But it is in its environs that Dublin stands ahead of all the capitals in Europe, or, perhaps, of any other city of equal size in any country. Because the beauties around Dublin were not described in the first chapters of this work does not imply that they are much inferior to what may be seen in other parts of the country. There is nothing like the Lakes of Killarney in the environs of Dublin, and Dublin Bay is hardly equal to Clew Bay; but barring those two gems of scenic loveliness, it is questionable if there is, for beauty alone, leaving sublimity aside, anything in Ireland that surpasses the immediate environs of Dublin, without going further north than Howth, or further south than Bray. Every inch of the country round Dublin has some peculiar scenic charm of its own. The Botanic Gardens of Glasnevin are the most interesting and beautiful in Europe; not so much for the care that has been taken of them, or the quantity and variety of the plants that are in them, but principally on account of the charming locality in which they are situated. It is not meant to be implied that they are not well taken care of, or that their collection of plants is not both rare and large. What is meant is that had they the rarest and largest collection of plants to be seen in any gardens in the world, they would not have the same attraction were they situated in a less picturesque locality. If ever there was a place made to spend a hot summer day in, it is these gardens, with their murmuring river, their shaded, sunless walks, their gigantic trees and deep glens. The place where the flower gardens of Glasnevin are would still be beautiful if there wasn’t a flower in it.
Its bay is the great scenic attraction round Dublin. It cannot be seen to real advantage but from the south-west side of the hill of Howth. The bay has very few islands, but its background of mountains on one side and woodland on the other is so wonderfully fair, that were there myriads of islands to be seen, they could hardly add to the wondrous beauty of the view. What a Scotch mechanic said about the view of Dublin Bay from the high land on the south-west of Howth the first time he was there will give the reader a better idea of Dublin Bay than a whole chapter of descriptions, and loses nothing by being expressed in the strong doric of the north: “Ech, mon, I seed mony a bonny sicht in Scótland, but this beats a’.” There are many who think the view from Killiney Hill finer than that from Howth. The view from the former takes in Sorrento Bay, which is in reality part of the Bay of Dublin that can hardly be seen from Howth, and also takes in many valleys in Wicklow and plains in the interior that are not visible from Howth. It is not easy to say which of the views is the finer; but either is worth travelling not only ten miles, but a hundred miles, afoot to see.
In describing the beauties of Dublin Bay, it cannot be out of place to give the finest poetic address to it that was ever written. It will be new to most English and many Irish readers. The poem is by the late D. F. M’Carthy:—
“My native Bay, for many a year
I’ve loved thee with a trembling fear,
Lest thou, though dear and very dear,
And beauteous as a vision,
Shouldst have some rival far away,
Some matchless wonder of a bay,
Whose sparkling waters ever play
’Neath azure skies elysian.
“’Tis love, methought, blind love that pours
The rippling magic round these shores,
For whatsoever love adores
Becomes what love desireth;
’Tis ignorance of aught beside
That throws enchantment o’er the tide,
And makes my heart respond with pride
To what mine eye admireth.
“And thus unto our mutual loss,
Whene’er I paced the sloping moss
Of green Killiney, or across
The intervening waters;
Up Howth’s brown side my feet would wend
To see thy sinuous bosom bend,
Or view thine outstretched arms extend
To clasp thine islet daughters.
“My doubt was thus a moral mist,—
Even on the hills when morning kissed
The granite peaks to amethyst,
I felt its fatal shadow;
It darkened o’er the brightest rills,
It lowered upon the sunniest hills,
And hid the wingèd song that fills
The moorland and the meadow.
“But now that I have been to view
All that Nature’s self could do,
And from Gaeta’s arch of blue
Borne many a fond memento;
And gazed upon each glorious scene,
Where beauty is and power has been,
Along the golden shores between
Misenum and Sorrento;
“I can look proudly on thy face,
Fair daughter of a hardier race,
And feel thy winning well-known grace,
Without my old misgiving;
And as I kneel upon thy strand,
And clasp thy once unhonoured hand,
Proclaim earth holds no lovelier land
Where life is worth the living.”
