present Duke of Devonshire and his predecessor have modernized the castle and equipped it with interior luxuries without interfering in any way with its noble and hoary exterior.
Lismore is in the very heart of the Blackwater country, amid some of the most lovely scenery in the south of Ireland. Through Lismore Glen, where the woods are thick on either side and the road is canopied over with the spreading green foliage, one enters the Gap, a famous pass in the Knockmeledown Mountains, where the hills rise on one side to frowning heights, crowned in the gold of the gorse, which gives an additional glory to the land, and, on the other side, fall sheer down in an almost precipitous steep, across which there is a vast and enchanting view over the rolling plains of Tipperary. As one passes through the Gap, either on a car or coach, or on foot, the sun streams down with dazzling brightness, and the little villages and townships, the tapering spires, the tall watch-towers of antiquity, the whitewashed cottages, and gray stone houses, standing solitary on green fields, the ranges of purple hills, and the clumps of woods are all suffused with the yellow mellowing glow of a glorious summer sun.
To all who visit the Blackwater, Lismore should be doubly dear; first, because of its being a fine example of the fortified domestic Gothic architecture of its time, and, secondly, because its present occupant is generous enough to open its interior to view.
A MS. of very ancient date was recently discovered by some workmen repairing the older portion of the castle. It is a most precious work on vellum, recounting contemporary history in a manner which classes it as one of the famous chronicles of English history, worthy, perhaps, to rank with Froissart, Doomsday, and St. Albans. It is known as the “Book of Lismore,” and is now considered one of the chief treasures of the castle.
One leaves Lismore with a certain feeling of sadness, if he is observant and studies the straws and the winds.
Not many years ago the long mountain road, which runs from Lismore to the Knockmeledown Mountains, had four or five little hamlets dotted along it; to-day scarcely one house remains, and hardly a sign of life, except a few sheep snatching at the precarious grazing. Of the 42,000 acres belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, only half are under cultivation, and this is a very large proportion compared to the rest of the surrounding estates.
Lismore, the town, has itself shrunk considerably during the past few years. The aching desolation of it all gets on one’s nerves after a time, and, during a sojourn in this beautiful region, admiration of the scenery is mingled with wonder as to whether nothing can or ever will be done to brighten the mournful economic aspect of the agrarian situation.
Irish names have often a knack of being frankly pugnacious, so that even a peaceful lord chief justice has had to bear the inciting-to-murder sobriquet of Killowen. But the mountains, which form the background to Lismore and Clogheen, the Knockmeledowns, are capable of an entirely pacific interpretation. Commonly one says, “We are knocked down all in a heap” by this or that which takes us by surprise, and these mountains surprise all by their beauty. There is no lovelier sight in Ireland, and, if an air of melancholy prevails, it is because the scene is “somehow sad by excess of serenity,” to quote a recent phrase of Mr. Henry James, concerning a similar aspect elsewhere.