“Nor can we buy things when we do stop. It’s dreadful of you to begin to want things so early.”
“Yes,” chimed in a masculine voice at the door, “It’s unworthy the spirit of a true Chautauquan. Get on your hats, girls, there’s time enough for a drive, to get what the books recommend—a general view of the town.”
Our hotel fronts Stephen’s Green, whose twenty acres of beautiful grounds form only one of six such ornamented breathing places for that portion of the city which lies on the right bank of the Liffey, beyond the confines of the ancient town. Our coachman knows his business, and halts to point out the equestrian statue of George the Second, showing through the trees in the center of the square. Then we must look at the old Mansion House, and at the site of the great exposition building which stands in twelve acres of garden, and was, if successful, to have been what the Crystal Palace of Sydenham is to London. Financially, it was not a success, and the future use of the building is not yet decided. We halt again to admire the architectural beauty of “the finest building in Dublin, if not in Ireland,” formerly the Irish House of Parliament and now used as the Bank of Ireland. If it were not too late we could go in and see the whole process of printing the bank notes. As it is, we jog slowly on to the eastern end of College Green, which is entirely occupied by the imposing front of Trinity College. The huge Corinthian pile covers an extent of thirty acres. The income is derived largely from landed estates. Its library of one hundred and thirty thousand volumes grows rapidly, for the University is one of the five that has the right to a copy of every volume published in the United Kingdom. The number of students, usually about two thousand, is diminished somewhat by the new Queen’s University, founded by Victoria in 1850, which grants degrees to the graduates from the Queen’s Colleges at Belfast, Galway, and Cork. To a company of learners, nothing could be more interesting than to visit the museums, observatories, botanic gardens, and printing houses of this great institution, which has had such an influence on education in Ireland; but, if we could not see all, we confess to a preference for a day at the Royal Dublin Society, whose professors lecture to the public gratuitously, and whose schools in the fine arts instruct worthy pupils without charge. We want also to see the male and female training schools, under the charge of the Board of Education, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and the Drummond Orphanage, owned and supported by a merchant of that name. Other societies for the promotion of science and literature are too numerous to name. No city is more generously provided with the means of education, or produces more learned scholars, yet nowhere is the ignorance of the lowest classes more marked. No place more abounds in charitable institutions. The charity schools number over two hundred, yet the condition of the poor is wretched in the extreme. The city is one of striking contrasts, of grand architectural effects, heightened by the meanness of the dwellings of the poor. The nine bridges over the Liffey add greatly to the picturesqueness of the place, but the water of the stream is as notoriously filthy as ever. Within a few years some efforts have been made to improve the sanitation of the city and the hygienic condition of the poor. Dirty alleys have been widened, model tenements built and drinking fountains supplied. At enormous cost the neighboring streams were turned into a valley, which made a natural reservoir seventeen miles from the city. Thence the water is brought through tunnels to filtering chambers, eight miles from town, from which it is distributed over the city. From the University we went down Dame Street to the Castle, used since the time of Elizabeth as the residence of the Lord Lieutenant. Here there are state apartments to be seen, and music to be heard in the beautiful chapel, but none of this to-day. The sun is setting, and as we whirl on past hospital, postoffice, Custom House, and convents, over the bridge and by the magnificent structure called the Four Courts, because there are held the courts of Queen’s Bench, Common Pleas, Chancery, and Exchequer, there is not time to drive inside the gate of the beautiful Phœnix Park and look at the obelisk that commemorates the victories of Wellington. That must be left for the morrow, as must the old Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, whose ancient archepiscopal palace is now used as barracks for the police. In this cathedral are the tombs of Dean Swift and the Stella of his poetry. The structure is the most remarkable instance of complete restoration of our day, Mr. B. L. Guinness, M. P., having spent £150,000 in its restoration. He was knighted for his generosity, and it does not become us to suggest that the sum could have been better spent.
We shall have to divide into two parties to-morrow, and while the artist and teacher go to examine the picture gallery and the schools, the others will get a look at the docks and the harbor, where, by aid of dredging machines, the sand is kept at bay, so that ships can now come up to the quays. Commerce still continues to be important, as Dublin is the avenue of supply for imports for the midland district, but manufacturers of woollen, cotton, silk, etc., are nearly extinct, though the general financial and commercial condition of Ireland is improved within the last twenty years.
While Dublin has declined, especially in manufactures of linen and flax, Belfast, the metropolis of the north of Ireland, has steadily grown in both. It lies on our route to the north, five hours from London. It offers nothing in the common lines of interest, such as churches, museums, public buildings, and parks that would induce a stay; but its immense manufactories are well worth any loss of time a visit may involve. We were shown all through the largest steam-mill, which employs nearly three thousand men; and through the immense establishment at Ardoyne, where the finest linen—that intended for the noblest houses, whose coats of arms are woven in the web—is made by hand. It was interesting indeed, to see, as in the former mill, the process from the beginning with the raw flax to the beautiful completed fabric, and more interesting to watch the workers, many of them women, young girls and little children, who live their lives out day after day in the dust and din of machinery. Their pinched and haggard faces, their dull, spiritless eyes, and the constant monotonous motion of their hands made them seem a part of the machines, and brought to mind with great force Mrs. Browning’s “Cry of the Children.”
