The merry humour and good-natured politeness of the people I met were very engaging. I know no nation of which the lower classes appear so little selfish; so thankful for the least friendly word vouchsafed to them by a gentleman, without the least idea of gain. I really know no country in which I would rather be a large landed proprietor than here. What I did elsewhere, and earned only ingratitude and opposition of every kind, would here attach ten or twelve thousand people to me body and soul;—the only difference is, that here with much less time and cost I should have attained infinitely greater results, since here nature and man make almost every thing attainable. The people taken in a body, with all their wildness, unite the frank honesty and poetical temper of the Germans, with the vivacity and quickness of conception of the French, and the pliability, naturalness, and submissiveness of the Italians. It may with the fullest justice be said of them, that their faults are to be ascribed to others, their virtues only to themselves. Now I am upon this subject, I must relate to you an incident of no great importance which befell me some days ago: it deserves mention, as illustrative of the national character.
As I was going from Killarney to Kenmare, I met a continual succession of people driving cattle from some neighbouring fair. Most of them were riding colts they had just bought, without bridles; and as man and beast were strangers to each other, the latter were not in a very perfect state of subordination: we were therefore often forced to stop. At last I grew tired of this; and at the third or fourth rencontre of the kind, I called out to the people that I had not time to spend half the day on the road on account of their clumsiness; and somewhat hastily ordered the coachman to drive on. In an instant two colts set off with their riders, galloping before the carriage as hard as ever they could, while the whole drove of cattle took to the mountains. I was now sorry for my impatience, and desired the driver to stop again. There were in all four or five drovers whom I had thus routed, all sturdy young fellows; and the trick I had played them was certainly one of the most disagreeable that could be imagined, as it would take them at least half an hour to collect their dispersed cattle. If a traveller in a miserable one-horse vehicle had given such a job to Germans, Englishmen, or Frenchmen, they would certainly have attacked him with appropriate abuse, and very likely have tried to catch him and do him some injury. The behaviour of these good-natured fellows was far different: at once respectful and witty. “Oh! murther, murther!” cried one, while his ‘crantancarous’ colt made another attempt to dart up the hill, and nearly threw him; “God bless your honour! but every gentleman in England and Ireland gets out of the way of cattle! Oh, for God’s sake stop now, your honour, stop!” I immediately stopped: and after the poor devils had had the greatest trouble in fetching back the part of the cattle that had run the furthest, they came back to my car, with a “long life to your honour!” to thank me for my goodness, and went merrily off with their recaptured prize. I must confess that their behaviour was far more commendable than mine, which I repaired as well as I could by means of a handsome present.
October 1st: Morning.
Although dreadfully tired I could not sleep last night, and asked the host if he had a book. He brought me an old English translation of the Sorrows of Werther. You know highly, how intensely I honour our prince of poets, and will therefore hardly believe me when I say that I had never read this celebrated book. The cause would appear to many very childish. The first time it came into my hands, the passage at the beginning in which Charlotte wipes the little boy’s dirty nose excited in me such disgust that I could read no further; and this disagreeable image remained, always present to my mind. I now, however, set earnestly to work to read it, struck with the strangeness of the accident which led me to read Werther for the first time in a foreign tongue, and in the midst of the wild mountains of Ireland. But even here, I must honestly confess I could not feel any hearty relish for the antiquated “Sufferings;”[137] the quantity of bread and butter, the provincial and obsolete manners, and even the ideas, which were then new, but are now become common-place,—like Mozart’s beautiful melodies degraded into street ditties; lastly, the involuntary recollection of Potier’s admirable parody,—it was absolutely impossible for me to work myself up to the right “communion frame of mind,” as Madame von Frömmel calls it. But thus much I could perceive, jesting apart, that the book was calculated to ‘far furore’ at one period: for the morbid state of mind under which Werther sinks is truly German, and German feeling was just then beginning to make its way through the materialism which had taken possession of the rest of Europe. Wilhelm Meister indeed followed it with far different steps; and Faust has since traversed it with giant strides. We have, I think, outgrown the Werther period, but have not yet reached that of Faust; nor will any age, so long as men exist, out-grow that.
In the tragedy of Faust, as in those of Shakspeare, the whole inward man is mirrored forth; the principal figure is a personification of the eternal mysterious longings of the human heart, the restless striving after the Unknown and the Unattainable. Hence this drama can obviously never have a fully definitive end, even were it extended through many more acts than it is. But as the lofty spirit here treads a path dizzy as the bridge of Al Sirat, he is every moment nearer to the bottomless fall than the human animal who remains quietly on the secure plain, and feeds.
A cousin of O’Connell’s, who gives hunting parties on the lake of Killarney, had promised me one for to-morrow. I have, however, a positive antipathy to going to see what I have seen before, as long as there is any thing new to see; and I cannot imagine that dogs and horses can make any great alteration in the features of a scene I know so well. On the other hand, in Glengariff, amiable people and a great deal of novelty awaited me: I therefore preferred it, rode once more across the Devil’s Mountain, this time by daylight, and arrived here about an hour ago. I am established in a pretty little room, and all the glories of the Bay are spread before my window.
Before I quitted Kenmare my vanity was put to a severe trial. The Irish naïveté of the innkeeper’s daughter made such an agreeable impression on me, that on my return to her father’s inn I scarcely talked to any body else, and thus won her good graces. She had never quitted her native mountains, and was as ignorant of the world as it is possible to conceive. I asked her, in jest, if she would go with me to Cork. “Oh no,” said she, “I should be afraid to go so far with you.—Do tell me now who you really are: You are a Jew;—that I know already.” “Why, are you mad?” said I; “what makes you think I must be a Jew?” “Ah, you can’t deny it; hav’n’t you a black beard all round your chin, and five or six gold rings on your fingers? And are you not an hour washing yourself in a morning, and don’t you go through ceremonies such as no Christian ever saw? Confess it now,—you are a Jew, ar’n’t you?” My disclaimer was of no use. At last, however, she said good-humouredly, that if I positively would not allow that I was one, she wished at least that I might ‘become as rich as a Jew,’ (an English phrase.) I confirmed this with a Christian ‘Amen.’
October 2d.
I am just returned from an excursion of sixteen miles with Colonel W—— to Hungry Hill, a lofty mountain at the end of Bantry Bay, remarkable for its waterfall, and for Thomas O’Rourke’s flight to the moon on an eagle’s back, which began here, and has so often been related in prose and verse. Even in Germany this amusing tale has been repeatedly translated, and has probably fallen into your hands. The hero of the story is a game-keeper of Lord B——’s, who is still alive, and almost always drunk. On our return Colonel W—— introduced him to me at the inn. He is now extremely proud of his celebrity, and seemed to me when I saw him to be projecting another visit to the moon.
The quantity of rain which has fallen these few days has added much to the beauty of the waterfalls. The fall at Hungry Hill entirely disappears in dry weather, but after violent rains exceeds the Staubbach and Terni. Hungry Hill is a huge mass of naked rock about two thousand feet high. On the land side it forms two steep terraces, on the ‘plateau’ between which there is a lake, which of course is not visible from below, whence you see only the continuous lines of these colossal terraces. The upper one consists of bare rock, and is divided in the middle by a deep vertical groove, which looks as if cut by art; the lower, although also free from any visible inequality, has its side clothed with heather and coarse grass, on which hundreds of goats are seen grazing.