[Original Size]
Here and there, in mid-stream, are beacons of an original pattern. The cormorants flew heavily away before us, but the heron moved not from the sighing sedge,—still and grey as the stone on which he stood,—nor seemed to note the seething waters, which swelled around him as the steamer passed.
Ay, and how touchingly that silent bird, with his keen gaze, steadfastly fixed, and his every thought concentrated, upon one object reminded me (if, for a moment, I may assimilate the Queen of my soul to a gudgeon) of myself; for alas, I was again in love! As soon as ever I set foot on the steamer, I knew it was all over, though she was a long way off.
“It would have been well,” writes Mr. Froude, “for Henry VIII. if he could have lived in a world, in which women could have been dispensed with;” and it would be better no doubt for the susceptible tourist, if there were fewer pretty girls in Ireland. In vain, I groaned
“O intermissa, Venus, diu,
Rursus bella moves!
Parce, precor, precor!”
for she wouldn't parce at any price; and by the time we arrived at Clonmacnoise, I was in a state of most abject infatuation. Frank proposed to bleed me with a large fishing-knife, and would keep feeling my pulse, with his watch in his hand, in an exceedingly frivolous manner. But I suffered severely, in spite of frequent beer, until a late period of the evening, when my wounded spirit, in the smoke-room at Limerick, at last found relief in song.