The river Lee, dividing here, flows round the island on which principally the city stands; and upon the wooded hills above, the richer part of the community have their pleasant, healthful homes.
Now, although I have deplored our transition from the wild scenery of Connamara and Kerry to the formalities of cultivation and refinement, I am not so bigoted as to deny that civilisation has its advantages; and, among them, I would specially include “the Imperial Hotel” in Pembroke Street. An excellent dinner, in pleasant society (the exception being a vulgar, garrulous old female, who ate with her knife, and told us how, in one of the foreign churches, she had “tried very 'ard to convert an aconite, quite a genteel young man,”) followed by some irreproachable claret,
“with beaded bubbles, winking at the brim,”
disposed us to criticise very leniently the defects and inferiorities of art; and we left our inn to see the fireworks in the Mardyke Gardens, not only consoled, but cheery. All Cork appeared to be going in procession up that long avenue of fine old trees; and as the subsequent exhibition appeared to be quite satisfactory, I can pay “all Cork” the compliment of saying, that it is very easily pleased. To us, as we stood in the long, damp grass, and the varnish was retiring from our favourite boots, intervals of twenty minutes between the pyrotechnic performances soon began to be rather tedious; and we longed to repeat an experiment, originally introduced at the Henley Regatta, when a dozen of us combining, applied our cigars to all the “fixed pieces” at once, and the grand design, which was to crown the whole, anticipated its glories by a couple of hours, and wished the bewildered spectators “Good Night” (in glittering letters two feet long) almost as soon as they had paid for their admission!
CHAPTER XIX. CORK
I was dreaming that I met Lord Evelyn, at sunrise, in the Gap of Dunloe; that he put into my hand, with a graceful bow and striking amenity, the largest horse-pistol I ever saw, constructed, as he said, upon novel principles, by which it loaded itself, and would continue to go off until three o'clock, with appropriate airs from a musical box in the handle; that, leaving me with a kind of Pas de Basque, which I thought very inappropriate at such a crisis, and taking up a position twelve paces from me, he produced a weapon, similar to mine, and requested me to “blaze away;” that I was making frantic, but futile efforts to get my deadly instrument on full cock, and that my Lord, disdaining to take any advantage, was pinking the eagles, as they flew overhead; when the loud ringing of a contiguous bell recalled me to the realities of life. There is ever in these large hotels some unhappy inmate, who is unable to put himself into communication with Boots, who rings his bell with an ever-increasing energy, until he performs, at last, in his wild fury, such a continuous peal, as must bring up somebody, or bring down the rope. It is interesting to listen to these bells. First they suggest, then they entreat, then they remonstrate, then they insist, and then they curse and swear! Like the music of the Overture to Guillaume Tell, they begin pleasantly and peacefully, then they grow grand and warlike, crescendo-ing, from andante pianissimo, until they arrive at allegro fortissimo; and reminding me of a village dame, whom I heard calling from her cottage door to a child, playing in the distance, and hearing but not heeding its mother:
“Lizzie, luv!”
“Liz—a—buth!”