“Grace and Terror smiling stand
Like sisters hand in hand.”
Though less fastidious than England, and without the canny cautiousness of Scotland, yet, of the Three Graces of the United Kingdom, fair Erin, for natural gifts and spontaneous beauties, stands preëminent.
“To the Bretons, the Basques, and the Irish,” says an observant French writer, “races not dissimilar in their hidden habits of thought and in the vague sadness of their eyes, the Atlantic Ocean is a boundary for the mind.... It is their climate background, resting-place, and grave ... the green hills into which Europe breaks to meet the southwest wind.”
All this, and more, is the Atlantic to the whole of northwest Europe,—Ireland in particular,—and its influences are not only great, but far-reaching.
The Irish, they say, have never been great seafarers. This, it is feared, is true to no small extent. They are not even great fishermen, as they well might be in their sea-girt isle. The Irishman himself will tell you that it is because the thrifty and hardworking west-coast Scotch have usurped their market. This may be so to a certain degree; but, to a still greater degree, their lack of capital to properly equip the industry is the reason why the harvest of the sea is garnered under their very sight.
It is not given to all who would travel and muse en route to be able to express their thoughts with that beauty of language which graces the lines of Stevenson or of Sterne. One may not even have the temerity to attempt to imitate their style.
He may, however,—and with propriety, thinks the writer,—consider, if he will, that theirs was the view-point of the acute observer and lover of the beautiful, and, as near as may be, imbibe somewhat of the emotions and sentiments with which these masters beheld the spots covered by their wanderings. Their words have come down to us as a variety of topographical description which can only be recognized as a new and precious thing, compared to the descriptions before and since.
With such an end in view were the various wanderings which are set forth in these pages undertaken. Not consecutively, nor even methodically, was the route laid out, but in the end it covered practically the entire island at varying seasons and under equally varying conditions of comfort or discomfort, though no hardships or disagreeable experiences were encountered, and it is confidently asserted that nothing of the kind would be met with by any who might make the journeys under similar conditions.
“June the nineteenth, arrived at Holyhead after an instructive journey through a part of England. Found the packet, the Claremont, Captain Taylor, would sail very soon.
“After a tedious passage of two and twenty hours, landed on the twentieth, in the morning, at Dunleary (now Kingstown), four miles from Dublin, a city which much exceeded my expectation.”