The General Post-Office and the Rotunda are near the monument. The Post-Office is a fine structure [pg 670] of stone with a portico of Ionic pillars five feet in diameter. Its pediment is surmounted by three statues: Ireland at the apex, Fidelity on the left, and Mercury on the right. In certain post-offices that we wot of Mercury would indeed be the right statue in the right place, and might be considered to have a double significance—as a celestial messenger and a patron of thieving post-office clerks.
Certain tourists have claimed for Sackville Street the proud pre-eminence of being “the finest thoroughfare in Europe.” I do not think the claim well founded. I do not consider it equal to some of the new boulevards in Paris, or even to some of those in Brussels. It is certainly grand and imposing as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Sackville Street, however, presents a lively scene on a fine afternoon. Beautiful women, well-dressed gentlemen, rich toilets, and magnificent equipages may then be seen; the toilets superior to anything to be seen out of Paris, the equipages not to be equalled out of London. Nothing that I have seen on the Continent of Europe can compare with the “turn-outs” and “cattle” driven in Dublin. The most beautiful equipage I have noticed, and at the same time the chastest in its elegant simplicity, was that of Earl Spencer, the present viceroy; four dark bays—blood-horses—with postillions and outriders in a dark livery almost black, with white buckskin breeches and top-boots. Not a brass button or strip of tawdry gold lace to be seen. Compared with this equipage, the state carriages at Buckingham Palace and those at Versailles looked like circus wagons.
Carlisle Bridge, the embouchure of Sackville Street, being considerably narrower than the street, is generally the scene of something like a “Broadway jam.” On a busy day it reminds one of the Fulton Street crossing—even to the policeman.
The élite of Dublin, however, will be found in Grafton Street about four p.m. This street, though narrow—narrower even than Broadway—is the brightest, cheeriest street in Dublin. It is laid with asphaltum, and is delightfully free from mud or noise. It is the fashionable shopping-street. Equipages in the very perfection of good taste may be seen in long lines at both sides of the street in front of the principal shops, while ranks of magnificent “Yellowplushes,” in rich liveries and powdered heads, wait, with the grand imperturbability of flunky dignity, to open the carriage-door for madame or “my lady.”
I have already said that the Irish in Ireland are becoming a serious people. I did not meet a single specimen of the Irish joker, indispensable to the tourist in Ireland a quarter of a century ago. If he ever existed as they represented him, the railways have killed him. Now there is no time for display of wit, so called. I think the extinction of the genus “joker” is something to be grateful for. I did not see any evidence of suffering among the laboring classes or any more raggedness than in England, France, or Germany. Artisans are becoming scarce, and can command good wages. It is hard to get agricultural laborers; they can almost set their own terms. Those who may be obtained cannot be kept very long; they work merely to save enough to join their relatives and friends in the Land of the Free.
The traditional costume of the stage Irishman is as rarely seen in Ireland as the short-waisted, long-tailed coat, and striped trousers of the stage Yankee in the United States. I saw but one pair of “knee-breeches” between Cork and Kingstown.
I did not encounter a single shillelah.
Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XIV—Uprooting Thorns.
By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”