One great charm of the country around Dublin, like one of the great charms of Killarney, is its diversity. There are mountain, bay, woodland, and river. There is a variety of scenery in the immediate vicinity of Dublin such as cannot be found so near any other European capital, and such as not even Naples itself can boast of. Great indeed is the difference in the style of scenery between the cliffs of Howth and the green lanes of Clontarf, although both places are hardly more than four miles apart. To go a few miles further from the city, Bray is reached. It is only twenty-five minutes by train from Dublin. There one finds himself almost within a gunshot of some of the most picturesque and peculiar scenery in the world. The Dargle and Powerscourt Waterfall are in the same locality. They are gems of loveliness that surpass anything of their kind in these islands. Even Killarney has nothing like them. Their very smallness adds to their charms. The Dargle is exactly what its name, Dair-gleann, signifies, an oak-glen. It is a chasm some two or three hundred feet deep, every inch of the sides of which is covered in summer-time with some sort of tree, shrub, or flower. In its depths laughs or murmurs a limpid stream that can rarely be noticed, such is the thickness and luxuriance of the trees and shrubs that overhang it. Powerscourt Waterfall is close by the Dargle. The river that forms it leaps down a rock nearly three hundred feet in height, into a valley of brightest verdure, covered with a thick growth of primeval oak-trees. An enchanting spot—which it is gross folly to attempt to describe—in a land of towering hills and flower-crowned rocks. Its wildness, winsomeness, and loveliness must be seen in order to form anything like a just idea of it. And all within about twelve miles of Dublin!
Then there is Howth on the north side, and only nine miles from Dublin, one of the most wonderful spots of earth for its size in Europe. It is a hill-promontory that juts out into nearly the middle of the bay, about three miles in width and nearly the same in length. It is over five hundred feet high, and in autumn is a pyramid of crimson and gold; for wherever there are not trees or cultivation, there are furze and heath. A place of wondrous beauty of its own, in no way like the Dargle or Powerscourt. From the summit of Howth there is one of the most enchanting and extensive views conceivable, reaching north to the Mourne Mountains and east to Wales. And all this about nine miles from Dublin! Yet with all these glories at her very feet, Dublin is still the Cinderella among the capitals of Europe.
There is beauty of a “truly rural” kind within half-an-hour’s walk from the Dublin General Post Office, or from the centre of the city. Thackeray said in his “Irish Sketch Book,” half a century ago, that it was curious how some of the streets of Dublin so suddenly ended in potato fields; but the potato fields Thackeray saw there are all covered with houses now. It is true, however, that on the north side of Dublin one gets into the real country by walking only a quarter of an hour from the city limits; no sham country of cabbage gardens, but real fields of grass and grain growing from soil of the most exuberant fertility. Trees and hedgerows abound; so do some of the best and most thrifty farmers in Ireland, who generally pay enormous rents for their land. The country north of Dublin is almost perfectly flat, while on the south side the mountains commence within a few miles of the city limits. But flat as the country north of Dublin is, it is one of the finest and most fertile parts of Ireland, and was known in ancient times as Fingall, because some Finn Galls, or fair-haired foreigners from Scandinavia settled in it when they ceased to plunder churches and monasteries. Those who prefer a flat, well-wooded, and very fertile country to a land of mountains and valleys, like that on the south side of Dublin, should see the plains of Fingall.
It has been said that the gentle and refined are ever fond of flowers. If this be so, the gentle and refined ought to be very plentiful in Dublin and its environs, for in no other part of this planet known to man are there as many wild flowers to be seen so near a great city as in the environs of Dublin. This statement is made in sober earnestness, and with absolute certainty as to its truth. It may be asked, if this is so, how is it to be accounted for? It is easy of explanation. To begin, Ireland is, par excellence, the land of wild flowers because of its moist, mild climate and generally rich soil. Sunlight, when it is the burning sunlight of southern climes, is death to flowers. Dublin enjoys a milder climate than any city in Great Britain, although not so mild as Cork or some other Irish southern cities. It is only a few miles from the mountains on the south of Dublin to Howth on the north. Between Howth and the mountains, if the whole of the mountains of Wicklow are counted and taking inequalities of surface into account, for government surveys always mean level surfaces, there are every autumn at least a hundred thousand acres of wild flowers within half a day’s journey of Dublin. It may be said that these wild flowers are nearly all of one species—heath. That is true; but heath, or heather as it is more frequently called, is a wild flower, and one of the most beautiful that grows. The reason the Irish mountains produce so much more heath than those of Great Britain is because they are less rocky and more boggy, and are in a milder climate. The mountains of Wales, being so stony, have hardly any heath on them. Then there is the furze or gorse, as it is generally called in England. Heath and gorse bloom side by side over thousands of acres in Howth and on the Dublin and Wicklow mountains. Then there is the hawthorn. Where in these islands, or on the continent of Europe, are there as many hawthorns to be seen on an equal space of ground as in the Phœnix Park, Dublin? Let those who have seen them in their snowy glory of white blossoms in the early summer answer. But there are still other flowers that do certainly bloom in greater luxuriance, and are more plentiful round Dublin than round any other city in these islands—one of these is laburnum. Florists have said that nowhere else does it bloom with such luxuriance as around the Irish capital. Dublin is indeed seated in a flowery land, for it is well known that even the rich soil of Ireland produces more wild flowers than the rich soil of Great Britain. It is true that not only the flora but the fauna of Ireland are less numerous in species than those of Great Britain. There are a great many species of flowering plants that are common in the larger island but unknown in the smaller one except in gardens. It is not easy to account for this; but if there are fewer indigenous flowering plants in Ireland than in Great Britain, the former country produces those that are natural to it in much greater abundance than the latter. The reason of this is easily understood. It is because the climate of Ireland is milder and moister than that of Great Britain; and it is probable that the soil is of a different quality in Ireland. But one thing is certain, that not in England or in any European country are there such a quantity of wild flowers to be seen as in Ireland. It is not alone on Irish bogs and mountains that wild flowers are more abundant than in most other countries, for the most fertile soil in Ireland, the best fattening land, generally grows wild flowers in such abundance that pastures become parterres.