Belfast is a great, comfortable, well-to-do looking city, with wide, well-paved streets, many attractive public buildings and substantial homes. We stopped but a night, taking train to Portrush, via the cozy little town of Coleraine. It is a journey of about seventy miles, leaving daylight enough to direct to the picturesque castle of Dunluce, which stands on an isolated rock a hundred feet above the sea. The bridge from the mainland is so narrow as to incline all four of us, like children, “to take hold of hands.” It is a wild spot, with many romantic associations, if the head did not swim, gazing down into the boiling waves that have worn great caves under the walls, so that we could not stay to hear. We creep back, cautiously as we came, to our car, a regular bouncing, swaying, Irish jaunting car, and are whirled on four or five miles further, to see the one thing for which we are up here on this wild Irish shore—the famous Giant’s Causeway. This great natural curiosity has been so often described, that it is already familiar. Its prismatic columns of stone, rising a thousand feet from the sea, make a promontory of pillars, each fitted so perfectly to its neighbor that we can not at first recognize the structure as a freak of nature. As we look over the whole field, it is strangely impressive, and reminds one of the towers, tombs, spires, and strange shapes taken at Vesuvius by the fields of lava, and the mind takes kindly to the wild legends, and does not disturb itself with the various scientific theories concerning the formation. The legends say that the giant was Fin M’Coul, who built the causeway quite across the channel to Scotland, in order to meet in fair fight a boasting Caledonian giant. The giant well whipped, and the causeway, no longer needed, Fin allowed it to fall into the sea. It is a pity to hasten here, for the wild picturesqueness of the spot grows with every hour of wandering upon the rocks, but we must back to Coleraine, and thence to Londonderry, where, tired and sleepy, we hide ourselves away in our cabins on the little steamer, and are carried in our sleep over the channel to Scotland, breakfasting cozily in McLean’s old-fashioned, quiet hotel in Glasgow.
And now we are in another world. Here is no lack of pure water, for Loch Katrine, thirty miles away, pours into the city no less than twenty-four millions of gallons a day. Here is thrift, for around us is a city whose trade so increased that its import duties multiplied a thousand times in sixty years. Here is the beautiful Clyde, literally lined with ships, old and new, ships going and coming, ships in every stage from hulk and beams to paint. Here is a city alive with honest work, with staunch and loyal principles, with churches and schools of the best. Her cathedral ranks next in the kingdom to Westminster Abbey. Among her philanthropies, one of the latest is specially worthy of mention. It is an immense depot, with many branches, for furnishing food to the working classes. They can have a good substantial breakfast for six cents; a dinner of soup, meat, potatoes and pudding, for about nine cents. The originator of this work is Mr. Thomas Corbett, who should find imitators in every city in the world. Is not this a better work than to scrape a cathedral inch by inch from base to tower?
With so much that is living and practical to interest, strange that we hurry away to that which is a matter of poetic sentiment and association with the dead. Yet there are, even in our quartette, those who cheerfully turn from the living pictures of Scotch prosperity, to go and dream for a day on the bridges and in the shadow of the old Wallace tower of Ayr. They want to stroll out to the cottage where Robbie Burns was born, to visit the “auld kirk-yard,” to grow sentimental, perhaps, over his snuff-box, and to touch the Bible he gave his Highland Mary. Well, if they will go, we might as well go along, for, leaving out the poetry and the poet, what can be lovelier than to be out of doors in this early September weather in one of the most picturesque parts of Scotland! The excursion takes only one day from Glasgow, and when we are safely back, we are only two hours by rail from Edinburgh.
And here, as we throw wide open the shutters of front rooms in the old Hotel Royal, and look out upon the deep ravine that divides the city, and across to the castle-crowned hills, and down upon the monument of Walter Scott, just over the way, our cool and quiet ones become eagerly enthusiastic, and the enthusiasts grow wild. We are sure we want to stay here a month; we want to fly out to the nearest circulating library and get all of Scott’s novels at once; we want to hurry our dinner, that we may go and explore this wonderful and picturesque old place.
The girl whose outcropping desire to buy things was unanimously nipped in the bud, ventures to say she “must have a plaid—a shawl, a necktie, something, anything, that is plaid,” and receives no unsympathetic reply. For the moment, struggling Ireland’s forgotten, and all that is not purely American in us, is altogether and unanimously Scotch. In this mood we are not slow in finding our way to the streets, believing that acquaintance with details will enhance our first impression of the imposing picturesqueness of the place. Our starting point is the foot of Sir Walter’s marble monument, which rises slender and graceful two hundred feet in air. The statues in the niches represent characters in his books, the “Lady of the Lake,” the “Last Minstrel,” and “Meg Merrilies,” breaking the sapling over Lucy Bertram’s head. We had thought to pass by Abbotsford, having indulged ourselves with Ayr, but here we find the question recurring, “Can not we take the time on the way to London to see the home, especially the study, of Scott—to go to Dryburgh Abbey and stand beside his grave; and on the same excursion see the Abbey of Melrose?” Forced to leave the question unanswered, but secretly resolving to do it, we go as straight as we can, asking many questions of the guide by the way, to the Castle of Edinburgh, which frowns down from the precipice on which it stands with a grim aspect ill-suited to the present time.