Between the Under Secretary's Lodge and the Hibernian School is the historical tract known as “The Fifteen Acres.” It was a celebrated duelling-ground in the old days, when a “crooked look” was followed by an invitation to pistols and coffee. There it was that “the Queen's Bench went out with the Common Pleas,” and the “Chancery winged the Exchequer.” It was there that Daniel O'Connell met Mr. d'Esterre, and killed him. Beyond the park lie the famous “Strawberry Beds,” where the Dubliners crowd, in the season, to enjoy their “sweet strawberries smothered in cream.”
An omnibus plies regularly between the city and the Botanical Gardens at Glasnevin; but it is better to take a four-wheeler, and suit your own time and convenience. Make your bargain with Jehu before you start, however. The gardens are about thirty acres in extent. The cemetery where lie the ashes of the great orators, Curran and O'Connell, is at Glasnevin. The monument to O'Connell is an imitation of that puzzle to antiquarians—the Irish Round Tower. The effect of the monument is not good. It seemed to me grotesque and out of place. I could not at first explain to myself why it produced such a harsh, unpleasing effect. A glance at the veritable Tower of Clondalkin enlightened me. The mock tower wants the mellowing touch of artist-centuries to soften down its hard, new outlines, and make it seem in keeping with the repose that reigns in the City of the Dead.
A pilgrimage to the birthplace of Thomas Moore was a labor of love which we promised ourselves [pg 534] would be among the first performed after reaching Dublin. We learned that the spot where the bard first saw the light was in Anngiers Street, generally pronounced by the Dubliners Aingers Street. Everybody we asked professed to know all about it, yet nobody could tell us the number of the house. Anngiers Street is not a very long street. We concluded to go through it from end to end, and at either side, examining every house in detail. Anngiers Street commences at Stephen Street, in rear of the castle, and extends to Bishop Street. It is not a particularly clean street. It is only just to say, however, that it is no dirtier than continental, transatlantic, or Britannic streets of like degree. We began our pilgrimage at the wrong end, but our patient search was at length rewarded. The house is No. 12, at the corner of Anngiers Street and Little Longford Street. It was then occupied by “Thomas Healy, Wine and Spirit Merchant.” According to some of little Tom's biographers, the old house has always been devoted to the sale of intoxicating beverages. His father was what Uncle Sam calls by the undignified name of “rumseller.” But “honor and shame from no condition rise,” and Tom's muse may owe her seductive, anacreontic blush to his early associations.
A weather-soiled and smoke-blackened bust of the poet occupies a niche between the windows of the second story. The house has been recently painted and renovated. When these repairs were commenced, the bust was removed by the proprietor, and was not replaced at their completion. The worthy vender of wine and spirits who occupied the house, though he believed in filling bumpers fair, and their power of smoothing the brow of Care, was probably rather bored by the continual visits of votaries to the shrine of the poet. The sacrifices of these pilgrims to the rosy muse were most probably merely theoretical. They did not “send round the wine,” or order any of it sent to their address in the city. They took none of those “brimming glasses” generative of “wit's electric flame.” A plague on such pilgrims! say I, marry and amen! The bust of the bard shall no longer be a beacon for them. But the statesmen and critics who sit at the base of Nelson's Pillar soon noticed that the niche was empty. Their poetical ire was raised to an unpleasant degree. They brought such influences to bear on the proprietor of the Cradle of Genius that the bust was at once restored to its accustomed niche.
The Dubliners have a passion for flowers and rock-work. Every available foot of ground in front and in rear of their houses is devoted to the cultivation of flowers and the building of miniature grottos. The city is spreading very fast, and rows of cottages are building in the suburbs on all sides. In general, the houses are not what we Americans would call comfortable. The fire-places are very small; for coal is scarce and dear, and a bundle of kindling-wood, composed of half a dozen chips not much larger than matches, is an object of purchase. The grates seem constructed to throw out smoke instead of heat. In this they are well seconded by the moist, heavy atmosphere. Living is good and cheap, however—about one-fourth cheaper than it is in our principal cities on this side of the Atlantic. Liquors are good in quality and moderate in price. Clothing of all kinds costs two-thirds [pg 535] less than in New York, and is not “shoddy.” The English custom of wearing flowers in the button-hole prevails in Dublin. The commerce in flowers is therefore extensive, and the shops devoted to that charming traffic make delightful displays of floral treasures. The Irish fruit, however, with the exception of strawberries, gooseberries, and currants, is inferior to ours. American apples are for sale at all fruiterers', at prices very little greater than those of New York.
Carving in “bog-oak” is quite an important trade in Dublin. Indeed, it may much more probably be called an art. I have seen some very artistic specimens of bog-wood ornaments—statuettes, groups, etc. Ladies' chains, brooches, and bracelets of Irish bog-oak were very fashionable a year or two since. The fashion extended even to London and Paris.
The Dublin streets are dull at night. The quality of gas supplied the city is poor. Early closing is pretty general, and all the principal stores are closed at dark. Doubtless this is better for the clerks and shopmen, and more economical for their employers. But it is not so pleasant for that large class of the community who love to saunter along the lighted streets in the evening, and feast their eyes on the treasures in the illuminated shop-windows. There is little to tempt the tourist into the Dublin streets at night. I should advise him—or particularly her—to avoid promenading on Saturday evening. I regret to say that evening is very generally observed by handicrafts-men and laborers, and even by shopmen and clerks, as a Bacchanalian festival. The number of persons who sacrifice to the rosy god at the week's end is lamentably great. Monday is a workmen's holiday, and it is very hard to get mechanics to work on that day.
The unsavory localities of Dublin are designated by strange names. Here are a few by way of example: Bow Lane, near the Insane Hospital founded by Dean Swift, who, as he says or sings,
“Left the little wealth he had
To build a house for fools or mad,