The controversial side of the religious question is omitted, though, considering the many noble monuments, ancient shrines, ruined abbeys, and existing church edifices throughout the land, references to it, and many of its acts and functions, were here and there necessary.
So, too, mention has been made of many of the romantic and eery legends of the country, many of which are, in the light of recent history, considered somewhat apocryphal as to their genuineness. But, reader, what would you? You surely would not go to Ravenna and not see Juliet’s tomb, even though you know that Juliet had no real identity. Neither would you go to that gay little city of mid-France, Nevers, without visiting the tomb of “all the Montmorencies,” nor to Warwickshire without going to Stratford. Hence you must, if you would know aught of Ireland, see Muckross Abbey, Blarney Castle, and the Giant’s Causeway. The harps, the shamrocks, the blackthorns, and the peat-bogs, all of which are genuine enough, will then fit themselves accommodatingly into the ensemble, and you will have a picture so impressed upon the memory that the recollection of it will rival most things of this earth with which one has had but a passing intimacy.
This work, then, may in some small measure
give a more favourable impression of the country than has commonly been produced even by Ireland’s pseudo-humourous novelists—that it is simply a land where mud huts, misery, discord, and violence predominate—by recognizing it as a land blessed by Heaven, in the first instance, at any rate, with nearly every natural gift.