In order to reach a tolerable inn at night, I had to ride ten miles over an interminable moor, the usual haunt of all sorts of spirits, though only now and then a solitary Will-o’-the-wisp flitted by me.
When I reached the village, both the inns were filled with ‘tourists;’ and it was with the greatest difficulty that I procured a little sort of ante-room, in which I was to sleep on straw. The tea, butter, toast and eggs were, however, excellent, and hunger seasoned my repast. I cannot describe to you how delightful this life is to me. Amidst all its privations, I feel myself a hundred times more ‘à mon aise,’ than encumbered and annoyed with a thousand unnecessary conveniences. I am as free as the bird in the air, and that is one of the highest enjoyments.
And now, honour to whom honour is due. Few men would sit down with religious regularity every evening, after such fatigues, to write you a faithful report of all the events of the day. If it does but give you pleasure, I am rewarded a thousandfold.
Bray, August 24th.
Gall maintained, as you may remember, when he examined my skull in Paris, that I have a very prominent organ of veneration. Nevertheless many have regarded me as a vile heretic; but he was right;—that is, if religion consists in love, and in a sincere striving after truth. In such a joyful, pious frame of mind did I greet the fresh morning with prayer and praise, and the inward brightness broke through the gloomy damp mist which surrounded me; for the weather was extremely bad. The road too was desert and melancholy;—but, patience! the evening brought back sunshine and beauty.
For the present I saw nothing around me, as far as my eye could reach, but barren heath and moor; a stormy wind blew across it in gusts; and drove before it the rack, which, when I came within its reach, wetted me like a heavy rain. Short and feeble gleams of sun gave momentary hope, till about noon the clouds parted; and exactly as I reached the summit of the mountain above the magnificent valley and lake of Luggelaw, the sun gilded all the country beneath me, though the tops of the hills were yet shrouded in mist.
This valley belongs to a wealthy proprietor, who has converted it into a delightful park. It is singularly laid out, and I will try to give you an idea of it. The valley forms a nearly regular long oval basin. The lake occupies the immediate fore-ground to the mountain’s foot; the middle-ground is meadow-land, studded with groups of trees, and watered by a meandering stream; and in its centre, backed by a solitary rock, is an elegant ‘shooting lodge.’ The mountains surrounding the valley are very high and steep, and rise on every side, in a bare and unbroken line from the perfectly level plain. On the left are naked rocks of imposing aspect, only here and there overgrown with heath-plants; the three other sides are clothed with thick and varied vegetation, whose foliage hangs into the very lake. At the spot where the mountain streams flow through bright green herbage into the lake, it forms a broad waterfall. It is indeed a lovely spot of earth, lonely and secluded; the wood full of game, the lake full of fish, and nature full of poetry. As the shooting season has not yet begun, the proprietor was absent; and the wife of the steward, a still pretty woman, though rather ‘passée,’ with handsome white hands, and manners above her station, at my request prepared my breakfast; while her lively little son conducted me about the valley. A beautiful greyhound, who bounded over the ground as lightly as a leaf borne by the wind, and enjoyed his freedom in the wildest gambols, accompanied us. We climbed, not without pain to my chest, ‘car je ne vaux plus rien à pied,’ to a rocky table-land, four hundred feet high, which overlooks the whole valley. Opposite is a strange sport of nature,—a monstrous face regularly formed in stone, looking gloomily and angrily on the lake below. The eye-brows and beard were distinctly marked by moss heath, and the prominent cheeks and deep sunk eyes perfectly formed by the clefts in the rock. The mouth is open;—when you remove further off it closes, but without altering the other features. It is really a high prerogative to possess such a living image of a mountain spirit. He looks, however, as I said, angrily on the lake, and seems to call aloud with open mouth, “Ye human creatures, leave my valley, my fish, my game, my rocks, and woods in peace! Leave them, or I will bury you, ye pigmies, under my ruins!” But it is in vain! the voice of spirits is become powerless since man’s own spirit awoke. Rübezahl’s countenance is turned to stone, and his voice dies away in the gusty breeze, which irreverently sports with his bushy eyebrows, and curls the waves of the lake as if in scorn against him.
An interval of ten miles of uninteresting country lay between this walk and my arrival at the gate of the park of P——, one of the most extensive and beautiful in Ireland. But it was Sunday, the lord of the domain a saint,—and of course the gate locked. On this day, according to his view of the matter, a pious man must on no account leave his house except to enclose himself within the gloomy walls of a damp church: on no account rejoice himself in God’s own wondrous and magnificent temple. This was a sin to which Lord P—— would by no means afford encouragement, and at his recent departure had therefore prohibited the opening of his gate. Instructed by the adventure which you may recollect befell me in England, I made no attempt at winning a passage by means of a gift, but pursued my way along a wall, over which from time to time I cast a longing and stolen glance at the magnificent waterfall and the enchanting scene. Thou beneficent God! thought I, in what different ways art thou worshipped! One man roasts his neighbour to thy honour; another fashions thee as Apis: some represent thee more partial and unjust than the devil himself; others think they offer thee the most acceptable service when they deface thy loveliest gifts, or deprive themselves and others of the enjoyment of them. Oh! Lord P——, you will not read these lines; but it were good for you if you could, and if you would lay them to heart! Full many a poor man, who sweats through the whole week that he may pay you your rent, would feel his heart expand with joy on a Sunday in your beautiful park, and would bless the goodness of that God who has not left him wholly destitute; who has spread out before his eyes the glory and the beauty of creation. And this joy would be reflected back upon yourself;—but perhaps, you are not even present? Perhaps you send your pious commands from afar? You are, perhaps, like so many of your colleagues, one of those ‘absentees’ who by the hands of ravenous and merciless agents strip the people of their last rag, rob them of their last potatoe,[127] to enrich the charlatans of London, Paris, or Italy. Then, indeed, if that be the case, your religion can hardly go beyond superstitious veneration for the Sunday, and for the ceremonies of your priests.
From hence to Bray the cultivation is luxuriant; the country is filled with houses and gardens of the opulent citizens: the road lies at the foot of the Great Sugar Loaf, whose hoary naked cone is barren of all vegetation. I saw some travellers who had just ascended it, and looked like moving chess-men; I envied them the magnificent view, for the day was brilliant and the atmosphere perfectly clear. Towards evening I lay myself down in a lonely spot, among the field-flowers by the side of a brook, and gave myself up to a dreamy and grateful delight in this beautiful world; leaving, like a knight-errant, my faithful steed to graze by my side. I thought of you and of past times; I called on the living to appear, and the dead to arise, and looked into my past life as into a mirror—now with a melancholy, then with a cheerful smile: for through all the follies and vanities of this world, through errors and faults, there still ran one pure silver thread strong enough to endure;—feelings of childlike love, and a high capacity for enjoyments which God’s goodness renders attainable by all.
I returned to Bray in good time, and found my travelling-bag arrived; it contained many things which, after long privation, were not to be despised: among others, it afforded me the most interesting of companions, Lord Byron. I have now two portraits of him before me, drawings which have been given me, and which I have had bound in the Giaour and Don Juan. Like Napoleon, while yet aspiring, he is thin, wild and melancholy; when he had reached the summit, he is fat and smiling. But in both these otherwise so different countenances is seen that scornful, haughty spirit, deeply shaken by fate, more deeply sensitive by nature, which animated these features.