arrested me. When I kneeled down to pray, the strangest alarms took hold of my mind. He to whom I had been accustomed to prate with flippant volubility in a set form of heartless words, seemed to my startled mind so exceedingly terrible in unapproachable majesty, and so very angry with me in particular, that I became paralyzed with fear. I strove against this with characteristic pertinacity; I called to mind all the commonplace assurances respecting the sufficiency of a good intention, and magnified alike my doings and my sufferings. I persuaded myself it was only a holy awe, the effect of distinguished piety and rare humility, and that I was really an object of the divine complacency in no ordinary degree. Again I essayed to pray, but in vain; I dared not. Then I attributed it to a nervous state of feeling that would wear away by a little abstraction from the subject; but this would not do. To leave off praying was impossible, yet to pray seemed equally so. I well remember that the character in which I chiefly viewed the Lord God was that of an Avenger, going forth to smite the first-born of Egypt; and I somehow identified myself with the condemned number. Often, after kneeling a long time, I have laid my face upon my arms, and wept most bitterly, because I could not, dared not pray.