On emerging from the darkness to the spot where daylight breaks faintly, as down a shaft, you see the ivy and creeping plants hang around the rocks in the most picturesque festoons and garlands. Here flocks of wild pigeons roost, whence the cave has its name. The popular superstition permits no sportsmen to molest them in this spot, so that they are fearless as in a dove-cote.
We quitted this gloomy region, where all is close and oppressive, and wandered down to the broad sea-like lake, where all seems to lose itself in boundless space. This majestic body of water fills a basin of twelve German miles long, and at its widest point, three broad. It contains just as many islands as the year days; at least so the natives assert,—I did not count them. It is bounded on two sides by the high mountains of Connemara; on the others its waters are nearly level with the plain: the approach to it opposite to the mountains was, therefore, more beautiful than the return. The navigation of this lake is very dangerous from its numerous rocks and islands, and the sudden squalls which often arise upon it. We saw in a newspaper a short time ago, that a boat, having on board a butcher and his sheep, had gone down, and man and beast perished. We had a very calm, though not a bright day. When we landed, my companion went before to give some orders; while as the sun was setting, I visited the ruins of an abbey, which contained some striking remains of architectural and sculptural beauty.
Ireland is studded with ruins of old castles and monasteries more thickly than any country in Europe, though they do not present such enormous masses as those in England. These old ruins (for unfortunately even here are many new ones) are constantly used by the people as places of burial,—a poetical idea, peculiar, I believe, to this nation. As there are none of those tasteless modern monuments which deform English churches, and the grave is marked only by a mound of earth, or at most a flat stone, the touching picture of human frailty is enhanced, not impaired, by this custom. The impression is, however, sometimes heightened into horror by the little heed paid by those who dig the graves to the earlier buried, whose skeletons are thrown out without ceremony as soon as there is a want of room. The ruins are consequently filled with heaps of skulls and bones thrown confusedly together, and sometimes placed in pyramids or other forms by children at play. I climbed over a heap of mingled stones and bones, and crawled up into a ruinous chamber of the first story, where I feasted myself on the strange romantic picture. On my left the wall had fallen in, and opened to the eye the beautiful landscape which surrounds the lake, with its bright-green foreground, the mountains in the distance, and on one side the house and the high trees in the park of the Macnamaras, who reside here. Before me was a window in good preservation, surrounded with carvings like ‘point d’Alençon;’ above it hung large bunches of deep purple blackberries pendant from their luxuriant branches, which crept in one continuous mass along the open wall. On the right, where the wall of the chamber remained perfect, was a low niche, which no doubt formerly contained a saint, but was now occupied by a skull; the empty eye-sockets were directed exactly towards the beautiful landscape spread before it, as if its brilliancy and freshness had power to gladden even death itself. Following the same direction, I discovered a grated window just above the ground, which I had till then overlooked: it gave light to a spacious cellar, in which I descried a vast heap of bones, all arranged in the way I have mentioned, in various forms. The sunny landscape above, the dark charnel-house below, in which childhood sported with death,—it was a glance at once into life and the grave,—the joys of the one, and the unsympathizing calm of the other; while the rays of the setting sun threw a cheering glow over the living and dead, like messengers from a fairer world.
Our return in a dark night, with incessant rain, was fatiguing and unpleasant; we broke several springs of our carriage, and had all sorts of calamities to endure. We arrived at B—— after midnight, and to my real dismay found the good old Captain and the whole family still up, and waiting supper for us. The prodigal attentions and the infinite kindness of these excellent people daily put me to shame, and I continually admire to see that their cordial hospitality is not deformed by the slightest trace of ostentation.
That my letter may not be too large, and cost too much postage, (for I have to pay some pounds sterling to the English post-office for my voluminous packets,) I close it before I leave B——m. You will know me safe and well up to this point, and in the care of people whose hearts are like your own, however inferior to you they may be in mind and cultivation.—Heaven bless and preserve you.
Your most faithful L.——.
LETTER XXXII.
B——m Sept 14th, 1828.
Beloved Friend,
Your sermon is excellent; your reasons are unanswerable;—but I happen to believe the contrary; and belief is, as you know, a thing which not only removes mountains, but often builds up such as it is impossible to see over. No conversion can consequently be effectual, be the subject what it may, till the opposite belief has already begun to totter. Till that point is reached, though you speak with the wisdom of Plato, and act with the purity of Jesus, every man will retain his belief, on which reason and good sense have ordinarily little influence. He who wishes to produce any sudden change in the minds of men before they are already disposed to it, will either be confined as a madman, or stoned and crucified as a martyr. History teaches us this in every page. What is applicable universally, is also applicable individually,—and now, ‘parlez-moi raison si vous l’osez.’—But, seriously speaking, a man who has the misfortune to be born with a too independent spirit, and who cares little for common opinion, merely because it is common, should remain unchanged all his life. The consequences of such a turn of mind, and the hostilities it excites, becomes painful, and at length dangerous, only when he grows weak and ceases to be self-sustained; when instead of despising, as before, the opinions of others, he begins to fear them. The multitude are quick to perceive the change, and instantly begin a steady and vigorous pursuit of the game which flees before them, and which, so long as it stood at bay and looked them boldly in the face, they dared not openly attack. For getting on in the world, there is no better maxim than this, ‘Bouche riante, et front d’airain, et vous passez par tout.’ We Germans are almost always too earnest as well as too timid, and are capable of only momentary struggles against these defects, which, like all such attempts, generally overshoot the mark. This makes us so fond of retirement and of converse with our own fancy,—our best and faithfullest companion;—we are sovereign lords of the regions of air, as Madame de Staël says. The world, as it is, does not please us, and we are just as little fitted to please the world. Retirement, and with it freedom, are therefore what we love best.