"No," said mine host, "your honor must never say good-by to Ireland until you see her only living monarch who has not emigrated or been transported to a penal colony!"
Slieve Donard, the king in question, was but twelve miles distant, or rather the village nestling at its foot. The road to Newcastle, the name this village bears, was one of peculiar beauty all the way, and I chose, to me, the most enjoyable of all ways of reaching it—I determined to walk there. So, about eight o'clock on a beautiful autumn morning, the dew still upon the grass and glistening upon the rustling leaves of the beeches in a grove of which my rustic hotel lay shadowed, armed with a stout blackthorn, a book in either pocket, and a light breakfast in its appropriate department, I set out upon my journey; accomplished it most enjoyably, arriving with but a [{794}] faint remembrance that I had eaten any breakfast whatever, and just in time for the table d'hôte at Brady's.
The hotel was full with the motley occupants peculiar, there as elsewhere, to hotels by the seaside in the bathing season. Among the guests were reverend gentlemen assorted in the nicest manner, lean kine and fat; the good-natured parish priest and the more sanctimonious and exclusive curate of the orthodox persuasion; surly country squires who had rushed down to please their wives and the girls—"what did they want with salt water?" the city shopkeeper and his prim property, exulting in evidence of ton in every word and movement. Even the eye-glassed, red, and wiry-whiskered Cockney could be seen and heard, possibly attracted there by the reputation of the "Hirish girls for fine hiyes and hintellects," or probably from a peculiar horror, for private reasons, of other watering places nearer home, where landlords were less generous and accommodating, being more experienced. These, and such as these, with a few who came to see rather than to be seen, made up the guests at Brady's.
After dinner I joined a party of the class last mentioned who purposed devoting the rest of the afternoon to an excursion upon the mountain, ascending as high at least as would enable them to enjoy a scene pronounced by travellers to be one of the finest in a land praised alike in song and story for its scenic beauty. The unmingled enjoyment of that ascent—for the labor of the journey was a pleasure too—is one of the most pleasant of the many happy memories which I owe to the "Isle of Tears." The landscape which unrolled itself like a scroll as we ascended was of remarkable beauty. Rich with all the gorgeous coloring of the season was spread out as far as the eye could reach the unshorn wealth of corn-field and of meadow. Here and there a clump of beech or chestnut sheltered, half hidden among the foliage, the snow-white walls of a farm house. Liliputian figures crept stealthily along through lane and over pasture, more like the tiny figures in a Flemish painting than men and cattle at their labor. The rock-bound bay was alive with its freight of toy-like fishing-boats, whose white sails borrowed the golden hues of evening as the sun stole down toward the heathery forehead of Slieve Donard. The whole scene, embraced from an altitude of fourteen hundred feet, is again before me, and I revel for a moment, whilst the illusion lasts, in the unspeakable emotion which was born of it.
But as I set out to tell a story whose theatre is not the mountain but the valley underneath, I must e'en come down again to supper and to prose, leaving, however reluctantly, Slieve Donard and its poetry behind me.
Leaving Newcastle with that regret which all must feel who leave it at such a season, I started next morning after breakfast for Castlewellan, where I intended taking the coach for Newry, having ordered my luggage to be forwarded there from my hotel at the Point.
Castlewellan is but four miles distant, and the journey thither was said to be one of the most enjoyable walks in this romantic region.
The road, for the entire distance, is one uninterrupted ascent toward the summit of one of the lesser hills on which the village stands, affording from every point—unless when now and then a jutting mountain crag overhangs the path, and for a moment, intercepts the vision—a view of the broad expanse of sea, the valley widening as you rise—each footstep of the ascent adding some new beauty of form and color, light and shadow to the scene.
Half way upon my journey I sat down to rest for a minute or two by the road side and lighted a cigar. Under its soothing influence and that of the scene beneath me, I dropped into one of those blissful reveries in which we sometimes forget our earthliness for a while, our souls absorbed in ecstatic [{795}] contemplation of the wondrous beauty, yet still more wondrous mystery, of the Creator's handiwork.
I had been thus but a short time indeed when the sound of approaching footsteps broke in upon my thought, followed by the customary salutation, "God save you, sir, 'tis a heavenly morning that we have."