There are within the limits of the city over twenty places of worship. It has many charitable and educational institutions, and much enterprise and business activity. Save the old and slummish portion, which is not of very great extent, and is under comparatively good control, it has a thoroughly English look, or, perhaps we may say, an old American look. We greatly enjoyed our visit, and were happily disappointed; for our minds were disabused of opinions we before erroneously entertained, and supposed to be true, concerning this famous city.
DUBLIN.
At 1.30 p. m., on Friday, April 26, we left for Dublin, and after a ride of four hours reached that city. The landscape on the way was interesting, though not presenting anything very picturesque or romantic. We were, however, continually impressed with the fact that Ireland is well named the Emerald Isle; for not a bare acre is to be seen, and over hill and dale luxuriant vegetation is found.
We could but feel sorry that the laws of primogeniture and entailment of property yet prevail, and that England thus deprives herself and poor Ireland, her disconsolate child, of the rich blessings of an interested and land-loving, as well as soil-working people. The land is owned by a few lords. Estates must be kept entire, and so handed down through the male heirs from generation to generation. No absolute sale is possible, and a homestead can rarely be bought. The farm, be it little or great, cannot be owned by the tiller, but is held by the lord of the domain. An estate may not be divided among his descendants, but must pass to each successive heir in its entirety. It cannot be sold to those who would use it and improve its value. Without homesteads, with no prospect of anything but unsatisfying labor, with scarce the surety of earning a scanty subsistence,—there is, among the common people, a lack of interest in agricultural efforts. Thousands of laborers leave this land, the fairest on which God's impartial sun shines; few are left to care for the soil; and so, as the shortest cut across this field of deliberately created difficulty, nearly all the land is laid down to grass. In our ride of more than one hundred miles, hardly one fruit-tree was seen, or one nice garden. The country suffers for want of skilled yeomanry, to whom anticipation of ownership of the soil is "a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night," to pilot them out of the bondage they are in. The laws of justice and divine compensation are, however, at work, and change for the better is at hand; amendment after amendment, even now foreshadowed, will come, for He who ruleth over all will "turn and overturn," "till he whose right it is shall reign."
But to return to the Queen City of Ireland,—its greatest place socially and commercially speaking.
Dublin is finely situated at the head of Dublin Bay. It is built solidly, on comparatively level land, on both sides of the River Liffey, running from west to east. The city has a population of 242,722; including the adjoining suburb, 295,841. The river is navigable to Carlisle Bridge at the centre of the city, and from the mouth of the river up to the bridge it has good docks and wharves. Its commerce is varied and extensive. Unfortunately there was at the entrance of the harbor a sand-bar, on which, at low water, the depth varied from nine to twenty-four feet. This is now no great source of annoyance, as a portion of it has been removed, and large ships, taking advantage of the tides, may come up to the wharves.
A great part of the city is regularly built, having wide and well-paved streets, and magnificent stores and public buildings. They are of splendid architecture, and of every style and kind, from the classic Greek and Roman, to the elegant Renaissance, and from the Gothic of antiquity to the most refined of our own day. The latter, however, in its best estate,—save perhaps in its new grouping and combination of the best of the old ideas, with a rejection of the questionable features—is not much in advance of its original sources.
Like all large places, there is a slum where the people are poor and low; but in these respects Dublin is not the equal of Cork and some other parts of Southern Ireland.
As we go north towards Belfast and Londonderry we find an advance in what constitutes a higher and better civilization. The influence of the people of the North of England, and more especially of Scotland, has modified it. It may be said that where inflexible Episcopacy, acting on Catholicism, has prevailed, different results have come. While the good but ignorant Catholic has no affinity for Presbyterianism, he has a great respect for the industrious, well-appearing, just-dealing Scotchman, and he entertains an active suspicion in regard to the more formal Episcopalian, who has ruthlessly, as he thinks, appropriated the grand old churches where rest the bones of revered saints, and where his fathers worshipped for many generations. Some especial influence certainly has modified Northern Ireland's action, nature, and life. There is a deal more implied in the phrase North of Ireland, and in its antithesis, Far-downer, than appears to the casual observer. There is no city of Ireland where wealth and poverty are more contiguous, and where aristocracy and democracy are nearer neighbors, than at Dublin.
Nine bridges, two of which are iron, cross the river, and a magnificent avenue nine miles long, called the Circular Road, environs the city. The Bank of Ireland, near the college, is a low but very large building, and was once the House of Parliament. Trinity College opposite—and both are in the very centre of the most crowded business portion of the city—has fine stone buildings, with large and elegantly kept lawns, one opening into the other. The institution was founded by Pope John XXII., closed by Henry VIII., and reopened by Queen Elizabeth, who incorporated it in 1592.