LIMERICK.
After a ride of five hours, having on the way passed back through Mallow, we arrived in Limerick, where we took rooms at the Royal George Hotel. Valises deposited, and the usual toilet operations gone through with, we walk out to see this place, so like Cork and Dublin. Limerick is the capital of the county of Limerick. It is on a narrow arm of the sea, or mouth of the River Shannon, with a population of 49,670. It consists of an English town, built on an island of the Shannon, and also an Irish one; and it has a suburb called Newton Perry, on the left bank of the river. These three portions are connected by five bridges, one of which, the Wellesley Bridge, cost $425,000.
We were pleasantly surprised with the appearance of the place, with the cleanness of the streets, and their good pavements, and the general order and substantial condition of all we saw. We speak now of the English portion, which is in fact the larger and principal division of the place. The surface is level, and the buildings are mostly of dark-colored brick. They are generally three or four stories high, without decoration, save simple brick cornices and arched doorways to the houses. There are solid and plainly finished fronts to the stores. The streets are of strikingly uniform appearance, presenting only here and there anything to attract notice. It has its slums like Cork; but of these we need not speak now.
We next begin our walk to the cathedral, for this was the first of the cathedrals we had reached. The greater part of the edifice, as it now stands, was built during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and so is six hundred years old. We readily found it, and came to one of the iron gates leading to the burial-ground in front of it. The dark and antiquated look of the old, massive structure impressed us favorably, and touched the right chord. We had seen castles and abbeys in fine ruin, but they belonged to a dead past. We were hungering for something ancient in which the living present was playing its part, and nothing feeds this hunger so well as a cathedral, especially those that, at the Reformation, passed over from Catholicism to Protestantism, as this has done.
After demonstrations at the iron gate the verger soon appeared, coming from the cathedral tower some hundred or more feet away. This burial-ground is the principal way of access to the cathedral, and has good walks from the gates to the edifice. The entire ground, perhaps a half-acre in extent, is neat and well kept, and has many ancient-looking gravestones and low slab-monuments. Our verger was a portly man of some sixty years, a master of the situation. An adept at the business, he soon understood our case and our nationality, and we thought we understood him. Both parties being in good humor and knowing their business, we proceeded from point to point over the edifice, he all the time trying to earn his fee of a shilling each, and we aiding him as best we could, by seeming to pay respectful attention, yet doing as much thinking outside of his thoughts as we chose, and in our own way.
The cathedral is large and imposing to view from the outside, irregular in outline, and antique-looking in the extreme. It is built of a dark-dinged, brownish colored stone, and is of Gothic architecture. It has a tower one hundred and twenty feet high, but no spire above it. At the time of our visit the building was under process of extensive restorations of the interior.
There are many ancient monuments in the various parts of the building, some of them centuries old. It would be interesting to allude freely to them, but our limits will not permit. One illustration must suffice, and that is quoted for its simplicity and quaintness. It was read off by our guide with a promptness and precision, both of words and declamation, that suggested familiarity, and that we were by no means the first who had heard it.
Memento Mory
Here Lieth Littell Samvell
Barington that Great vnder
taker of famiovs cittis
Clock and chims maker
He made his one time goe
erly and latter Bvt now
he is retvrned to god his creator
The 19 of November then he
Scest and to his memory
This Here is pleast by his
Son Ben 1693.