Dublin and its vicinity are not quite so rich in antiquities as some other parts of Ireland. Very few traces of the old Danish city have been left. Its walls can be traced in some few places. But what sort of houses the people lived in can only be guessed at. They were probably, for the most part, built of wood; for it cannot be too often impressed on those who have a taste for antiquarian studies, that in ancient, and even what is generally known as mediæval times, almost the entire populations of northern countries lived in houses of wood or of mud, and sometimes in houses made of both materials. For centuries after the art of building with stone and mortar was well understood, stone houses were rarely used by the masses either in towns or country places. They had stone-built churches and round towers, and sometimes castles, but the people lived in wooden or in mud houses. Dublin has more round towers in its immediate vicinity than any other Irish city. There are three of them within a few miles’ distance. That of Clondalkin is on the Great Southern Railway; that of Lusk is on the Great Northern; and that of Swords is only seven miles from Dublin by road, and only two miles from Malahide Station on the Great Northern. All these towers are in a good state of preservation; but the one at Swords will soon be a ruin if the ivy, with which it has been foolishly allowed to become completely covered, is not removed from it. Ivy holds up for a time a building that is in a state of decay, but in the long run it is sure to ruin it completely; for when the ivy becomes strong enough, it forces its way between the stones, gradually displaces them, and the building then tumbles down. If it is the Board of Works that has charge of the Swords round tower, they are greatly to blame for allowing the ivy to be gradually but surely bringing it to certain ruin. If it is under the control of a private person, public opinion should compel him to have the ivy removed from what was not long ago one of the most perfect and best preserved of Irish round towers.
There is something connected with the census of Dublin published in Thom’s directory from official documents which may be more interesting to some than any description of the Irish capital, however graphic. This something is an evident error that has, by some means, been made in enumeration of its inhabitants. According to the published census, there were in round numbers 13,000 more people in Dublin in 1851 than in 1891; and only 14,000 more in county and city included in 1891 than in 1851. There is a gross error here, for between the two epochs mentioned, the increase in what is generally known as the metropolitan district has been so great that it is visible to anyone who has been familiar with Dublin for forty years. It is known that since 1851 nearly 25,000 houses have been erected in city and county. That number of houses would represent at least 100,000 people, but it only represents 14,000 according to the census, or two-thirds of a person to each house! It may be said that a great many houses have been pulled down in the city since 1851. True, there have; but ten have been built since then for the one that has been pulled down. There are at least a dozen streets, large and small, in Dublin, the population of which is four times greater than it was in 1851; for there were no tenement houses in those streets then, whereas they are all tenement houses now, and consequently there are four or five families instead of one in each house. The great increase in the population of Dublin during the last forty or forty-five years is quite apparent in the more crowded state of the thoroughfares. It seems not only probable, but certain, from all the data that can be got at outside the census, that there are from fifty to one hundred thousand more people in what is known as the metropolitan district of Dublin than is shown by the published census. This will go far to account for the weekly death-rate of Dublin being generally higher than that of any other city in these islands; for if the weekly number of deaths is based on a population less than what it is, it will make the weekly death-rate per thousand higher than it should be. This is a very serious matter for Dublin, for nothing has a more detrimental effect on the welfare of a city than getting the name of being unhealthy.